...that them young whippersnappers have never heard of.
This spins off from the "Age of Posters" thread, prompted by watching an episode of Never Mind the Buzzcocks the other night, in which one of the "challenges" for the panel was to pick Eric Haydock (bass player for the Hollies) out of a line-up of five, gray-haired, elderly gents. One of the panelists, an eighteen-year-old UK pop star named Lil Chris, was asked if he'd ever heard of the Hollies. No, he hadn't.
Which caused me to think, not for the first time, that we who are approaching our golden years remember a lot of things that the younger folk have never seen or heard of -- like the tv tube testers that used to be found in supermarkets and drug stores. Years ago, I made a list of some of them, but of course now I can't find the list.
But here are a few:
horse-drawn wagons delivering milk and bread, door to door. Drivers would sometimes let you ride along (no fear of pedophiles in those days) and the horses got lots of free carrots and apples.
Men in hats. Up until the early sixties, most men wore hats -- fedoras, trilbys, even bowlers for the middle class, mostly flat caps for workingmen.
Gas station attendants -- in uniform, yet! -- who pumped your gas, checked your fluids and tire pressure. By the time they started calling "full service" it wasn't.
"shell-shock" victims -- in the fifties and sixties every town in Canada (and Britain, too, I'm sure) had its handful of elderly men who had been driven mad by too many months in the trenches of WWI and who spent the rest of their lives in trembling dementia. As kids, we would see them on the streets and in the parks. I remember one old fellow, frail, hunched over, walking with a cane, who could only say one word -- "Cheerio!" -- though he said it to everybody he met.
"Bombed Properties" (later shortened to "bombies") -- a whole block of houses reduced to to broken brick and shattered masonry, where we used to explore and play as kids in the post-war years, although we were forbidden to go there.
Cars that started with a hand-crank. I had one, a 64 Austin Cambridge that I ran for six weeks without a battery.
A long fork used for making toast at the fireplace -- standard equipment in British homes until the 1950s.
Streets lit by gas lamps, the lamps lit by a man who came around with an igniter (I assume) on a long pole.
Homes for unwed mothers -- I used to deliver groceries to one in suburban Vancouver in 1972.
Along the same lines, condoms sold only by pharmacists -- you had to ask for them -- that came with the words "sold for prevention of disease only" printed on the packets, because contraception was illegal
SF tie-in: those of us who like time travel or alternate reality stories need to remember L.P. Hartley's line: "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there."
In article <739e7072-a019-43d9-8f9c-f0d953413...@v30g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>, Matt Hughes <archon...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>Which caused me to think, not for the first time, that we who are >approaching our golden years remember a lot of things that the younger >folk have never seen or heard of -- like the tv tube testers that used >to be found in supermarkets and drug stores. Years ago, I made a list >of some of them, but of course now I can't find the list.
>But here are a few:
[list snipped]
I'm 41 and *I* can't remember any of the things on your list. (Also at least a few of them I don't think we've ever had anywhere that I've lived.)
-- David Goldfarb |"I suppose an idiot plot is better than goldf...@ocf.berkeley.edu | no plot at all." goldf...@csua.berkeley.edu | -- Katie Schwarz
<archon...@googlemail.com> wrote: >...that them young whippersnappers have never heard of.
>This spins off from the "Age of Posters" thread, prompted by watching >an episode of Never Mind the Buzzcocks the other night, in which one >of the "challenges" for the panel was to pick Eric Haydock (bass >player for the Hollies) out of a line-up of five, gray-haired, elderly >gents. One of the panelists, an eighteen-year-old UK pop star named >Lil Chris, was asked if he'd ever heard of the Hollies. No, he >hadn't.
>Which caused me to think, not for the first time, that we who are >approaching our golden years remember a lot of things that the younger >folk have never seen or heard of -- like the tv tube testers that used >to be found in supermarkets and drug stores. Years ago, I made a list >of some of them, but of course now I can't find the list.
>But here are a few:
>horse-drawn wagons delivering milk and bread, door to door. Drivers >would sometimes let you ride along (no fear of pedophiles in those >days) and the horses got lots of free carrots and apples.
Yes. I would have been 4 or 5. After we moved to the suburbs it was trucks.
>Men in hats. Up until the early sixties, most men wore hats -- >fedoras, trilbys, even bowlers for the middle class, mostly flat caps >for workingmen.
Yes.
>Gas station attendants -- in uniform, yet! -- who pumped your gas, >checked your fluids and tire pressure. By the time they started >calling "full service" it wasn't.
Yes
>"shell-shock" victims -- in the fifties and sixties every town in >Canada (and Britain, too, I'm sure) had its handful of elderly men who >had been driven mad by too many months in the trenches of WWI and who >spent the rest of their lives in trembling dementia. As kids, we >would see them on the streets and in the parks. I remember one old >fellow, frail, hunched over, walking with a cane, who could only say >one word -- "Cheerio!" -- though he said it to everybody he met.
Maybe. Didn't realize the cause if it was war-related
>"Bombed Properties" (later shortened to "bombies") -- a whole block of >houses reduced to to broken brick and shattered masonry, where we used >to explore and play as kids in the post-war years, although we were >forbidden to go there.
No. Wrong side of the Atlantic
>Cars that started with a hand-crank. I had one, a 64 Austin Cambridge >that I ran for six weeks without a battery.
No. But an uncle had an old hand-cranked tractor
>A long fork used for making toast at the fireplace -- standard >equipment in British homes until the 1950s.
No.
>Streets lit by gas lamps, the lamps lit by a man who came around with >an igniter (I assume) on a long pole.
No
>Homes for unwed mothers -- I used to deliver groceries to one in >suburban Vancouver in 1972.
Yes. One still existed in Toronto in the 80's
>Along the same lines, condoms sold only by pharmacists -- you had to >ask for them -- that came with the words "sold for prevention of >disease only" printed on the packets, because contraception was >illegal
Yes
>SF tie-in: those of us who like time travel or alternate reality >stories need to remember L.P. Hartley's line: "The past is a foreign >country; they do things differently there."
> ...that them young whippersnappers have never heard of.
> This spins off from the "Age of Posters" thread, prompted by watching > an episode of Never Mind the Buzzcocks the other night, in which one > of the "challenges" for the panel was to pick Eric Haydock (bass > player for the Hollies) out of a line-up of five, gray-haired, elderly > gents. One of the panelists, an eighteen-year-old UK pop star named > Lil Chris, was asked if he'd ever heard of the Hollies. No, he > hadn't.
> Which caused me to think, not for the first time, that we who are > approaching our golden years remember a lot of things that the younger > folk have never seen or heard of -- like the tv tube testers that used > to be found in supermarkets and drug stores. Years ago, I made a list > of some of them, but of course now I can't find the list.
> But here are a few:
> horse-drawn wagons delivering milk and bread, door to door. Drivers > would sometimes let you ride along (no fear of pedophiles in those > days) and the horses got lots of free carrots and apples.
My uncle Joe drove one of those. He did door-to-door fruit and vegetables, not bread and milk until at least the time we moved away from Youngstown, Ohio in the early Sixties. I remember that he retired but I don't remember exactly when. The horses were in use until around 1958, when he bought a small Dodge truck. The horses lived out the rest of their lives in the little stable and the adjoining yard, right in the city. I remember that one of them died in 1965, having been retired for eight years.
> Men in hats. Up until the early sixties, most men wore hats -- > fedoras, trilbys, even bowlers for the middle class, mostly flat caps > for workingmen.
I remember that. Of course, I still wear either a Yankees cap or a western hat myself.
> Gas station attendants -- in uniform, yet! -- who pumped your gas, > checked your fluids and tire pressure. By the time they started > calling "full service" it wasn't.
Still have to let them pump your gas in New Jersey, state law.
> "shell-shock" victims -- in the fifties and sixties every town in > Canada (and Britain, too, I'm sure) had its handful of elderly men who > had been driven mad by too many months in the trenches of WWI and who > spent the rest of their lives in trembling dementia. As kids, we > would see them on the streets and in the parks. I remember one old > fellow, frail, hunched over, walking with a cane, who could only say > one word -- "Cheerio!" -- though he said it to everybody he met.
My grandfather didn't have those symptoms. He limped a little and you could see the big marks made by heavy machine-gun rounds all up his right leg. And he'd been lightly gassed. But he wasn't shell-shocked.
> "Bombed Properties" (later shortened to "bombies") -- a whole block of > houses reduced to to broken brick and shattered masonry, where we used > to explore and play as kids in the post-war years, although we were > forbidden to go there.
> Cars that started with a hand-crank. I had one, a 64 Austin Cambridge > that I ran for six weeks without a battery.
> A long fork used for making toast at the fireplace -- standard > equipment in British homes until the 1950s.
> Streets lit by gas lamps, the lamps lit by a man who came around with > an igniter (I assume) on a long pole.
> Homes for unwed mothers -- I used to deliver groceries to one in > suburban Vancouver in 1972.
The daughter of one of my mother's friends went into one of those in the Sixties. I think there are still some around.
> Along the same lines, condoms sold only by pharmacists -- you had to > ask for them -- that came with the words "sold for prevention of > disease only" printed on the packets, because contraception was > illegal
> SF tie-in: those of us who like time travel or alternate reality > stories need to remember L.P. Hartley's line: "The past is a foreign > country; they do things differently there."
On 2009-11-04 07:52:47 -0800, Matt Hughes <archon...@googlemail.com> said:
> Which caused me to think, not for the first time, that we who are > approaching our golden years remember a lot of things that the younger > folk have never seen or heard of -- like the tv tube testers that used > to be found in supermarkets and drug stores. Years ago, I made a list > of some of them, but of course now I can't find the list.
> But here are a few:
> horse-drawn wagons delivering milk and bread, door to door. Drivers > would sometimes let you ride along (no fear of pedophiles in those > days) and the horses got lots of free carrots and apples.
We had milk delivery, but he drove a van.
> Gas station attendants -- in uniform, yet! -- who pumped your gas, > checked your fluids and tire pressure. By the time they started > calling "full service" it wasn't.
I vaguely remember this; my father didn't want some idiot kid doing anything but filling the tank. He handled the rest at home.
> Cars that started with a hand-crank. I had one, a 64 Austin Cambridge > that I ran for six weeks without a battery.
My father had stories of these, from his younger days, but I don't recall ever seeing one.
> A long fork used for making toast at the fireplace -- standard > equipment in British homes until the 1950s.
And here, it was my grandmother who had something like that, but it wasn't a fork, it was a long handle with a little cage for the bread at the end.
> Homes for unwed mothers -- I used to deliver groceries to one in > suburban Vancouver in 1972.
I saw one, once, and it was actually called a home for "wayward girls." My mother did not want to tell us what "wayward" meant.
> Along the same lines, condoms sold only by pharmacists -- you had to > ask for them -- that came with the words "sold for prevention of > disease only" printed on the packets, because contraception was > illegal
Condoms you had to ask for at the drugstore, yes.
That's all I experienced from your list; I'll be 50 next year.
On Nov 4, 9:52 am, Matt Hughes <archon...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> ...that them young whippersnappers have never heard of.
> This spins off from the "Age of Posters" thread, prompted by watching > Which caused me to think, not for the first time, that we who are > approaching our golden years remember a lot of things that the younger > folk have never seen or heard of > But here are a few: > Anybody else got a few?
Dial telephones.
Life without cell phones.
black & white TV
Teeball where the T was a plumbers plunger with a big spring on top.
Not being paranoid about talking to strangers.
Not being paranoid.
School yards that were auxiliary parks. So many school yards are off- limits these days, reserved for the twenty kids on the varsity team.
On Wed, 4 Nov 2009 07:52:47 -0800 (PST), Matt Hughes
<archon...@googlemail.com> wrote: >...that them young whippersnappers have never heard of.
Either you're older than I am, or things varied more between countries than I thought.
>horse-drawn wagons delivering milk and bread, door to door. Drivers >would sometimes let you ride along (no fear of pedophiles in those >days) and the horses got lots of free carrots and apples.
Milkmen and door-to-door bakery men, yeah, but they were two separate companies and they both drove trucks, not horses.
>"shell-shock" victims -- in the fifties and sixties every town in >Canada (and Britain, too, I'm sure) had its handful of elderly men who >had been driven mad by too many months in the trenches of WWI and who >spent the rest of their lives in trembling dementia. As kids, we >would see them on the streets and in the parks.
I don't think they were as common in the U.S., but in fact I grew up near a veterans' hospital that had been built specifically for shell-shock cases, and sometimes saw them on the buses. Some of them were fairly creepy.
Though the creepiest guy I ever saw on a bus was the one with the concentration camp tattoo on his arm -- something else one doesn't see much anymore.
>"Bombed Properties" (later shortened to "bombies") -- a whole block of >houses reduced to to broken brick and shattered masonry, where we used >to explore and play as kids in the post-war years, although we were >forbidden to go there.
Not, of course, in the U.S.
>Cars that started with a hand-crank. I had one, a 64 Austin Cambridge >that I ran for six weeks without a battery.
Never saw a crank-started car except at antique car shows of one sort or another.
>A long fork used for making toast at the fireplace -- standard >equipment in British homes until the 1950s.
No fork, but we had a wire cage for making toast in the fireplace.
>Streets lit by gas lamps, the lamps lit by a man who came around with >an igniter (I assume) on a long pole.
The only gas lamps I ever saw had automatic lighters and didn't need the guy with the igniter.
>Along the same lines, condoms sold only by pharmacists -- you had to >ask for them -- that came with the words "sold for prevention of >disease only" printed on the packets, because contraception was >illegal
Those I remember.
>Anybody else got a few?
Not immediately, but I'll mention a couple of things that my parents grew up with that seemed strange to me: tooth powder and straight razors.
In article <739e7072-a019-43d9-8f9c-f0d953413...@v30g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>, Matt Hughes <archon...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>...that them young whippersnappers have never heard of.
>This spins off from the "Age of Posters" thread, prompted by watching >an episode of Never Mind the Buzzcocks the other night, in which one >of the "challenges" for the panel was to pick Eric Haydock (bass >player for the Hollies) out of a line-up of five, gray-haired, elderly >gents. One of the panelists, an eighteen-year-old UK pop star named >Lil Chris, was asked if he'd ever heard of the Hollies. No, he >hadn't.
It's probably unnecessary for me to mention this, but I never heard of them either and I'm sixty-seven. But that's me.
>Which caused me to think, not for the first time, that we who are >approaching our golden years remember a lot of things that the younger >folk have never seen or heard of -- like the tv tube testers that used >to be found in supermarkets and drug stores. Years ago, I made a list >of some of them, but of course now I can't find the list.
>But here are a few:
>horse-drawn wagons delivering milk and bread, door to door. Drivers >would sometimes let you ride along (no fear of pedophiles in those >days) and the horses got lots of free carrots and apples.
I can just barely remember milk deliveries (in bottles) at all; motorized delivery trucks though. That would've been in or before 1953. No bread deliveries ever. I can also remember, as late as the 1960s, a grocery store whose employees would deliver your order to your house. (Of late some stores have offered online orders and deliver the goods; mostly the plan collapses after a few months.)
>Men in hats. Up until the early sixties, most men wore hats -- >fedoras, trilbys, even bowlers for the middle class, mostly flat caps >for workingmen.
I remember only old men wearing hats. But then, we were in California. My father, born 1912, never wore a hat. I don't think he owned one.
>Gas station attendants -- in uniform, yet! -- who pumped your gas, >checked your fluids and tire pressure. By the time they started >calling "full service" it wasn't.
I remember those too, vaguely. Cf. the scene early in _Back to the Future_ (set in 1955) where a car drives into a gas station and three guys run out and start massaging the car. Three guys is probably an exaggeration, designed to astonish the visitor from 1985.
>"shell-shock" victims -- in the fifties and sixties every town in >Canada (and Britain, too, I'm sure) had its handful of elderly men who >had been driven mad by too many months in the trenches of WWI and who >spent the rest of their lives in trembling dementia. As kids, we >would see them on the streets and in the parks. I remember one old >fellow, frail, hunched over, walking with a cane, who could only say >one word -- "Cheerio!" -- though he said it to everybody he met.
I never saw one. Perhaps they were all in the institutions that Ronald Reagan was later to shut down? There are plenty of people with badly blown minds on the streets of Berkeley now, but they suffer from drugs in the 1960s, not WWI or -II.
>"Bombed Properties" (later shortened to "bombies") -- a whole block of >houses reduced to to broken brick and shattered masonry, where we used >to explore and play as kids in the post-war years, although we were >forbidden to go there.
None in the US. IIRC a Japanese submarine managed to get to Seattle and lob a few shells, but I didn't live near there.
>Cars that started with a hand-crank. I had one, a 64 Austin Cambridge >that I ran for six weeks without a battery.
Never saw one of those except in the movies, but my father had a 1935-or-so Packard roadster in the early 1960s. It was a coupe, with two seats inside and a rumble seat outside where I used to ride. (If someone had made a sudden stop in front of us I would have been decapitated, but we never thought of that somehow).
>A long fork used for making toast at the fireplace -- standard >equipment in British homes until the 1950s.
>Streets lit by gas lamps, the lamps lit by a man who came around with >an igniter (I assume) on a long pole.
Both toasters and street-lamps were electric as far back as I can remember. I do remember margarine being sold in its basic white form, packaged with a dye capsule inside a tough plastic bag; you broke the capsule and kneaded the whole thing until it was a uniform yellow. This was according to legislation pushed through by the dairy lobby, which didn't want margarine to exist at all, but failing that it mustn't confuse the consumer by *looking like* butter.
>Homes for unwed mothers -- I used to deliver groceries to one in >suburban Vancouver in 1972.
>Along the same lines, condoms sold only by pharmacists -- you had to >ask for them -- that came with the words "sold for prevention of >disease only" printed on the packets, because contraception was >illegal.
I was a girl. I was a grown woman before I ever heard of condoms. But I think I can remember reading about drugstores who made sure to have one female employee behind the counter, so that other women could ask for sanitary napkins (which were not out on display either) without having (blush) to mention them to a male.
>SF tie-in: those of us who like time travel or alternate reality >stories need to remember L.P. Hartley's line: "The past is a foreign >country; they do things differently there."
There are a couple of television series, neither of which I have seen, involving the concept. One, IIRC, is called _Life on Mars_ and involves a cop, or maybe a PI, who's hit by a car and thrown back from 2000 or so to 1970 or so. And there's one called _Mad Men_ which is simply set in the 1960s, no time travel necessary except on the part of the audience.
The thing I tend to reminisce about is the weakening of the iron grip fashion designers used to have over what everybody was actually wearing. Paris and New York would decree that skirts were going to rise, and millions of women all over the Western world would go out and buy new skirts, and/or cut six inches off the bottoms of the ones they had, or if they couldn't sew, get someone else to do it. (I made a nice little profit in fall 1962, altering my housemates' hems.)
Oh yes, and the assumption (either pushed, or reflected, by Hollywood) that a woman wearing glasses was _ipso facto_ ugly, but could be returned to her naturally gorgeous state by taking the glasses off. The young people don't believe me when I tell them that.
And the assumption that a woman was still young at twenty-nine, but the instant she turned thirty she became an ugly old hag.
-- Dorothy J. Heydt Vallejo, California djheydt at hotmail dot com Should you wish to email me, you'd better use the hotmail edress. Kithrup is getting too damn much spam, even with the sysop's filters.
In article <bb16006c-fb1b-4b67-999b-29b1256ae...@v25g2000yqk.googlegroups.com>, Will in New Haven <bill.re...@taylorandfrancis.com> wrote:
>On Nov 4, 10:52 am, Matt Hughes <archon...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>> Gas station attendants -- in uniform, yet! -- who pumped your gas, >> checked your fluids and tire pressure. By the time they started >> calling "full service" it wasn't.
>Still have to let them pump your gas in New Jersey, state law.
Oregon too. It's supposed to provide jobs for teenaged boys who wriggled out of high school with no other salable skills.
-- Dorothy J. Heydt Vallejo, California djheydt at hotmail dot com Should you wish to email me, you'd better use the hotmail edress. Kithrup is getting too damn much spam, even with the sysop's filters.
Bitstring <mcc3f5hblu53q1gfbgt1icvprglf6c2...@news.eternal-september.org>, from the wonderful person Lawrence Watt-Evans <l...@sff.net> said
>>Anybody else got a few?
>Not immediately, but I'll mention a couple of things that my parents >grew up with that seemed strange to me: tooth powder and straight >razors.
More recent examples (as used for educating today's school kids), the double ended 'church-key' that'd open bottles one end and punch triangular holes in drink cans the other end (no pull tabs - steel cans).
Slide Rules.
8" floppy discs (or even 5.25" these days I guess).
-- GSV Three Minds in a Can 16,110 Km walked. 2,937 Km PROWs surveyed. 53.1% complete.
In article <739e7072-a019-43d9-8f9c-f0d953413...@v30g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>, Matt Hughes <archon...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Anybody else got a few?
Here are some that I, not yet 30, remember but that my brother, still in high school but old enough to drive a car and fly an airplane, does not:
The constant threat of nuclear annihilation, and Communism as the Big Bad rather than the guys who make all our stuff.
Spontaneously breaking down on the highway. (Admittedly, part of this is because my family is able to afford better cars now, but cars in general are amazingly more reliable.)
Having to visit the library, a bookstore, or an expert if you wanted to learn about a new subject.
Sunday being a day of rest whether you liked it or not, because all the stores were closed.
Planning out long distance calls and being reminded every 60 seconds by your parents to hurry it up.
Heating with wood for more than just novelty value.
-- Mike Ash Radio Free Earth Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon
Grocery stores that deliver come and go and come and go...
I do not remember the foot X-ray machine in shoe shops. I do remember one that gently pushed metal blocks against all sides of your foot - this is for children - to measure the size mechanically. I haven't been in any classy shoe shops recently, I suppose, because I don't remember any gadget like that lately.
Telephone with an actual dial, a disc that you rotate and then release to generate a number-selecting signal.
Asbestos.
Mercury.
You'd be reading a regular paperback book and you'd turn a page and there was a colour printed card advertising cigarettes.
Photo-story comics based on films, or shows like Star Trek - photo stills with dialogue and action descriptions printed over them. Before everyone had video devices.
Video cassette tapes, in different, incompatible sizes.
Power cuts were common.
We didn't get colour television till well after our neighbours had it. I was raised to regard it as a frivolous luxury. Then for a while I dug televised snooker... it really matters what colours those balls are. But there were three television channels. Depending on your taste, either one of them or two of them you NEVER watched, or almost never. Sometimes you'd talk to someone who did. Mutual incomprehension.
When Isaac Asimov was a real person.
When spiritual powers and pyramids and stone circles and UFOs were taken seriously. Some young folks may remember "crop circles"...
On Wed, 4 Nov 2009 17:14:18 +0000, GSV Three Minds in a Can
<G...@quik.clara.co.uk> wrote: >Bitstring ><mcc3f5hblu53q1gfbgt1icvprglf6c2...@news.eternal-september.org>, from >the wonderful person Lawrence Watt-Evans <l...@sff.net> said >>>Anybody else got a few?
>>Not immediately, but I'll mention a couple of things that my parents >>grew up with that seemed strange to me: tooth powder and straight >>razors.
>More recent examples (as used for educating today's school kids), the >double ended 'church-key' that'd open bottles one end and punch >triangular holes in drink cans the other end (no pull tabs - steel >cans).
I still have and use one of those.
>Slide Rules.
My kids thought those were the funniest things. I wonder what ever happened to my old K&E log-log one?
>8" floppy discs (or even 5.25" these days I guess).
I managed to miss 8" floppies, but I sure remember punch cards.
> Bitstring > <mcc3f5hblu53q1gfbgt1icvprglf6c2...@news.eternal-september.org>, from > the wonderful person Lawrence Watt-Evans <l...@sff.net> said >>> Anybody else got a few?
>> Not immediately, but I'll mention a couple of things that my parents >> grew up with that seemed strange to me: tooth powder and straight >> razors.
> More recent examples (as used for educating today's school kids), the > double ended 'church-key' that'd open bottles one end and punch > triangular holes in drink cans the other end (no pull tabs - steel cans).
> Slide Rules.
> 8" floppy discs (or even 5.25" these days I guess).
Heck, 3.5" floppies are nearly extinct. Exploding file sizes plus Internet file hosts, shared network servers and USB sticks did them in.
-- 7 Years - 2265 Experiments - 10 tons of explosives - 705 Myths Myths - Will - Fall!
On Wed, 4 Nov 2009 09:32:17 -0800 (PST), Robert Carnegie
<rja.carne...@excite.com> wrote: >Grocery stores that deliver come and go and come and go...
>I do not remember the foot X-ray machine in shoe shops. I do remember >one that gently pushed metal blocks against all sides of your foot - >this is for children - to measure the size mechanically. I haven't >been in any classy shoe shops recently, I suppose, because I don't >remember any gadget like that lately.
The current thing in shoe shops is a scanner you stand on that reads the pressure from your feet and analyzes where you put your weight and whether you have fallen arches.
X-rays were ever so slightly before my time -- I remember seeing the machines still in the stores, but they were shut down, no longer being used.
In article <739e7072-a019-43d9-8f9c-f0d953413...@v30g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>, Matt Hughes <archon...@googlemail.com> writes:
>...that them young whippersnappers have never heard of. >This spins off from the "Age of Posters" thread, prompted by watching >an episode of Never Mind the Buzzcocks the other night, in which one >of the "challenges" for the panel was to pick Eric Haydock (bass >player for the Hollies) out of a line-up of five, gray-haired, elderly >gents. One of the panelists, an eighteen-year-old UK pop star named >Lil Chris, was asked if he'd ever heard of the Hollies. No, he >hadn't.
I remember using "Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress" as my song for checkout of new speakers. (Yes, I was into bass. How did you know?)
>approaching our golden years remember a lot of things that the younger >folk have never seen or heard of -- like the tv tube testers that used >to be found in supermarkets and drug stores. Years ago, I made a list >of some of them, but of course now I can't find the list.
It's probably with your car keys and reading glasses.
>horse-drawn wagons delivering milk and bread, door to door.
My folks had milk delivered until about 1966 or so, but it was always motorized. My grandparents' house had a pass-through for milk next to their back door.
>Men in hats. Up until the early sixties, most men wore hats --
My church even had little clips mounted on the back of every pew, for holding hats.
>Gas station attendants -- in uniform, yet! -- who pumped your gas, >checked your fluids and tire pressure.
I was one of them in the summer of 1974.
>Along the same lines, condoms sold only by pharmacists -- you had to >ask for them -- that came with the words "sold for prevention of >disease only" printed on the packets, because contraception was >illegal
I can't remember where it was, but I was in a fairly seedy men's room recently, and that text was on the condom vending machine. I checked because it'd been so long since I'd even seen one of them.
-- Michael F. Stemper #include <Standard_Disclaimer> I feel more like I do now than I did when I came in.
On Wed, 4 Nov 2009 16:45:33 GMT, djhe...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:
>In article <739e7072-a019-43d9-8f9c-f0d953413...@v30g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>, >Matt Hughes <archon...@googlemail.com> wrote: >>...that them young whippersnappers have never heard of.
>>This spins off from the "Age of Posters" thread, prompted by watching >>an episode of Never Mind the Buzzcocks the other night, in which one >>of the "challenges" for the panel was to pick Eric Haydock (bass >>player for the Hollies) out of a line-up of five, gray-haired, elderly >>gents. One of the panelists, an eighteen-year-old UK pop star named >>Lil Chris, was asked if he'd ever heard of the Hollies. No, he >>hadn't.
>It's probably unnecessary for me to mention this, but I never heard >of them either and I'm sixty-seven. But that's me.
The Hollies are an interesting case of a band name being forgotten while some of its members and of its songs are much better remembered. I'm sure you would recognise "The Air That I Breathe" stright away.
-- Don Aitken Mail to the From: address is not read. To email me, substitute "clara.co.uk" for "freeuk.com"
On Wed, 4 Nov 2009 08:51:32 -0800 (PST), trag <t...@io.com> wrote: >On Nov 4, 9:52 am, Matt Hughes <archon...@googlemail.com> wrote: >> ...that them young whippersnappers have never heard of.
>> This spins off from the "Age of Posters" thread, prompted by watching
>> Which caused me to think, not for the first time, that we who are >> approaching our golden years remember a lot of things that the younger >> folk have never seen or heard of
>> But here are a few:
>> Anybody else got a few?
>Dial telephones.
>Life without cell phones.
>black & white TV
Living in a house without either telephone or TV. My family got a TV when I was ten (one channel, black & white), but still had no telephone when I left home to go to university.
-- Don Aitken Mail to the From: address is not read. To email me, substitute "clara.co.uk" for "freeuk.com"
In article <opf3f59necvkllk0lekhanadrp16soc...@4ax.com>, Don Aitken <don-ait...@freeuk.com> writes: >On Wed, 4 Nov 2009 16:45:33 GMT, djhe...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote: >>In article <739e7072-a019-43d9-8f9c-f0d953413...@v30g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>, >>Matt Hughes <archon...@googlemail.com> wrote: >>>of the "challenges" for the panel was to pick Eric Haydock (bass >>>player for the Hollies) out of a line-up of five, gray-haired, elderly >>>gents. One of the panelists, an eighteen-year-old UK pop star named >>>Lil Chris, was asked if he'd ever heard of the Hollies. No, he >>>hadn't.
>>It's probably unnecessary for me to mention this, but I never heard >>of them either and I'm sixty-seven. But that's me.
>The Hollies are an interesting case of a band name being forgotten >while some of its members and of its songs are much better remembered. >I'm sure you would recognise "The Air That I Breathe" stright away.
Ten bucks says that she wouldn't.
-- Michael F. Stemper #include <Standard_Disclaimer> I feel more like I do now than I did when I came in.
I remember a time without the internet. Without mail. Without computers, even. A friend of mine had a game computer avant la lettre; it took some kind of big cassette thingy you could put into a machine connected to the television. I was fascinated by that. I think she was only my friend because of that.
In article <d7g3f5lhahclg3kr0029v15a2o144vf...@4ax.com>, Don Aitken <don-ait...@freeuk.com> writes: >On Wed, 4 Nov 2009 08:51:32 -0800 (PST), trag <t...@io.com> wrote: >>Dial telephones.
>>Life without cell phones.
>>black & white TV
>Living in a house without either telephone or TV.
Actually, my first flat after I was out of college had neither. I didn't have any vacation time, so I couldn't take off from work for the telephone installer. If I needed to make a phone call, I'd go to the phone booth on the corner. I can't remember if phone calls were still a dime, or if they'd already gone up to a quarter.
Kids aren't going to understand "phone booth", though.
After six months, I had some nominal amount of vacation, so then I got a phone. It was a couple more years before a television, though. A friend and I bought a duplex, and after we'd been there a year or so, somebody gave him their old B&W.
-- Michael F. Stemper #include <Standard_Disclaimer> A bad day sailing is better than a good day at the office.
On 2009-11-04 09:14:18 -0800, GSV Three Minds in a Can <G...@quik.clara.co.uk> said:
> Bitstring > <mcc3f5hblu53q1gfbgt1icvprglf6c2...@news.eternal-september.org>, from > the wonderful person Lawrence Watt-Evans <l...@sff.net> said >>> Anybody else got a few?
>> Not immediately, but I'll mention a couple of things that my parents >> grew up with that seemed strange to me: tooth powder and straight >> razors.
> More recent examples (as used for educating today's school kids), the > double ended 'church-key' that'd open bottles one end and punch > triangular holes in drink cans the other end (no pull tabs - steel > cans).
I still have a few of those.
I can't recall the last time I used the pointy end, but it would have been on a big can of chicken broth or evaporated milk or something, not on a soda.
> Slide Rules.
I was just young enough (or my school system just liberal enough) that calculators were allowed when we got to stuff that slide rules were used for. I learned how to use a slide rule once, but never needed to get the hang of it.
> 8" floppy discs (or even 5.25" these days I guess).
I go back to punch tape, but had lots of the big floppy discs at one point.
>On Wed, 4 Nov 2009 09:32:17 -0800 (PST), Robert Carnegie ><rja.carne...@excite.com> wrote:
>>Grocery stores that deliver come and go and come and go...
>>I do not remember the foot X-ray machine in shoe shops. I do remember >>one that gently pushed metal blocks against all sides of your foot - >>this is for children - to measure the size mechanically. I haven't >>been in any classy shoe shops recently, I suppose, because I don't >>remember any gadget like that lately.
>The current thing in shoe shops is a scanner you stand on that reads >the pressure from your feet and analyzes where you put your weight and >whether you have fallen arches.
>X-rays were ever so slightly before my time -- I remember seeing the >machines still in the stores, but they were shut down, no longer being >used.
I remember them in use. I was about four, so that would have been around 1950. I believe they were banned (in England) not long after
-- Don Aitken Mail to the From: address is not read. To email me, substitute "clara.co.uk" for "freeuk.com"
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