Dating myself meme

[firecat]

via okoshun (who posted it back in December), a list of things that people apparently think don't exist any more, and you're supposed to bold which ones you remember.

1 Blackjack chewing gum

2. Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water
3. Candy cigarettes
4. Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles (I think a few of these might still be around.)
5. Coffee shops or diners with tableside juke boxes (These are still pretty common in my experience.)
6 . Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers
7. Party lines
8. Newsreels before the movie
9. P.F. Flyers
10. Butch wax
11. Telephone numbers with a word prefix (Ours was "tuxedo".)
12. Peashooters
13. Howdy Doody
14. 45 RPM records
15. S& H greenstamps This still exists but it is now a web site called S&H greenpoints. You can also buy greenstamps collections on eBay. Last I checked they were going for about $1 per completed book.
16 Hi-fi's (This household never migrated to 5.1 home theater so what we have is still a hi-fi I suppose.)
17. Metal ice trays with lever
18. Mimeograph paper
19 Blue flashbulbs
20. Packards (I've seen them because there are a lot of old-car clubs around here. But I don't remember them.)
21. Roller skate keys
22. Cork popguns
23. Drive-ins (These still exist too.)
24. Studebakers
25. Wash tub wringers
26. Big, little books. (Huh?)
27. Using hand signals for cars without turn signals.
28. Soldering irons you heat on a gas burner.
29. Pant leg clips for bicycles without chain guards.
30. Real ice boxes.
31. Head lights dimmer switches on the floor.
32. Heaters mounted on the inside of the fire wall.
33. Ignition switches on the dashboard. (Ironic thing is that the Prius has this, although it's a button rather than a switch.)

Comments

[brooksmoses]

Head lights dimmer switches on the floor.

My '88 Bronco has that; it's not that old.

Really awkward when one was shifting gears going around a turn on a country road and needed to quickly dim the lights for an oncoming car, as the necessary foot for dimming the lights was occupied with the clutch pedal!

[klwalton.livejournal.com]

Big Little Books (http://www.biglittlebooks.com/).

I think there might be four things on that list that I don't remember. But some of that can be attributed to spending summers with my grandmother, who didn't give up the familiar unless she absolutely had to. She had an ice box and a wringer wash tub. I vaguely remember the party line my parents had when I was tiny and we lived in Hayward.

[pogodragon.livejournal.com]

The list is a bit too USAnian for there to be much point in me doing it, but we have doorstep milk delivery here still. Though the glass bottles have foil tops (as they have done for as long as I can remember, which is something like 40 years)

[necturus.livejournal.com]

Re; #6 (home milk delivery): there's a company called Crescent Ridge in the Boston area that still delivers, and in the traditional glass bottles with cardboard stoppers to boot.

[crazed-lynn.livejournal.com]

I remember them all and many of them still exist. All the candy mentioned, for instance.

[nolly.livejournal.com]

I know Big Little Books from my grandmother's basement -- I think the ones there were my uncles'. They're about four inches square, and an inch and a half or so thick. The ones I"ve seen were Dick Tracey or sports related stories, but I think there were a variety. Contruction style and quality was similar to the Whitman hardbacks from around the same time -- the laminated shiny covers that eventually, the laminate peels off, with pulp-quality paper. I don't know if that rings bells for you, or if I'm describing it well.

[deyo.livejournal.com]

I used to use disposable flash bulbs to create flash grenades. They all had built-in power sources, so all I had to do was rig an impact trigger to close all the switches at once.

[firecat]

Doesn't ring a bell...

[auntysocial.livejournal.com]

I remember riding to kindergarten in a friend's mother's Packard. It had a wonderful green knob on the gearshift.

Studebakers. For some reason my father disliked them and called them "Stinkebakers."

Black Jack was my favorite gum. Licorice flavored. I'm sure you can still get it somewhere.

[abostick59.livejournal.com]

To make this meme a true LJ meme, there should be a part where you add something:

34. Loading a bootstrap with a switch register

35. Punch cards

36. Eight-track tape cassettes

37. Tube testers in drug stores....

[firecat]

Dial phones...

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Now, I've had a party line, but it wasn't the date (1978), it was because I was living on the top of a mountain and there weren't enough lines coming up.