Keep the GREAT suggestions coming!
July 19th, 2010 by Mike Redding
I asked and you delivered!
I wanted to compile and extensive list of all the things we grew up with that kids today will never see… and VOILA! Some of you left comments here… some e-mailed. This list makes me laugh and groan in amazement.
But it feels incomplete still. Read through it and add your 2 cents. And I’ll keep building this list. (Remember when a penny could get you a piece of gum?)
Rotary dial phones
Getting spanked or paddled by teachers in school
Black & White TV
Powdered dishwashing detergent
Kitchens with NO automatic dishwasher
Clothes lines
Painting a house with a paint brush
Sandwiches wrapped in wax paper
Non-electric pencil sharpeners
8 tracks
Tape recorders with actual cassette tapes, not digital chips
Home heat source was wood fired furnace
A big, round, black, vinyl disc you lay on a spinning table and a special “needle” would be placed on it… VOILA! Music!
Mix tapes (we spent hours, even days making these. Now kids assemble “playlists” with mouse clicks on a computer in minutes)
Flashcube cameras (The four-sided kind you popped on and off)
Wax fingers and lips
Balsa wood airplanes (some had rubber band powered propellers)
Waiting days to see what your pictures looked like
Carbon paper
Rabbit ears (that’s a TV antenna for the kids reading this)
Getting up to change the channel
Party lines
Tang
Betamax tapes (This format lost out to VHS tapes)
Pull tabs from soda cans… the type that actually came off
Grass trimmers that worked like giant scissors you actually squeezed by hand
Lawnmowers that required no gas or electricity… just you pushing
Tube radios and TVs that had to “WARM UP” before they worked right
Garage doors without remotes
Houses without AC
GameBoys, Atari, Pong,
MS-DOS
45’s,
PF Flyers
Photos in physical albums
Newspapers in print
Transistor radios
Sack lunches
Princess telephones
Ice cube trays
The small box on your TV that you had to get up and turn the dial to make the antenna on house turn to pick up another channel.
Cars without seat belts
Seat Belts that were lap only
Cars with the high-beam button on the floor you pushed with your left foot
My Partridge Family (Metal) lunchbox
Free Hotwheel cars and tracks when the service attendant pumped your gas and washed your windshield.
Mimeograph machines and the smelly purple ink on mimeographed paper
The MovieFone guy/voice that you called to get movie listings
Pay Phones
Okay, if you want to add something, make a comment (remember when you had to sit down and write a letter with a pen on paper and send it by ground mail to comment on anything? It’s amazing, all that has changed just in our generation… MR
Responsibility for your own actions!
45 rpm and 33 rpm vinyl records and turntables, much less a 78 rpm
Matel handheld electronic football game
Holly Hobby dolls
Boom boxes
Sleeping with all the windows open
Playing outside all day when your Mom didn’t know where you were, but knew you were ok
Drinking from the water hose
No microwave oven
Pulling into the gas station and having someone fill your tank and check the oil as a courtesy for no extra charge
Cracker jacks had nice prizes, plastic glasses in oatmeal boxes.
dirt roads, milk truck delivering to your house (although they are coming back), family farms, Fred Kirby and the Little Rascals
outhouses ( not theses fancy porty potties) If you were high class that would be a 2 seater outhouse ,,and a hand pump in the kitchen to pump water for all your needs including the Saturday wash tub for bathing
“BAG BOYS” you know, back in the day when you had someone to help you get your groceries to the car…
NO Walmarts.
No cordless phones,no cell phones.
In my grandmother’s neighborhood (in Hamburg, NY) there was a vending machine that sold milk in glass jugs. We loved walking the few blocks to go buy some.
For the ladies, I remember short hair styles with”spit curls”.
Clothes pins. I heard someone at Target ask the cashier (who looked 12) “where would i find clothes pins?” and the cashier looked totally blank. Didn’t have a clue.