You know you are getting old when ...

I was watching the movie "Apollo 13" with my young niece. At the end of the movie, when the 3 big parachutes FINALLY open... a very suspense filled moment in the movie... My niece yells "OH NO!!! It's going to land in the WATER!!!".

It was then that I realized how old I really was.
 
Remember the showcases full of penny candies. I will take one of those, one of those, 2 of those, boy those ladies sure had patience. A Saturday at the movies was a weeks allowance 25 cents. The real treat was Dad taking us kids for a real Rootbeer float with Hires rootbeer and chocolate ice cream at a real soda fountain. My first car at age 16 was a 1957 Jaguar 4 door sedan, that set my big brother back $125 when he came home on leave. Dang, those are some great memories.
 
I remember when ball point pens were new. There was some question at the time whether a check written with one was valid.

Has anyone mentioned home delivery of milk? I remember having to bring it inside in the winter time before it froze.

Oleo during WWII that had the separate color that you could knead in if you wanted it to look like butter.

Saving cans. bacon fat and rags during WWII.

Cars that wouldn't start when the temperature was below zero.

FM radio. No static! How do they do that?

The radio in my first car had vacuum tubes which had to warm up before it worked.

Making a crystal radio. Did not need any batteries. Amazing!

Being able to hitch-hike or to pick up hitch-hikers without worry.
 
I was born in New York in the early forties and here are some great memories...How many are yours.

1. The Ice Man....we had an ICE BOX and a guy actually came about every three days and brought us a 50 lb. block of ice...had a great big leather shoulder pad and a big scissor like thing to hold the ice.

2. Little Scuba diving men and submarines in your cereal boxes....I think you put baking soda in them and they would dive in your tub and then surface when the soda ran out.

3. Radio only...No TV....The Shadow would scare the crap out of me and and INNER SCANTUM would finish me off.

4. Party lines..already mentioned.

5. Gasoline in 17.9 and 27.9 cents a gallon...In Regular and Ethyl.

6. Crusader Rabbit and Rags.

7. Manual carpet sweepers.

8. The Fuller Brush man.

9. Watkins Vanilla man.

10. A guy in a cart selling fruit yelling at the top of his lungs...STRAWBERRYS, APPLES AND CHERRIES.

11. Milk Man and Bread and Donut Man making deliveries.

12. FORD, CHEVY, CHRYSLER.....THAT WAS IT !!

13. Every boy you knew had a pocket or jack knife.

14. The playground at the Drive in Theater.

15. Most men wore hats.

16. COMMANDO CODY AND THE SECRET DECODER RING.

17. Rice Krispies were high tech....Snap, Crackle, Pop...How do they do that?

18. Meat loaf was a staple food for most of America.

19. Almost every man smoked cigarettes, no filter.

20. No air conditioning....Just fans.
 
Crusader Rabbit and Rags. ???
Don't remember that one. But the rest I sure do.

I tried explaining to the grandkids how we got on the internet before Windows came out.
Remember all that DOS stuff. Getting on line through a BBS and actualy talking to guys like Bill Gates to get advise. I think we were text messaging long before it became the in thing to do.
.
 
I told my daughter that when I was a kid you couldn't die from having sex, she couldn't believe there wasn't any HIV.
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That is not quite true, you could if her father caught you!!!!!
 
You know you're getting old when....

You update your address book by scanning the obituaries page...
Your joints are more accurate than the National Weather Service.
Your investment in health insurance is finally beginning to pay off.
Your back goes out more than you do.
The twinkle in your eye is only the reflection of the sun on your bifocals.
You feel like the morning after when you haven't been anywhere the night before.
You finally got your head together, now your body is falling apart.
Your supply of brain cells is finally down to a manageable size.
You wake up with that morning-after feeling and you didn't do anything the night before.
You don't care where your wife goes, just so you don't have to go along.
It takes twice as long to look half as good.
Many of your co-workers were born the same year that you got your last promotion.
People call at 9 PM and ask, "Did I wake you?"
You can live without sex but not without glasses.
The clothes you've put away until they come back in style... have come back in style.
You look forward to a dull evening.
Your mind makes contracts your body can't keep.
The pharmacist has become your new best friend.
There's nothing left to learn the hard way.
You come to the conclusion that your worst enemy is gravity.
You start video taping daytime game shows.
You quit trying to hold your stomach in, no matter who walks into the room.
Your idea of a night out is sitting on the patio.
You look for your glasses for half-an-hour, then find they've been on your head all the time.
You wake up, looking like your driver's license picture.
Happy hour is a nap.
You begin every other sentence with, "Nowadays..."
You constantly talk about the price of gasoline.
You don't remember when your wild oats turned to shredded wheat.
You sing along with the elevator music.
You are proud of your lawn mower.
You wonder how you could be over the hill when you don't remember being on top of it.
Getting lucky means you find your car in the parking lot.
The little gray-haired lady you help across the street is your wife.
Your idea of weight lifting is standing up.
Your secrets are safe with your friends because they can't remember them either.
Your ears are hairier than your head.
You have a party and the neighbors don't even realize it.
It takes longer to rest than it did to get tired.
You talk about "good grass" and you're referring to someone's lawn.
The end of your tie doesn't come anywhere near the top of your pants.
You give up all your bad habits and you still don't feel good.
Your childhood toys are now in a museum.
You can't remember the last time you laid on the floor to watch television.
You confuse having a clear conscience with having a bad memory.
You frequently find yourself telling people what a loaf of bread USED to cost.
You know all the answers, but nobody asks you the questions.
You enjoy hearing about other people's operations.
You got cable for the weather channel. Old Folks MTV!
Your new easy chair has more options than your car.
Your little black book only contains names ending in M.D.
Everything hurts and what doesn't hurt, doesn't work.
You find yourself beginning to like accordion music.
You have too much room in the house and not enough in the medicine cabinet.
You get into a heated argument about pension plans.
"Getting a little action" means you don't need to take a laxative.
Conversations with people your own age often turn into "dueling ailments."
You buy a compass for the dash of your car.
You take a metal detector to the beach.
The car that you bought brand new becomes an antique.
You are cautioned to slow down by the doctor instead of by the police.
You realize that caution is the only thing you care to exercise.
You don't remember being absentminded.
You have more patience; but actually, it's just that you don't care any more.
Your memory is shorter and your complaining is longer.
Your drugs of preference are now vitamins.
You tip more and carry less.
You read more and remember less.
You get propositioned by AARP.
Younger women start opening doors for you.
The highway patrol sigh or shake their heads but don't give you a ticket.
You scout for a warmer place to spend the long, cold winters.
You work on your short game.
Youthful injuries return with a vengeance.
Youthful indiscretions harden into bad habits.
A 'late night' now ends at 11 pm.
You learn where your prostrate is.
You develop a knack for wearing hats.
 
akivory said:
Candy cigarettes
Wax coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside
Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles
Hoola hoop contests
Buying milk from a vending machine for a quarter, with your penny change taped to the side
Coffee shops with tableside juke boxes
Blackjack, Clove and Teaberry chewing gum
Home milk delivery in glass bottles, with cardboard stoppers
Party lines
Newsreels before the movie
P. F. Flyers
Butch wax
Telephone numbers with a word prefix .... (Drexel-5505
Peashooters
Howdy Doody
45 RPM Records
Green Stamps
Hi-fi's
Metal ice cube trays with levers
Mimeograph paper
Blue flash bulbs
Beanie and Cecil
Roller skate keys
Cork pop guns
Drive ins
Studebakers
Wash Tub wringers
The Fuller Brush man
Reel-to-reel tape recorders
Phonographs
The "twist", "mashed potatoes", and "funky-chicken"
Tinkertoys
The Erector Set
The Fort Apache Playset
Lincoln Logs
15 cent McDonald hamburgers & 10 cent fries
5 cent packs of baseball cards..... with that slab of pink bubblegum
penny candy
35 cent-a-gallon gasoline
When the first man walked on the moon
When Elvis Presley first appeared on the Ed Sullivan show
When the Beatles arrived
When the Barbie doll hit the scene
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I was also born in '54. I remember ALL of that stuff. Damn, I miss the smell of that Butch Wax stuff...The pink stuff that came out of the red plastic tube.

8-tracks
Beatle-Boots
Superball
shooting marbles
4-square & teather-ball on the playground
monkey-bars
'56 Chevy Nomad
House of the Rising Son...The Animals.
 
Dangitt akivory... I can relate to a majority of your second list... and I'm only in my mid 40's!:eek:
 
great thread!!!

im 36, but many of these things bring back memories.

lincoln logs, tinker toys, erector sets, drive in movies, 8 tracks, bathtub submarines....
 
Your joints are more accurate than the National Weather Service.
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Rolling dice is more accurate than the National Weather Service.

Born in 1944, the year before the first atomic bomb. My daughter was born the year after the first moon landing. I wish we could have given up on the bombs and kept up on the moon landings.
 
T-BAG said:
1. The Ice Man....we had an ICE BOX and a guy actually came about every three days and brought us a 50 lb. block of ice...had a great big leather shoulder pad and a big scissor like thing to hold the ice.

2. Little Scuba diving men and submarines in your cereal boxes....I think you put baking soda in them and they would dive in your tub and then surface when the soda ran out.
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Definitely favorites of mine.

We had a fridge but the iceman came to our block every week. We also had a vegetable man with a horsedrawn wagon. West 171st in Washington Heights.

The little submarines did use baking powder. I lose track of how many toys I sent away for to Battle Creek Michigan! :D
 
A former country boy's input:

Hog killings - on the first few colder days of fall, it was a community effort. You go help your neighbor butcher his hogs, and then he would come help you butcher yours.
Looking forward to fresh scrambled hog brains and eggs.

Plowing a mule - We borrowed a mule to break up our garden site and lay off the rows (about an acre, the man was a fanatic about growing things) then we worked it the rest of the summer with a push plow, and I in effect became the "mule".

Chicken for dinner (or breakfast, for that matter) meant catching one of the free-roaming chickens, wringing its neck, and plucking feathers.

Finally getting indoor plumbing when I was about 15 years old.

Being able to roam freely, alone, at 10 years old, carrying a 12 gauge shotgun (I was a BIG 10-year old).

Every responsible adult in a five-mile radius in our country community being a "parent" to me when I was were away from home. Learning early in life the value of a good reputation.

Not remembering, ever, being without a good knife in my pocket, and adults not freaking out about a preteen with a knife. In fact, they expected you to have one, and it was a point of minor chastisement if you didn't.
 
akivory said:
Candy cigarettes
Wax coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside You can still get it
Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles
Coffee shops with tableside juke boxes They still have them, some places
Blackjack, Clove and Teaberry chewing gum You can still get it, they make it
Home milk delivery in glass bottles, with cardboard stoppers Foil for me, but yeah Party lines
P. F. Flyers IF you are talking about the shoe...they still have them
Butch wax http://www.thegreaseshop.com
Metal ice cube trays with levers ://www.wdrake.com/walterdrake/Shopping/ProductDetail.aspx?ProductID=1004799&SourceCode=20658000007&Affid=4
Blue Flash bulbs -Xenon strobe is VAST improvement
Drive ins They still have some
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Best Regards,

STeven Garsson
 
As already listed previously, one of my grandfathers WAS the milkman and the
other the iceman. I remember when milk was still delivered to the home,
and I'm a youngster. 35, just recently.

I remember a lot of the things listed as they were still popular/around
when I was a kid.

I gotta go find some Pop Rocks and build a Lincoln log cabin. :D

I miss Gibson's dept stores too. :(

mike
 
Manual typewriters with ribbons you changed by hand.

Pong was state of the art

red wagons

Sleds made of steel and wood, not plastic

Listening for your folks yelling for you from the porch when it was time to come in.
(I NEVER hear parents yelling for thier kids in our neighborhood.....`course now most of my neighbors` kids are in thier 40`s.)

building a damn in the creek was real entertainment

If you wanted cartoons, you got them on Saturday morning....but only until noon.

25 cent comic books

I Love Lucy

Nancy and Sluggo

movie projectors

when microwave ovens were new and exotic
 
Then I remember seeing the first episode of a sci-fi show called Star Trek, and thinking how nice and convenient to have a little communication device that flipped open and be able to talk to somebody anyplace. Hey, what’s that thing in my pocket beeping at me?
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Jackknife:

I went with some friends to a Science Fiction Museum in Seattle. The Star Treck exhibit included an example of those communication devices. Every one of us had flip phones that were smaller than the Star Treck originals.
 
Those black and white TVs that took a long time to warm up. First pull the 'on knob', then it would hum, followed by sound and then finally a fuzzy picture that became brighter after several minutes. Heck there were only a few channels, and most of them did not start broadcasting until later in the day. When I was a kid I thougt the test pattern on the screen was some kind of super gun used to keep the Russians away.

We used to play army, and sometimes yell out, 'The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming', and we played war games all after noon in the fields.

Of course one thing too was the great promise that started after WW2, at that point thought that things would only get better, and we would all work less. In school we were taught that by the year 2000 we would all be flying around in our little space ships. What happened to this great vision of promise?
 
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