You kids today have it made...

[Carl Lawrence]

Although I'm younger than some of you, and I can still remember when I was a little boy at the TV only had 4 channels and no remote, no VCR. The channels were: BBC1, BBC2, ITV1 (it had a different name back then) and Channel 4.

 

[Borg 386]

I would argue that laziness is the prime motivating factor in all inventions, innovations, and technological breakthroughs throughout history.

You can't argue with that...anything to save time or a buck.

 

[linnemeyerhere]

Here in the Los Angeles area growing up in the late fifties and sixties we had:

1) An Egg Man .....coo coo ca choo !
2) A Milk Man
3) The Helms Bakery Man (the best smells ever when the donut draw was opened!)
4) All the local Markets and Liquor stores delivered
5) A Paper Boy or Boy's

Oddly I can't remember Pizza deliveries back then.....wonder when that actually began (PizzaMan or the like)

 

[jadinolf]

I remember all except all the stores delivering.

I wish I had bought a Helm's truck when they came on the market.

 

[robinb9]

Pretzel sticks were a penny a piece when I was a kid

 

[jadinolf]

Yep, all of that but some of the delivery folks expected a dime tip.

Replying to:
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!

 

[Imperfect1]

My mom used to send me out to the corner drugstore to buy her cigarettes. (That was allowed, in those days.) The cost of a pack of cigarettes was 20 cents. Several years later, as a teenager, when I became a smoker, cigarettes were 25 cents a pack. By the time I quit smoking in the early 1980s they cost around 75 cents a pack. What are they now? About $4 - $5 a pack? Or thereabouts?

 

[jadinolf]

My mom used to send me out to the corner drugstore to buy her cigarettes. (That was allowed, in those days.) The cost of a pack of cigarettes was 20 cents. Several years later, as a teenager, when I became a smoker, cigarettes were 25 cents a pack. By the time I quit smoking in the early 1980s they cost around 75 cents a pack. What are they now? About $4 - $5 a pack? Or thereabouts?

Here in Ojai we used to buy a carton of cigarettes for $6 US.

Now a pack is selling for close to that.

I stopped in 1989.

 

[stevieray]

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!

Believe it or not, my dad still gets his milk delivered to his house. They'll bring you butter, eggs and cottage cheese as well if you want.

 

[mjf]

My immediate reaction was that kids are soft now but I have a 15 year son and on reflection I think kids now have different pressures than some of us adults did. In my country there is more expectation by many parents that their kids do well enough at school to go to University even when a good trade may be their passion. I think there is more peer pressure on them now with social media sometimes resulting in psychological bullying. The sad consequences are fact. I believe it is a more dangerous world and kids tend to be more protected from the "dangerous" physical environment. When I was a young teen I'd jump on my bike and just head off.
I think cut them a bit of slack.

 

[jadinolf]

Although I'm younger than some of you, and I can still remember when I was a little boy at the TV only had 4 channels and no remote, no VCR. The channels were: BBC1, BBC2, ITV1 (it had a different name back then) and Channel 4.

I remember on my trip to London in Autumn of 1990, there were not that many channels compared to what we had here in California.

There was one thing that I had never seen before and that was 95% nudity. Still don't think I've seen that here but the language here----WOW!

 

[strollin]

When I was a kid, we only got 2 channels (NBC & ABC) on the TV (B&W, no color) with rabbit ears. My dad bought an antenna with a 20 ft mast and rotor and installed it. After that we still got the same 2 channels but they came in clearer. Later we got cable TV and got about a dozen channels but still only a B&W TV. I didn't watch TV in color until I bought my own color TV at the age of 24.

 

[mjf]

The tone of the discussion reminds me of this

 

[Carl Lawrence]

I can remember the milk man and I still see the milk floats sometimes. A milk float is one of these (see below) and there is more info here: Milk float - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[maxie]

I am probably older than most people on here I can remember when we had had milkmen and bakers vans and also
Rag Men who would collect old clothes .

 

[Joan Archer]

My Dad was the local Rag and Bone man with a horse and cart when I was growing up in Nottingham.

 

[bigmck]

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.

When I was a teenager in the 60's, I remember our TV went out several times. They had at the local convenience stores, a TV Tube Tester. My Dad would look in the back of the TV and try to find a tube that was black like it might have burnt out. He would take several tubes down to the store and test them. He usually didn't find one that was bad. Then the fun came when he would get home and try to remember where the tubes went in the TV.

 

[COMPUTIAC]

I recall some different things.
We had the insurance man come to the house weekly to collect a few cents toward life policies. The local doctor always made house-calls, day or night. The Charles Chip man, brought a large metal container full of fresh chips.
When our b/w tv broke and dad could not fix it, he would have the tv man come to the house and fix it for a $ or 2.

 

[strollin]

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.

When I was a teenager in the 60's, I remember our TV went out several times. They had at the local convenience stores, a TV Tube Tester. My Dad would look in the back of the TV and try to find a tube that was black like it might have burnt out. He would take several tubes down to the store and test them. He usually didn't find one that was bad. Then the fun came when he would get home and try to remember where the tubes went in the TV.

Generally, there was a diagram glued to the inside of the cover that showed where each tube went so that wasn't a problem.

 

[A Guy]

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.

When I was a teenager in the 60's, I remember our TV went out several times. They had at the local convenience stores, a TV Tube Tester. My Dad would look in the back of the TV and try to find a tube that was black like it might have burnt out. He would take several tubes down to the store and test them. He usually didn't find one that was bad. Then the fun came when he would get home and try to remember where the tubes went in the TV.

My brothers and I would volunteer to go with our Dad when he took the tubes to check at Thrifty's. And what do you know, hey Dad, triple ice cream cones are 15 cents

A Guy