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mom12~ me!! my first job.. I quit the first day, I’m embarassed to say!! I couldn’t continue to re-arrange the stacks of clothing that continued to be tossed around by just about every customer :/
How upsetting it was when they closed down..aside from the closing bargains..we literally emptied out the store!
Ditto machines in school? Your hands were blue from the ink and it got onto everything you touched.
And the papers always had that smell.
First diet cokes: RC Cola; Tab; Patio
And you could drink at 18 but had to wait until 21 to vote.
And Harvard was all-male, as were many other schools.
Walter Cronkite
The Huntley-Brinkley Report. (Goodnight Chet. Goodnight David.)
My Mother the Car
Dialing 0 for Operator and actually getting the information or service you needed.
Memorizing phone numbers for the police and fire departments because there was no 911. (In Chicago it was PO5-1313 and FI7-1313.) And of course, let’s not forget phone “numbers” had letters in them.
And speaking of phone numbers, all area codes had either a 1 or a 0 as the middle digit. There was no dialing 1 for a long distance call.
Telephone exchanges that were Names instead of numbers.
Hand cranked adding machines.
Freezer paper.
phillybubby…
You wrote… “not too many people had washing machines and the clothes were hung outside to dry or in the winter they were put on the radiators to dry.”
I think most people DID have washing machines, but most did NOT have dryers. In the winter, we had a “clothes line” (do kids today even know what that term means?) strung across our basement where my mother a”h would hang the wet laundry to dry.
Remember BEFORE cell phones, we had beepers.
The later model ones gave messages, the ones before that only gave numbers.
Originally only doctors carried beepers, and the original ones didn’t even give numbers, they just beeped, and the doctor would have to call his answering service to get the message.
Grocers who sliced cleaned their bread slicers Erev Pesach morning
No digital scales; no cash registers–just add everything up on a brown paper bag.
I remember when VIDEO first came out and only TV stations had them!!!
It was such a big chidush that when they showed a video report on the news, they’d put a special little icon in the corner of the screen that said something like “Via VideoNewsCam”.
well meaning busy body…
Yes, the RCA logo was of a dog with his head tipped toward the old fashioned “horn” type speaker, and it said…
“His master’s voice”
I still remember “kashering” chickens and livers at home. Our little tabletop clothes dryer where we hung the chickens, mounds of salt draining boards to make sure the blood didnt go all over the place (and in the summer, with no AC the flies). Broiling those livers on a hot summer day, no picnic either. Gribens, I still smell the fat frying.
And to think my wife gets upset if i hang a salami.
“gee our old Lasalle ran great”
I never could figure out what that line was – thanks!
Tab soda – my mother drank that stuff, nastiest stuff ever!
apushatayid…
re: kashering
I always find it funny when I see a recipe (from a non-Jewish source) where they tell you to use “Kosher Salt” (as opposed to Non-kosher salt???)
The truth is, of course, that it IS what it’s called on the box, but what they mean is kosherING salt, i.e. the coarse salt used for koshering meat.
wanderingchana… (and others)
FYI… The LaSalle (mentioned in Archie Bunker’s “All in the Family” show theme song) was a General Motors car, from the 1930s and 40s. It was a “semi” luxury car, positioned in the GM line between the Oldsmobile and the Cadillac.
Kosher Salt works well, when you run out of rock salt.
finally we got a thread for just the older ones around here. i think we should talk about the alter heim. Wasnt it so much better?? no distractions, no pressures, no competition. i just love reminiscing…
Chayav–are you talking about the alter heim, as in the shtetl in Poland, or are you talking about many years ago in the USA?
I wasn’t old enough to drive, still remember helping my father put the chains on the car tires. And the milk man who came every day and took the empties and left full bottles in the little silver box by the door. I’m sure my parents didn’t register me for kindergarten a week after my bris either.
Eisenhower was our best president ever, as far as I’m concerned. Things were really good for me when he was in charge, and they have never been that good since.
All I had to do was cry out, and someone would come to feed or comfort me. Women, both related and unrelated, would pinch my cheek and tell me what a good-looking fellow I was.
Meals were prepared for me, free-of-charge, and there was always dessert. I did not have to work.
Yes, things have not been that good since. Our best president ever.
I also remember when we chiseled our emails into the walls of our cave.
Incandescent lights had not yet been invented, so we had to read our emails by candlelight.
Do you remember the dinosaurs?
How about lining up with hundreds of other families to get the new miraculous polio vaccine? (Salk vaccine by injection, Sabin vaccine in a sugar cube, you know which we preferred).
dear Aries – the fax machine goes back to 1840s, I know you’re not that old.
I don’t know what precursor to the fax you are thinking of in an era before the telephone, but faxes (facsimile machines) more or less as we know them, only started to appear in ’70s. – YW Moderator.
dear Haifagirl, please don’t forget Fresca as one of the first (awful) diet drinks. Don’t forget Metrecal, either, for weight loss. Or the appetite suppressant candies, Ayds.
John Cameron Swayze hawking Timex watches on TV.
Alan Shephard blasting off into space.
John Glenn blasting off into orbit.
The Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday night. Everyone would talk about it on Monday.
Who remembers that January is Alien Registration Month — register your alien.
pre-Zip code addresses with zone numbers: e.g. New York, 25, New York, instead of 10025.
Don’t be a litterbug!
The brand new Verrazano Narrows bridge! the longest suspension bridge in the world.
The great east-coast blackout of 1965.
When your whole family would come to the airport to see you off. Just like when you left on an oceanliner. They could accompany you right up to the gate.
Idlewild Airport.
The 1964 Worlds’ Fair and the Unisphere.
the Bell Picturephone. Never really caught on, but it was cool. They would demonstrate it in Grand Central Station.
Ma Bell – dialing with a real dial.
Western Union – telegram for you. stop.
steam-powered typewriters.
(only kidding)
Does anyone remember starting school at the age of five, rather than being expected to go to a playgroup by 18 months?
Fresca tastes good, much better than Tab. But not as good as RC Cola, the brand in my high school vending machine.
ronrsr~ thank you for some GR8 memories!!
going to a (B’klyn) Health Dept. bldg. w/ my Mother, a’h, for that sugar cube. * watching The Beatles on Ed Sullivan w/ my Parents, a’h, & sister. * going to The World’s Fair w/ my family.
:,) <– smile w/ a tear
I was “tested” for kindergarten and was told I didn’t need to go. I felt cheated I started in the first grade.
I do remember the confusion with the fax machine because the paper kept coming back out. I don’t understand what people thought that when you put the paper in it would magically get carried through the air to the other party?
I remember playing “stoop ball” with the other kids on the block. Who even has stoops these days?
People who haven’t had polio shots since they were a kid back in the 50’s or 60’s should probably get a booster.
aries~ our block has stoops (Midwood), but now we have to keep those steps from getting icy/treacherous.
Anyone remember the Telex machine in the office?
Remember teletype machines???
The sound of those machines typing away is STILL (I think) used as a background sound on WINS News radio, but I’m sure few people would know (now) what that sound is.
re: The Beatles when they appeared the first time on the Ed Sullivan show…
Everyone my parents’ age made such a big deal because they had “such long hair”.
The truth is, it wasn’t really THAT long, it’s just that they had bangs over their foreheads and hair in the back over the collar.
Someone with hair like that TODAY, wouldn’t even get a second look by ANYONE.
Also, they wore SUITS AND TIES!!!
Don’t believe it? I’m sure you can check it somewhere on youtube.
RONRSR If you remmber a choice of Salk Vs Sabin this was in the 60s
In 1960, after extensive, worldwide preliminary trials, Dr. Sabin’s oral polio vaccine was first used in about 100 million children in Europe. While it was approved for use in the U.S. in late 1960, it was not until 1962-64 that about 100 million persons of all ages received the vaccine in the U.S
I remember standing in line at the PS for my shots in the 50s
In 1953 Salk reported his findings in The Journal of the American Medical Association. A nationwide testing of the vaccine was launched in April 1954 with the mass inoculation of school children
ronrsr–Remember Topo Gigio on the Ed Sullivan Show (he was a cute little Italian mouse puppet)? His ending line was always “Eddie–kiss me goodnight!”
Does anyone remember when libraries were as quiet as…The librarians would go around shushing everyone who was talking above a barely audible whisper.
Anybody remember the rules for Skelly or Skully the “board” was chalked on the sidewalk and the playing pieces were soda bottle caps
The scooters the Shkotzim (no heimishe kids were old enough & the unidentifiable Jews were unidentifiable) made out of wooden milk crates & roller skates?
Do you remember in the scorching hot summers pushing the bottle caps into the melting tar in the gutters?
Going to the italian grocers for real italian ices in the paper cups?
Playing stick ball with your neighbors on the block. The sticks with the black tape wrapped around it and the spaulding pink balls we would buy from the corner candy store?
RONRSR If you remmber a choice of Salk Vs Sabin this was in the 60s
It was probably 1961, coulda been 1962 – summer time- they were giving them out on the football field of the high school. What a miracle that was! How much suffering was eliminated due to those vaccines.
dear phillybubby, wasn’t it more like, “Eddie, keesa me goo’night!”
also gone are:
printing presses – from the little AB Dick 360, to the giant presses on which they printed the New York Times and Daily News, they were beautiful behemoths, moving in harmony to create the printed word.
I had a friend whose father worked for a large entertainment retailer. In 1971, he brought a 35mm movie projector home, and a movie, I think it might have been Patton. This was the first time I ever watched a full-length feature movie in someone’s home, a few years before Betamax was widely available.
Smallpox vaccines – do you have that mark on your arm? Thank heavens that that disease was completely eliminated – twice now.
Tuberculosis tests in school – they’d jab you with this pointy device, then read the mark a few days later.
Setting an extra place at the Passover seder for the Soviet Jewry.
Postage stamps you had to lick.
Copy & Paste – involved scissors and real paste (glue).
RONRSR It was probably 1961, coulda been 1962
it was not until 1962-64 that about 100 million persons of all ages received the vaccine in the U.S
That is how they showed the “movies” in the country. How many times the film burnt before our very eyes.
ronrsr…
I like your Italian (mouse) accent!!!
Anyone remember all the name changes of the phone company?
I only remember a few…
New York Telephone
NYNEX
and of course now… Verizon.
I know I’m skipping several in between those.
Help anyone?
Of course the gas company was…
Brooklyn Union Gas
Keyspan
and now… National Grid.
Did I leave out any?
I don’t think anyone mentioned traveling to Israel with packages for family and friends of all the things you couldn’t get there – peanut butter, toilet paper,cake mixes, breakfast cereal, mayonnaise. And I always had israeli bazooka and egozi bars sent back because you certainly couldn’t get them here! OH – and we had little yellow soup nuts sent back. Those weren’t available in America either.
Railway Express
AinOhdMilvado:
New York Telephone (a subsidiary of AT&T) – from the late 1800’s until 1984
New York Telephone (“A NYNEX Company”) – from the breakup of the Bell System in 1984 until about 1997.
NYNEX – marketing decision to use the parent companies name 1998 – 2000
Bell Atlantic – 1997 – 2000 following Bell Atlantic’s purchase of NYNEX
Verizon – 2000 – Present, following Bell Atlantic’s purchase of GTE
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