How about car ignition switch on the floor of the car–a small button you pushed with your foot to start the car.

No home air conditioning in the summer—and in central Texas it gets hot.

No air conditioner in cars.

Only AM stations, no FM or any of the fancy stuff available now.

Sunday night with radio broadcasts of the following: Lone Ranger, Fibre Mcgee and Molly, Amos and Andy, The twilight zone, Jack Benny Show, etc. Only a morning show called the Breakfast Club.

TV shows like The Honey Mooners, Sunday night Colgate Palmolive hour–a variety show, Ed Sullivan show, You Bet Your Life, I’ve got a secret—this could go on forever.

Rotary dial phones.

$.09 to go to a movie with a $.05 bus ride to and $.05 from the movie theater. That $.19 cents leaving $.06 for a box of popcorn with $.01 left over for a piece of gum from a bum ball machine.

Home made ice cream where you actually had to crank the machine by hand.

Gasoline for $.17 per gallon!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just a few. Will try and think of others.

Doc and Alligator Rose

Baseball cards with your favorite players and statistics.

These cards could be used to trade with your friends, read all about the players and the their teams. Finally, you could make a motorcycle out of your bicycle by clipping them to the wheels with a clothespin so that they made a sputtering sound as they flapped against the spokes.

Speaking of clothespins, there was a clothesline in the backyard where clothes were dried on nice days. One in the house for when it was too nasty outside to hang clothes. Clothes dryer, what was that and who could afford one when they became available?

Iron bathtubs with claw legs.

Station wagons that could fit your whole baseball team without seat belts and certainly over the limit of number of people allowed to ride in a car today.

Drive in movies with the family, sitting on the hood of the car to get a good view.

Penny candy at the local drugstore where you could get an egg cream that had no eggs or cream in it at the counter.

Neighborhood corner stores, S&H Green stamps, Bushel and Peck baskets, Oleo you mixed from two packages, the gum that came with Skinny’s base Ball Cards (couldn’t chew it had to throw it away), real live Dinners, the Golden arches but you ordered at the window and took the 5 cent hamburger and fries to the car, Ovaltine, Sky King, Buck Rogers, Roy Dale Trigger Buttercup Rusty, Nelliebell, Sergeant Preston, Beach Blanket movies, Automatic changers on the turntables … those summer breaks that were over to soon and the 9 months in school you were certain would never end. Fishing with grandpa, getting chased by grandma with her wooden spoon. Spending the night with your blacksheep Aunt and Uncle who would let you have a sip of their beer.

Damn, starting to get misty eyed……………………………

Playing ball in the streets and stopping the game to let a car go by, pitching pennies for nickels, .01 cent candy at the corner store, the corner store.

Not worrying about the police you feared your father more, spending all day outside rain or shine not playing video games in doors.

Just getting dirty outside building up our immunities so we weren’t always sick.

This list could go on forever, the good old day’s were much simpler

I remember all of the things listed by everyone except oleo in 2 packages. My Dad didn’t allow any oleo except for cooking. We didn’t have much but always had butter. On really hot days that we were traveling to my Grandmother’s house my Dad would buy a chunk of "dry ice" and put it on a piece on butcher paper in the passenger side of the car with a stern warning of not to touch it.

I also remember "Gunsmoke" on the radio with William Conrad the voice of Matt Dillon. TV was one channel from Boise, ID but we didn’t have a tv though my babysitter did and local Grandparents. How about sawdust tires? Screw type bumper jack, I still have my Dad’s and the price is still on it. Steel pennies?
Dip top cones at Dairy Queen. We didn’t have Chinese food but went to a Chinese place in Portland called the Canton Grill, I was 8 and my Dad insisted on me trying Chinese instead of a hamburger, I cried and he said that if I didn’t like it he’d buy me a damned hamburger and assured me he wouldn’t be mad. Been hooked on Chinese ever since. I even remember the dish, pork chow mein with fried rice and "bug" juice (soy).

Watched "Sputnik" in awe from our pasture. I lived in the Great Basin, high desert, hot as hell in summer but cold at night even in the summer. My folks would go gambling to Winnemucca and they would leave me with my maternal grandparents.

Buffalo nickels and Indian head pennies and mercury head dimes. Any one remember Ginny Gordon mystery books? Most probably remember Nancy Drew but I never heard of her till I was an adult. Beatle Bailey? Gasoline Alley? Cartoon characters that were "stick" figures? Popeye? Ma and Pa Kettle, Francis the talking mule? Shane? My parents would take me to a drive-in movie and sometimes it was so cold that they would run the engine with the heater going just to get through the movie. We had wood stoves and an oil burner for heat. Grandparents had a coal fired furnace.

Do you remember when cinnamon rolls came out with icing? My Dad liked to have cream cheese with them when we could afford it. How about packages of marbles stapled to quart milk cartons? General Mills packaged a little plastic car in cereal boxes, I still have one somewhere, this was around 1955.

Yep, getting old.

OneMoonCircles