Baby boomer nostalgia thread

[jayem]

A break from heated discussions about unpleasant things. 10 items from our childhood we never (or hardly ever) see anymore. Other submissions welcome.

 

[NothingIsImpossible]

I'm not considered a baby boomer but I remember some of those things growing up (80s). Actually I see them all the time at antique stores. In my case I no longer see arcades. No more real "pool" rooms unless your at a bar (do they even have them now?). Drive in theaters is something I miss.

 

[tansy]

Police telephone boxes,
Fry's Five Boys (a chocolate bar)
telephone books in phone boxes,
skateboards made out of a roller skate and an old children's annual book,
ungated and unlocked primary schools,
block salt from the grocer's,
the little payment thingies that used to go along a wire above from the shop assistant to the pay booth by the entrance to the shop,
straw on butcher's shop floors,
sides of meat hanging from hooks in the butchers
dustcarts pushed by a man who used to sweep the gutters in the road,
rag n' bone men with their horse and cart
Buses with a platform on the back where one used to get on (no closing door)
Bus conducters
Ten shilling notes, pounds, crowns, halfcrowns, florins, shillings, sixpenny pieces, threepenny bits, pennies, halfpennies, farthings
Co-op milk tokens
Green Shield stamps

Probably much more, but can' think of anything else off-hand

 

[Aryeh Jay]

.

 

[tansy]

I still have a ten Bob note somewhere. Ah, back in the day you could live like a king with a ten bob note, now you can’t even get a bag of crisps.

My paper-round, if I remember rightly, I used to earn fifteen shillings. Can't remember what I earned in my first and second Saturday job, somewhere a bit under a pound in one, and maybe £1.25 in the next one (gone to decimal by then ).
Sometimes, just for fun, I try and add up in my head an imaginary set of things priced like 1/6d, 4/9/halfpenny, 11/8d etc etc . It strains my brain now! Yet in the shop I worked at we used mechanical tills and I had to add everything up in my head - oh, and count the change back. No problem (unless it was loads of things, had to use a bit of paper then). These automatic tills nowadays are all very well, but they really dull the brain

 

[Aryeh Jay]

.

 

[tansy]

Ten pound five and two is a forgotten thing today.

LOL

 

[ArceusAlpha493]

Listen to this while reading this

I grew up in the ninties and back then, we still had Blockbuster where me and my family would rent movies and video games(Ah the nostalgic memories of some of the nintendo 64 and Gamecube games, some I still have). We may have gamefly but to me nothing beats Blockbuster when it came to video game rentals. So many games for the Gamecube and N464 that I otherwise never heard of or played if I had not gone there. The fun of playing the first three Mario Parties, Paper Mario, Legend of Zelda, and many others.

 

[bill5]

http://www.boredlion.com/15-things-guaranteed-to-make-baby-boomers-nostalgic/6/

Plenty more on the 'net I'm sure. From 60s "hot pants" to 70s feathered hair to the wonderfully inventive candy in those candy aisles in stores (wax lips, candy cigs etc)....transistor radios while playing in the back yard, the list goes on and on. Best of all to me...by FAR...the politically correct nazi/hissy fit addicts essentially didn't exist, or the few who did were (rightfully) dismissed and ignored as whiny idiots. It wasn't all good of course (like silly long hair for boys and leisure suits, good gracious...how they became popular I'll never know lol) but yeah a far better time. You could ride your bike around the block w/o adult supervision and people didn't freak out, [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse] now it's "parent neglect" Do kids even really ride bikes any more? I can't count how many hours we spent doing that in the summer.

 

[BubbaJack]

I'm an Xer, but I don't miss phone booths at all. Cell phones are way more convenient. Payphones were nasty; sometimes there would be someone's lipstick on them, or they would smell of cigarettes and cologne (at least after I used one).

 

[tansy]

I'm an Xer, but I don't miss phone booths at all. Cell phones are way more convenient. Payphones were nasty; sometimes there would be someone's lipstick on them, or they would smell of cigarettes and cologne (at least after I used one).

That's all very well, LOL, but if you happen to run out of battery or credit and you need to phone in some kind of emergency or crisis, then phone boxes are still a jolly good idea!..There are lots of places out in the country or on the coast where you can't get a mobile phone signal, nor signal for WiFi. And if you have no coins you can get the operator to call someone and get the recipient (if they agree) to pay for the call. Good to have both options imo.

Same goes for Satnavs..they can drop out of signal too. All this new tech is great, but as far as I'm concerned we still need to keep some of the old. If I go somewhere and I'm unfamiliar with the area I will always take a map, either instead of or as well as a Satnav. My sons when they first started driving jobs and were relying on Satnavs, several times they had to ring us up and say, help, I'm lost, where's such and such, or how do I get to so and so? If they'd had a map and maybe even had a look at it before they left, they at least would have had a general idea where they were.

 

[Chesterton]

 

[LovebirdsFlying]

Mod Hat ON

Good thread. Wrong place. On consensus of staff, it's being moved to Community Hangout.

Mod Hat OFF​

 

[LovebirdsFlying]

And here's my submission.

 

[tansy]

And here's my submission.

Is that a mini jukebox, or is it to order something? Don't remember seeing those in Britain! Although we did have juke boxes

 

[LovebirdsFlying]

Is that a mini jukebox, or is it to order something? Don't remember seeing those in Britain! Although we did have juke boxes

It's a tableside jukebox. Some diners had them set up at every table. I can't remember if it makes the selections for the whole network of jukeboxes, and they all play the same songs, or the selections were just for that table.

 

[bill5]

I'm an Xer, but I don't miss phone booths at all. Cell phones are way more convenient. Payphones were nasty; sometimes there would be someone's lipstick on them, or they would smell of cigarettes and cologne (at least after I used one).

On the other hand, nobody ever died (or killed others) because they were using a pay phone while driving.

And there's this (the quote is irrelevant, the pics say it all): The Day Albert Einstein Feared

Increasing "hi tech" has its pros and cons, to put it mildly.

 

[tansy]

On the other hand, nobody ever died (or killed others) because they were using a pay phone while driving.

And there's this (the quote is irrelevant, the pics say it all): The Day Albert Einstein Feared

Increasing "hi tech" has its pros and cons, to put it mildly.

That's why in the UK they've made it illegal to use a mobile and drive at the same time. It's horrendous what I've seen at times, people trying to go round a roundabout one-handed, phone glued to their ear...they can't change gear or anything.
Even if one uses a hands-free, it can still be distracting.

 

[LovebirdsFlying]

It's illegal here too, but not that some people pay attention to that.

 

[bill5]

Exactly. Even dumber: driving while "texting." Are you kidding me? How stupid can a person be? Gee why stop there, how about let's change a baby's diaper while driving?

Maybe we need those self-driving cars more than we realize.