If you didn't know something, you had to look it up in the encyclopedia. We had the whole World Book set.
If it wasn't in there (or if the set was too outdated on that topic) you had to go to the library, and search through the card catalog.
And don't forget searching through the Readers' Guide to find reference material.
There used to be only ONE phone in the house. It was a big deal to get a "second extension" and you had to sit at the phone and talk. The cords weren't that long. A long distance call was a BIG deal, and everyone had to be very quiet if Daddy was talking long distance.
I was soooo jealous of my few friends who had a "kids' phone" to share among the siblings. And don't forget . . . those phones had rotary dials.
I think in a lot of ways kids have it so much harder today then we did. They weren't under the pressure kids are today to be the "best" at everything. We were allowed to grow up and do things on our own from a young age which made things like going off to college much easier for us. My parents we in no way involved in my college selection process other then filling out the FFA, by hand
.
That's true. Our kids have much more "stuff", but they are forced to deal with pressures that we didn't have.
Remember when the whole neighborhood would go to the bank on Friday after work to cash their paychecks? And Friday was the only day that the bank stayed open after 3:00.
Nope, in our area stores were open 'til 5:00 every day . . . but everything shut down at noon on Wednesdays. People had to have time to get ready for Wednesday evening church service.
Our house had a milk chute - a little door through the wall of the exterior of the house. We never used it
Milk shoot? That's nothing. We had a barn! We had cows, but not milk cows -- we raised ours for beef.
I remember when only 'rich' people had color television; the rest of us could get 'color' tv by placing a rainbow-hued sheet of plastic over the screen (or using crayons - ONCE
). We went to my uncle's once a year to watch "The Wizard of Oz"... which is another thing we've lost over the years. Not the movie, but the 'specialness' of it. It used to air once a year and it was an Event.
Wizard of Oz wasn't the only thing we looked forward to watching: The Grinch, Sound of Music, Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang. Oh, and the Charlie Brown specials. We were allowed to stay up "late" to see those, and we'd get Jiffy Pop popcorn to eat. If we forgot to watch, we'd be soooo upset. Like you said, it'd be a year 'til we had the chance to see "The Great Pumpkin" again.
A bike! Mine had a basket on the handlebars.
And a flag on the back for safety (so people could see you coming behind cars. But if I'd have seen a bike helmet, I wouldn't have been able to identify it.
No UPC scanners! I worked retail right out of high school, and had to learn what the million buttons on the cash registers were all for. Grocery stockers had to stamp prices on everything, and the cashiers practically memorized all the prices.
I worked at Belk's department store, and we had HAND CRANKS underneath the registers. They said that if the electricity every went out, we could attach them to the side and keep selling things. It never came to that while I was working, but I wouldn't liked to have seen it. In reality, it couldn't have worked . . . because we had no windows in the building, and we wouldn't have been able to see.
I challenge your age and raise you one. I remember when cans of beer had to be opened with a can opener! (I was a little kid then, but I remember them.) Then they came out with the pop tops that came off and you would step on them and cut your foot. (for younger folks, that is what Jimmy Buffet is singing about in Margaritaville. "I stepped on a pop top. Blew out my flip flop. Cut my heel had to cruise on back home.")
And cool young single guys (like my uncle) would save up the pop tops and make chains out of them, chains which they used in place of doors in their cool bachelor pads. Kind of like beads in a doorway, but in a bachelor kind of way. My uncle also had his parachute (from Vietnam) stretched over his bedroom walls (tacked up to make space for windows and closet) like paint.
Riding in the back of a pickup truck down the road at 60 mph...sometimes standing up hanging onto the cab.
Or playing Superman: Laying with your stomach on top of the pick-up truck and your arms/legs sticking out straight. We didn't do that at 60 mph; we'd slow down to 30-40 and do this only on the little backroads just before we got home. Even so, how is it that I am still alive?
During said family gatherings, at night was the time that us kids would go outside and play because it was cooler. Of course we were outside the whole time mostly but it was never a worry to have the kids outside at night, no one ever worried about being kidnapped.
And what'd we look forward to doing with our cousins at Grandma's house? Rolling down the hill. Really, we'd do it for hours at the time. And when it got dark, we'd go inside to watch Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom (every Sunday night we'd see our host Lawrence Perkins narrate while Jim got his butt kicked by some animal), then we'd watch The Wonderful World of Disney . . . and when it was over, we'd go to sleep in the car on the way home and wake up while our parents carried us into the house.
I remember being bored out of my mind on Saturday nights having to watch Lawrence Welk
Yeah, all these aren't happy memories! Shudder!
And I remember when the entire state of NC had one area code, 919.
Nope, I'm a lifelong North Carolinian, and we've never been 919. At least, since I was born in the 60s, we've been 704 in my area.
Engines on the Volkswagen Beetles were located in the back of the car. The front of the car was the trunk.
I wanted a VW Beetle so badly!
No one mentioned flicking on the high beams via a button on the floor next to the break (I assume, I was little/born in 1971).
I remember that. And straight drive on the column instead of on the floor. And no one had automatic transmission. Not everyone had air conditioning -- in the car or the house.
I'm only 42, but boy, I remember planning ahead for footnotes! Oy. And the cover page? You had to plan out the page, subtract the number of lines from 66 and divide by 2 -- that's how far down you hit the carriage return before typing. Centering text, too! Starting in the middle of the page and backspacing once for every two letters. 
