Businesses that Have Gone the Way of Buggy Whip Mfgs.

And on that thread, I mentioned ice boxes, which implied an ice man. Most of the small towns had cold storage facilities for keeping food frozen - and they weren't used for TV dinners.

Haven't seen a pump jockey in a decade, but boomerang says they still have them in Oregon, where an attendent is required to pump your gas. I don't know if they do windows or not.

To a certain extent emulsion film for cameras has being replaced by digital technology. Wonder how long before regular film is obsolete entirely?

Brand X. Kodak just announced that they will no longer be making film cameras for sale in the US. I would give it about 5 years, before film is completely obsolete!

Mmmm. I remember the Polaroid camers, where the picture developed itself, right outside the camera. You then had to smear this liquid on it, to make the (black and white) picture more permanent.

Yep, heard that too, of course Fuji had a large share of the market already.

I expect film and cameras to be around for quite a while, but more and more for professional use. There is probably not enough being used to support all the 1 hour developing shops now. As they go under, we may be back to mailing the film to a central developer, which will not increase the popularity of film photography.

I was thinking of the milk man, but we still have one.

Record stores.

(There are some still hanging on by their fingernails, but the whole music industry has one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. It's because nearly no one below the age of 25 actually purchases music. I don't know the true statistic, but the reason why you see so many Led Zep, Rolling Stone, and other dinosauer rock bands on late-night P.I. TV ads is because us boomers are the last generation left who would pay money for their CDs...)

Door-to-door encyclopedia salesmen.

(Not that I actually miss them...)

Mom-and-pop stores. (Thanks, Wal-Mart.)

Several thoughts:

My grandfather was a skilled harness maker. After the Model T arrived he became a cobbler and shoe repairman which he regarded as a step down.

Skittering across a frozen parking lot, wind chill in the minus figures, I remarked to my son, "This will blow the cobwebs out of your mind." He's certainly used to my lackadasical housekeeping, but somehow in 40 years he'd never known that his mind could also be prone to cobwebs.

I've been wondering how much the advent of refrigeration contributed to the decline of the Knights of the Road who would chop wood and do other chores in exchange for a meal. Once leftovers could be safely stored and served to the family the next day...

My mother had a no-good cousin several times removed who used to make his drinking money during the summer going door to door with a grater and offering to grate horseradish for a few cents a root.

As a child in the 40's I remember the Knife Man who used to go door to door with a grindstone to sharpen both knives and scissors.

Do elementary school children still clean erasers? I was never picked to clean erasers. I'm still a bit wistful about that.

Places like this where you could get your picture taken.

This was taken at a place on Revere Beach many years ago and that's my mother (on the right), her sister and their dates. My mothers sister ended up marrying my mothers boyfriend, LOL!

Paperboy/girl - this was done after school. I don't know if this was common anywhere else, but there were two copies of the newspaper printed. If you went downtown, you could get the morning edition. Afternoon delivery, ment the paper was waiting for you when you got home for dinner.
Fuller brush man
Drive-In Movies

Video stores are on the way out too.

Businesses
Ice-man, coal-man, organ grinder (with and without monkey). Elevator operator.

My very first job was as a seamstress, and so, with all the clothing manufacturing businesses going bust because of cheaper labor outside of the U.S., there are very few, if any, sewing factories left here.

Aha- How many shoemakers do you see nowadays?

Pretty much about 90% of the full service gas stations are gone

GO out and try and find a shoehorn