WIWYA there was only one phone company in each country. Ours was AT&T, at the time, the largest company in the world. They made the telephones too and no one else was allowed to make one and put it on their network.
WIWYA - AT&T ran out of trunk lines in NYC and Long Island and you would often get busy circuit signals trying to call two towns over, which was a toll call and cost extra.
WIWYA Text messages were sent by an electromechanIcal teletype.
WIWYA A skateboard was a piece of wood with the two halves of a metal roller skate screwed on. If you were a good carpenter, your skateboard didn't pull to one side.
WIWYA the only video game was Pong and you played it on the TV.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
WIWYA We cut the grass with a reel mower that had no motor except you.
WIWYA you could still find shells on beaches.
WIWYA shellfish didn't come with a side order of mercury.
WIWYA we didn't know about our sports heroes' sex lives, alcohol problems or drug addictions.
WIWYA we spent more time playing outside than inside, no matter what the weather, except maybe when raining.
WIWYA we left the house to go play without adult supervision, sometimes miles away, as far as our bikes would take us.
WIWYA fire emergency calls were made via pull boxes on a pole down the corner. If you had to go to the hospital, it was probably in the back of a cop car or whatever car was available.
WIWYA Milk was delivered to everyone's house. (When I was really little, the milkman still had a horse drawn wagon). You had a milkbox on the stoop that would hold 4 or 6 quarts in glass bottles with cardboard caps. Lots of stuff was delivered - beer, soda, syrup and seltzer to make your own egg creams, bread, cake (Dugans and Entenmanns). Everyone in my family on Long Island knew the beer & soda delivery guy, Paul, a big beefy German guy, because we all ordered from him. He used to carry 4 cases at a time on his shoulder.
WIWYA Nobody I knew called a repairman. Everyone knew how to fix their own stuff. Maybe this was more of a suburban thing though.
WIWYA We had a small plot right next to the house where we would bury our pet birds. My father would make little crosses for them and paint their names on them. We were kind of hard on parakeets.
WIWYA we were taught how to grow things from seeds and were each assigned a tree to take care of.
WIWYA Vacation trips were by car. Entertainment was watching the scenery and the destination wasn't a resort or amusement park, it was a Quality Inn and a place to learn about history or science: museums, restored villages, battlefields, forts, mansions, seaports, natural features, monuments, and government buildings.
WIWYA we started school days with a prayer and the pledge of allegience.
WIWYA we raised the flag in front of the house for certain holidays Independence Day, Veterans Day, Memorial Day, Washington's and Linclon's birthdays, maybe Labor Day too. And we had both Washington's and Linclon's birthdays off from school, before they combined them into President's Day.
WIWYA we made our bicycles sound like motorcycles by putting baseball cards on our bkes, held on with clothespins so they would make a sound as they slapped against the wheel spokes.
Edit: WIWYA one of our favorite pasttimes was throwing dirt bombs. Like hand grenades that don't get you on the no-fly list.
Edit: WIWYA one of our favorite pasttimes was throwing dirt bombs. Like hand grenades that don't get you on the no-fly list.
WIWYA, most of our fathers had been in WWII, so we had no shortage of Eisenhower jackets, Web belts, canteens, helmets,and medals, etc. Plus we had an arsenal of realistic looking toy guns and air rifles. Combined with dirt bombs and we would play war all day. No one called the cops or child protection services.
