Little things that have just faded away...

[Dru Edwards]

Originally Posted by ewalling

In England, there is. My parents always had their milk delivered (they died a few years ago), and people in the area all do.

Originally Posted by Bob Womack

There are milkmen in our area.

Bob

Thanks guys. I didn't realize they were still out and about. Bob - do you live in a rural area?

Originally Posted by buddyhu

Doing "long division" on paper.

Photographs on paper, and Fotomats (little kiosks where you took your film to be developed).

S&H Green Stamps. And Blue Chip Stamps.

The Christian Science Monitor...used to be considered the most "objective" newspaper.

McDonald's signs that actually specified a number (e.g. "5 million served").

Sun tan lotion that didn't specify an SPF (what did that stuff actually do?).

Banks giving away piggy banks for kids.

I never noticed that they stopped this practice but now that I think about it, I can't recall the last time I saw it.

[Bob Womack]

Originally Posted by Dru Edwards

Thanks guys. I didn't realize they were still out and about. Bob - do you live in a rural area?

Nope. Suburbia. But I live on the edge of a reasonably large dairy farm area.

Bob

[dirkronk]

Originally Posted by buddyhu

Doing "long division" on paper.

As a society, we're likely to suffer for not insisting on such basics. (Sorry...that's a sore point with me.)

Originally Posted by buddyhu

S&H Green Stamps. And Blue Chip Stamps.

We had S&H. But we also had Texas Gold Stamps...and there was some short-lived plaid "Scotty" Stamps (or similar) that tried to get a foothold in central Texas. Same principle as the "free" glass, cup, dish or towel given away with a gas fill-up of X gallons or more at the local filling station. My mom kept multiple sets of glasses and bowls gotten that way right up until she died.

Originally Posted by buddyhu

Sun tan lotion that didn't specify an SPF (what did that stuff actually do?).

Don't you remember? The original idea was to PROMOTE a dark tan, not to deflect the sun's rays. Sunlight provides vitamin D and darkening of the skin seemed an indicator of "healthy outdoor life."

Dirk

[Bingoccc]

You guys have brought up a lot of old memories for me. Cool. We still have a couple of full service stations in the area and a prosperous drive-in movie theater just down the road. I remember being taught how to use a slide rule in school. Calculators were around (but expensive) but they thought we should know anyway.

[Tone Gopher]

Originally Posted by Dru Edwards

Anyone remember the milkman? He used to come to our house once or twice a week until the mid '80s.

Were there a lot of kids in the neighborhood that shared similar characteristics?

[duff beer]

Originally Posted by fazool

"quite a bit of fecal matter and urine"

Of course it happens. The issue is typical Internet and urban legend exaggeration and drama-mongering.

If you did a forensic analysis you will find trace amounts.

When it comes to a stranger's fecal matter and/or urine on things that I might put in my mouth, there is no such thing as a "trace" amount

[Scootch]

In my first year of college, 1972, the bookstore had three glass counters of slide rules. Big ones, tall ones, fat ones, small ones, curved and circular ones, all kinds.

Over the next year, Texas Instruments brought out a four function calculator big as a very large sandwich that they called a pocket calculator. It was a princely $150.

By 1974 they blew out the slide rules, had only a couple and the cabinets were full of calculators. TI, HP, Sharps, Commodore, Canon, were a few I remember.


Another couple items were carbon paper and Eaton's Corrasable Bond erasable typing paper. That stuff got me thru college. Make a mistake? Roll the paper up a couple clicks, rub it with a pencil eraser, and roll it back in place. With care it looked fine, without care it was smudgy. Remember putting the carbon paper in upside down?

Then there were Ditto machines and Mimeographs. Dittos were basically a reverse carbon copy that was applied to the paper with a solvent. Smelled mmmm good. Mimeographs were more like a silk screen process. They stunk but could make a lot cleaner copy and could make many more copies.

Then typewriters... Elite and Pica. Pica had bigger letters. Elite was from the days when airmail cost an arm and a leg. I always had Elite, when professors preferred Pica. Finally a procured a Pica IBM selectric with three or four balls, shortly before PCs made them obsolete.

[ewalling]

Originally Posted by Scootch

Then typewriters... Elite and Pica. Pica had bigger letters. Elite was from the days when airmail cost an arm and a leg. I always had Elite, when professors preferred Pica. Finally a procured a Pica IBM selectric with three or four balls, shortly before PCs made them obsolete.

There was the word processor era, too. I began with a Brother word processor and printer combo that was built like a tank and weighed as much. The printer literally typed out the text at top speed. Then I had a more portable inkjet word processor before finally getting a laptop.

[M19]

Originally Posted by jpd

In the early 70's I still used the old style weight scales to weigh and price all things in my butcher shop. I'd weigh the moms babies, their purchase, and wrap up in paper and write the price on their package........great memories!

You'd wrap the babies in paper?

[dirkronk]

Originally Posted by Scootch

Then typewriters... Elite and Pica. ... Finally a procured a Pica IBM selectric with three or four balls, shortly before PCs made them obsolete.

I started my copywriting career on a manual typewriter in 1975 (though I'd learned on old-fashioned, pre-Selectric typewriters in high school in the late 1960s).

IBM Selectric came out in the mid or late '60s IIRC and had interchangeable type balls, but then (starting mid-'70s, early '80s) came correcting electrics... and other brands, notably Olivetti, had Daisy Wheels. You could have any of a number of typestyles...not just old-fashioned Pica and Elite, but Times, an "almost" Helvetica and other serif and sans serif faces, each on its own replaceable Daisy Wheel. I had at work...and later bought for my own use...a huge, wedge-shaped Olivetti self-correcting (it could remember a full line of type to automatically correct...or you could go back and line up and earlier line and use a reverse-and-correct technique to erase each letter) 121 or 221 electronic typewriter. Before true word processors and then desktop computers, this was the ultimate in professional look for documents.

Dirk

[Earwitness]

Originally Posted by Scootch

In my first year of college, 1972, the bookstore had three glass counters of slide rules. Big ones, tall ones, fat ones, small ones, curved and circular ones, all kinds.

Over the next year, Texas Instruments brought out a four function calculator big as a very large sandwich that they called a pocket calculator. It was a princely $150.

.

I was at an estate sale this summer, and someone was selling the deceased's very high-end slide rule that was in a nice leather case. Made of wood, and extremely precise. I think I bought it for $5; gave it to my engineer son-in-law. He probably rolled his eyes after I left!

It's probably okay that logarithms faded away....

[Long Jon]

Originally Posted by Roselynne

-- Elevator operators. (Sooooo glad I never had to pull that gig.)

It ain't so bad, got it's ups and downs ....

Originally Posted by Earwitness

It's probably okay that logarithms faded away....

Whoah there ! No logarithms, no calculating guitar scales.


Things I miss include: rickets, tuberculosis, painfully scary dentistry, casual sexism, casual racism, and Sunday closing of pubs.... Aaahh, the good old days.

[LouieAtienza]

I was pretty old fashioned in high school, and carried around an old book of logarithmic and trigonometric tables. Lots of fun interpolating when the angle I needed a sine or cosine for was in between two angles in the table...

I never really liked nor found long division useful. Short division to me was and is easier, tidier, and more useful, and should be taught in schools. I have Korean friends, and their kids were memorizing a 20 x 20 multiplication chart! I felt like such a dummy.

I used to love paying for a round trip at the toll booth, and getting a token for the return trip. So much faster then paying cash each way, but admittedly not as fast as EZ-PASS.

How 'bout the little doo-dad that you put on the spindle of your turntable to play multiple 45's? Or those star-shaped plastic thingies you put on the center of 45's?

[Earwitness]

Originally Posted by Long Jon

Whoah there ! No logarithms, no calculating guitar scales.

Okay, I take it back! I'm just glad they faded out of my need to work with them.

[TeleBluesMan]

I remember when the free matchbooks had the striking part on the front. At some point after too many people accidentally lit the entire book on fire the striker part was switched to the back.

Also, AFAIK, it is still against the law for the driver to pump his own gas in New Jersey. An Attendant must do it! But they don't offer free full service.