Things growing up have fallen by the wayside

[6miths]

My Mom's favorite line to me as I was heading out the door......"Head home when the street lights come on".

You had street lights?

 

[aja8888]

You had street lights?

We lived in a low rent housing project (slum).

 

[rk911]

Kids playing outside!

I had a great childhood back in the 60's. A neighborhood with hundreds of kids. During the Summer, we'd leave the house around 10:00, come home for lunch, leave again and show back up at dinner and maybe leave again until dark. My mom would scream "out of the house!" She basically had no idea where me and my brother were at any given time. And, of course, if she did ask we'd only give her a hint of where we "might" have been.

my biggest "worry" as a kid i. the summer was getting enough guys to get a ball game going at a vacant lot. after dinner. we could play outside until the street lights came on. at 9:30 every night the firehouse in a neighboring town would blow their station siren announcing curfew.

 

[rk911]

we had a milkman (oj, eggs, too) and mom sent dad's suits and dress shirts to a laundry that picked up and delivered. in the winter if we didn't get the milk inside quick enough the cream would rise and force the top up and off the milk bottle.

 

[Rocky mtn high]

Party line in the early 70’s. Talking to my girlfriend way too long and neighbor interrupted said he needed the phone line to sell his cattle! ��. Embarrassing

 

[NW-Bound]

Another interesting service fall by the wayside!! Just asked my wife when did the mike deliver service stopped here. She said early 90's and we got mike delivered to the doorstep till that era disappeared.

The song "No Milk Today" was released by Herman's Hermits in 1966.

 

[Calico]

Party line in the early 70’s. Talking to my girlfriend way too long and neighbor interrupted said he needed the phone line to sell his cattle! ��. Embarrassing

There were no secrets on the party lines! Sometimes I think it was the equivalent of "social media" back then.

 

[PatrickA5]

my biggest "worry" as a kid i. the summer was getting enough guys to get a ball game going at a vacant lot. after dinner. we could play outside until the street lights came on. at 9:30 every night the firehouse in a neighboring town would blow their station siren announcing curfew.

We had a ball field directly behind my house. Severl times a week a bunch of kids would show up to play some ball (baseball in the early Summer and football (tackle) in the Fall. Often resulting in injuries.

I basically didn't wear shoes from late May to early September. Once school rolled around, I'd have a hard time getting shoes on since my feet were so callus from walking miles on the hot streets.

Great times!

 

[Amethyst]

It sounds like what we kids called an "old man hat."

Would you happen to have a name for that flat cap you speak of? Or an online pic of one?

 

[RobbieB]

Playing with plastic “army” men.

Back then (when I was 8 years old) my parents bought me a "lead soldier" kit. A mold, an electric melting pot and ladle and lead ingots. Yup, 8 years old and melting lead in the basement.

But those ingots were expensive, so we went out to where they were building and harvested the over pour from the drain pipe joints.

I had a hundred lead soldiers. They stood up better than the plastic ones which was important when we blew them away with the toy cannons, tanks and mortars that fired plastic projectiles.

 

[Time2]

Highway Patrol with Broderick Crawford!

 

[street]

My Mom's favorite line to me as I was heading out the door......"Head home when the street lights come on".

or the 10 o'clock whistle in the small town I grew up in. When that whistle blew you better be heading home.

 

[street]

- Big floppy "Dan Mathews" fedoras on men and white buck shoes on little boys.
- Obvious bifocal looking bifocals
- Fins on cars.
- Houses of perfectly prosperous, wage earning 30-ish and 40-ish year old people with 3-5 kids, and no air conditioner. How did they LIVE?!

- One telephone in the house and it hung from the kitchen wall
- Christmas lights on the outside of people's houses as Seasonally de rigueur

- All the stores closed because it's Sunday. Except drug stores so you could get a Sunday paper

- The big, huge, thick, Sunday paper or, in my town, BOTH Major Sunday newspapers

Would you happen to have a name for that flat cap you speak of? Or an online pic of one?

Many of the things mentioned brings back a lot of memories.

 

[Car-Guy]

Going house to house trick or treating on Halloween from dark until ~10pm all over the neighborhood. Most of the boys went and some of the girls too and very few adults went with their kids. Most people gave out candy and I never recall having or hearing of any problems.... Not so anymore.

 

[RobbieB]

I Love Lucy, Leave it to Beaver and The Twilight Zone.

Rocky & Bullwinkle

 

[Winemaker]

One can still get milk and dairy products delivered in SW PA, today..

 

[Pellice]

One can still get milk and dairy products delivered in SW PA, today..

True in the suburban megalopolis of NJ as well. At least 3 milk delivery services near me. But, really, you now can get ALL your groceries delivered, milk included. I wonder if the delivered milk is merely pasteurized or ultra-pasteurized?

 

[gauss]

Free replacement light bulbs from the electric company.

 

[NameTaken2]

Building scale models.
Taught patience, planning, following/interpreting directions, and attention to detail-
And provided pride and a sense of accomplishment if you endeavored to develop all 4.

 

[wrigley]

Milk deliveries, which I just barely remember.

But, more consequentially, the pivotal exercise of getting to a telephone. I'm not arguing that telephones were more consequential than smartphones - they weren't - but you had to absolutely plan your communications and then communicate those plans to other people. If you watch any old movie or television show, or listen to an old radio show, the plot turned SO OFTEN on a phone call. "I have to get to a phone." "I can't leave the house, I'm waiting for a call." Even more drama in the era before answering machines. It's fun to watch the old shows with this in mind.

I remember glass milk bottles at the front door in the Chicago winters. Had to get them shortly after the milkman deliveries so the bottles didn't explode.

Mike

 

[wrigley]

S and H green stamps!

Mike

 

[Venturer]

I was basicly raised by my maternal grandparents. My Dad came home from Korea wild as a buck, divorced my Mother so we moved in with her parents. They lived and worked in the cotton mill "village". Company owned houses that were 3 or 4 rooms and all the same on a street. I you were a "boss" you had a 4 room. A guy I grew up with now writes "Cotton Tales" about experiences living there in those days. He is really talented and is about to have a book published with them in it. There was a church and school up on the hill both owned by the mill where all the workers kids went. They finally deeded the church and school building to the members of the church in the late 60's, and all the kids tranfered to the county or city school. The school had a large flat hill with playground equipment on it. A really tall metal slide,metal monkey bars, and a tall metal swingset. Down below was the ball field with a creek running along side it. If you hit a foul ball that went in the creek you had to retrieve it your self, brrr, cold in late fall -early winter. We didn't have a lot but never realized it growing up, mostly good memories.

 

[JoeWras]

Prepared shrimp cocktail in a glass. Pop off the top like a soda and start eating. I miss those!

The vintage glasses sell for decent dollars on ebay these days. That glass was durable!

 

[Aerides]

Pantyhose - thankfully women today have enough sense not to bother with that daily nylon constriction.

 

[intent]

At the risk of veering into the political (but I'm really not trying to), culturally I was taught to be humble, not to put down others - especially those weaker and less able than yourself, to be honest, to treat people like you would want to be treated, and maybe most importantly to view with disdain and distrust those who didn't follow these rules.

I've been amazed in the past few years now that it appears these values aren't still universally taught. Maybe they weren't universally taught when I was a child. Or perhaps they are/were taught, but few took them to heart.