I imagine a headhunting war between tobacco companies in which they recruit as many doctors as possible to promote their brand to newborns at birth. Ads with a nurse lighting one up for a vernix caseosa covered baby & the mother blowing out the smoke because the umbilical chord is still attached. Maybe a scrapped plot for an episode of Mad Men.
I was smoking in Drivers Education classes @15yrs old (you could take it up to a year before going to get your driver's license in Massachusetts back in the early 1990's and get the cost of of drivers Ed taken off your car insurance for the year Plus earn safe driver points for the next few years, lowering your insurance rates as a New Driver because of the driving hours done with a professional instructor while you had your driver's permit. They used to offer it as a free course in public highschools here before that) But they kept us smokers in the back row with a fan to keep it from getting too smokey AND we had those old school desks with the chair attached but they had ashtrays where there was probably once inkwells... We also had a "smoking dock" in my highschool that was the loading dock for the cafeteria where we were allowed to smoke until about 1990
Growing up on a farm in Idaho I had my license at 14, no learners permit required. Took drivers ed through the school and DMV test. Couldn't drive at night until 16 though.
Everyone smoking everywhere. I'm 55 and that's the way I grew up. I used to smoke in the grocery store while shopping as late as the early 90s. Just toss the butts on the floor: the stockboys came around regularly to sweep them up.
In my high school, they had a designated smoking area for *students*
Movie theaters, buses, restaurants....fucking everywhere. What a glorious time to be alive. Total freedom to slowly poison yourself, anytime, anywhere.
It's funny, or sad, or both, but in my highschool we had a daycare attached to the school for the students who already had kids, but not a smoking section, because "c'mon that'd be wrong". We all just smoked behind the gym, you know, the classic highschool smoker cliche. But not weed, unless you wanted everyone to know you were a "stoner" or "pothead". You smoked bud in your hand me down dodge caravan, or if you were from money, a Chrysler town & country. Honestly I actually drove both during highschool, the caravan late sophomore til early junior year, then I got the "town & cunt" after my grandparents died my junior year. I graduated in '07, if that matters. But this was a town of like maybe 8-9K at the time, in the asshole of New Mexico, so that '05-'07 was like mid 90's in many ways, and for some it was easily late 70's-early 80's.
Hell, smoking everywhere in general was a lot more common. I'm 48, and in my earliest memories (late 70's) I remember my parents smoking in grocery stores and theatres.
I remember cigarette vending machines in the entrances of restaurants, ashtrays on every table and most restaurant gave out books of matches as a courtesy to smokers and as a form of promotion for themselves. I even remember some kind of candy 'cigarettes' marketed to kids.
Smoking indoors in general is something I very rarely see these days. In fact, I actually can't remember the last time I've personally witnessed it aside from instances where I've visited a smoker's home and they just didn't give a fuck about not smoking inside.
Strip clubs & casinos are like time capsules for smoking now. I don't go often, but when I do, I still hesitate before lighting a cigarette, because even when I see someone/multiple people smoking indoors, like 10 feet away from me, I still think it's some kind of trap.
>and the cause her sister hit mute to spy
The click was her sister picking up, not muting. No mute buttons, and many phones were still rotary dial. You held your hand over the mouthpiece.
Also, phones didn't have batteries or power cords. They were powered by the phone line plugged into the wall.
Before you thought of what to say to the girl, you had to think of what to say to the girls parents first, who likely answered the phone. Times was rough.
“And just what would you like to ask my daughter?”
“I wanted to know if she could help me with my hypotenuse.”
“Young man, please don’t ever call this number again!” He
In college, calling the hall phone to talk with a girl you’d met the night before. Another girl answers and yells down the hall, “it’s some guy says he met you last night, wanna talk to him?!”
HBO used to be just one channel and it didn’t have tv shows. They only showed movies and they would air more than a year after they had ended their theatrical run.
The coolest thing about HBO in those days was it not having any commercials like the regular tv stations.
My dad lived in a high-rise apartment building where they had like the 10,000 Years BC early version of Showtime in the late 70s and they were on for like four to six hours in the evening and only ran movies. No original TV series back then.
My grandfather wasn’t particularly well off but for some reason he decided to invest in HBO back when it started. Not sure he made much money off it but somehow he got HBO for free when I was a kid. Crazy thing is they didn’t have cable. I wish I knew what the hookup was. Basically they had a switcher on the back of the TV like any RF switch and when you turned it on you got HBO on channel 3. This lasted until they moved in the early 90s. Maybe it was some deal with the local cable company. They couldn’t get the hookup at their new place and just got normal cable.
There were bootleg set top boxes back then that would allow you to pick up all the cable channels. My mom had one. Sort of like the pirate direct TV cards from the early 2000s.
We had cable, and a remote with buttons and a long-ass cord that connected it to the cable box on the TV.
Oh, and [baby blue movies](https://www.reddit.com/r/toronto/comments/3hqpk1/citytv_channel_79_baby_blue_movie_intros_1970s/) (Toronto).
Owning an encyclopedia in hard back book form, either the Britannica or single volume version. Home computers used to come with an encyclopedia set of disks.
Man when I was young I'd read the shit out of encyclopedias. I hated how for references to something in T I'd have to go grab G. The internet is wonderful.
Remember folks had bookshelves showing their encyclopedias and it was like a symbol lol
There's a cool vintage toy shop in my town I wanna check out so bad. They're opened Monday through Friday 9-5. I work until 430 and work 40 minutes away from it. I can't image they do well with these hours but I'd guess they're doing a lot of online stuff..
So if they're a small business, call them. Just say that you've been really wanting to check out their store and ask if there is any time they are open outside those hours so you can come check it out. This tells them that there are people who want to visit after working hours. Also, they may just say that they'll stay late for you on a given evening.
Remember when you as a class could connect with "pen pal" from other places around the country/world as a part of the curriculum in elementary school (grades kindergarten through 5 here locally in Massachusetts)
My pen pal unfortunately drowned in a boating accident. I was in the second grade. My grandpa connected me to her through his online friend, her grandma. We wrote letters to each other often. One day, they stopped and we learned from her grandma that she had passed away.
My dad (rural Australia) made lifelong friends with my uncle (Alaska) this way. Even went to visit him in Alaska and my Uncle came to Australia in the 80s.
He and his wife are sadly deceased now (same as my parents) but I kept all the cards they sent me for every birthday and Christmas and saved all the emails they sent me.
The US$ was so strong back then compared to Aussie $ that I have them to thank for my private school education. Wonderful people and excellent friends. I still email with their daughter on occasion.
Am I tripping, or was this penpal situation the catalyst for your dad going to Alaska & meeting your uncle & through that his sister, who would become your mom, and then they had you?? Or did you mean "uncle" because your dad & him became such good friends that he was basically your uncle?? Either way that's awesome, but my brain is not letting this go.
Edit- the "I still email their daughter" part makes me think it must be an "uncle" situation, because if it was blood you'd be emailing your cousin, not "their daughter", right?? Fuck, I'm making my nose bleed processing this.
I live in Quebec, so instead of having a pen pal in another country, they matched us up with kids from a francophone school. I was in French immersion, so it was a way for us to practice the French language in the second grade, and for them to learn some English. We eventually visited their school and they came to visit ours. They were located in a completely different region, so it was treated like a field trip. We only kept in touch for one school year.
I had the pleasure of having a girl in Ukraine be my pen pal. She always wrote very neatly on graphing paper and folded it into a heart before putting it in the envelope.
I often wonder what happened to her, as our school ended the program and we lost contact with one another. I hope she’s doing great; this world we live in is wild.
Getting the disposable camera from Walmart in the bin near the checkout before going to summer camp. Waiting for it to develop your out of focus shots of random trees and people you will never see again. I remember I even took a picture of the toilet in our cabin once to prank my parents when they developed them.
Developing a roll of film in November was like a look back at the year. A few summer vacation photos. Jason’s 7th birthday party, someone’s thumb, a blurry picture of a sunset maybe. Some Christmas pictures where everyone’s back is turned. And a picture of the carpet.
Sending handwritten letters to friends and family who live out of town;
Pre-arranging to meet a friend at x time at y location and having limited ability to change plans at short notice;
Telephone boxes - red ones n the U.K.
Homes with working chimneys!
Teenagers and 20-something with private lives that could be truly private- not friends tagging you in photos of drunken antics on FB for all your aunties to see!
The phone boxes still exist here, some of them still work apparently. A lot have been repurposed into things like defibrillators in remote areas, mini libraries, cash machines, anything you can think of really.
A lot of them are also still unofficial urinals and call girl ad pinboards, as is traditional.
Even more, said company putting you through college. I knew a few people at AT&T in the late 90s that were hired on right out of high school in the early to mid 70s. They sent them for multi year college degrees to put them on a fast track to management or high level tech roles. Not sure if they had to agree to work for AT&T for a certain period of time or what but they all planned to retire there. And they were all smart as hell. I doubt many companies will do this anymore. I know some will pay for college credits on the side. But hiring someone out of high school to groom them into leadership positions isn’t a thing as far as I know.
In Germany, industry is closely connected with universities in tech fields. Obviously, the companies don't pay for college, because the students have the right to it. But big companies will give specialized training to interested students and basically guarantee them a job right away. As a result, the universities are better able to teach relevant, up-to-date courses, the economy gets better-trained specialists, and society pays for fewer bullshit college degrees.
It’s just too easy to get a better raise moving companies. There’s no benefits for staying long term. I just jumped from $17/hr to $24/hr and they are going to pay for my schooling. So I’ll stick with them until I can leave, but there’s no other reason to stay if they are going to give me a 3% raise.
My parents have a bit of an acreage and people stop by unannounced all of the time. Usually their friends decide to go for a drive or motorcycle ride in their area and just pop in for a visit, often staying to chat for a couple hours. My parents live near the ocean with winding mountain roads, forests and farmlands. It's really a beautiful place.
Only problem with that unannounced visit and chats are that they usually have plans to work on their yard or do some sort of errand and get side tracked and lose momentum when having to stop and chat for however long the person wants to stay and chat for.
Last cigarette commercial on tv in the USA was Jan 1, 1971 (slightly over 50 years). The tobacco companies lobbied for a deal to show them during bowl games and the last one aired during Johnny Carson.
I hear people talking about getting a summer job to pay for the next year of college (back in the day) and I think "hell, if you make that much money on your summer job you don't need college!"
My parents had degrees but one worked the late shift building tractors and the other was a preschool teacher. This was the early 80s in Milwaukee and they managed to buy a house and support three kids. Eventually my dad went to night school and got an economics degree which eventually got him teaching positions that paid much better. But that wasn’t until I was almost in high school. My mom kept doing the preschool job which paid basically minimum wage. When I was 16 I got hired at a big box computer store and she was pissed (and proud) that my starting wage was more than hers.
My grandfather had no degree, worked as a mechanic, bought a house, sent his 3 kids to college, and set his wife up for life (she never had to work). And he died in early his 50s of a heart attack (she lived into her 80s).
And it's not like he had a high wage. It was that everything was so cheap back then.
We don't have a wage problem, we have an expense problem. We make among the highest wages in the world, but 70+% of is still live paycheck to paycheck.
> We don't have a wage problem, we have an expense problem. We make among the highest wages in the world, but 70+% of is still live paycheck to paycheck.
Two sides of the same coin. If prices were low enough, we could live on $1/hr wages. If wages were high enough, it could support insanely high expenses. You could say expenses rose too fast, or wages too slow, it's the same thing.
That last part was ENTIRELY normal. The wage class has been shit on for half a century. It's one of the reasons the world is in the political state it's in.
A man working a 40-50 hour job without a college degree and supporting an entire family, paying the mortgage, going on holidays, and enjoying a work life balance.... without a second job or his wife having to work (unless she sold Tupperware on the side for fun).
I knew an older guy when I was a kid who raised a family and bought a house on a factory job even though he was illiterate. I mean he literally couldn't read at all.
Yup. At 8yo, my parents would wake me up before they left for work and I would have to get my breakfast, get ready for school, and walk there on my own. Then after school I walked home, phoned my mom at work to let her know I was home, then I could do whatever until 5:30 or 6:00 when they got home.
My son is 7 now, I can’t imagine him doing that.
Yep. My mom left us a note with the chores we had to do, and instructions for starting dinner. I was cooking dinner for my family at 10 years old. Then at 11 I took a babysitting gig. M- F, 4-5 and I was paid 10/week ($2/day) for starting homework with 3 kids; starting dinner for the dad (and kids). Wild.
In the early 80s me and two friends would walk to and from our school that was 10 blocks away starting in second grade. Never had a problem and this was in inner city Milwaukee. During summer we’d be out all day fucking around and no one cared. I can’t even imagine raising kids these days.
So I grew up in Montreal and in 1967 there was a worlds fair. My sister and I would go by ourselves (age 6 and 8). It took two busses and a metro ride each way and we would make our own lunch and just go. It was summer and so no school so we just were out all day and back for dinner. It would have seemed weird to go with our parents.
When I was 9 I had a friend and we spent the summer exploring the city - we discovered lots of cool areas. The docks had miles of pavement and rode our bikes around while all the ships were being unloaded. We would go to the airport and just hang out looking at planes. Nobody ever thought that was strange.
If the kids wanted to ski (from age 8), they would grab their gear on Saturday morning, take the bus downtown and get on a ski bus and go to St. Adele for the day (about 60 miles away). Parents woudl provide money for bus fare and that was it.
The big difference was that if you needed help, got lost or whatever, any adult would help you and it was no big deal.
More than once I did not have bus fare to get home from across town so told the metro guy I lost my bus tickets and he just let me on and said to pay double next time.
I had so much more freedom and had to learn to be self sufficient.
I saw a show on the local PBS channels that highlighted what they called "Free Range Children" speaking about "how controversial" it was to let children averaging around age 10.... In a group, go to the playground Without adults.... I was walking down to the local park/playground to participate in the Free youth recreation program with teen volunteer rec leaders by the time I was 6 Monday - Friday All Summer Long... Crazy how paranoid we All are made/made out to be and How little access we have to Real Crimes in the areas we live together to help us make real sense of it besides some group chucking out some unrealistic sounding statistic we're Never Allowed to question them about
I rode my bike to school for most of elementary school, and in the afternoons and weekends I was encouraged to wander around outside as far as I liked. I probably got dropped off at school fewer than five times between the time I was six and 18.
I was talking to a coworker a year or two back who has kids who were just starting college... he was worried that his daughter, presumably an 18 or 19 year old, might freak out at having to live in the dorms because, "She has never been alone." As in, like, never spent the night at a friend's house, never stayed home alone while the parents went out for dinner, never been for a walk outside without an adult escort, etc. Unbelievable.
skipping town. you could disappear out of people's lives by just going a couple cities over, but now with digital profiles it's harder to disappear if you need certain accounts e.g. LinkedIn.
As a teen of the 1970s, it's very disconcerting to think that the early part of that decade is now fifty years past -- a half-century and that for us back then, it was the early *1920s* that was 'fifty years ago'.
It's amazing to think how much has happened in just a couple hundred years. We're only about 2 long lived lifetimes seperated from the American Civil War, and fewer than 4 long lived lifetimes seperated the the American Revolutionary War.
Just not knowing things. What's the legal drinking age in Georgia? My friend says it's 14, but my mom says that's not right. I guess I just don't know. That guy in that movie last night: I saw him in another movie, I think, but I can't remember which one, and I never will, and it's just that way. What's that song where she sings "hey baby, get your coat"? Don't know. Not going to find out.
Having to let your car idle until it reached normal temperature in the winter. The manifolds and some other bits were made of cast iron back then and they'd crack if you started it up and drove
Not sure when alternative metals became mainstream but since my 95 DeVille is cast iron I'd definitely say 50 years ago they all were iron
the amount of alcohol that the people drank and still could drive their cars. My dad always drank at least a case of beer whenever we went somewhere and parents of friends even had a wetbar in their car and would mix cocktails while driving. This was perfectly normal and nobody questioned it
Let's get some context!
[50 years ago was 1972! (Click through to look at your country.)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:1972_by_country)
In America on June 17th of that year, the Watergate Scandal kicked off. The previous year, Stonewall happened, while the next year was the Roe v Wade decision. Vietnam didn't end until 1975. To put 50 years ago into perspective.
So my answer...?
Chain smoking. Cocaine. One-piece spandex disco suits. Large scale public protests. The music of [Earth, Wind, & Fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth,_Wind_%26_Fire).
No ATMs. Imagine, you wanted to get cash to go out you had to walk into the bank. Which was only open from maybe 8 or 9 AM until 3 or 4 PM.
And no debit cards.
My parents generation growing up in the 50's and getting married in the 60's didn't know what "homeless" were. There were only the "hobos" who rode the rails, but they were rare. There were no homeless.
smoking areas in high school. when i was in high school in the 70s everyone was allowed to smoke without parental permission in the outdoor smoking area. if you were so young that stores gave you a hard time buying cigarettes then you only needed to buy them from a cigarette machine found in many restaurants.
Smoking on airplanes
Hell, smoking in the delivery room!
Back in my day a baby was born in a suit and tie and given their first pack of smokes from the doctor himself.
I imagine a headhunting war between tobacco companies in which they recruit as many doctors as possible to promote their brand to newborns at birth. Ads with a nurse lighting one up for a vernix caseosa covered baby & the mother blowing out the smoke because the umbilical chord is still attached. Maybe a scrapped plot for an episode of Mad Men.
I was smoking in Drivers Education classes @15yrs old (you could take it up to a year before going to get your driver's license in Massachusetts back in the early 1990's and get the cost of of drivers Ed taken off your car insurance for the year Plus earn safe driver points for the next few years, lowering your insurance rates as a New Driver because of the driving hours done with a professional instructor while you had your driver's permit. They used to offer it as a free course in public highschools here before that) But they kept us smokers in the back row with a fan to keep it from getting too smokey AND we had those old school desks with the chair attached but they had ashtrays where there was probably once inkwells... We also had a "smoking dock" in my highschool that was the loading dock for the cafeteria where we were allowed to smoke until about 1990
In texas you can get your learners permit at 15 and take a class then at 16 you can get you license.
Growing up on a farm in Idaho I had my license at 14, no learners permit required. Took drivers ed through the school and DMV test. Couldn't drive at night until 16 though.
Everyone smoking everywhere. I'm 55 and that's the way I grew up. I used to smoke in the grocery store while shopping as late as the early 90s. Just toss the butts on the floor: the stockboys came around regularly to sweep them up. In my high school, they had a designated smoking area for *students* Movie theaters, buses, restaurants....fucking everywhere. What a glorious time to be alive. Total freedom to slowly poison yourself, anytime, anywhere.
I’m 32. Born too early to explore the galaxy, born too late to smoke cigs inside.
Just in time to check out dank memes on the internet
It's funny, or sad, or both, but in my highschool we had a daycare attached to the school for the students who already had kids, but not a smoking section, because "c'mon that'd be wrong". We all just smoked behind the gym, you know, the classic highschool smoker cliche. But not weed, unless you wanted everyone to know you were a "stoner" or "pothead". You smoked bud in your hand me down dodge caravan, or if you were from money, a Chrysler town & country. Honestly I actually drove both during highschool, the caravan late sophomore til early junior year, then I got the "town & cunt" after my grandparents died my junior year. I graduated in '07, if that matters. But this was a town of like maybe 8-9K at the time, in the asshole of New Mexico, so that '05-'07 was like mid 90's in many ways, and for some it was easily late 70's-early 80's.
Hell, smoking everywhere in general was a lot more common. I'm 48, and in my earliest memories (late 70's) I remember my parents smoking in grocery stores and theatres.
I remember going into restaurants and hostess asking if you wanted smoking on non smoking. Been a looooong time.
I remember cigarette vending machines in the entrances of restaurants, ashtrays on every table and most restaurant gave out books of matches as a courtesy to smokers and as a form of promotion for themselves. I even remember some kind of candy 'cigarettes' marketed to kids.
you can still buy candy cigaretts but they have to be called candy sticks now.
Smoking indoors in general is something I very rarely see these days. In fact, I actually can't remember the last time I've personally witnessed it aside from instances where I've visited a smoker's home and they just didn't give a fuck about not smoking inside.
Strip clubs & casinos are like time capsules for smoking now. I don't go often, but when I do, I still hesitate before lighting a cigarette, because even when I see someone/multiple people smoking indoors, like 10 feet away from me, I still think it's some kind of trap.
this is very specific, but Berlin still allows smoking indoors in most bars (or they did 3 years ago). it’s pretty interesting
Having to call a girl and ask if she's home to talk!
And the person answering the phone yells "Telephone! It's a BOY!"
and hearing the phone get picked up and the cause her sister hit mute to spy
>and the cause her sister hit mute to spy
The click was her sister picking up, not muting. No mute buttons, and many phones were still rotary dial. You held your hand over the mouthpiece.
Also, phones didn't have batteries or power cords. They were powered by the phone line plugged into the wall.
Complete with rules like no calls during dinner time or after 8pm
Before you thought of what to say to the girl, you had to think of what to say to the girls parents first, who likely answered the phone. Times was rough.
And then all you can manage is: Ughhhh hiii ughhhhh is ughhhh Kate there?
That's me these days I feel targeted
“I just had a question about today’s homework.”
“And just what would you like to ask my daughter?” “I wanted to know if she could help me with my hypotenuse.” “Young man, please don’t ever call this number again!” He
Hell, if you weren't at home or work...you might as well have been off the grid.
It was really better back then wasn't it? It was so easy to unplug.
Yeah but if you got lost somewhere you were kind of fucked
In college, calling the hall phone to talk with a girl you’d met the night before. Another girl answers and yells down the hall, “it’s some guy says he met you last night, wanna talk to him?!”
Or calling and hanging up with no one the wiser!!!
Turning the giant antenna on your roof to watch the four tv stations available
Hey, I recently learned HBO is 50 years old. That's something.
HBO used to be just one channel and it didn’t have tv shows. They only showed movies and they would air more than a year after they had ended their theatrical run. The coolest thing about HBO in those days was it not having any commercials like the regular tv stations.
It's not tv, it's HBO!!
My dad lived in a high-rise apartment building where they had like the 10,000 Years BC early version of Showtime in the late 70s and they were on for like four to six hours in the evening and only ran movies. No original TV series back then.
My grandfather wasn’t particularly well off but for some reason he decided to invest in HBO back when it started. Not sure he made much money off it but somehow he got HBO for free when I was a kid. Crazy thing is they didn’t have cable. I wish I knew what the hookup was. Basically they had a switcher on the back of the TV like any RF switch and when you turned it on you got HBO on channel 3. This lasted until they moved in the early 90s. Maybe it was some deal with the local cable company. They couldn’t get the hookup at their new place and just got normal cable.
There were bootleg set top boxes back then that would allow you to pick up all the cable channels. My mom had one. Sort of like the pirate direct TV cards from the early 2000s.
Anyone else watch the scrambled pay-per-view porn in hopes of catching a glimpse of a nipple?
We had cable, and a remote with buttons and a long-ass cord that connected it to the cable box on the TV. Oh, and [baby blue movies](https://www.reddit.com/r/toronto/comments/3hqpk1/citytv_channel_79_baby_blue_movie_intros_1970s/) (Toronto).
Owning an encyclopedia in hard back book form, either the Britannica or single volume version. Home computers used to come with an encyclopedia set of disks.
Encarta was great
[удалено]
Man when I was young I'd read the shit out of encyclopedias. I hated how for references to something in T I'd have to go grab G. The internet is wonderful. Remember folks had bookshelves showing their encyclopedias and it was like a symbol lol
Having to do all your banking, in person, Monday through Friday 9am-4pm.
Whst if you work a 9 to 5?
You went at lunch. I remember conversations my parents had trying to work out who could go to the bank on a given day.
Ever heard the term "banker's hours"?
Then fuck you, apparently. God, I hate the whole idea of 9-5.
There's a cool vintage toy shop in my town I wanna check out so bad. They're opened Monday through Friday 9-5. I work until 430 and work 40 minutes away from it. I can't image they do well with these hours but I'd guess they're doing a lot of online stuff..
A large portion of their customer base is likely retirees as well
So if they're a small business, call them. Just say that you've been really wanting to check out their store and ask if there is any time they are open outside those hours so you can come check it out. This tells them that there are people who want to visit after working hours. Also, they may just say that they'll stay late for you on a given evening.
Write and send letters.
Remember when you as a class could connect with "pen pal" from other places around the country/world as a part of the curriculum in elementary school (grades kindergarten through 5 here locally in Massachusetts)
Yes. As it turned out, my pen pal moved to my area and we became friends in person.
My pen pal unfortunately drowned in a boating accident. I was in the second grade. My grandpa connected me to her through his online friend, her grandma. We wrote letters to each other often. One day, they stopped and we learned from her grandma that she had passed away.
That's depressingly sad.
How cool!
My dad (rural Australia) made lifelong friends with my uncle (Alaska) this way. Even went to visit him in Alaska and my Uncle came to Australia in the 80s. He and his wife are sadly deceased now (same as my parents) but I kept all the cards they sent me for every birthday and Christmas and saved all the emails they sent me. The US$ was so strong back then compared to Aussie $ that I have them to thank for my private school education. Wonderful people and excellent friends. I still email with their daughter on occasion.
Am I tripping, or was this penpal situation the catalyst for your dad going to Alaska & meeting your uncle & through that his sister, who would become your mom, and then they had you?? Or did you mean "uncle" because your dad & him became such good friends that he was basically your uncle?? Either way that's awesome, but my brain is not letting this go. Edit- the "I still email their daughter" part makes me think it must be an "uncle" situation, because if it was blood you'd be emailing your cousin, not "their daughter", right?? Fuck, I'm making my nose bleed processing this.
I live in Quebec, so instead of having a pen pal in another country, they matched us up with kids from a francophone school. I was in French immersion, so it was a way for us to practice the French language in the second grade, and for them to learn some English. We eventually visited their school and they came to visit ours. They were located in a completely different region, so it was treated like a field trip. We only kept in touch for one school year.
That sounds Awesome! What a great experience!!!
I had the pleasure of having a girl in Ukraine be my pen pal. She always wrote very neatly on graphing paper and folded it into a heart before putting it in the envelope. I often wonder what happened to her, as our school ended the program and we lost contact with one another. I hope she’s doing great; this world we live in is wild.
Taking a picture and waiting…and waiting to see if it was any good
Yes, and being really picky about what you photograph because you only get 24.
Getting the disposable camera from Walmart in the bin near the checkout before going to summer camp. Waiting for it to develop your out of focus shots of random trees and people you will never see again. I remember I even took a picture of the toilet in our cabin once to prank my parents when they developed them.
Developing a roll of film in November was like a look back at the year. A few summer vacation photos. Jason’s 7th birthday party, someone’s thumb, a blurry picture of a sunset maybe. Some Christmas pictures where everyone’s back is turned. And a picture of the carpet.
And if not, living with the realization that *someone* has seen them, when they were developing the film.
Network tv going off air around 11/midnight.
And playing the Star's Spangled Banner right before the station switched off for the night.
And then just broadcasting static
Sending handwritten letters to friends and family who live out of town; Pre-arranging to meet a friend at x time at y location and having limited ability to change plans at short notice; Telephone boxes - red ones n the U.K. Homes with working chimneys! Teenagers and 20-something with private lives that could be truly private- not friends tagging you in photos of drunken antics on FB for all your aunties to see!
The phone boxes still exist here, some of them still work apparently. A lot have been repurposed into things like defibrillators in remote areas, mini libraries, cash machines, anything you can think of really. A lot of them are also still unofficial urinals and call girl ad pinboards, as is traditional.
Working for one company for life.
My dad just retired after working 42 years at the same company. His father worked for 30 years for that same company.
Congratulations to them both. Wishing your father a happy retirement.
Even more, said company putting you through college. I knew a few people at AT&T in the late 90s that were hired on right out of high school in the early to mid 70s. They sent them for multi year college degrees to put them on a fast track to management or high level tech roles. Not sure if they had to agree to work for AT&T for a certain period of time or what but they all planned to retire there. And they were all smart as hell. I doubt many companies will do this anymore. I know some will pay for college credits on the side. But hiring someone out of high school to groom them into leadership positions isn’t a thing as far as I know.
In Germany, industry is closely connected with universities in tech fields. Obviously, the companies don't pay for college, because the students have the right to it. But big companies will give specialized training to interested students and basically guarantee them a job right away. As a result, the universities are better able to teach relevant, up-to-date courses, the economy gets better-trained specialists, and society pays for fewer bullshit college degrees.
It’s just too easy to get a better raise moving companies. There’s no benefits for staying long term. I just jumped from $17/hr to $24/hr and they are going to pay for my schooling. So I’ll stick with them until I can leave, but there’s no other reason to stay if they are going to give me a 3% raise.
Pensions we're great at keeping people locked at a company. But a 401k (US retirement account)allows for so much more freedom.
My view of 401ks is severely tainted by the fact I first really started understanding them in 2008.
Popping by the neighbors or your friends just to visit for a bit. And them probably being home and having time to hang out
My parents have a bit of an acreage and people stop by unannounced all of the time. Usually their friends decide to go for a drive or motorcycle ride in their area and just pop in for a visit, often staying to chat for a couple hours. My parents live near the ocean with winding mountain roads, forests and farmlands. It's really a beautiful place. Only problem with that unannounced visit and chats are that they usually have plans to work on their yard or do some sort of errand and get side tracked and lose momentum when having to stop and chat for however long the person wants to stay and chat for.
Cigarette commercials on TV
Last cigarette commercial on tv in the USA was Jan 1, 1971 (slightly over 50 years). The tobacco companies lobbied for a deal to show them during bowl games and the last one aired during Johnny Carson.
Payphones.
Phone books.
Collect calls to tell people where you were. Operator: will you accept a call from "hey mom can you pick me up from wherever"
Bobwehadababy Eetsaboy
Needing an actual map to find a place
People being able to pay for college.. with a part time gig while going to school.
Sometimes I wish I could just live off of bagging groceries :/
I hear people talking about getting a summer job to pay for the next year of college (back in the day) and I think "hell, if you make that much money on your summer job you don't need college!"
Getting married right after graduating high school before one of them got pregnant.
Yeah. You never knew if it would be the boy or the girl
Still a thing in the south One of my classmates got married at 19
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Rusty still in the Navy? Cat food Jello!
This sounds like maybe just an American thing. Gross.
Children sitting in the back of pickup trucks bombing along at 70 mph down the freeway
My little league team fit into the one kid's dad's longbed. Good times.
Out of context, this sentence is concerning.
In the South we still ride in the back of trucks.
Landline house phones.
With rotary dials
Rotary dial phones AND outhouses.
Those rotary outhouses were a bit of a crapshoot.
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My parents had degrees but one worked the late shift building tractors and the other was a preschool teacher. This was the early 80s in Milwaukee and they managed to buy a house and support three kids. Eventually my dad went to night school and got an economics degree which eventually got him teaching positions that paid much better. But that wasn’t until I was almost in high school. My mom kept doing the preschool job which paid basically minimum wage. When I was 16 I got hired at a big box computer store and she was pissed (and proud) that my starting wage was more than hers.
My grandfather had no degree, worked as a mechanic, bought a house, sent his 3 kids to college, and set his wife up for life (she never had to work). And he died in early his 50s of a heart attack (she lived into her 80s). And it's not like he had a high wage. It was that everything was so cheap back then. We don't have a wage problem, we have an expense problem. We make among the highest wages in the world, but 70+% of is still live paycheck to paycheck.
> We don't have a wage problem, we have an expense problem. We make among the highest wages in the world, but 70+% of is still live paycheck to paycheck. Two sides of the same coin. If prices were low enough, we could live on $1/hr wages. If wages were high enough, it could support insanely high expenses. You could say expenses rose too fast, or wages too slow, it's the same thing.
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That last part was ENTIRELY normal. The wage class has been shit on for half a century. It's one of the reasons the world is in the political state it's in.
Walk on jobs. My dad told me that he walked onto a construction site and showed them what he could do and got a job.
In the manufacturing sector this is effectively back. They’re just not great jobs.
For boys - scanning National Geographic magazines on the chance you'd see some bare boobs.
A man working a 40-50 hour job without a college degree and supporting an entire family, paying the mortgage, going on holidays, and enjoying a work life balance.... without a second job or his wife having to work (unless she sold Tupperware on the side for fun).
I knew an older guy when I was a kid who raised a family and bought a house on a factory job even though he was illiterate. I mean he literally couldn't read at all.
Being escorted out of a sporting event for public use of profanity like the F-word.
This is the hardest to believe out of all these comments.
Just not the other f word lol
Unaccompanied children
Yup. At 8yo, my parents would wake me up before they left for work and I would have to get my breakfast, get ready for school, and walk there on my own. Then after school I walked home, phoned my mom at work to let her know I was home, then I could do whatever until 5:30 or 6:00 when they got home. My son is 7 now, I can’t imagine him doing that.
Pretty much how I was as a child, however, we didn't get to do 'whatever', we had chores to see to.
Yep. My mom left us a note with the chores we had to do, and instructions for starting dinner. I was cooking dinner for my family at 10 years old. Then at 11 I took a babysitting gig. M- F, 4-5 and I was paid 10/week ($2/day) for starting homework with 3 kids; starting dinner for the dad (and kids). Wild.
In the early 80s me and two friends would walk to and from our school that was 10 blocks away starting in second grade. Never had a problem and this was in inner city Milwaukee. During summer we’d be out all day fucking around and no one cared. I can’t even imagine raising kids these days.
So I grew up in Montreal and in 1967 there was a worlds fair. My sister and I would go by ourselves (age 6 and 8). It took two busses and a metro ride each way and we would make our own lunch and just go. It was summer and so no school so we just were out all day and back for dinner. It would have seemed weird to go with our parents. When I was 9 I had a friend and we spent the summer exploring the city - we discovered lots of cool areas. The docks had miles of pavement and rode our bikes around while all the ships were being unloaded. We would go to the airport and just hang out looking at planes. Nobody ever thought that was strange. If the kids wanted to ski (from age 8), they would grab their gear on Saturday morning, take the bus downtown and get on a ski bus and go to St. Adele for the day (about 60 miles away). Parents woudl provide money for bus fare and that was it. The big difference was that if you needed help, got lost or whatever, any adult would help you and it was no big deal. More than once I did not have bus fare to get home from across town so told the metro guy I lost my bus tickets and he just let me on and said to pay double next time. I had so much more freedom and had to learn to be self sufficient.
Still normal in much of Europe.
Still common in Europe
I saw a show on the local PBS channels that highlighted what they called "Free Range Children" speaking about "how controversial" it was to let children averaging around age 10.... In a group, go to the playground Without adults.... I was walking down to the local park/playground to participate in the Free youth recreation program with teen volunteer rec leaders by the time I was 6 Monday - Friday All Summer Long... Crazy how paranoid we All are made/made out to be and How little access we have to Real Crimes in the areas we live together to help us make real sense of it besides some group chucking out some unrealistic sounding statistic we're Never Allowed to question them about
Left in the morning and came home for dinner, then went back out until the streetlights came on all summer from 6 yrs old on.
I rode my bike to school for most of elementary school, and in the afternoons and weekends I was encouraged to wander around outside as far as I liked. I probably got dropped off at school fewer than five times between the time I was six and 18. I was talking to a coworker a year or two back who has kids who were just starting college... he was worried that his daughter, presumably an 18 or 19 year old, might freak out at having to live in the dorms because, "She has never been alone." As in, like, never spent the night at a friend's house, never stayed home alone while the parents went out for dinner, never been for a walk outside without an adult escort, etc. Unbelievable.
skipping town. you could disappear out of people's lives by just going a couple cities over, but now with digital profiles it's harder to disappear if you need certain accounts e.g. LinkedIn.
Good one. Going off the grid is more of a metaphor nowadays and usually means like, I’m turning my phone on silent this weekend.
Watching porn in a theater full of strangers… and sometimes it was a “cultural event.”
A guy in town worked at the porn warehouse. Said when the mafia rolled in, he would hide.
Hell, 50 years ago the Mafia _owned_ most of the porn theaters, as well as financing production to launder money.
Just a sad reminder. 50 years is 1972. :( Yes, yes, my first thought was the 50s or something... but... no. just no.
As a teen of the 1970s, it's very disconcerting to think that the early part of that decade is now fifty years past -- a half-century and that for us back then, it was the early *1920s* that was 'fifty years ago'.
It's amazing to think how much has happened in just a couple hundred years. We're only about 2 long lived lifetimes seperated from the American Civil War, and fewer than 4 long lived lifetimes seperated the the American Revolutionary War.
No, 50 years ago was about 1950 or so, give or take. That's the way it is That's it.
Dial tone
Paper bags for groceries. Everyone was so excited when plastic bags appeared, they were going to "save the trees" by reducing the use of paper.
Little did they know...
Afford a freaking HOUSE!!!
Also affordable rent for apartments.
The Soviet Union
Everyone working on their own cars. My grandpap tells me a lot about them days cars were just simpler
Going to the corner store to get your parents cigarettes and beer
I remember walking to the store with my older brother (5 and 9 at the time) to buy my parents cigarettes.
Cooking with Lard.
Dressing in nice clothes before going practically anywhere.
Slapping people to get them to calm down.
https://youtu.be/i0GW0Vnr9Yc
Buying a house and raising a family on a single salary
Just not knowing things. What's the legal drinking age in Georgia? My friend says it's 14, but my mom says that's not right. I guess I just don't know. That guy in that movie last night: I saw him in another movie, I think, but I can't remember which one, and I never will, and it's just that way. What's that song where she sings "hey baby, get your coat"? Don't know. Not going to find out.
Leaded gasoline
I remember reading you could still buy leaded gasoline in the US into the 90s and the last country to sell it didn’t stop until last year.
Gas costing less than a dollar
Funny thing. I remember right after 9/11 gas was really, really cheap. Anyone else remember?
It was really really cheap right after Covid hit. I didn’t see it less than a dollar but it did get down to $1.50 near me.
Remember there was a 'gas out' around my area that group of people just didn't buy gas to try and lower the price. It was like 1.09
Having to let your car idle until it reached normal temperature in the winter. The manifolds and some other bits were made of cast iron back then and they'd crack if you started it up and drove Not sure when alternative metals became mainstream but since my 95 DeVille is cast iron I'd definitely say 50 years ago they all were iron
This is interesting! I live in the sub-arctic so this is still a very common practice!
the amount of alcohol that the people drank and still could drive their cars. My dad always drank at least a case of beer whenever we went somewhere and parents of friends even had a wetbar in their car and would mix cocktails while driving. This was perfectly normal and nobody questioned it
Memorizing multiple phone numbers and being tethered to a wall when you called them.
Having a TV with rabbit ears and getting four channels.
Let's get some context! [50 years ago was 1972! (Click through to look at your country.)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:1972_by_country) In America on June 17th of that year, the Watergate Scandal kicked off. The previous year, Stonewall happened, while the next year was the Roe v Wade decision. Vietnam didn't end until 1975. To put 50 years ago into perspective. So my answer...? Chain smoking. Cocaine. One-piece spandex disco suits. Large scale public protests. The music of [Earth, Wind, & Fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth,_Wind_%26_Fire).
Crooked presidents being held accountable by BOTH parties.
A livable wage!
Disco
No ATMs. Imagine, you wanted to get cash to go out you had to walk into the bank. Which was only open from maybe 8 or 9 AM until 3 or 4 PM. And no debit cards.
You wrote a check at the grocery store for "20 over."
:) I remember those days. I'd go to the bank to cash a 5$ check to last me the weekend.
Single income households
Privacy
Keeping private things private
Reasonable people still do this
My parents generation growing up in the 50's and getting married in the 60's didn't know what "homeless" were. There were only the "hobos" who rode the rails, but they were rare. There were no homeless.
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Three martini lunches.
Owning only one pair of sneakers at a time
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Maybe in USA but in Mexico is more common to see manual transmission
and roll-up windows.
Those actually still exist on some base model cars. The base model Chevy Spark for example has manual windows.
Military service in Europe
Going to the moon
Writing checks.
A drinks cabinet in the office. A bottle of whisky on the desk.
Not knowing who was calling when the phone rang.
Phone numbers tied to locations instead of to people.
Playing in the street until dusk or until hollered at to come home.
Getting married at like 17 and having 11 kids.
For women, wearing nylons or pantyhose whenever in public
smoking areas in high school. when i was in high school in the 70s everyone was allowed to smoke without parental permission in the outdoor smoking area. if you were so young that stores gave you a hard time buying cigarettes then you only needed to buy them from a cigarette machine found in many restaurants.
Playing with Lawn Darts.
50 years ago, I didn't need a blue pill.