You kids today have it made...

[Imperfect1]

Anyone remember the milk man? And the ice man? And the paper boys hawking the headlines? And the Western Union delivery guy who almost always had very bad news!

I remember the milk man. He ran over my dog Jiggers and killed him.

OMG Layback Bear. That is so tragic! You must've been broken hearted. I'm so sorry. Those memories never go away, do they?

 

[Layback Bear]

Anyone remember the milk man? And the ice man? And the paper boys hawking the headlines? And the Western Union delivery guy who almost always had very bad news!

I remember the milk man. He ran over my dog Jiggers and killed him.

OMG Layback Bear. That is so tragic! You must've been broken hearted. I'm so sorry. Those memories never go away, do they?

I remember having to bury Jiggers twice the first one wasn't proper and the critters got to him. The second grave was much deeper and with adding large amounts of black pepper his grave was never bothered again. I was about 10 or 11 years old. Jiggers was my first dead buddy. I don't forget any of my dead buddies.

 

[Solarstarshines]

Too funny this Thread killed it

I remember taping songs off the radio and the quality was @#$#!

and tape decks lasted till the mid 90's or late 90's if i recall

You forgot to mention gas was like 55 to 65 cents in the 80's to early 90 then it went up to 95 cents then few years later more then a dollar

Also parents could and would pop you any given time and yes all adults had permission to straighten you up if you were out of line

Teachers also could put a hand on you and it wouldn't be considered a issue
Detention was after school who knows wh at they do now

Yes and we played outside all day till the late evening then dinner bath and bed
also no sleeping in

Parents used to get me up early as hell to cut lawn do yard work etc and if i didn't i would be in trouble kids have payed Gardners now

@LaybackBear my Hamster was killed by my Nieghbors cat -My neighbor was playing with my Hamster and lost it in the yard later that night his cat swooped on it we chased it down beat the cat and got back my bitten up hamster i tryed to nurse him back but 2 to 3 days later he died and my dad was watching tv and tells us he didnt make it
The neighbors got me a new one but after that they kept dying guess the ghost of the old hamster wasn't having it lol

 

[DirtRider]

Remember going into the bush to pay and see what I could find.

 

[strollin]

Great thread. I grew up in the 50's & 60's, so a little earlier than many here.

1) The library was 5 miles away and we had to ride our bike there. No access to Wikipedia and my parents wouldn't spring for a set of encyclopedias either.

2) Letters were 5 cents to mail, a postcard was 3 cents.

4) If you were really fortunate, you had an AM only transistor radio with a tiny speaker and used a 9V battery. Batteries back then weren't rechargeable and didn't last very long so you often couldn't listen to your radio because you didn't have a battery for it. Only wealthy people had HiFi or Stereo systems.

5) We didn't have cassette decks so didn't do any recording off the radio.

7) When we left the house, we were always supposed to carry a dime in our pocket so if we needed to make a phone call we could do it from a pay phone (if we could find one).

9) No such thing as a game console, we only played board or card games.

10) We only had B&W TV (Oh, no!) and only got 2 channels. My parents had 2 remote controls, my sister and I, as they would tell us to get up and go change the channel on the TV! (By the same logic, they had 2 dish washers as well.)

11) In addition to Sat morning cartoons, there were usually cartoons in the afternoon after school.

 

[Layback Bear]

T.V. Console. A piece of furniture. Very heavy, took 10 men and a boy to get it into the house. Had a screen the size of a small dinner plate.

 

[pparks1]

I always try to explain to my kids that when I was growing up we didn't have DVR's, or even VCR's. While we had a TV, if you watched a particular show (Dukes of Hazzard...in my case), you were either home on Friday night at 8PM to watch it, or you simply missed it.

I remember when we got our first VCR, sucker was over $400, it popped up from the top and it had a wired remote control.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

T.V. Console. A piece of furniture. Very heavy, took 10 men and a boy to get it into the house. Had a screen the size of a small dinner plate.

And the screen was the same shape. A portable took two men and a boy.

 

[dwarfer66]

we used to get extra sweets by returning pop bottles to the sweet shop and getting 2 pence per bottle,

the funny thing was we were getting the empty pop bottles out of the stack of crates behind the sweet shop.

years later my mum told me that the shop keeper knew and she (my mum ) would pay for the sweets later .
not sure that taught me any lessons about honesty though!

i think it had more to do with keeping it from my dad.

I used to do the same here in Australia, bottles were 20 cents, bottle crates were $4, a crate would hold 12. I made a little bit of cash early on!

 

[dwarfer66]

I remember when I was growing up in western australia,

in the mornings you had the milk home delivered,

a hot bread van cam around everyday

a 300ml milk at school free for every student

being caned at school (almost every day!, in primary school, swearing; high school, smoking) upto about 1982.

And yes parents could and would pop you and yes all adults had permission to straighten you up if you were out of line

Many others my scrambled brain can't remember!

 

[DirtRider]

I remember when I was growing up in western australia,

in the mornings you had the milk home delivered,

a hot bread van cam around everyday

a 300ml milk at school free for every student

being caned at school (almost every day!, in primary school, swearing; high school, smoking) upto about 1982.

And yes parents could and would pop you and yes all adults had permission to straighten you up if you were out of line

Many others my scrambled brain can't remember!

It looks like you guys had very much the same as what we did when I was a wee lad

We only got TV in our country when I was around 18 and then my parents never had one so it would be off to my mates house to watch TV there. It was like a movie house with all his mates sitting on the floor watching TV :shock:

 

[OvenMaster]

As someone who grew up with three channels of black and white television, vacuum tubes, 78rpm records, and a wood-fired potbelly stove in the kitchen, that post was a blast from the past. Well done.

 

[msdos622wasfun]

Great post, a fun read.

In our house, we were always the ones who were later than my friends when it came to certain things, like VCRs, microwaves, cable TV, etc. Although we bought our first computer in 1983, thanks to my brother, who adopted technology faster than my dad. Now we have all those things, and I'm grateful for them.

Of course, I've always wondered if there's some definitive, authoritative study that has been done on whether we live in more or less dangerous times compared to several decades ago. "Leave it to Beaver" makes you think that life was perfect back then, with the man going to work, the woman staying at home, and with the exception of some occasional minor mistakes that they make (that can be resolved simply through reason alone or mild punishment), children who behave really well, don't do drugs and don't bring guns to school.

Does anyone know if we are better or worse off in that respect?

 

[DirtRider]

I think this would be a matter of opinion but personalty I think the kids were safer than they are in today's times

 

[pincushion]

I think this would be a matter of opinion but personalty I think the kids were safer than they are in today's times

We certainly had more freedom - that perhaps was why I fractured my knee at a local park when aged 8 (no supervision) - children's play areas and devices were a little more unsafe then! We had a valve radio in which a mouse had made a nice nest. Also I can remember trams and trolley buses (overhead electrics), which are still used elsewhere it seems but mostly gone from the UK until the recent revivals.

 

[x BlueRobot]

You say that the past was harder and we have it all better off, but my dad is 49, and when he tells me about what he used to do when he was a kid and started to go drinking etc. The 70's and the 80's sounded so much better than they are now!

You got so much more freedom, he could finish school with a few half-decent O levels and walk into a comfortable job, yes I know there was still unemployment etc. Now, you need 20 odd qualifications just to get a half-decent job :O

You could walk into a pub at 16, and have a drink without no-one noticing or really caring, that was my dad's and his mates free time when you finished school

Harry - 17

 

[marsmimar]

Thanks for bringing back some memories, Bill (A Guy.) Hope you don't mind if I add a site that you (and others) might find interesting.

1950's 1960's 1970's Classic TV, Sci-fi Drive-in movie theater, 60's vintage Cartoons,classic Commercials. Time Warp Memories

 

[Imperfect1]

Not that it was necessarily "safer" --- but I think most of us were much less supervised in the old, old days. I grew up in Manhattan, and even as a small girl of 7 or 8, was out on the streets playing with the neighborhood kids every day all day, when I wasn't in school or doing chores at home. By age 10 I was traveling by myself, on the bus or the subway (or walking) all around NYC, and my parents didn't think anything of it. Even the stores didn't pay much attention. My mom used to send me to the store to buy her cigarettes --- no such thing as asking for ID in those days.

And on summer evenings all around the US, you could go down to the beach, gather up some wood and light a bonfire -- roast marshmallows, hot dogs, etc. Is it even legal to do that nowadays?

 

[DirtRider]

You say that the past was harder and we have it all better off, but my dad is 49, and when he tells me about what he used to do when he was a kid and started to go drinking etc. The 70's and the 80's sounded so much better than they are now!

You got so much more freedom, he could finish school with a few half-decent O levels and walk into a comfortable job, yes I know there was still unemployment etc. Now, you need 20 odd qualifications just to get a half-decent job :O

You could walk into a pub at 16, and have a drink without no-one noticing or really caring, that was my dad's and his mates free time when you finished school

Harry - 17

Well I would love to be able to do the 70's and 80's all over again as I had a ball

 

[Joan Archer]

My growing up was in the late 40's and 50's, the 60's was no good as I was married with kids then. But like others we had freedom to play without fear of being taken and of course over here there was never any fear of guns, those were something that only the soldiers had.

At school you had respect for teachers and did as you were told the same when playing out you knew that if you did wrong the local bobby, (policeman) could chastise you and if you went home to complain to your parents you'd get the same, you couldn't be innocent if the bobby told you off.