Nostalgia
Tuesday, 10.10.06 @ 12:14AM 
One thing about getting old is that there are so many more young whippersnappers around to make you feel even older. I recently found out that email is passe! Email is not even old! Yeah, back in MY day, we had to pick up a phone when we wanted to talk to someone. And we had to twirl our fingers around a rotary dial, which our parents told us was newfangled. And we walked to school, because our parents had no idea the world was full of predators (which it was, even then). We went to different stores for groceries, clothing, and hardware, believe it or not, and we LIKED IT!
OK, now I’ll get off my soapbox and take a good look back at the good and not-so-good old days. You kids pay attention.
Vintage Bus is a site about the split-window Volkswagen Microbusses from 1949-1967. Hey! I learned to drive on one of those! (via the Presurfer)
Where’s the sitcom door? If you know your sitcoms, you should do well on this quiz.
The Bad Fads Museum is a site about fads that, in retrospect, were pretty awful. I’m talking about platform shoes, CB radios, waterbeds, and the Limbo. (Thanks, Mike!)
The Baby Boomer Death Counter Clock. (Thanks, Ed!)
Vintage ads from the earlier part of the 20th century. Some are creepy; most are politically incorrect.
There’s a nostalgia craze in Britain, too, causing companies to bring back old familiar brands.
Check out these drug ads from the 50s and earlier!
The Pinky Show explains the Vietnam War. This is a longish movie, and big file, but well worth it for anyone who wasn’t around back then, or anyone who hasn’t read the Pentagon Papers. (via Grow-A-Brain)
Gen-Exers will want to catch up, and keep up with, Jellio’s Where Are They Now? series.
Back in the 70s, what we call music videos were known as “promotional films” or “production numbers”. Some of them were pretty bad. Like this one.
The Top Ten Most embarassing fashion trends of the past 25 years. This makes me happy that my fashion sense was stunted over 25 years ago.
Technology then and now shows how our favorite gadgets tend to become smaller and sleeker.
Toy ads fromthe 70s. How many do YOU remember?
Vintage Robot Porn will take you back to the days of those classic movie and TV robots we all loved.
I never much thought I’d have any luck with a Rubik’s Cube, but it drove some people nuts. Still does!
Classic arcade games you can play online, like Tetris, Pacman, Asteroids,and more!
In the Seventies is a nostalgia site taking you back with pages on seventies food, music, movies, fashions, and world events. There’s also In the Eighties and In the Nineties for you young folks.
Do you remember when...?
All the girls had ugly gym uniforms?
It took five minutes for the TV warm up?
Nearly everyone's Mom was at home when the kids got home from school?
Nobody owned a purebred dog?
When a quarter was a decent allowance?
You'd reach into a muddy gutter for a penny?
Your Mom wore nylons that came in two pieces?
All your male teachers wore neckties and female teachers had their hair done every day and wore high heels?
You got your windshield cleaned, oil checked, and gas pumped, without asking, all for free, every time? And you didn't pay for air? And, you got trading stamps to boot?
Laundry detergent had free glasses, dishes or towels hidden inside the box?
It was considered a great privilege to be taken out to dinner at a real restaurant with your parents?
They threatened to keep kids back a grade if they failed. . .and they did?
When a 57 Chevy was everyone's dream car...to cruise, peel out, lay rubber or watch submarine races, and people went steady? No one ever asked where the car keys were because they were always in the car, in the ignition, and the doors were never locked?
Lying on your back in the grass with your friends and saying things like, "That cloud looks like a .."and playing baseball with no adults to help kids with the rules of the game?
Stuff from the store came without safety caps and hermetic seals because no one had yet tried to poison a perfect stranger?
And with all our progress, don't you just wish, just once, you could slip back in time and savor the slower pace, and share it with the children of today?
When being sent to the principal's office was nothing compared to the fate that awaited the student at home? Basically we were in fear for our lives, but it wasn't because of drive-by shootings, drugs, gangs, etc. Our parents and grandparents were a much bigger threat! But we survived because their love was greater than the threat.
Send this on to someone who can still remember Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, Laurel and Hardy, Howdy Dowdy and the Peanut Gallery, the Lone Ranger, The Shadow Knows, Nellie Bell, Roy and Dale, Trigger and Buttermilk.
As well as summers filled with bike rides, baseball games, Hula Hoops, bowling and visits to the pool, and eating Kool-Aid powder with sugar. Didn't that feel good, just to go back and say, "Yeah, I remember that"?
I am sharing this with you today because it ended with a double dog dare to pass it on. To remember what a double dog dare is, read on. And remember that the perfect age is somewhere between old enough to know better and too young to care.
How many of these do you remember?
Candy cigarettes.
Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside.
Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles.
Coffee shops with tableside jukeboxes.
Blackjack, Clove and Teaberry chewing gum.
Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers. Newsreels before the movie.
P.F. Fliers.
Telephone numbers with a word prefix....(Raymond 4-601).
Party lines.
Peashooters.
Howdy Dowdy.
45 RPM records.
Green Stamps.
Hi-Fi's.
Metal ice cubes trays with levers.
Mimeograph paper.
Beanie and Cecil.
Roller-skate keys.
Cork pop guns.
Drive ins.
Studebakers.
Washtub wringers.
The Fuller Brush Man.
Reel-To-Reel tape recorders.
Tinkertoys.
Erector Sets.
The Fort Apache Play Set.
Lincoln Logs.
15 cent McDonald hamburgers.
5 cent packs of baseball cards - with that awful pink slab of bubble gum.
Penny candy.
35 cent a gallon gasoline.
Jiffy Pop popcorn.
Do you remember a time when...
Decisions were made by going "eeny-meeny-miney-moe"? Mistakes were corrected by simply exclaiming, "Do Over!"? "Race issue" meant arguing about who ran the fastest? Catching the fireflies could happily occupy an entire evening? It wasn't odd to have two or three "Best Friends"?
The worst thing you could catch from the opposite sex was "cooties"? Having a weapon in school meant being caught with a slingshot? A foot of snow was a dream come true?
Saturday morning cartoons weren't 30-minute commercials for action figures? "Oly-oly-oxen-free" made perfect sense? Spinning around, getting dizzy, and falling down was cause for giggles?
The worst embarrassment was being picked last for a team? War was a card game? Baseball cards in the spokes transformed any bike into a motorcycle? Taking drugs meant orange-flavored chewable aspirin? Water balloons were the ultimate weapon?
If you can remember most or all of these, then you have lived!!!!!!!
Previously on Miss Cellania: Generation X
Thought for today: Nostalgia is defined as the good old days multiplied by a bad memory.
YOUR TURN! What do you remember from your childhood that your children cannot? Tell me about it in the comments.
PS I submitted this blog to 25peeps.com about a month ago, and I’ve finally made the grid. This is another of those blog popularity contests, so do me a favor and go over there and click on my picture. I'm the blonde with glasses. You can also submit your own blog, but don’t let that keep you from voting for me, because mine will be gone by the time yours comes up.
humor jokes video funny games good old days nostalgia childhood
Reader Comments (25)
And at 46 I remember watching Walter Cronkite list the daily death toll each night, double dutch, pixie stix, the Partridge Family, Carol Burrnet and the first moon landing.
Among many other things.
Speaking of Chief, we did our first grade writing on a Big Chief tablet.
There were no razor blades or poisons in trick or treat candy, and your parents trusted you to walk all over your neighborhood alone to collect goodies. Old women gave out waxed paper wrapped homemade popcorn balls that were brightly colored with enough food dye to leave you purple until Thanksgiving after eating one.
The T G & Y dime store sold cinnamon soaked toothpicks - a dozen in a pack for a nickel.
But nobody made me laugh like Miss Cellania! Thank you again for making my day! Is that you sitting next to the stone post?
So that's my excuse for not popping in sooner. But I am enjoying this post. :)
I was eight years old when my dad woke me up about midnight and kept me awake to see Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. That was big! I think with 24 hour news, EVERY little thing is big, and nothing grabs our imagination anymore. I miss the excitement of manned space exploration.
Oh, by the way, thanks for triggering my epileptic fit with that headline this morning.
great post, though
And I'm going to kick in those godawful wax candy soda bottles with the sticky syrup, and the fact you could eat the bottle when you drank it down.
And I remember those wax syrup bottles. I loved them as a kid, but now.. EWW! Remember the Halloween wax harmonicas?
How about "Ollie, Ollie, Oxen Free!"
Anybody else remember that one?
BTW- they still make Jiffy Pop.
I wish I was at that party in the picture... looks like fun!
I remember a bunch of the things you mentioned. Remember the little bell that would ring when a car drove up to a gas station?
I loved this nostalgic post too which brought me down the memory lane and back to the good old days. Thanks for sharing!
What I remember whis my children don't: How about black and white TV? Norway started collor TV sendings in the beginning of the 70s you know:-)
I like hippies. I was something of a hippie myself. But all hippies do grow up, right? I guess so. But can a hippie ever really stop being a hippie?
There's a lot in this post to which I can relate, of course. I remember when cigarettes were 18 cents per pack, then twenty-five in a machine. Gas was about a quarter a gallon, etc, etc, etc.
Sometimes I give driving directions based on what used to be there (Turn right there where the old Arlen's building used to be.) Raleigh has really grown in recent years. I remember it from the 50s when it was a nice, quiet southern city, >100,000, and when all the movie theaters were downtown, not the multiplexes in the suburbs.
When we moved into our new house in 1954, we were on a dirt road. That road was paved not long after that, and that house doesn't seem so far from downtown anymore.
One thing I always use as an example is a toaster. Remember when they they were all metal and lasted for many years? And then if it broke, you could have it repaired, and it would last many more years, and still look good?
I remember in the '60's when the term "planned obsolescence" was coined. These days, this is the norm. Everything is made of plastic that is planned to break, and you need to buy a new one. Sit in a new car and count the number of metal parts - you can use your fingers for the count.