I’m not that old, born in 1970. I remember my dad getting a kick out of kids coming into his barber shop not knowing how to use his rotatory phone he kept long after they had gone out of fashion. The weird thing is one set of my grandparents still used a chamber pot when I was a kid. I guess because they lived in a two story house with the bedrooms upstairs and the only bathroom at the other end of the house from the stairs on the first floor. I’m sure any kid nowadays would flip out if they saw that.
My dad still uses a rotary phone as his primary line.
For some reason the thing that comes to my mind is the switch to turn the high beams on and off being on the floor of the footwell on the driver’s side, so that you used the ball of your foot to control the headlights. Had that set up in the Plymouth Gran Fury that my family had when I was a kid, haven’t seen them in many years.
I’m not that old, born in 1970. I remember my dad getting a kick out of kids coming into his barber shop not knowing how to use his rotatory phone he kept long after they had gone out of fashion. The weird thing is one set of my grandparents still used a chamber pot when I was a kid. I guess because they lived in a two story house with the bedrooms upstairs and the only bathroom at the other end of the house from the stairs on the first floor. I’m sure any kid nowadays would flip out if they saw that.
What’s a chamber pot?
I used to have to go onto the roof after a good storm to re-orient the antenna. How else were we gonna watch cartoons?
when I was young we had to make our own water - slam hydrogen and 2 parts oxygen together - funny to think of doing this today with rivers and lakes and shit all around
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My dad still uses a rotary phone as his primary line.
For some reason the thing that comes to my mind is the switch to turn the high beams on and off being on the floor of the footwell on the driver’s side, so that you used the ball of your foot to control the headlights. Had that set up in the Plymouth Gran Fury that my family had when I was a kid, haven’t seen them in many years.
On that note, Dodge and Plymouth also had push button transmission.
I was born in 71, my grandparents had a party line, the other set of grandparents still had washing machine with a wide open wringer, I knew early on in life what “tit caught in the wringer” meant.
A little more recently, my kids found a music cassette in a old box of stuff and had no clue what it was, they’re 10 and 11.
edited for abysmal spelling
when I was young we had to make our own water - slam hydrogen and 2 parts oxygen together - funny to think of doing this today with rivers and lakes and shit all around
What did you do with all that leftover oxygen?
Not sure this is so far in the past it’s not done widespread, but my sweet little gromma always made sun tea for us. My mom still makes sun tea. I have no idea if it makes a hill of beans difference, but that’s how we do it around our house! Sugar free sun tea yums.
Born in 1965…
For the longest time, we had a rotary phone, mounted to the wall near the kitchen. Which was also near the in-window air conditioner because we didn’t have central air. My grandparent’s phone was an ancient rotary made out Bakelite…it was unbelievably heavy. They also were on a party line for quite a while.
Used to disappear for hours at a time in the summer…just had to be home before dark. Rode my bicycle everywhere.
Getting the TV Guide and seeing what was on the whopping 4 channels we got (NBC, CBS, ABC, and PBS). And having to turn the antenna in order to get NBC. We also had this hugemongous Motorola that in it’s last days had the TV repairman out all the time swapping tubes (remember the tube testing stations in grocery stores?). We also used to collect S&H greenstamps.
Spot
Manually changing the channel on the tv
We had a VHS recorder with a “remote control” that was attached by a cord
Answering machines with a tape
Pay phones
AAA “trip tics” for travel and paper maps in general
.
I could probably come up with a lot of things I grew up with that were already obsolete then. My parents were older, grew up before the depression on farms when horses were still how you got work done. We had all the old stuff on the farm, but were using some fist generation post WW2 tractors/equipment in the 70’s.
One modern thing I was telling my son about was zerks. I guess modern cars do not need lube anymore so no longer have zerks. I am sure other equipment still use them, but I guess we no longer get a Lube Oil Filter service on most vehicles.
Grandparents had a chamber pot, despite their bedroom being two rooms away from the bathroom.
They had a WWII air raid shelter at the end of their back garden, which they used as coal storage (Aga stove in the kitchen, coal fireplace in the living and sitting rooms).
We used to get bread, soda and milk delivered (full cream, you had to shake it before opening to make sure the cream got mixed in). Foil tops on the bottle, sometimes in the winter the milk would freeze and there’d be an inch-high column of milk with a foil cap on top of it. My parents still get their milk delivered, as well as their bread.
We didn’t get a microwave until I was in my teens, and my parents never really took to using it much. When I go home to visit and want to heat something up quickly, I have to empty all the tupperware out of it first because that’s where they store it.
slideshows after my parents took a trip. The neighbors would come around and everybody would get tanked on whiskey sours.
I remember when you had to steal magazines to get masturbation material.
Hand tools for basic carpentry. Born in the mid '60s, I remember my dad cutting lumber with a hand saw to repair our porch. It looked like a lot of work. Anything to be screwed was done manually with a screw driver. A circular saw, which he got later, made life alot easier. My uncles and grandfather built a summer house in the '50s, all with hand tools.
My dad still uses a rotary phone as his primary line.
For some reason the thing that comes to my mind is the switch to turn the high beams on and off being on the floor of the footwell on the driver’s side, so that you used the ball of your foot to control the headlights. Had that set up in the Plymouth Gran Fury that my family had when I was a kid, haven’t seen them in many years.
Good one, we had one of those at some point.
I remember when you had to steal magazines to get masturbation material.
I remember finding them on the side of the road more than once riding my bike to friends’ house. One of my friends kept a stash of them in the fort he had built back in the woods. Ah, memories…
We used to have a home incinerator, used to be my job as a boy to take the garbage to basement and burn it. Also my grandfather had a 8mm camera and we used to dread the spring when he came back from traveling with hours of grainy film for us to watch.
Born in 1965
- we had a party line for the phone but parents splurged for the push button phones
- huge stereo sat in the front room for LP’s and 8 tracks (3 feet high, 1-1/2 feet deep, 4 feet long)
- just like spot, out all day and rode my bike everywhere. I lived 10 miles from the nearest small town of about 1200 people
- Pong
- Our house was broken into when I was about 10 and they stole our TV. My dad didn’t want to buy a new one so we had a B&W and only got NBC.
- Our TV only had a remote control when my sister watched. We were forced to change the channels for her
- My dad said get my belt and it didn’t mean he needed something to keep his pants up.