I'm so old I Remember when:

[Nomadicus]

Anything is possible in Michigan.... Had to wear a jacket to my high school graduation open house at the end of June. It was cold that day!

I saw a dusting of snow early one June.

 

[Evadig]

I wish we had taken a trip to the UP when we had the chance. I remember the beauty of the northern part of the LP.

It is beautiful in the summer despite the ticks and mosquitoes and caterpillars

 

[Nomadicus]

I remember the first year of the Salmon run after they had been stocked in the rivers that drained into Lake Michigan. I remember the loss of life because people were catching salmon for the first time and not paying attention to the bad storm coming in on them. Huge waves picked up there small fishing boats and crashed them up on the beaches. A very joyful day that ended in tragedy.

 

[RedwoodCoastChick]

More things this thread has reminded me of : THE camera was Kodak Brownie.

I learned about photography with my Mom's classic Brownie Camera! Black & white film, cranking it to roll the film forward for the next picture. It was tough and reliable, a great way for a young teen to learn the basics. So exciting to wait for a roll of film to get developed, then see if I got any decent pictures! Mostly of the horses, including an unintended close-up of a curious muzzle dripping water from her whiskers: "What's that, can I eat it?"

 

[RedwoodCoastChick]

I remember Fun with Dick and Jane books. See Spot run. Run Spot run!

Oh, I loved those books! We learned to read with them in my Marietta, Georgia elementary school, 1959-61-ish. (We named our Boston Terrier puppy "Sally" after the little sister.)

 

[RedwoodCoastChick]

We used paper grocery bags to make bookcovers for our school books.

So did we! When we were issued our textbooks at school, we had one week to cover them all with paper-bag bookcovers or get points deducted from our grades, protecting the books was stressed that much. Textbooks were expensive and had to last for years & years of students. Mom showed us how to fold the grocery bags to fit the books and stay on for many openings/closings, and we had to write the book title, our name and grade on the outside in case a book got lost/left somewhere.

I used to look forward to the bookcover-making ritual when school started each year! Some teachers encouraged us to decorate the brown paper with drawings, as long as the title & our names weren't obscured.

By the time my girls were in school, Target and office supply stores had cheap, colorful stretchy fabric bookcovers for the kids to use (and re-use, they lasted more than one school year). Folded paper covers weren't accepted at school; more unrecyclable trash generated, alas.

 

[RedwoodCoastChick]

You know I thought of something last night and now I'm so old I can't remember it when I get the computer up and going.

But I do remember instead of crushing and bailing cardboard boxes they used them for customers to take home groceries in. Very handy for those in pickups with one bench seat with mom and pop and 3-4 youngins in there with them.

Our local natural foods store still does that! They have a big bin of empty stock boxes of varying sizes, and if you don't bring your own bags (or need more) the items go home in a box. I use all the cardboard from there and packages sent to the house to squelch weeds & improve our soil; the "dirt bugs" eat cardboard amazingly fast. Lasagna mulch or just on bare dirt with a cover of wood chip mulch.

 

[Yard Farmer]

I can't even comment in this thread because y'all got me beat... Big time..

I remember seeing creepy Ronald McDonald commercials...

That's the best I got, ok?

 

[RedwoodCoastChick]

I remember when the "Streaker" craze hit.

My freshman year of college (1971), in a huge theater-style lecture hall, a streaker wearing only a ski mask, clear plastic backpack and hiking boots ran across the stage behind the teacher yelling, "Which way to the John Muir Trail?" The whole place erupted laughing, including the instructor as the streaker went bouncing offstage on his merry way...

 

[RedwoodCoastChick]

I remember home ec classes that actually taught you how to cook/bake and sew.

By the time we had home ec classes in junior high, most of us had been cooking meals and sewing clothes already for YEARS. Our mommas "done teached us real good" so we could be of real help at home. So home ec was pretty much a joke. Would've been way more useful to put the boys in home ec (so they wouldn't be helpless in a kitchen) and allow us girls to take the shop classes...lots of dads like mine weren't into teaching girls to use tools and fix stuff. But again, the early/mid 60s. Times were just starting to change where we were.