What are your dinosaurs?

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Blackhorse

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Dinosaurs?  You know...stuff that’s gone extinct.  Or are going extinct.  So what are the things that once were, but are no longer.  List stuff that you miss or that you’re glad are extinct...or are just weird.

Me?

Smoking?  Smoking used to be a way of life in our culture.  No longer.

Also...

I miss...$0.25/gal. gas.  Yup.  I can remember buying gas for my dads car for twenty five cents a gallon.  (It was a 1963 Chevy Impala SuperSport 409 cu in - Black w red interior...Lordy do I wish I still had that car!)  Glad it was a quarter with THAT thirsty engine!

Here’s another long gone thing I remember...getting milk delivered to our house by the milkman and his little delivery truck filled with milk kept cold in the truck via bags of ice chips.  

Mostly gone?  Growing up playing outside during every daylight hour.  I think my generation might have been the last to “grow up outside” as opposed to “glued to a screen”.  I remember my mom hosing us off out on the back porch before letting us into the mud room where we’d strip down and be marched straight to the tub.  

Soon to be gone...plastic grocery bags.  Soon, in our eco nutty state, a total ban on plastic grocery bags will go into effect.

It’s gone...we are no longer depending on over the air broadcast TV.  Good or bad, you pick.  We tied a ROKU unit into our high speed cable internet and get Amazon Prime, Netflix, PBS, uTube, crunchyroll (thanx to my kid), and a bunch of other free channels.  We also can get local channels via ROKU or switch back to satellite for that feed.  Wow!

Gone...our newspaper subscription.  This has changed my behavior as I no longer do a daily or the Sunday NYTimes crosswords.

Gone...hard line telephone in our house.  We’re 4G mobile only.  Soon to be 5G I guess.  Will I need yet another new phone for that?

Street maps and maps in general.  Now I use WAZE while driving and google maps otherwise.

Are slide rules extinct?  Don’t know.

Any stuff you can think of?
 
I too think the days of most children playing outside is done. There are exceptions but it’s not the norm.

Cars that you can actually work on and fix yourself. I drive an 1997 Jeep Cherokee XJ. I can do just about anything I need to on it. I found all the dealer repair manuals/shop manuals. I think it 5 or 6 books. Way way way more in depth than a chilton or Hayes manual.

My wife drives a 2010 Lincoln MKX. I had to jump my Jeep off on morning with it. I had to search online just to figure out where to put the jumper cables. Then we had to put a battery on it. Took me forever to find that. I ended up carrying it tot the dealership to change the battery and service it. It makes me feel like a idiot cause I can’t even do the simplest stuff to that car.

I’m really not going to miss the plastic grocery bags. We don’t have a recycling program here yet. So that’s one of the biggest trash items we have. I see a lot of them around ponds, lakes, rivers and creeks in the water and on the banks. Lazy people just can’t pick up after themselves.

In 1988 I bought my first car and gas was $.99 a gallon I miss that too.

Slide rules now there’s a good one. I have my grandfathers. But I have no idea how to use it. Although I really wouldn’t learning. I have a friend who is a doctor and was a pilot. He told he took a course in college in the mid 70’s at Memphis state that required him to learn it. He tried to show me how but after messing with it he was more lost than I was.

I really miss a good bookstore, comic book store and baseball card shop. None of my friends with younger kids collect cards or read comic books.

Boys and girls joining some type of scouting program. They don’t want to go outside or get dirty.

Kids used start playing football, basketball and baseball around the middle school. Now they playing ball as early as 1st grade.and it’s all year round now time for anything else. If they play baseball then its little league/babe Ruth league. Then when that’s over it’s straight to travel ball. Then that’s all summer long into the fall. No time for anything else serious traveling ball no play time at all.

It really grinds my gears the way parents force every sport there is on there kids.

Ham radio is another thing that maybe losing interest in the younger generation. I asked a niece if she wanted to talk on my rig on day. She told me if she want to talk to someone she could use messenger or some other type of chat app.

If the internet ever goes down these kids will go crazy because their phones will stop working.

I really miss playing board games. Card games too.

 
Geoff - house calls! My father was an MD and got the first automobile delivered after WWII in our state...to do house calls. I remember him going out at ALL hours of the day or night. Boy, has THAT ever changed.
 
Yeah, books for sure. Sad. there were several large bookstores around here a decade ago. We are down to one now.

I can see why though. Books got SO expensive. Now you can look up nearly anything you can imagine (and lots you never would have) on the web.

It's nice to have actual physical books made of paper though. If you have it in a book, you have it. Can go back and read it whenever you wish. Websites disappear on you eventually.
 
Man, you need to visit Portland...just to go to Powell’s City of Books!

https://www.powells.com/locations/powells-city-of-books/

“Powell’s City of Books is the largest used and new bookstore in the world, occupying an entire city block and housing approximately one million books. Located in downtown Portland’s Pearl District, the City of Books has nine color-coded rooms and over 3,500 different sections, offering something for every interest, including an incredible selection of out-of-print and hard-to-find titles.”


 
Was on a job in Portland a few years ago. Didn't know about that place. Good thing probably. I spent plenty of money at Benchmade Knives and Danner Boots. I shouldn't need boots for the rest of my life.
 
pistolero":pjyvjn6i said:
Was on a job in Portland a few years ago. Didn't know about that place. Good thing probably. I spent plenty of money at Benchmade Knives and Danner Boots. I shouldn't need boots for the rest of my life.
Nice. The Benchmade factory is about a mile from our place. I used to walk my black lab by there on Sundays and sometimes go dumpster diving. Let me tell you...a primo knifemaker’s dumpster has got some pretty interesting stuff...slabs of carbon fiber, knife blanks with a teensy flaw, chunks of micarta...SWEETNESS!
 
Chocolate soldier. I really miss that too. Haven’t had on in years. I can still get a yahoo chocolate drink but I don’t think it’s the samw
 
I miss quality and durability. I miss when planned obsolescence was a rarity or a remote design element of a product. I miss when you could buy an $18 electric razor that was going to last 20, 30, 40 years. Or buy a furnace/big ticket item with the expectancy that it will last 30-50 years; not this idea that a $3000 item will need to be replaced every 10 years. Or as yet another example, I'll use stereo equipment. You could buy the lowest of the line or the top of the line, but everything within the line was built to last. The lowest of the line didn't mean it was going to stop functioning within a few years of use. The difference wasn't durability, but in additional functions or better circuitry, not utter junk circuitry vs. good circuitry.


This all relates to I miss when business (FU Wall Street) thought the customer was always right, which ultimately meant, "We value you as a customer. It's our privilege to serve you, because you chose to spend your hard-earned money with us." Rather than today's market that is all about volume sales, which translates into, "We don't care about you because we have another X amount of customers in the wings."

Which then makes me miss anti-trust laws and oversight. Now, it's all about monopolies and strangleholds on customer bases. We've walked backwards in time to the golden age of robber barons.

Which then makes me really, really miss when Wall Street and stockholders weren't controlling and micromanaging everything in our world.

I cannot wait until single-use plastics are banned or priced to significantly hurt. CANNOT WAIT. You don't want to bring your own grocery bag? The plastic bag is $2. You want a straw? That'll be $1.50. I used to pick up garbage on my daily walks and during my commutes. 90% of it was single-use plastics. I don't live anywhere near an ocean, but it makes me sick what we're doing to them.

I miss when people drank water out of a tap or fountain. When bottled water didn't exist.
 
All the above. In spades. Not sure I can add anything. Been there and seen it. And the changes have been downhill. Mostly.

Dave, I've been to Powell's many times when I was based in the greater Seattle area. Used to come down for the OBF every year and Powell's was a must. I only read real books with paper pages. Don't have and do not want one of those other things. And I still get a daily newspaper. I grew up reading the newspaper and still do.

Maybe one thing to mention is the penny candy I used to get at Woolworth's five and dime. Mom would give me a dime and I'd go and get an assortment that would be plenty for 1c each. Red or black licorice whips, dots, ju-ju-bees, those little figured wax containers with the neon colored sickly sweet liquid, jawbreakers, rolled fruit discs, etc. All dispensed from a glass fronted enclosure by a kindly man in a white apron.

Ya I'm an oldster!


Cheers,

RR
 
Ooh ooh!  SODA FOUNTAINS!  We used to go to the Rexall Drug Store “downtown” and I’d get a cherry soda. Bliss.  Maybe a Black n White?  A Green River?  Sugar used to be our crack.

The chocolate malted used to come in a huge tall glass and they’d also give you the container they made it in, which still had half a glass in it. Wow.


Anyone remember Green Stamps?
 
Blackhorse":kfjzw5gk said:
Ooh ooh!  SODA FOUNTAINS!  We used to go to the Rexall Drug Store “downtown” and I’d get a cherry soda. Bliss.  Maybe a Black n White?  A Green River?  Sugar used to be our crack.  

The chocolate malted used to come in a huge tall glass and they’d also give you the container they made it in, which still had half a glass in it. Wow.


Anyone remember Green Stamps?
I was going to mention S&H green stamps. I was the one to paste them into the book. My damn tongue got worn out after a few pages. And then they started issuing stamps that had a greater value, such that one stamp could be used for the whole page. Don't remember ever getting enough filled books to redeem for anything.

We also had a milkman deliver daily. He'd drop off the order in a little insulated box outside the back door. He'd always try and up-sell us on cottage cheese or whatever,

That was when it was all whole milk in wide mouth glass bottles. Had the cream on the top with a little cardboard circle you'd tear off. When they did away with the home delivery it was terrible!


No Cheers,

RR
 
Blackhorse":hu1xi45e said:
Ooh ooh!  SODA FOUNTAINS!  We used to go to the Rexall Drug Store “downtown” and I’d get a cherry soda. Bliss.  Maybe a Black n White?  A Green River?  Sugar used to be our crack.  

The chocolate malted used to come in a huge tall glass and they’d also give you the container they made it in, which still had half a glass in it. Wow.
I clearly remember the soda fountain at the local drug store. Forget the name but it could have been a Rexall. Remember the jingle-

The 1 cent sale
The 1 cent sale
Get twice as much for a penny more
The 1 cent sale

I didn't frequent the soda fountain much as it was a hang for the cool kinds and I wasn't one of them. On the few occasions I did go there I had a cherry coke. They had cherry and lemon syrup which they'd pump into the glass before filling it with coke. Cherry was for boys, lemon is what the girls had.

Also remember getting a phosphate. Ice cream and some kind of carbonated soda.


Cheers,

RR
 
Green Stamps, yah....

Sometimes the TV would go on the Fritz (meaning stops working) you pull the tubes, blow out the cabinet, go to the drug store and test the tubes at a station. Under the tester was several bins with tubes in a jumbled mess that were new. Take 'em home and plug them in and wait for the picture tube to warm up, and whammo! TV worked!

When Henry Weinhard was made in Portland OR.

Super Leaded petrol. The last time I bought it, it cost 75cents/gallon. Had to buy lead additive for years after that.

Strong wolf packs in the wildernesses.

Cursive writing. And the patience to wait for posted corresponding. For that matter, having to wait to call someone until they MIGHT be home.

Due process of law.

Legal non pasturized milk.

Canvas water bags you hang on your front bumper to feed your radiator as needed.

Full service stations. "Check your oil sir?" "Thanks son", you'd reply. "Fill 'er up with Ethyl!" Seven bucks for you to the beach and back.

McClelland.

Common courtesy. Like Please and Thank you. Sir and ma'am.

Card catalogues. Probably just baffled half the folks reading this.

That's it for now. Time to smoke.
 
Those X-ray boxes at shoe stores that you stuck your shoes into and looked in a viewer to see how your feet looked inside your shoes. Had kind of a greenish cast to it. This many years later and it never gave me cancer!

Parents would think nothing of slapping or spanking their children's playmates if they got out of line. Then they'd call the kid's parents and the kid would get a second licking when they got home!

Schools that still had corporal punishment. No one talked about suing. The kid deserved it.

Having a party line. Many people won't even know what that means. If Mildred next door was talking when you picked up the phone you could listen in to some juicy gossip!

Calling "long distance" was to be avoided due to the cost. I clearly remember my late Pap saying "keep it short, it's long distance". And then the party you called sounded like a million miles away.

The house would have 1 phone, usually in the kitchen area. Having an extension phone was a needless luxury. I remember when push button dialing came in. We got a "princess phone" that the push buttons would be illuminated. All the phones were owned by Ma Bell, and they weighed about 3 or 4 lbs.

There were public phone booths/pay phones everywhere. 10c for a local call. When it went to 25c in the early 70's I thought "what a ripoff"!

I remember when the Zip Code came into being. Before that the country was divided into what they called "zones". Remember the Elvis song "Return To Sender"-

Return to sender
Address unkown
No such number
No such zone

3 TV channels. 4 if you counted the "educational" channel which no one watched. Later there was a UHF channel so that made 5. When my folks erected a bigass antenna on the roof that rotated we could get several more. Man, that was living.

Getting our first color TV which was a new concept. The old Zenith B&W had a remote that was 5X as large as a pack of cigs and weighed several lbs. When you pressed the channel changer it rotated the channel dial on the side of the TV and made a helluva noise. Damn thing never worked right. The channel would keep on spinning and not stop where it was supposed to!

Stereo records in the 60's. Everything was mono before then. And you had to buy a stereo record player! I grew up listening to my folks old 78's. Lotta people don't even know what that means. And each one weighed a lb or more and they were brittle. Broke a few as a kid.

Having a breadbox. Every household had one.

Refrigerators with tiny freezer compartments in the upper corner. There were no such things as automatic icemakers. You froze water in an aluminum tray, and it had a form in it that separated the individual cubes. When it was frozen you pulled the handle and it broke out the cubes.

No one talked about or cared about gas mpg. Gas was cheap enough. I used to put in $2 or $3 worth and drive all week. $3 would get me 3/4 tank, $2 about half a tank.

Hardly anyone drove foreign cars. When my Uncle bought a little tiny Renault it was boxy and ugly looking. I asked my Pap about it and he shook his head and said something about an "economy car" which I didn't understand. The interior was tiny and spartan. It didn't even have a radio!

Radio was all AM up until the late 60's when FM became a factor. FM could air stereo recordings and the new "underground" FM stations played album cuts with little/no commercials or screaming DJ's.


Cheers,

RR
 
I don't know if this counts cuz I wasn't born at the time that it was made but I was raised with it it was in the household a 1927 victrola crank up record player I used to listen to that thing all day long it was my grandmother's aunt's and then passed to my grandmother
 
Henry Weinhard beer brewed in Portland? Try BLITZ beer and/or Rainer.


How about Big Time Wrestling on Friday night tv?

How about the “rainout movie” aired when the scheduled baseball game was...well, rained out?

Pretty soon we might be listing incandescent light bulbs here!
 
I remember when the first indoor mall in WI was built a few blocks from where we lived. This was a new concept, and it had Sears at one end, Marshall Fields at the other, a JC Penny in between, a Kohl's supermarket, plus numerous other shops. Imagine that, all shopping at one location. Shortly after that they enclosed the Mayfair shopping center nearby.

McDonalds hamburgers were 15c. Fries were 10c - one size. If you wanted more you got two.

We had A&W drive-in's with car hops. You ordered through a speaker on a pole and the car hop brought your order on a tray that hung on the car window that you rolled down. Still remember that bigass mug of root beer which must have held a full quart. The mugs were frozen and weighed a ton. We also had a chain called Dog and Suds with car hops.

A big treat was the drive-in movie. Spent many nights there watching the big screen that always seemed to be a little blurry and the crappy speaker that hung on the inside of your window. Very tinny sound. And then the car windows would steam up!

In school we had drills for an atomic attack. We'd have to go into the bowels of the school where the walls were thick. Also practiced "duck and cover" by crouching under our desks and you had to cover your head in case of a sudden attack.

The library gave away plans for underground bomb shelters that you could dig on your property. Pap never would consider this but I was all for them.

School dress codes that included hair length for boys, skirt length for girls, no blue jeans for boys and girls could not wear slacks, just a skirt or dress. Plus much else.

Boys took shop - wood or metal. Girls took home economics. Typing wasn't taught although I think there may have been an after school elective class for it. Unless you were a girl looking to become a secretary or a guy who wanted to go into journalism typing wasn't necessary. All class assignments had to be written. And we didn't call it cursive - it was either printing or writing. I remember hours practicing loops and even then my penmanship sucked. Still does. One reason I never got into fountain pens.


Cheers,

RR
 
Blackhorse":sxl9ajtf said:
Henry Weinhard beer brewed in Portland?  Try BLITZ beer and/or Rainer.


How about Big Time Wrestling on Friday night tv?

How about the “rainout movie” aired when the scheduled baseball game was...well, rained out?  

Pretty soon we might be listing incandescent light bulbs here!
Wrestling. Yup. Tom Peterson would roll out an appliance into the ring and give his pitch while Stan Staziak and Buddy Rose cleaned up. The Kung Fu Theatre. Old Tom would bang on the TV screen yelling "wake up!" During commercials. After that you got the Star Spangled Banner and the station would go off the air for the night. After that you either went to sleep or read a book.

Phone numbers were "Alameda 238" or such. You could call "Time" to check your clock in case you forgot to wind it or pull the chain.
 
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