Things you remember but that most young folks never heard of. Pre 1980

[Moxiechick]

I am Offically "old". I can recall a time when Tv shows were "taped", when music recordings came on things called records, and phones had cords.

If you lived before 1980, what do you remember that folks born after 1980 would rarely have even heard of?

Here are a few of mine-

The little white dot that appeared, and then slowly faded on your Tv set right after it was turned off.

Watching the Children's Film Festival, with Keukla, Fran and Ollie, on Saturday. Used to come on right after Fat Albert and the Cosby kids.

Most radio shows, wtih the exception of Mystery Theatre on PBS, were before my time, but I remember listening to Bill Cosby records with my sister. I think kids today miss out by not having to use their imaginations to picture the stories.

Jello Pudding pops... the real ones that were coated with ice and actually tasted like pudding.

Watching slides. Now people have their photos on computers and discs. I used to like the hum of the little fan and the sound the carousel made when it changed slides.

The cartoon version of Star-trek!

When cereal would have actual prizes inside the box. Nowadays, the companies are too worried about people mistaking the toy for food.
What I want to know is, who was the idiot who actually ate the toy and made the cereal companies think we are all too stupid to distinguish between food and plastic?

Recording a Tv show meant holding the microphone of your cassette recorder up to the Tv speaker, and hoping that family members would keep quiet! My sister has some pretty funny stuff with my Dad in the background of a John Denver special!

When The Wizard of OZ, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Mary Poppins, and the various Christmas still-action specials were only on once a year, and it was a really, really big event!

 

[michickenwrangler]

I was born in 1980 but I still remember some of those things. We didn't have a microwave until I was 5, and we used to watch filmstrips ALL the time in school. Even into the '90s we were still using microfiche and mimeographs. I also have a memory of playing Pong at a young age. My mother who began nursing in the 1970s talks about glass syringes.

The house I live in still has appliances from the 1940s. Germans sure know how to take care of things. We have an old chrome toaster, an old Oster mixture in pea-green with no handle that still works. The area that I live in now still hard "party lines" until the late '70s.

I had a HUGE laugh one day when my mother (who lovs antiques and old-timey things) tried to explain party lines to a 21 yr old new mother at the mall who had her child in an Eddie Bauer stroller and a Blackberry at her side. She thought my mother was making it up. "That's NOT the way phones work," she insisted.

 

[Camelot Farms]

Paper from the mimeo-graph machine at school that smelled like bananas

 

[debilorrah]

Typewriters with carbon paper. No spell check.

 

[Widget]

Actually having to get up off the couch to change the channel on the television. And the choices were limited to four stations (ABC, NBC, CBS and PBS).

Rolling down the window in the car.

Saturday morning cartoons.

Disney World only having the Magic Kingdom and using the ticket system. Hence the term E-ticket ride.

Not having a calculator to do math problems until I started college. Forget a computer or the internet.

Cash registers that did not tell the clerk how much change to give back. They actually had to know how to do math and were required to count back the change instead of handing it back in a clump.

No asinine security at airports.

No airbags in cars.

 

[maplesky7]

being able to sit in the stationwagon in the back seat facing the opposite direction with our feet out the back window with out any seat belts.

or riding in the back of dad's pick up truck.

 

[Dar]

I remember taping songs off the radio
buying 45's
taping from tape to tape by putting to ghetto blasters close together
when you were watching TV there was a little white box that used to flash in the corner so you knew when to run up to the VCR to press pause to omit the commercials
the smurfs
not wearing a seat belt in my dads 1972 GMC Jimmy, because there were no seats except the driver and passenger

 

[rebelcowboysnb]

The things that comes to mind is dirt road, the outhouse an the bucket.......

If you have ever had an outhouse you know about the bucket........

 

[debilorrah]

8-tracks

 

[Scoop]

The perculator pot that my mom made the most wonderful coffee in. I started drinking it at 6 years old it smelled so wonderful!