By Pam
I was born in the 50s and a child of the 60s. Things were quite different then. Simpler times for sure. I have a lot of fond memories of my childhood and although I truly love many of the modern conveniences that we have in 2011, it is still fun to look back at the things and adventures that were very much a part of my life.
Whether you were born in the 30s or the 80s, there are memories you associate with things and experiences that no longer exist due to our ever evolving society. Let’s share some of those with each other ( the good and the bad) and take a stroll down memory lane. I will start.
I remember when we had party telephone lines. Some of the old biddies, er I mean women, on our line would love to listen to my older brothers talk to their girlfriends and then tell my mom what was being 
said . Sometimes, not often, I would catch my mom listening in on others. She would always pretend she was just picking up the phone to make a call…but we knew better.
I remember “smoking” candy cigarettes and thinking I was so cool. I am not sure why because my parents did not smoke…but a lot of other people did.
I remember when finding an empty pop bottle equaled two pieces of penny candy. 🙂
I am a child of the 50’s too. I remember the party lines..loved those, except when I wanted to make a call. I can still remember our ring, 2 shorts. In the 60’s I remember big plastic rollers that I would put in my long hair to make it straight. I also recall sleeping in those large hard pink plastic rollers everynight! No air conditioning in cars, and being a kid sitting in the back seat being wind blown and no seat belts. A small screen Black and white TV that you would change channels with a pliers after you broke the knob off. As a kid you were the ‘remote’ for your parents.
Wood paneled station wagons that numbed the bum! Running to get the milk – delivered everyday. Just so I could be the 1st to get the cream off the top. 10 cents bought a pack of Bazooka bubble gum & an Archie comic book. If I washed the dishes after a ‘dinner party’ – $1 & I’d hop on my bike to buy a prized Nancy Drew book for 99 cents! (Never enough dinner parties!) Friday night=ballroom dancing class! We’d end it w. the bunny hop – lost my petticoat to my ankles, & was asked to not return the next week. (No such thing as underwear malfunctions for a ‘lady’..of 13!)
Oh yes Pam – party lines too, but NO children allowed on the phone unless an emergency. It was the real operator who’d take the # to make your call that I had a problem with. Not only did she know who I was & who I was calling, but she’d tattle. She’d listen in! If I was on the phone too long, she’d tell me to get off b/c someone was trying to call my parents. (Had she only been Lily Tomlin, ‘the operator’, my tween yrs. would have been a rambling JOY!) etc., etc. ;0)
HB,
I was laughing so hard about the petticoats and being asked not to return that I could hardly tell my husband.
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Sage…..no seat belts and the big bench seats in the cars…windows down in the summer. How did parent’s with large families every keep their kids under control?
I confess, a tad younger here, but American Bandstand, Sat at noon on TV. We had to get all our chores done and lunch over and dishes done before we could watch. Those dance partners, some of whom went on and got married in real life were just so awesome to a kid from a small midwest town. My folks square danced and a couple of times a year, they all went to the country and danced under the lights strung over a piece of concrete. Kids played ball, we had potluck supper, and watermelon and ice cream from the real daity. It was a large canister packed with an army green canvas all the way around it. You could have more than 1 ice cream cone. What a treat for all of us. 🙂
I have my husband Grandmothers old phone desk top version of the wall phone. LOL. It has a small crank in the middle of it. Party lines were always the topic of morning coffee’s around the block. We had a party line until 5th grade, cheaper, until we had a medical emergency and needed the phone and the old bitty we were on with would not hang up. Next day, no party line in our house. 🙂
I remember when my parents used to stuff me and my 4 siblings in the back of our old unairconditioned station wagon with our pillows and sleeping bags and head off to the local drive in movie theater…I remember my dad fussing with the big metal box that you hooked on the inside of your window and the tinny sound and music coming out of it. I remember lying on the open gate of our station wagon watching movies and eating popcorn, and sometimes running around in the gravel chasing my brothers and sisters playing tag. I also remember hot summer nights when it almost hurt to breathe but at the drive in we didn’t care. We also didn’t care about a bazillion mosquitoes. I still remember the smell of my father burning a coil thing to repel the mosquitoes (Off?) and how nasty it smelled, LOL. I also remember how gigantic the screens seemed to be there, and watching the movies was the coolest thing (and the cheapest in hindsight, whole car of us for like $5!) we got to do as a family back then! 🙂
snickers, I too have my grandmother’s old phone. Brass stand w. the hang-up mouthpiece…1904. My mother had it made into a lamp that was on a table in the hallway. When I came home from a date…I had to hang up the receiver to turn the light off as a signal I was home! How I’d rush to hang up that darned phone…curfew was enforced!
HB, that is so funny about your petticoats. Wow, they had no sympathy for your embarrassment.
I was thinking about this today and remembered how we didn’t wear seatbelts and would climb back and forth over the seat.
I remember when the dry cleaner’s came around for p/u and drop off once or twice a week. The driver was like a member of our neighborhood.
I remember growing up in Florida in the late 60’s, riding our bikes behind the mosquito fogging trucks. Probably explains a lot about Floridians;).
I’m an early baby boomer from the 40’s growing up in the 50’s and 60’s in Texas and North Carolina. I remember the tin milk box at the back door where the milk man left the milk twice a week. During holiday season he also left eggnog! I also remember the bread man’s truck that came through by a couple of times a week. We walked to school 1st grade through 12th and the neighborhood moms looked out for all of us. If anyone misbehaved, their mom usually knew about it before they even got home!
I also remember rushing home from school to watch old movies with my mom… if the weather was good, we could pick up a station in Roanoke. We only had three stations to choose from in our town. One for each network. We also watched the soapsl after school… They started out at 15 minutes each… The Edge of Night and The Secret Storm… now those were great!
I remember our first phone number when we moved to NC in 1954… 55675 — No exchange needed!
Having to go home when the street lights came on.
Going on family trips fighting in the back seat with my siblings in a smoke filled car.
I remember the days of no seat belts and rides to the beach in the back of the pickup. Archie comics and Nancy Drew were my favorite and when I was done with those, I would read the Hardy Boys lol. We had no TV in our town until I was 12, there was only 1 channel and it wasn’t live. Then came Gunsmoke, The Rifleman, Bonanza, Green Acres, Gilligan’s Island and on Saturdays, American Bandstand. For 50 cents I could go to the movie and have enough left for a popcorn and soda. The boys would bring their rifles to school and store them in their locker so they could go hunting after school. Can you imagine that now? I also remember the candy cigarettes.
…ok, chardonnay – guess who got to sit in the audience & sing, ‘It’s Howdy Doody Time’. Thank goodness there was not such thing as a VCR. The rabbit ears on my parent’s t.v broke…good thing. They were going to take photos of me on the t.v.! Bad. I stuck my tongue out at Buffalo Bob!
You’re a star HB? Who knew!!! LOL @ sticking your tongue out!
We had six kids and also had a station wagon, a Valiant. I dreaded when it was my turn to sit in the back, with no seat.
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I also remember the fun we had playing outside with all the neighbor kids until dark. And Wendy it’s not only Floridians that played behind the bug sprayer. Texans did it too. LOL
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I also remember spending hours catching lightning bugs. There were none around when my girls were small. My youngest daughter finally saw some when she was 18 and we were in central park. Don’t think my odest has ever seen them.
LOL, great walk down memory lane. I remember summers. Playing outside all day. So carefree, no one had to worry about us as the whole neighborhood watched out for all of its kids. No such thing as having a TV on during the day. Rope swings over the lake, forts in the woods, bicycle parades with friends. We rode our bikes to a general store for penny candy and rainbow tablets and colored pencils. Loved Black Jacks. The Book Mobile would come with all the Nancy Drew you hadn’t read. Went to visit cousins in the big city and couldn’t believe they had musical trucks that brought you ice cream! Then glorious Sundays, scrubbed pink & stuffed in a dress and Sunday dinner at Grandmas.< I miss that the most. Then Sunday evening popcorn and lemonade to watch Walt Disney. Did anyone elses mom have to bribe them out of hiding to give them that end of summer gawd awful perm so you'd look like a girl to start another school year? We had the party line phone too, funny we all had the same problems with it-guess the biddy down the road had to do something until the internet was invented.LOL, thanks for the memories. Just talking about the good ole days melts the stress of today for a minute doesn't it?
It sure does, BlogHawg! I forgot about the scrubbed pink & stuffed into a dress Sundays, lol! I always did like dinner at Grandmas. Ah the gawd awful perm! Yes, and I also had the bangs up to my hairline to go with the tighter than a spring curls. The thing I think I miss the most is the long, long days, into the late evening, playing outside with all the neighborhood kids…kick the can, red rover, ante I over (annie annie over) and baseball.
I wanted to add, we put a old playing card attached with a snap clothes pin in our bicycle wheeels. We would steal cards from the neighbors bikes when they went in for the night and then we would really let those cards rip the next day. I thik our our Mothers all bought their cards at the same place, they were either blue or red on the backside. I also remember the 5 and 10 stores and the candy counters they had. You could buy a dimes worth of M’m’s and they put it in a little brown sack and gasp, those women didn’t wear gloves when handling food products.
Loved the book-mobile in the summertime. We lived in the country and it was the only way for us to get books when school was out.My sister and I had best friends who were sisters and we would walk to the creek where we had a rope tied to a tree that we would use to swing out to the middle of the creek and jump off. I would have never let my kids swim in that dirty creek water, but when I was growing up everyone did that stuff. We also had a little general store down the road where we could get a coke and a candy bar for a quarter.
Mass migration from NYC to the ocean. The only store in town was Mardy & Al’s (The Fountain of Youth’)…kids would ride their bikes there most every day. They kept paper cups w. our names, on a shelf behind the soda fountain where parents would deposit $$ that was to last from the 4th of July – Labor Day. 10 cent double-decker ice cream cone or 15 cents for most delicious ice cream soda ever! Strawberry. (It was our own cup of a debit card…imagine!) When it rained & Al was in the store & his bossy wife upstairs at home, he’d let us read comic books…just as long as they still looked new when we were finished. No charge. (Norman Rockwell would have loved it!)
Thanks Pam…I agree, what a lovely way to end a Sunday! Sweet, sweet memories!
CJWhodunit,
Reading your account of the drive-in experience was exactly the same as mine. My Dad was a drapery and carpet salesman so he always had a station wagon so he could keep his sample books in the back. I loved going to the drive in. When we were very young we used to go in our pajamas!
I remember having “jacks competitions” for hours on end! My Sister and I shared a room and we had a pink linoleum floor,perfect for playing jacks. While we were playing we listened to my transistor radio.
I was at my Mom’s house today, the same house she has lived in since I was eight. So many great memories. We had so much less than our kids do, but I truly believe we had a better experience.
Remember when you had to pull over to use a phone, in a booth? Now try and find one that works.
Phone booths! Lol. My kids are intrigued by the giant cordless phones on the Seinfeld reruns.
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CJ, we had the same drive-in experience. Big ol’ station wagon STUFFED with kids because we paid by the car-ful, might as well bring the cousins. I saw Planet of the Apes and I didn’t understand the ending…did the apes have a Statue of Liberty, too?
Remember when you could go to the top of the Statue of Liberty?
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Sage, we had the same TV channel changer- the pliers. It got lost just as often as the clicker we use now.
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I remember the milk box. It was the boys’ job to bring in the milk, but there was no cream on top. It was clearly marked “Homogenized.” I also remember when the milkman stopped coming and we got milk in a store. The milk box became the home for my pet fuzzy caterpillar. I pet the fuzz off it. And then, one day, it wasn’t there. 🙁
I also remember on rainy days playing jacks, pick-up sticks and canasta with my mom. No haters, we were not neglected. Moms were not outside playing with the kids.
Holly, I totally forgot about being in our pajamas at the drive in! We did that too, I can still remember my dad carrrying the younger kids (I was the oldest) in the house when we’d go home, LOL. 🙂
Ann, one of my favorite times at the drive in was an all night marathon of Planet of the Apes, which I LOVED…my dad and I were the only ones who managed to stay awake that long, LOL…5 movies straight in a row! Wish the drive in was still there, they tore it down in the 80s and put in a big Walmart there 🙁 I would love to take my kids now, but there’s only like *1* drive-in in the entire state of Texas and it’s a pretty good drive from here, we’d have to stay at a hotel overnight! 😉
Oh, and the basic them of POTA? A group of astronauts set out to explore space and hit some sort of wormhole thing…when they land on a planet they find humans are very primitive and can’t talk, and are kept as slaves to intelligent apes (fascinating social structure)…main character manages to survive just barely and escape with a female human he was hooked up with, one of the best endings E.V.E.R. was Charlton Heston riding a horse down that beach, and coming upon the head of the Statue of Liberty–the astronauts never left earth, they just traveled forward in time!
GeeWhiz, I literally remember waking up with the sun, getting dressed, eating breakfast, then outside to play ALL DAY with my friends around the subdivision where we lived…came home for lunch, and then as the sun was setting the moms would come out the back doors of the apartments and call everyone home for dinner…wow, so many memories I haven’t thought about in years! 🙂
OMG, the TONY perms!!! I had straight STRAIGHT blonde hair, most of the time in a ‘pixie’ cut 😉 and wanted curls soooooo bad…one of our neighbors knew how to do those home perms, I remember how horribly nasty, stinky, eye-watering awful those chemicals were…and for some reason, my bangs too would be up at the top of my forehead, and the other funny thing was that only one side of my head would take the perm, so it would be curly and cute, but the other side was straight as a board, LOL…always took forever for the perm to grow out too, wouldn’t you know it! 😉
Do y’all remember when microwaves and calculators first came out? The nerdy kids at my high school had them, and they were HUGE, about 3/4 inch thick and like 5X7, LOL. We thought those were sooooooo coool! And microwaves, well that was just Star Trek cooking instantly for us! 😉
Not just wonderful memories, but such a simpler time! People were nice. People were neighborly……we ran and played outside all day in the summer, barely taking enough time to grab a piece of bologna or cold hot dog out of the refridgerator when we got hungry…..grabbing a drink out of the hose when you got thirsty. Mom practically dragging us in to get a bath in the evening. We went barefoot ALL THE TIME and I have a very vivid memory of my mother scrubbing our feet with a brush to get the tar off!!! LOL LOL The most organized we got was when we played baseball with the entire neighborhood. No organized sports, no play dates.
Tony perms. I had forgotten all about them. And who didn’t use Dippity Doo? My first thought about the drive-ins was going in my pajamas (I was the youngest). But, then I thought, did I go and play on the swings like that?? LOL, I do remember other kids in their pjs playing on the swings before the movie started.
I remember when kid tv was only in the morning and a short time after school. Of course we had Sat. mornings, loved Bugs Bunny. All the dads watched the 6:00 news and you had to be quiet when it was on.
Yep, we got one of those boxy calculators for Christmas from my bachelor uncle and played with it CONSTANTLY. The font of the digital numbers was so intriguing- I’d never seen it before! It was so space age-y.
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I miss Mad magazine. Is it still around?
My Mom should have bought stock in Dippity Doo! She used it to slick back my bangs while they were growing out! LOL LOL My hair would be so caked with Dippity Doo it would be hard and crusty! It was a great attraction at school though. All the kids wanted to touch my hair! LOL LOL
Yep, we used Dippity Doo too!! LOL! I remember it smelled good compared to the perms, but was VERY sticky/tacky, but wonderful to dig your fingers into! Simpler time, yes, hard to believe things are so different now I worry about my daughter walking to a friend’s house a few houses away from us! 🙁
We had a town whistle in my hometown growing up. 12 noon and 6 at night. You hit your bikes and went home to eat. No watches, that was the rule for kids in town. Heck, if a Mom wanted to find their child, call around and see who’s yard or ballfield you were at. We had a huge barn in our backyard, (yes, we were in town), had a BB hoop and you had to oped the door for light at one end. If you missed the shot, the ball would fly out that door and so down the ladder you went to get it. We piled snow under that door all winter and we would jump out, we were superman doing that. Oh, the simple things in life!!
I remember roller skates you could use outside and adjust with a key to fit on your shoes. I remember going to Girl Scout camp for a week in the summer. Good times. Riding bikes and going down hills with hands in the air, finding tadpoles in the creek, sledding in the winter, watchung the black and white TV with the rabbit ears, eating dinner as a family every night. I remember being scared during the Cuba Missile Crisis and of course the assisination of JFK. Memories how wonderful!
I was born in the early 70’s
I remember…
a life before internet, my high school didn’t have internet until my senior year of high school
cars that didn’t even have seatbelts
when penny candy was really only a penny
Paula,
Ahh, roller skating. Those old inside rinks where some lady was up in a corner playing organ music as we flew around the floor. Maybe first boyfriend in life to skate with. Oh we were so hot at the age!! Girl scout camp, yes, campfire stew, made those plastic sit a ponds??? pons?? basket weaving, singing, and meeting girls from all over your state. Church camp, got to leave home for a whole week, stayed in log cabin style homes with lots of bunkbeds in them. Laughed until your sides hurt.
stxmom,
You are a baby, but a sweet baby!! Was there really penny candy in the 70’s??
My Dad called me and my sister in from playing to watch Nixon resign on TV. I didn’t know what was going on, I didn’t understand any of it. All I knew was that I had to leave my playing and come inside!!!!!! He wanted us to “witness history”. Now some people might think that was stupid since we didn’t understand what was going on, but looking back I can appreciate the thoughtfullness of it. All I remember is asking how long it was going to take and my Dad saying “Hush, squirt. This is history.”
snickers I remember buying gum for a penny.
My Dad called me and my sister in from playing to watch Nixon resign on TV.
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I remember that too! It must be my earliest TV memory. I think I was about four. I watched it with my mom and aunt and sister in the livingroom of the first house I really remember living in (I have very vague memories of a couple of the previous places we’d lived in, but that one we lived in for several years, from when I was about three to six).
Oh my, I was married the day after Kennedy was assassinated. As I left for the chapel…I can remember being swathed in sheets to fend off the rain…& some elderly lady saying…’how selfish you’d go thru’ with this wedding’. Little did she know everyone, but the small musical trio & the photographer were the ONLY ones who showed up. No caterers, no tent…but my grandmother’s house ROCKED w. friends, relatives who came from afar. We had the champagne, the mother-load of food meant for Thanksgiving, & the wedding cake…we lost the country’s mourning for a few short hours. (That old, cranky lady was caught in a photo w. a bottle of Wild Turkey under her chair.) ;0)
I was a toddler when Kennedy died, but I remember my mother watching the funeral procession on tv, crying, because when he’d been a senator in Boston, he and others used to visit the restaurant she worked at (young waitress in the 50s), and they’d prank her by saying they weren’t leaving a tip, then when she’d go bus the table she’d find a dollar bill under each plate (lot of money back then for a large party)…I still remember the horses pulling the coffin to this day, on our little black and white tv. 🙁
Years later when we moved to the Ft. Worth area, she somehow became friends with Oswald’s elderly mother (worked at same nursing home or something, don’t remember)…weird that she experienced both.
CJ, we took the southerly route via a tiny 2-seater w. ONE suitcase – from FL to CA a few wks. after 22 Nov. Flooding rain in Dallas so we went looking for a Sears for a shower curtain for that suitcase. Getting off the route to Dallas took us unknowingly right on that same JFK ride…NOT a soul on the grassy knoll, & a lone security guy led us thru’ the Texas Book Depository. Chilling to the bone & soul! A simple bouquet of daisies was left by someone – on the ledge of that window Oswald used to pull the trigger.
HB…LOVE THE WEDDING STORY! LOL LOL cranky old lady with Wild Turkey. You would think drinking the Wild Turkey, she would have been friendlier……lol lol
I grew up in the 80s. I used to wear matching flourescent sweatshirt and socks with parachute pants. I would tease my hair big. I had a poster of Scott Baio up in my room.
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Back in those days, kids would be allowed to play outside at night. We used to play spotlight. It’s like hide and seek with flashlights.
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I also remember drive ins with those little radios you had to hang off your window. Then they moved to radio stations. Now there are no drive ins where I live.
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I remember when A&W used to bring your food to your car. They would hang a tray on your window. Ah, good times.
HB. …….that is a pretty good size quake. Are you ok?
HB….did you feel the quake? I am praying things are okay with you!!!
Does anyone have a Drive In theater around them? Are there any left out there?
There’s one about 45-55 minutes from where I live and it’s the only one around that I know of. I took the kids to it about 9 years ago but it’s still around. A bunch of us Moms caravaned (sp?) to it and camped out……lol It was really fun. They showed 2 movies, and my kids fell asleep about 20 minutes into the second one.
Teresa E.
I was one of those car hop girls that deleivered food to your car that had a clip on tray that attached to your window. I remember wearing the changer belt, and had a apron that had the bills in it. That was probably one of the times in my life that my legs were in super shape. 🙂
There are still a couple left in the Pittsburgh area. (drive-ins) I haven’t been to one since I was a Teen. 😉
We have two drive-ins around here, Pam. One of them has 2 screens. It’s been a few years for me (the very last Indiana Jones, I think,) but my kids still go. We would always meet friends, take the back row, and bring lots of food. You tune your radio to the movie for a speaker. It’s always full. There is a playground for little kids. Unhealthy food stand. And you pay per person, not by car. The best part is getting 2 movies for the price of one and the summer air. The worst is that I could never stay awake for the second movie.
Theresa E., my kids were allowed to be play outside at night. I let them sleep out in tents or on the trampoline, but we have a pretty private backyard. They are sooo over sleeping in tents now though. Except my youngest, who spent a week at Girl Scout camp recently. She’ll probably have friends over in the fall when we can have a bonfire.
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Any Girl Scouts reading?
Is this where we talk about the pacifiers? My oldest never had anything like that and he was a terrible sleeper as an infant. My second sucked her thumb until kindergarten. LOVED it! She was SUCH a GOOD sleeper. And she was so cute about giving it up. The last one had a “bink” and she sucked that thing until she was old enough to threaten a lawsuit if I took it away. (I think she was 4.) Don’t judge me.
No Ann, that would be in the lounge….https://imperfectwomen.com/august-means-back-to-school/. But we will make an exception for you. 😉
LOL….no judgement Ann…lol
We have a drive-in. But, it is really popular and crowded. It takes forever to get inside, so I rarely go.
If you grew up in the Midwest, they had the old fashioned A&W Rootbeer stands. Those frosty mugs were the best and the large mug cost 10 cents. I car-hopped and those were heavy trays.