I asked the Baby Boomers to chime in about what existed “then but not now.”

One evening my wife and I, as we listened to a 60s music channel, reminisced about things that existed when we were growing up–but we don’t see much (if at all) now. Well, we quickly developed quite a list. Things like: 1 rotary dial phone (attached to the wall!) for the entire house; bread boxes; 30 minutes of nightly news—and that was it; there was a 154-game baseball season and a 14-game NFL season.

I decided to throw the question to my Facebook page. I asked the Baby Boomers to chime in about what existed “then but not now.”  I have broadly categorized and posted many of those comments below.  Have fun with the list…feel free to add more of your own.

Technology

• TV aerials on the outside of many homes
• The word “aerial”
• Reel-to-reel tape player
• Super 8 camera and projector, slide projector and screen
• Spare change for a pay phone
• Long distance phone calls being kept short because they were a very big deal and expensive
• Black and white westerns on TV
• The peacock that appeared right before a TV program that was about to be broadcast “in living color”
• AM radio—only
• 9-volt transistor radios
• Party lines

Music and Entertainment

• Black and white TV with 4 channels plus about 100 UHF channels with nothing on them but static
• Cars without AC
• Single blade razors that sucked
• Paper maps in your car
• 33—LPs
• Big colorful 33 rpm album covers that opened up like some kind of Christmas gift!
• 45 records—with those plastic inserts so you could play them on a record player spindle
• Record players—non-stereo
• Record player needles
• Records
• Scratched records
• Bandstand and Sooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuul Train

Video recommendation for the week:

Enjoy this musical flashback (or, for the younger readers, musical history lesson).

Sports

• No pitch counts
• Goalies without facemasks
• Place kickers in football who kicked head-on with their toes
• Sneaking a transistor radio to school to hear the opening-day game of the baseball season
• The Yankees ALWAYS won
• Only 4 bowl games at the end of the college football season
• Million dollar contracts? Are you kidding me?

Pop-Culture

• Tricycles for kids called “big wheels”
• Candy cigarettes
• Comics. Lots of them
• Saturday morning cartoons
• Lunch boxes
• Captain Kangaroo
• Tom Terrific
• Real Army Navy stores with authentic military items from WWII
• The little “seal of good standards” emblem you’d see at the end of the credits on a black and white TV show
• Drive-in movies and drive-in liquor stores
• EVERYONE watching Ed Sullivan on Sunday nights
• Wedding registries just for china, crystal and silver
• No “Save-the-Date” cards for up-coming weddings
• No limos and beach houses attached to Prom
• You borrowed Dad’s car for the prom and drank Boone’s Farm in the parking lot before going in
• No ATMs
• The phrase “standard shift” for a car with a manual transmission
• MPH not MPG

Consumerism

• Milk delivery and milk boxes by the back door
• Coffee came in one flavor—and that flavor was strong NOT bold
• What is a credit card?
• Returnable soda bottles
• $4 pretty much filled your tank—not just a gallon
• Bottled water? Drink it from the tap
• Corner drug stores with a soda fountain
• Really good stereos and TVs came in furniture cabinets

Life-style

• Walking home from school for lunch—and then returning back to school again
• Fathers who were all veterans of a foreign war
• “Clean your plate because children are starving in China!”
• Percolating coffee pots.
• Litter everywhere along highways (thank you Lady Bird)
• Dressing up to fly and getting to peek into the cockpit to chat with the pilot before or after your flight
• Everyone had tickets printed on cardstock
• No TSA
• Meals for everyone on planes
• Suitcases you had to carry, not roll
• Just about everybody CHECKED their baggage—at no extra charge
• No in-flight Wi-Fi
• Home delivery for big cans of “Charles Chips” – yes, potato chips!
• Front bench seats in cars
• Accountability
• Catching fire flies in a jar
• Sadie Hawkins dances

Health

• Small pox
• Small pox vaccine scars
• Chicken pox
• Freaking everyone smoked wherever they liked including planes, restaurants and offices
• DDT and everything that goes with it
• Cigarette commercials and billboards

Government

• No Clean Water Act. No Endangered Species Act. No Clean Air Act. No meaningful pollution control for cars or industry
• Second-class education for minority students
• Jim Crow
• A woman was NOT your boss at work
• Little to no accommodation for disabled persons
• A draft
• The Vietnam War

School-aged stuff

• High school students with after school jobs
• We got paid 50 cents an hour to babysit
• School dances
• Boards and chalk dust
• You went to the library to find books and do research
• You probably had an encyclopedia set in your house
• Portable Royal typewriters

What’s on your list of “then but not now”?

Enjoy your week—and H.T.R.B. as needed!

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© 2012. Steve Piscitelli and Steve Piscitelli’s Blog.