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My sister sent this one out today. It had a photo example of each item, and danged it I'm going to post all of those photos anywhere. It would take a week.
My sister is about 8 years older than I am, and I turn 53 tomorrow. There are some of these items that were staple items to her in childhood, but I missed 'em because the trends changed by the time I came along.
This will put every one of you to sleep, but it's intended for the more senior of us. You young bucks won't have a clue about a lot of these things. And that's not at all bad. It's just that there WAS life before electronics. There really was. Trust us, there was. And life was in color, too, even if a lot of the photos were not. Not that any of us would ever want to go back there these days, but this is the way it was.
Items, and my narrative, sans photos, to reflect the perspective of a 53-year old (me, as of tomorrow).
45 RPM Spindles: Heck yeah. You had Vinyl album players that had a thin shaft with a thingy on it that would allow you to stack 5 or 6 records on there, and it would automatically drop the next one when one got through playing. The record would drop on top of the one below it, and would slide like airplane wheels on the runway until it matched the speed of the spinning record. thereby ruining the sound grooves on both records and making them all sound worse and worse the more you listened to them. The 45 spindles slipped over the shaft to allow you to play singles on the same player - the single had a huge hole in the center. Where are you Eagle Kammerick?
S&H Green Stamps: Yeah, they used to give them out at the grocery store, based on the amount of the purchase. You pasted them in a book and for so many books you could get all kinds of kitchen appliances and stuff in trade at the bonafide Green Stamp store, just like any other store. Of course that went away, and even as a kid I never understood the economics of it.
Metal Ice Cube Trays: They had a handle you pulled on to try to pop the cubes out of the tray. They didn't work very well at all. But there was some ice, if you could get it outta there somehow. The best thing available at the time - who designed those things?
Benny and Cecil: A cartoon about a big green dinosaur and his friends. I kinda missed it, was into Speed Racer and Johnny Qwest when I was ready to watch.
Roller Skate Keys: I caught the tail end of this one. Skates were kinda out of style when I came alive, but you had to have a skate key to take apart a roller skate to make a skateboard out of it. Hard ass metal wheels, very loud on the sidewalk, and would make white marks on the concrete like tire skid marks on a race track. But you used the key to take the old skate apart and then used the front and the back of the skate to make a skateboard by lashing the parts to a 2x4 with strips of an old inner tube. You could almost steer it by leaning you weight to one side ? almost. That whole game was mostly straight. Straight into trouble if got up any speed.
Cork Pop Guns: Yep.
Marlin Perkins: The host of what may have been the first commercially sponsored show, ?Mutual of Omaha?s Wild Kingdom.? He messed with exotic animals. A pretty use for one of the two channels that were available through the gaudy aluminum antenna up on the roof.
Drive-in Restaurants: Missed the real allure of this one by a few years. By the time I was able to drive, they were for the most part gone. Definitely a 50?s thing.
Car Hops: Refer to Drive-in Restaurants.
Studebakers: Missed ?em. I was close, though, in the timetable of the earth.
Topo Gigo: Yep, definitely. Ed Sullivan?s puppet. Part of the show.
Wringer Wash Tups: Saw one at my grandmother?s house in Alabama on the back porch, but it was out of service by then. Missed ?em.
Fuller Brush Man: Missed him.
Sky King: Ohhhh yeah. He flew a Beechcraft twin engine airplane and did lots of heroic things. He had a woman around him named Penny, and every time he flew through a storm, the lightning was shaped like a pitchfork. Every time. Uncanny.
Reel-to-Reel-Tape Recorders: Danged right, I had two of them over time. You could record vinyl record albums on there on the slow speed and it would play for as long as 90 minutes, continuously. A party favorite, an amazing thing. The prequel to CD?s. Useful in the recording studio, too. They lasted, longer than most items on this list before they went away for household use. I had ?em fer sure.
Tinker Toys: Yup, all the way. Had a whole set.
Erector Sets: Tinker Toys on steroids. Plus, you got to use a screwdriver and a wrench to build stuff. You could build cranes, whatever with the battery-powered electric motor that came with the set. A fabulous catalyst for mechanical talent, but sadly for me it didn?t take. To this day, I still can?t use a wrench to do anything useful.
Lincoln Logs: They were around, but I didn?t have any. Didn?t even want any. They paled in comparison to the erector set. Boring. Mundane.
15-cent Hamburgers: This one came with a photo of a McDonald?s sign with the notation ?Over 200 Million Sold.? No, I don?t have a connection with that one. While going through all of these items, I realize I didn?t have any sort of a connection with money, or the cost of things, until way way later.
5-cent Postage Stamps: Yep. My mom, thinking I was becoming a ?big boy,? let me glue all of the 5-cent stamps on her pile of Christmas Cards. I can see them still ( at least I THINK they were 5 cent stamps). Mama should have supervised. She gave me the job and walked away. I licked and glued every single stamp on about 40 envelopes to the upper left-hand corner of every single envelope, where the return address should be. Oh yeah, she was proud of me. I don?t know to this day what she did to fix that.
Gum Wrapper Chains: I saw ?em, but it was so hard to make them I never tried. It was a girl thing anyhow, where I grew up.
Chatty Cathy Dolls: A girl thing, I have no idea.
Cigarettes for Christmas: I remember the ads in every magazine, Santa smoking cigarettes.
Falstaff Beer: I guess that brand was gone when I was old enough to drink. But I had had enough of it to drink, I probably wouldn?t remember that anyhow?
Flash Bulbs: Oh yeah. You plugged them into your Polaroid camera ? POW! One shot, they were shot to hell. Didn?t quite explode, but nearly did. Melted all the plastic gooey stuff around it, it swelled up after the bang like a pregnant whale. Gotta load another on for the next photo and throw that one away.
Aluminum Christmas Trees: My dad?s best friend had one of these at his house during the season. 3 or 4 feet tall. With a spotlight shining through a rotating different-colored round glass. Classy. Nice. Yeah, I saw that.
And I can add one that wasn?t on the list: Chemistry sets. Good gosh. Yes, there used to be chemistry sets for kids. My mom was a little bit smarter than I thought at the time ? she simply wouldn?t allow it.
My sister is about 8 years older than I am, and I turn 53 tomorrow. There are some of these items that were staple items to her in childhood, but I missed 'em because the trends changed by the time I came along.
This will put every one of you to sleep, but it's intended for the more senior of us. You young bucks won't have a clue about a lot of these things. And that's not at all bad. It's just that there WAS life before electronics. There really was. Trust us, there was. And life was in color, too, even if a lot of the photos were not. Not that any of us would ever want to go back there these days, but this is the way it was.
Items, and my narrative, sans photos, to reflect the perspective of a 53-year old (me, as of tomorrow).
45 RPM Spindles: Heck yeah. You had Vinyl album players that had a thin shaft with a thingy on it that would allow you to stack 5 or 6 records on there, and it would automatically drop the next one when one got through playing. The record would drop on top of the one below it, and would slide like airplane wheels on the runway until it matched the speed of the spinning record. thereby ruining the sound grooves on both records and making them all sound worse and worse the more you listened to them. The 45 spindles slipped over the shaft to allow you to play singles on the same player - the single had a huge hole in the center. Where are you Eagle Kammerick?
S&H Green Stamps: Yeah, they used to give them out at the grocery store, based on the amount of the purchase. You pasted them in a book and for so many books you could get all kinds of kitchen appliances and stuff in trade at the bonafide Green Stamp store, just like any other store. Of course that went away, and even as a kid I never understood the economics of it.
Metal Ice Cube Trays: They had a handle you pulled on to try to pop the cubes out of the tray. They didn't work very well at all. But there was some ice, if you could get it outta there somehow. The best thing available at the time - who designed those things?
Benny and Cecil: A cartoon about a big green dinosaur and his friends. I kinda missed it, was into Speed Racer and Johnny Qwest when I was ready to watch.
Roller Skate Keys: I caught the tail end of this one. Skates were kinda out of style when I came alive, but you had to have a skate key to take apart a roller skate to make a skateboard out of it. Hard ass metal wheels, very loud on the sidewalk, and would make white marks on the concrete like tire skid marks on a race track. But you used the key to take the old skate apart and then used the front and the back of the skate to make a skateboard by lashing the parts to a 2x4 with strips of an old inner tube. You could almost steer it by leaning you weight to one side ? almost. That whole game was mostly straight. Straight into trouble if got up any speed.
Cork Pop Guns: Yep.
Marlin Perkins: The host of what may have been the first commercially sponsored show, ?Mutual of Omaha?s Wild Kingdom.? He messed with exotic animals. A pretty use for one of the two channels that were available through the gaudy aluminum antenna up on the roof.
Drive-in Restaurants: Missed the real allure of this one by a few years. By the time I was able to drive, they were for the most part gone. Definitely a 50?s thing.
Car Hops: Refer to Drive-in Restaurants.
Studebakers: Missed ?em. I was close, though, in the timetable of the earth.
Topo Gigo: Yep, definitely. Ed Sullivan?s puppet. Part of the show.
Wringer Wash Tups: Saw one at my grandmother?s house in Alabama on the back porch, but it was out of service by then. Missed ?em.
Fuller Brush Man: Missed him.
Sky King: Ohhhh yeah. He flew a Beechcraft twin engine airplane and did lots of heroic things. He had a woman around him named Penny, and every time he flew through a storm, the lightning was shaped like a pitchfork. Every time. Uncanny.
Reel-to-Reel-Tape Recorders: Danged right, I had two of them over time. You could record vinyl record albums on there on the slow speed and it would play for as long as 90 minutes, continuously. A party favorite, an amazing thing. The prequel to CD?s. Useful in the recording studio, too. They lasted, longer than most items on this list before they went away for household use. I had ?em fer sure.
Tinker Toys: Yup, all the way. Had a whole set.
Erector Sets: Tinker Toys on steroids. Plus, you got to use a screwdriver and a wrench to build stuff. You could build cranes, whatever with the battery-powered electric motor that came with the set. A fabulous catalyst for mechanical talent, but sadly for me it didn?t take. To this day, I still can?t use a wrench to do anything useful.
Lincoln Logs: They were around, but I didn?t have any. Didn?t even want any. They paled in comparison to the erector set. Boring. Mundane.
15-cent Hamburgers: This one came with a photo of a McDonald?s sign with the notation ?Over 200 Million Sold.? No, I don?t have a connection with that one. While going through all of these items, I realize I didn?t have any sort of a connection with money, or the cost of things, until way way later.
5-cent Postage Stamps: Yep. My mom, thinking I was becoming a ?big boy,? let me glue all of the 5-cent stamps on her pile of Christmas Cards. I can see them still ( at least I THINK they were 5 cent stamps). Mama should have supervised. She gave me the job and walked away. I licked and glued every single stamp on about 40 envelopes to the upper left-hand corner of every single envelope, where the return address should be. Oh yeah, she was proud of me. I don?t know to this day what she did to fix that.
Gum Wrapper Chains: I saw ?em, but it was so hard to make them I never tried. It was a girl thing anyhow, where I grew up.
Chatty Cathy Dolls: A girl thing, I have no idea.
Cigarettes for Christmas: I remember the ads in every magazine, Santa smoking cigarettes.
Falstaff Beer: I guess that brand was gone when I was old enough to drink. But I had had enough of it to drink, I probably wouldn?t remember that anyhow?
Flash Bulbs: Oh yeah. You plugged them into your Polaroid camera ? POW! One shot, they were shot to hell. Didn?t quite explode, but nearly did. Melted all the plastic gooey stuff around it, it swelled up after the bang like a pregnant whale. Gotta load another on for the next photo and throw that one away.
Aluminum Christmas Trees: My dad?s best friend had one of these at his house during the season. 3 or 4 feet tall. With a spotlight shining through a rotating different-colored round glass. Classy. Nice. Yeah, I saw that.
And I can add one that wasn?t on the list: Chemistry sets. Good gosh. Yes, there used to be chemistry sets for kids. My mom was a little bit smarter than I thought at the time ? she simply wouldn?t allow it.
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