Remember When ......

[Gordon Eyre]

The ice man delivered ice blocks for our ice box (refrigerator). Coke was sold in 6oz hour glass bottles. Party lines had distinctive rings, ours was two longs and a short. I listened to the Green Hornet and The Shadow on the radio. My mom made my shirts out of printed flour sacks.

[Pat Barry]

The ice man delivered ice blocks for our ice box (refrigerator). Coke was sold in 6oz hour glass bottles. Party lines had distinctive rings, ours was two longs and a short. I listened to the Green Hornet and The Shadow on the radio. My mom made my shirts out of printed flour sacks.

On a hot summer day when this milk man / ice man delivered, we would ask him for a chunk of that ice and he would get out his pick and chop a piece off for each of us, Now that was a real treat for us back in the day!
Sundays we would have to put on our little suit jackets and ties for church.
Didn't it seem like there was a lot of room in the back seat of the old Chevy / Buick / Dodge? Not to mention the trunk could hold all your possessions including half the neighborhood kids sneaking in to the drive in movies.

[Rich Riddle]

The ice man delivered ice blocks for our ice box (refrigerator). Coke was sold in 6oz hour glass bottles. Party lines had distinctive rings, ours was two longs and a short. I listened to the Green Hornet and The Shadow on the radio. My mom made my shirts out of printed flour sacks.

You mean you really had to buy ice to put in your refrigerator? It didn't come with a compressor capable of freezing ice?

[Dave Zellers]

Notice 'refrigerator' is in parentheses- it was an ice box- no compressor at all. The ice was cut from the frozen lakes in winter and stored in ice houses for use in summer.

[Rich Riddle]

Dave,

This has turned into somewhat of a history lesson and interesting. Stories from Ken crossing the plains on a wagon with his family and using dynamite to clear cellars to folks with no way to keep a cool brew without ice. I find many of the car stories interesting. Some folks sound happy the statutes of limitations expired on some of those stories.

[Brett Luna]

I grew up in the South in the '60s and '70s.

I remember Mom giving my brother and I a summer buzz cut when we were very young and sending us out to play in the yard in our tightie-whities so she didn't have so much laundry to do. No one called child protective services on her. Ever. That was also back in the days of the "dirt necklace."

I remember when we kids knew all/most/many of the astronauts' names and wanted to be them when we grew up. Never occurred to us to be a gangster instead. Yeah, that was back when it was spelled with an "er."

I remember when you could often repair your own radio or television by checking one or more vacuum tubes on a tube tester at your local drug and/or grocery store.

I remember when >I< was the remote control for the television. I also remember rabbit ears, hoop, and bowtie antennas; horizontal and vertical hold; and the kerchunk-kerchunk-kerchunk sound of changing channels on the VHF dial. Oh...and "Don't touch that dial!"

I remember when television stations played the national anthem and displayed a test pattern at the end of the broadcast day. Stores closed on Sunday...at least until noon or 1 PM, if not all day.

I remember going shoe-less pretty much all summer with my friends and racing like mad across blazing hot asphalt parking lots because we were too cool to go around them. That high level of coolness didn't stop us from dancing along recently painted parking lines because they were just a tad cooler.

We carried pocket knives and maybe a wrist rocket slingshot or an air rifle. I had a hatchet and a machete. We disappeared into the woods for hours on end, built forts, made bamboo spears, or went fishing and hunting.

Dirt clod wars.

As a boy, I remember my grandmother making me go outside to cut a switch when I misbehaved. My dad favored the belt. "Time out" was for when you got dirt in your eye during one of the great wars. Teachers got in on the action, too. My high school (yeah, high school) shop teacher was a paddle connoisseur. He amassed quite a collection that varied in width, thickness, and drilled hole patterns during his ongoing search for the perfect sting.

I remember buying .22 and shotgun ammo at 14. I bought my own H&R Topper Jr. single shot 20-gauge that year, too. I kept it in my closet and never pointed it at another human being. Bobwhites, doves, and squirrels weren't so lucky. Well, most of them were quite safe but not all of them.

[Myk Rian]

Coal truck backing up to the chute.
Milk chute actually being used for milk.
Advertizing paper plates being dropped from airplanes.
C-119 Flying boxcars flying overhead.
ACME store.
Smudge pots at road construction jobs.
Sputnik and Echo satellites.

[Kent A Bathurst]

Coal truck backing up to the chute.
Milk chute actually being used for milk.
Advertizing paper plates being dropped from airplanes.
C-119 Flying boxcars flying overhead.
ACME store.
Smudge pots at road construction jobs.
Sputnik and Echo satellites.

Good list, Myk - 4 of those are mine as well.

I also remember vacations on the Grandparents' Kansas farms. The cream separator; Grandad srelighting the fires in the wood-burning stoves each cold morning; outdoor plumbing. When the distant tiny municipalities finally got water to them, the Grandmothers were in awe. City water. No live-or-die on the cistern, and on trucked-in water during dry spells"; Line 7, 2 long & 1 short for a phone # - except you just called the exchange in that tiny town and asked for them by name.

[Moses Yoder]

I remember my dad setting up the table saw in our kitchen to work on projects. I have one of those projects now, the tool box I helped build for him to use for his carpenter work.

[Andrew Joiner]

Bumpers were chromed steel and drivers would bump other cars with them parallel parking.

All my relatives had outhouses and used a sauna to bathe.

At 5 years old I beat a partridge to death with my toy gun. We had it for dinner. My family was so proud they called the newspaper. They ran the story and a photo of me in my coonskin cap like I was a little celebrity. Today I'd be in trouble for animal abuse!

[Ken Shea]

"At 5 years old I beat a partridge to death with my toy gun"

Andrew,
Do you happen to be any relation to a Gertrude Bradley, she was my Grandmother?
The reason I ask is because you both seem to have a lot in common, she chased a baby pig to death in the summer heat when she was about the same age

[Rick Potter]

Actually, they did use dynamite to plant power poles that went to our desert (5000' elevation) cabin, in the late 60's. It is in the big rock country, and they had to put the poles in with a helicopter.

I was the designated driver, before it was cool. I drove a trunkload of guys into the drive in, then took them home because I didn't drink. That stopped as soon as I found a girl who would go with me.

We also had a party line at our first house (1964), which cost $13,500. $300 down and $87 a month PITI. I was making $440 a month as a Fireman. I could also afford my first new car a few months later.....'65 GTO..$3330 OTD.

[Tom Stenzel]

I remember a guy in high school telling us he liked his '48 Willys Jeepster, because the 4 cyl. motor was so gutless that he drove it flat out all the time, and the police never noticed.

I remember lifting the hood on my '48 Willys Jeepster and finding a Chevy 327. Yesterday.

You have a Jeepster with a 327? Sorry Rick but your village idiot status is hereby revoked!

Tom

[Tom Leftley]

I remember before I started school, riding with my grandparents in an old Pontiac coupe delivering rural mail.
This would have been 1944/45. I don't know what year the car was, but it had wooden spoked wheels.
In the fall, my grandparents would sell quart baskets of apples and pears along their route.

In the summer, guys in the village who had shotguns would meet every evening after supper and clear starlings out the trees in one block.
The next night, they would repeat this and clean out another block.

I remember the first fire truck in our village. It was a 1949 Ford.
The fire chief was a farmer who lived across the road from us.

I remember also when my grandfather said it was time to buy a new lawn mower.
Man was I disappointed when they delivered it. It was a push mower with steel wheels.

[Malcolm Schweizer]

My grandfather owned an ice plant in Mississippi. He went to Eupora wanting to build a power plant and they said they really needed an ice plant. He said, "I could build that!," and he did. This was long before my time.

I remember my neighbors got this new "remote control" TV. You could change the channel from your seat. The funny thing is, the first remote control TV's still had dials, and when you pressed a button on the remote the dial on the TV would turn. "Clunk! Clunk! Clunk!" Note: Our town was a bit behind the times. This was the 70's. I think remotes were out for a while already.

I don't think anyone has mentioned 8 Track tapes. Remember when you changed tracks they went "kachunk!"?

Remember the first cell phones? The "bag phone." It was huge. It had a corded handset and a base that was in a leather bag.

Drive-in movies.

Vane-style TV antennas that went on the roof. You aimed it at the tower


When cartoons were actually hand drawn, and they had music scores composed to go with them.

Winding the alarm clock. ... Or how about the "digital" clock with the numbers on little cards that flipped each minute.

Digital watches with red numbers. You had to push a button and they lit up.

The Radio Shack TRS-80 and the Commodore 64.

Remember when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and then it got really, really cold? That next million years were rough.