Phoenix, we share certain years, as I remember. I had a brownie and then at some point an instamatic.
I learned real photography, sort of, via my dad's Argus, but then that was in the bin that was stolen around 1975, grumble.
edgar: White Cloverene Brand, or something like that?
My family used to have a camera looking very much like one of those in the below photo.
My dad traded it for a bottle of Scotch during his time in WW 2.
My husband has one just like the big one on the far right, Reyn. I've borrowed it several times to use as a prop in photo shoots. It's a great looking object.
Yeah, I guess the one we had looked probably like the one on the far left.
It wasn't in the best of shape. I inherited it some years back. I ended selling it to a New York collector for about $80 US. Not too bad for the condition and the fact that's it's not really that rare.
My parents had one of those. It was much too fancy for a kid, so I had my Brownie.
You KNOW that you are an old fart, when the last situation comedy that you thought had any merit at all was, "All in the Family"!
And here I thought it was The Donna Reed show which was the last show with any real value...
I've still got a couple of skate keys, and three Duncan yo-yos.
I remember when going to museums was free.
I remember people sitting on folding chairs out in the street on warm evenings.
I remember being able to leave things under the stairs. Nobody would take them.
I remember the first supermarket! And the eventual demise of the small corner grocery store.
I remember when you could get a pickle from a barrel.
I remember almost all the characters from Howdy Doody--the title character, Buffalo Bob, Flub a Dub, Dilly Dally, Clarabelle, Mr. Bluster, Chief Thunder Thud, Princess Summer Fall Winter Spring. I think Mr. Bluster had a brother, but I don't remember his name.
I remember cigarette and cigar commercials.
I remember when we didn't lock the door.
I remember open discrimination. I'm not suggesting that discrimination is gone. But now it's against the law, so people have to be sneaky about it.
I remember holding up my stockings with a garter belt. Ugh.
I remember peace marches.
I remember being able to get up from sitting on the sofa without grunting.
I remember when you could actually buy something with a penny.
I remember when most women didn't work.
I remember walking from Campbell, which is near San Jose, CA, to Los Gatos, which was all wilderness. Me and my brothers would go on hikes taking us there. What is it now, Silicon Valley?
I can remember when the latest, and the greatest dance, was the cha-cha-cha.
I can remember that if a person made $25,000 a year, he was RICH!
I can remember when very few families owned more than one car, if they even had one. Only the most expensive cars had air conditioning, even as an option.
Almost nobody had air conditioning in their houses. If you were one of the few fortunate enough who did, the neighbors next door got pissed, because their windows were open, and the sound from the early home air conditioners was atrocious.
If it were hot, you either slept on the roof, if you lived in an apartment house, or on your porch. Some nights you didn't sleep at all, because of the heat.
I can remember when the money that the government took out of your paycheck for Social Security was miniscule.
Phoenix32890 wrote:
If it were hot, you either slept on the roof, if you lived in an apartment house, or on your porch. Some nights you didn't sleep at all, because of the heat.
Our bedrooms were upstairs. On the hottest nights we would pull the mattresses off the beds and haul them downstairs to the living room where we would set up 'camp'. It was like a slumber party for the family. No one got much sleep because of the heat, but it was better than being upstairs.
Sleeping on the porch in the middle of summer. To us kids it was almost like a camp out.
An anecdote - Grampa held little regard for modern fripperies. Wouldn't have one of those "Useless television sets" in his house. He spent many evenings at our house. Sid Caesar was a favorite of his, along with Groucho Marx and Ed Sullivan.
Good grief, Roberta, now I remember garter belts--thought I'd erased them from the mind.
When I was a stew for TWA (yes, back when teradactyls still ruled the skys) we had to wear girdles and our superiors had the right to pinch our bottoms to make sure. Our way of getting around the dreaded girdles was to soak them in Clorox, thereby rotting them to the point that they no longer held anything in but our risk of being fired.
I had the curious experience of being raised by my grandparents, and being exposed to a longer "old-timey" range than most. My grandmother recounted that when she was a little girl in Colorado Springs, the kids would get a flake of hay, and use it to lure one of the burros abandoned there by failed prospectors, to get a free ride across town. My grandfather recounted the prices of a century ago--three cantalopes for a dime.
Big Bird reminded me of my grandfather, who opposed the television, but could be caught standing in the dark of the hallway from the kitchen watching intently. For him, it was J. Fred Muggs on the Today Show which did him in--he was always a sucker for cimpanzees.
