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***** "I just had to shake my head and walk away from the masses that were in line to buy overpriced, crappy T-shirts, golf balls and shot glasses.
Rattling my cane.... But when I was young, it was Mt. Rushmore, Yellowstone, NYC, Disneyland where one shopped for useless crap :-).
Times do a change.
Creighton" *****


Creighton wrote this on another thread about people today going to Pawn Stars instead of Disney, Times Sq. etc.... and I thought of something.

WHAT DID WE DO AS A KID THAT TODAYS KIDS HAVE NO IDEA ABOUT?

I will start off by saying;   We had to get off the couch to change the channel or raise the volume on the TV.

making a call from a payphone

...and using a rotary dial when calling from a payphone.

And another thing I've been thinking about and miss... listening to LP records.. I have a box of them from my younger days...
Started looking for a old record player to play them on... I remember back in my high school days at night I would put a stack
of 4 records on the turn table and go to sleep listening to them... my kids have no idea what I mean...

What's a payphone? I saw one in the wild the other day and had to take a second look.
I used to play outside.

       Nobody had to teach us how to use the bottle opener on a Coke machine  :biggrin:

       We did our math homework without a calculator and our source of knowledge came from the encyclopedia or the library.

Google=Encyclopedia Britannica

We played kickball until the street lights came on...then it was time to come home, get cleaned up, and go to bed (with no TV in the bedroom).

film in a camera....... taking  a picture without being able to  look at the the picture on the camera..... polaroids.....

Watch a show when it was on or have to wait for the repeat. No on demand or tevo. Had to hope you programmed the vcr right to record. Along with phones they made phone calls not showed tv. Heck posting this from my phone and spell check didnt recognize "vcr"

Directions consisted of hanging a left at the run down house not garmin units.

Clocks had hands to tell time.

No organized sports!! Gather the neighborhood kids of all ages in an empty lot and just play ball!! Didn't matter the age OR  if we knew how to play. Heck we were  pre-teen age (there's a word that didn't exist) playing either Kick-the-can or Hide n Go Seek after dark! FUN! Never crossed our mind we could be snatched off the street. We had about 100 kids on our street in a town of about 5000 back in the mid-1960s.

Didn't have the internet.......

Had to rely on junkyards, landfills, swap meets, and the classified Ads to find soda machines. :biggrin:

Sorry....had to throw that one in

Something my grandmother had was a pen pal.. she picked a name from a list of girls of the same age but lived in a different state (New York) in a Sunday school class
when she was around 8 years old... they wrote each other every month up until my grandmother passed at age 74. (She died in 1991) I think they may have called
each a few times... but no internet or facetime... I think that is something really cool.. just waiting for a handwritten letter from a friend she never met in person.

I ran ads for soda machines in the local papers... also had to watch for sales/auctions in the paper or the Antique Trader (which I think is still around but nothing near what it
was 20 years ago) ... now there's Craigslist...

Going to an arcade to play video games.

Wait in line at a bank to get cash or listen to a busy signal when you made a call.

Getting cool prizes in Cracker Jack boxes

Good one!
I spent HOURS playing Galaga 88

HOURS!
And I never finished it, or had the net to find out how to beat it

****On a hot summer day, riding my bike to the gas station/country store about 1/2 mile down the road from my house. Buying summer sausage and cheese from Mrs. Culp, who had coke bottle glasses and smoked cigarettes from a long plastic filter.  She would put the cost on my parents "Tab." Then going outside to the coke machine, putting money in and opening the door, feeling that cool air around my hand, with that "coke machine smell". I wanted to stick my face in there. Then there was the whole experience of pulling out a bottle of coke, the sound it made when you opened it. ice cold....... My kids sat in their air conditioned house playing video games occasionally getting up to get anything they wanted from the fridge... not the same

Calling a girl in grade school and having to talk to her mom...or worse dad! 

Making prank phone calls...
Is your refrigerator running....better go catch it!
Got Prince Albert in a can....better let him out!
 :laugh: :biggrin: :laugh: :tounge:

Reel to reels had a great sound.  Converse were the only gym shoe.  Ford gum machines were in all the stores.  Wax harmonicas at Halloween.  Plastic head Halloween costumes with an elastic band in the back.  Riding bikes without helmets.  CTA busses with electric poles on the top of the bus (OK that was a Chicago thing).  Marx Electro Shot shooting gallery, Rock em Sock em robots, Lightning bug glow juice, toss across, mood rings, and board games.  Tag your it.

       Thanks a lot Creighton. I just watched myself age about a hundred years between these 2 videos.  :help:

         http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-a_05Y4CrEc  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-a_05Y4CrEc)


         http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_zVbMU3n34  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_zVbMU3n34)

The kids in our neighborhood are outside a lot. In the summertime they are pretty much out all day.

When I was a kid, not only did we get up to change the channel, somebody had to go outside and turn the pole that the antenna was attached to. Somebody else stood inside the living room and knocked on the window when the picture was good.

Movie theaters with only one screen.

Wearing pajamas to the drive-in.

Chalkboards.

Food actually made in the school cafeteria, not just warmed up.

Metal lunchboxes with a matching thermos.

You forgot "Do you have 16 pound balls?"  How do you walk? :laugh:

Obey our parents.

The winner got a prize.

Used your key to unlock and lock the car door, and turned a crank to roll down the window.Used the key to start your car. ( the wife's vehicle is one were the key ring is in the car all you do is push a button to start car) hate that thing.  :glare:

One key for the door and a different key for the ignition.

TV dinners that were warmed in the oven.  Dialing a phone withouth the need to dial the area code first.  Waiting and waiting by the radio to hear a song you want to hear.   Calling the movie theater to find out what's playing and having to listen to the entire recorded loop of movie times.  The sound of the neighborhood moms yelling for their kids when it was time for dinner.  I could go on and on..

Having to bring film to a developer, and not taking ten photos and hoping one looks good

waiting 3 months to build up the courage to ask a girl out instead of texting, winking, im'ing and whatever else kids can do now behind the safety of a computer screen...

sitting on the front bench seat of a car between mom and dad.

Unlocking the door by pulling on the knob by the window.

1/4 panel windows on the front of a car.

lap belts in the back seat.

Vinyl seats on a hot summers day after the car is parked in the sun

Turning on high beams with your left foot from the floor

No rear window defrost

AM only

Cassett tape (if you were lucky) or 8track in the car

no power steering

Cigarette lighters.  Smoking cigarettes was accepted.  Smoking weed was outlawed.  Now its getting to be the reverse.

Headlights that were easy to change.

Leaded gas.

Free air hoses.

Ding Ding, here comes the gas station attendent to fill up your car.

Real size action figures and accessories
Console TV's
Microwaves the size of console TV's
Free water
Gas pumps that could not go over ninety nine cents
Telephones with cords (especially those ones with really long cords so you could get some privacy!!)

Judging by tonight's turn out: trick or treating

Getting to run around the niehgborhood laughing and screaming with all the other kids on Halloween as opposed to being driven from house to house in the car.

Cartoons ONLY on Saturday mornings.

Oh yeah! The Photo-Mat building in the parking lot!

Worked in one of those parking lot photomats in the late 90s for a year before it was shutdown and leveled.  Was great, basically got paid to do homework and flip through people's pictures when they came back.

And they were enjoyable too. Often very silly, but that was the point. Nowadays silly Saturday morning shows are illegal unless something "government-mandated" is done with the silliness. This is called "Educational and Informational", or "E/I" television.

Today kids, we learned that "government-mandated silliness" is a redundant expression.

back on topic: Fiddling with AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS numerous times and rebooting, in order to get that brand new $40 game to run. In rare cases the game (not whichever version of DOS, but the game itself) might have had serial port/dial-up modem support for "on-line multiplayer".

Parcel pick up at a grocery store.

Ordering items from a Catalogue

Hitting play and record at the same time when your fav. song came on the radio.... (I tell my kids that radio was my way of torrenting when I was a kid lol)

Knee patches on our pants

Going to school with a house key around our necks cause our parents were at work.

Not having to lock up or bikes at the store

AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS .... lol...

How about Commodore 64:     LOAD"*"   ,8,1

I remember when my dad brought home PONG and it was the BEST THING EVER... watching that ball go back and forth back and forth... lol... there were 4 games, hockey, tennis, and two other games I cant remember... BUT EVERY GAME HAD THE SAME IDEA, don't let the ball get past your line lol

Atari 2600 games were 99.99 back when they came out!  That would be equivalent to paying about 200+ for your kids games!..... but what better game was there than COMBAT, ASTEROIDS, or later games such as PITFALL,  RIVER RAID or POLE POSITION

Then there was the scam of commodore 128... DOUBLE the power of a 64, but everyone who had it played 64 games... lol.... 64 kilobytes... my kids toy watch from the dollar store has more memory than that lol

Vic 20 was great too.... pop in the casset tape and away you go!

We had a PET in school, (no not a animal lol) but the computer, it was in the library and not to be used by anyone... don't know why we even had one!

I've heard of the PET computer (Commodore PET, IIRC), I've just never seen one in person.

I used to tinker with a TI-99 4/A. Even figured out how to program in BASIC it a little bit. To play a plug-in game, all you had to do was plug the "Command Module" into the cartridge slot, turn it on, "Press Any Key to Begin", then press a number higher than 1, and you were in business. I never could find the "Any Key", but I eventually figured out all of the other keys would start the system, too. :biggrin:

You could program a simple game if you wanted to, but it wasn't required. Then there was the Speech Synthesizer option. In those days, getting anything resembling natural sound out of a computer was remarkable.

Today, full pre-recorded voices. Sometimes, the voice acting is even mostly bearable.

A few years back, I had this old Sinbad pinball machine I used to have working. Unfortunately it was the electronic version missing a power supply board. The Gottlieb System 80 didn't feature all that great electronics either, not to mention what might have been wrong with what was under the playfield. I eventually sold it.


As far as Ataris go, you can by a brand new "reproduction" at the Dollar stores today around US $50, with some games already on it. Not really sure which Atari is being copied, I'm not an Atari fan. I'm sure they're emulation consoles, but I've heard that some of the boards inside are set up where you can solder an Atari cartridge port to them. I've never tried one though.

Here's an example. http://www.dollargeneral.com/product/index.jsp?productId=15702686


I know I've rambled off topic a bit.

Sending in box tops or bar codes from cereal boxes for prizes. Today Kellogg's prints codes on the inside of boxes to be entered online. Same with instant win games, bleh.

Stick of gum in a pack of baseball or hockey cards

Yesterday's card games. - Kings, Queen's, Jacks, Jokers, Old Maids, and Rooks.
Today's - Pikachu, Charizard, Yu-Gi-Oh, Lugio, Rodeo, Onkyo, and Nokia.

Riding in the back of a pickup truck (even with the tailgate down sometimes....)

We had an Oddessy 2000 with the static clings that went on the TV screen. The haunted house was awesome back then!

Lincoln logs and slot cars..

The Vectrex had something like that, though I've never seen one for myself. I think they were thought of as the world's first portable game system, though from the videos on the internet, they look like they weigh a good 30 lbs anyway.

I've heard some Commodore SID base music, and it's very impressive what they could do with it. I really like the theme for International Karate. Over 8 minutes of strange, but still interesting, nice music. I like to think the Commodore had it's own sound, though it is something of an acquired taste IMO. If you've never heard it, here's a link. I really like the rhythm of the slow part it's so tight in it's regularity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzlK_JNuOGE

If SID sound isn't quite you're cup of tea, here's a solid re-mix.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2ycUszWeCg

From what I've seen of it, I'd go so far as to say that modern fighting games owe some respect to International Karate.

I found the Great Giana Sisters to be very interesting as well. Quite a rare title- Nintendo won a lawsuit and had it taken off the shelves in short order. Apparently it started out as a port of Super Mario Bros., which Nintendo refused to sanction. I kind of think that was a shame, especially considering what Nintendo allowed Philips
to do with their characters on the CD-i.

Most of the good ones have already been mentioned but you all forgot the most important one.

We walked a mile to school, uphill in both directions!  :laugh: 8) :biggrin:

Seriously, we went to the Catholic grade school that was a little more than six full city blocks from our house.  We walked to school in the morning, walked home for lunch and back (one hour lunch break) and walked home at the end of the day.  My sister actually went to the old neighborhood and measured the distance and we were walking about 2 miles a day just to get to school and back.  That is more exercise than most kids get in a week today.  It was a rare treat to be driven to work because most of the time, our family only had one car and my dad had that at work.

And how about working or helping neighbors out?  We used to walk around the neighborhood and shovel snow or rake leaves and we were lucky to get 50 cents for an hour or two of work.  And our parents would not let us take money from the older neighbors because we were supposed to help them out without charging.

Lastly, I had a paper route and delivered over 60 newspapers everyday of the week for about $15.00 a week.  I still remember the serious conversation I had with my parents and my news station manager when I bought my route--yes you had to buy your route from the previous carrier!  The station manager impressed upon me that I was buying my own business and it was up to me to make sure that my business was successful by doing a good job with the current customers and adding more customers from the non-subscribers on the route.  And during the two years that I owned the paper route, my parents only drove me once and that was because there was an ice storm in Detroit and there were trees and power lines falling all over the place--but the paper had to be delivered.  Every other day, rain, shine, snow or sleet, I rode my bike and delivered those papers to the front door, side door, milk chute or mailbox--whatever the customer wanted.  The Detroit News would not let us just roll the papers and throw them on the driveway or porch.  Learned a lot from that experience about dealing with customers and managing money.

 :drinking: Tim :drinking:

Today's kids are always wanting something for nothing. They don't understand what it means to be respectful and work for what you get. Not all of them but most. It all starts with the parents!

It sounds like something my parents would've said, and probably something their parents said too.  I think every generation believes that the next generation has it easier or is more spoiled, and if you compare the lifestyles of our relatives throughout the different generations, it's true.  I wonder what my kids will say about the next generation.

       I was thankfull to have a job..........and thankful to the man who gave it to me.

Carefully placing the needle down on your new "album" so it didn't drop and scratch the hell out of it the first time playing it..........enjoying it until you fell asleep and awoke to the schtook......schtook....schtoook....of the needle spinning in the center  OR having to listen to an 8-track all the way through because you had no fast forward or rewind.  No one touch MP3 of any song in the world you want to hear...............

How about when playing an 8 track and have it "click-click" half way through a song to the next track?

"I wanna "click-click" rock and roll all night, and party every day"!

Ha- Or carefully stack pennies on the needle top so it wouldn't skip where you lightly scratched it the first time..

Going to the movies to see the latest Disney animated feature, carefully crafted paper-and-ink by the finest artists. IMO, those people understood their craft better than anyone in the world. Whether epic masterpiece, or just plain old light-hearted fun, "once upon a dream" Disney could make excellent animated movies.

These days, pop in a Blu-Ray containing some massively over-hyped PC pop-culture garbage fired out of several hundred number-crunchers, and backed by barely adequate singing ability.

Don't get me wrong, I like CGI animation and it has it's place-I thought "Cars" was a very effective use of CGI. But there's just something about old-fashioned animation that sadly seems to be disappearing from the entertainment landscape. Most CGI movies just aren't that good.

Well what a great thread. Thanks All!.

Throwing rocks at the dog catcher truck, "Bonking" cars with snowballs, Finding a stash of returnable Coke bottles that paid for the needed Estes rocket engines.
The "mishaps" that occurred with Fireworks/ Model Rockets were just a lecture not a felony arrest. When the snow/ice got just right spinning donuts in parking lots.

It took a matchbook wedged in the 8 Track player to get "Cat Scratch Fever" to play right. Drawing straws to sort who went in the trunk to sneak into the drive-in...
Fun times,
Creighton

I'm surprised no one mentioned drinking from the garden hose on a hot summer day! MaineT...if we let our kids ride in the back of a truck these days we'd probably get arrested! I used to look at it as a treat! Anyone remember SST's(it was a drag  car with a plastic rip-cord)? How about a Whizzer?(they were a top that you would push the tip against the floor) It's fun the think about The Good Ole days! 
   TFJ

Waiting in line for sporting event or concert tickets.....  My friends and I used to wait over 24 hrs for playoff tickets!  We would bring sleeping bags a football and a radio to kill the time.

Tom Whizzers were one of my favorite toys.  I remember trying to see how fast I could get that bottom to spin and the centrifigal or centripital force when you would hold it and move your wrist around and of course the sound it made. 

Sizzlers, hot wheel electric cars?  You would plug into a gas pump looking charger for ever and then race your cars, or for that matter Hot Wheels anyone?

How about seeing a movie and six years later it would premiere on a television station.  Now if a movie flops, or is good, you can get it a few weeks after it's out of the shows.

How about trying to explain to the kids that after the 11 pm news, the national anthem would play and then there would be colour bar codes until 6am when there would be aerobic work out shows  :tounge:

Or the weather man standing behind a clear glass panel, and would write backwards the temps for the day, week etc..... green screens?  what screens?

Men with hats.

Trying to tune in to your favorite station on the car radio just right then pull out the button then push it back in to set it.

Yep, Sizzlers Hot Wheels electric. Didn't work very well. Anybody have all of the original sweet 16 redline Hot Wheels? I'm short 3.

Miss the day's of fetching concert tickets. Often the fun had getting tic's was better than the show.
Creighton

only redline I have from my childhood is the sandcrab (I think that's what it was called) a little blue dune buggy.
Was my favorite... been hauling it around all these years.. she's rough but was fast I have a friend who does a Hot Wheel car
show every month... let me know which you're looking for.. and I'll have him watch.

ABC's Wide World of Sports
The thrill of victory
and
The agony of defeat! (c'mon picture it....tumble, tumble, tumble)

And for those who can't...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2AZH4FeGsc

Everytime I look at this post I can't help but smile.
My two brothers and I rode around in the back of my moms 1970 Datsun pickup every where we went for our entire childhood.
Sizzlers!!! Spent many hours watching the family cat sit in the middle of the track and swat at the cars as they went by.
OK. Back on topic. Explaining to my kids why my old cars have no seat belts but have an ashtray on all 4 doors.
I love this post.

one speed only for car wipers.

Chalkboards at school.

Taking your lunch to school in a brown paper bag.

Chalkboards... I remember being “chosen” to take the chalk erasers outside to “clean” them by beating them against the building...
Got out of class for that! loved that...

I also mentioned chalkboards. We then went to dry erase boards (much better than chalkboards) when our building was renovated about 10 years ago. Now, I rarely use the dry erase board.

When we were kids, as a joke we placed a white pastel crayon on the chalkboard ledge during a rain lunch day, and with no teachers in the class during lunch, we egged on another kid to draw male body parts on the board (with what he thought was chalk), and never to turn down a dare, he drew SEVERAL of them of all shapes and sizes.... well, when you try to erase a pastel chalk off a black board... IT DOESNT COME OFF!!  lol.... water only makes things worse!!! When class started, and the teacher came in, lets just say she was NOT amused!

We had to get the janitor to use wild coyote ACME chemical solution to get it off!   :laugh: