The NASA Apollo Space Program

Listening to music (not just talk) on AM radio stations at night that were 1500 miles away.

Spare Time

This message has been edited. Last edited by: radioman,

quote:

Originally posted by Doc H.:
Surprised no one mentioned transistor radios. Oh, and chain mail.

Before the transistor radios, there were portable radios which used vacuum tubes and needed two giant batteries, an A battery and a B battery. One was to run the filaments and the other was high voltage.

1000 yard Santiago Gun Range in SoCal

Weatherbys in Southgate.. Is Weisers Sporting Goods still in Anaheim?

Ford School and Wilshire Jr Hi, in Fullerton

Milk being delivered to your front porch.

You would leave the empty bottles out to be picked up and they gave you a rotating index thing that would tell them what to leave for the new delivery. Mom would get so mad at me as I would sneak outside and move chocolate milk card to the top.

Freedom !!!

Bob

The rifle range in the basement of my high school in Suburban Chicago. (Park Ridge/Des Plaines)

Cigarette lighters and ash trays in cars. (The sockets, sometimes multiple, are still there.)

Watching bull bats and chimney sweeps outside at night , around dusk.

I don't know the correct name for bull bats, but they were large black birds about the size of a seagull, with long thin wings.

Chimney sweeps were swallows, small black birds, that chased insects in the evenings. I seldom see these anymore, been decades since I've seen a bull bat.

No catbirds around anymore.

Drive In Theatres

CD players - they’re phasing out. Can’t listen to them in either of our new cars.
Electric can openers - I would guess they still exist, but every home used to have one. I haven’t seen one in ages.
Texas Instruments Scientific Calculators.
Pagers (beepers)
Gasoline under $1/gallon
Cigarettes under $1/pack
Flushing enzymes for the septic
Butt ball - nowadays it would be considered violent and a criminal act.
Merry- go-rounds
Pledge of allegiance every morning over the intercom at school, where we all stood facing the flag with our hand on our hearts.

quote:

Originally posted by Beancooker:
Flushing enzymes for the septic

You mean like Rid-X? Still a monthly ritual.

quote:

Originally posted by Sunset_Va:
Watching bull bats and chimney sweeps outside at night , around dusk.

I don't know the correct name for bull bats, but they were large black birds about the size of a seagull, with long thin wings.

Chimney sweeps were swallows, small black birds, that chased insects in the evenings. I seldom see these anymore, been decades since I've seen a bull bat.

No catbirds around anymore.

Nighthawks, and I think you mean “Chimney swift.”

Sorry you don’t get to see, and hear them anymore. They add a lot to my enjoyment of summer.

Saturday morning cartoons
Cruising the “strip” from 8-11pm every Friday and Saturday night.
Three wheel ATVs
Shopping malls when they weren’t crime ridden ghost towns.
Radio Shack during the Christmas holiday season.
Hickory Farms stores with samples of everything.

Elevators that were started/stopped manually by an elevator operator
Volkswagen Microbuses (the original)

Car Phones. -- Seriously, the type that were permanently mounted in the car with the little antenna with the spiral in the middle. It was bonus points if you had the accessory that would toot your horn when your phone rang.

Shocked that no one has mentioned Sears and Roebuck, and JC Penney catalogs. Western Auto stores. American Motors/Rambler.

The Berlin wall.

The U.S.S.R.

Disco.

Good riddance to all of the above.

moon dialing....talking between the busy-signal beep on a party line, with unknown people...and...pausing....between....each....beep....

(later in my youth) 25 cent gasoline;
levis only came about 6" too long whatever size you wore, so the were rolled up in one wide fold, or the next exciting fashion, rolled up narrow, in multiple 1" folds;

cinnamon-clove tooth picks in a little bottle of contraband the popular girls in the 6th grade would pass around to their entourage;

civics class where the teacher made us read the news paper for 20 minutes each day;

being able to ride your bicycle away after breakfast and explore all day until you were hungry enough to come back home, without the police being called by anyone;

discovering the exotic taste of 'lime-phosphorus' in place of the 10 cent cola at the ice cream parlor;

being proud of having to pay a whole quarter to ride the bus downtown, instead of the 10 cent Kids Fare....

quote:

Originally posted by Graniteguy:
Drive In Theatres

There's one about 5 miles from my house. Been there for at least 50 years. We go about once a summer. Have taken grandkids and their friends. They think it's incredible that you can bring your own popcorn, drinks, lawn chairs, coolers and watch movies outside.

quote:

Originally posted by Eponym:

Elevators that were started/stopped manually by an elevator operator

I ran those in the Hotel New Yorker (45 floors and several sub-basements), in the mid 1950s.