Seniors, what changes have you seen in your life?

Question

Remember when you had to get up and turn the channel on the tv?
Remember when microwaves first came out? They were expensive and they were called Radar Ranges.

Remember a big boxy telephone that had a long cord and a dial?

Remember the first mobile phones? They were the size of a shoe box.

What "remember whens" can you come up with?

☺ Gladys, I am particularly anxious to see your answers.

EDIT This is so amazing! I am having such a good time remembering some of things ( a few are before my time, like the ice box)

Keep them coming!

Answer 1

i remember when outdoor phone boxes had phone books in them!!! no one stole them or set fire to them
also at primary school-youd all take an item of food in-cake etc for the xmas party-now its just send in a fiver
oh and i remember when kids who were cheeky to teachers were few and far between

Answer 2

well i dont know. i have read the others and i didnt find Gracie, whoever she is, but we must be somewhere near the same age. But i will try to remember some things. I remember when we went to school baarefoot in the spring, and we had to walk over a mile to one school. And i was about 7 or 8 at the time. The wall telephone was one that you had to turn a crank to get the other person. Our number[ as such] was a long , a short, and a long. You would crank the handle about 4 or 5 times for a long, and ctrank it a couple times for a short. etc. Usually, when they heard the phone ring[ Everybody heard it] other people would pick it up too. They would all talk together. Us kids would take an old phone apart and use the generator and crank to electrocute cockroaches,. In THEIR house. NOT OURS. We had a 6 volt radio and my dad would take the battery out of the truck and bring it in the house and we would listen to the radio for awhile. Not for long, cuz the battery would run down and we didnt have electricity or battery chargers out in the country. The toilet was out back, no more needs saying. Seatrs catalog , speigels catalog and montgomery ward catalogsw were there. AND not for reading. Our sAT nite bATH WAS IN A TUB BEHIND THE kitchen stove> For us kids anYWAy. DonT KNOw what the adults did, We maSE TOaST on top of the kitchen stove. JusT laid it on the top. Ma made bread too, it was made and out in a big washtub[ not the same one for baths] and it would rise to the top. Us kids got to help knead it. We even ate the dough whule kneading it. We had a horse and buggy, and a sleigh for winter. Sure missed those sleigh rides. Winters were winters back then. Other people have mentioned most of the other stuff. Oh, in the 30s my dad made home brew. It was prohibition tine. Our biggest customers were the state police. They rode motorcycles and wore the same type of pants that a canadian mounty wears. Or wore. ?? Probably more, but my memory is not that good anymore. My check spelling dont work, so you are on your own. AS Bob Hope useD TO SAY> THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES [ in the first line, i meant Gladys, not Gracie.]

Answer 3

I remember when the "facilities" were out back, and boy was it cold in the winter!
Wringer washer, in the wash shed off the kitchen.
First telephone, on the wall. Wooden, and you called central to get your party. And it was a party line. Once, lightning struck the windmill that pumped our water, came in thru the phone, and it exploded right off the wall.
Big wood range in the kitchen, and taking a bath in a round tub in front if the open oven door, with water heated oon the stove. Sure was glad when we got an indoor bathroom and a gas range. I was in the 5th grade. 1951.
First TV, 5th grade also. Old console radio with short wave.
Cooking in the summer in the "summer kitchen" on a kerosene stove. Canning all the fruit and veggies, until we got a freezer.
Gas was like .15 a gallon. That is sure a change!
Having babies in the 60's, nobody breast fed. Formula was the thing all the doctors recommended.
Computers took up a whole building. Nobody had a pc.
Secretaries took shorthand. and typed on manual typewriters.
There were record players, and vinyl.
Adding machines. Manual cash registers, and you had to count change back. (very few people even know how, now).
Slide rules are obsolete.
Kids had scarlet fever, and scarletina, and mumps and measles. Vaccines, now.
Used to be when you looked under the hood of a car, you could see the motor! And a backyard mechanic could tear one down and rebuild it in a day or two!
Drive-in movies, soda fountains with cherry and lime phosphates. Real juke boxes. Saddle shoes, penny loafers. "Can-can' slips so your skirt was waaay out to here. Ducktail haircuts for the delinquent boys, and a few "wild" girls. Crew cuts for the jocks.Elvis was the bad boy, Pat Boone was the clean cut good guy. All the heros smoked, James Dean, John Wayne.
Marijuana was something musicians smoked in New York nobody had ever had any. Or any other drugs.
I could go on all night, I have just begun, but it's getting late and I have to go to bed. Happpy memories, everyone!

Answer 4

Ok, so I'm 35 and don't consider myself a Senior, but my Grandmother is 92 - a Senior by almost everyones book. She and I had a conversation a year or so ago about this very thing.
I said, "Granny, you've seen a lot of changes in your life, haven't you?" She said, "Yes, I guess I have." "What changes have you seen?" "I remember when we got our first radio, and how grand it seemed, to be able to turn on a box and hear people from hundreds of miles away. I remember going to Mrs. _____'s house and seeing her telephone. I remember when we first got indoor plumbing, and when we took out our gas lamps and went ELECTRIC. It was like we were living high on the hog when we got electricity." My Mother who is 65 remembers getting their first electric washing machine, although it was decades later before they got their first electric dryer. She remembers getting their first phone, and how they all jumped when it finally rang one day. My mom also remembers when they would sit and watch the pattern waiting for Howdy Doody to come on, then watch it again after it was over and before the next program came on.
Personally I can remember sitting with some friends in a DJ's booth while he played the first CD that was ever broadcast on the college radio station. Everyone had to be perfectly still and not walk around or even come near the equipment in fear that any jaring of the CD player might cause the CD to skip, thus ruining the CD and causing the dreaded "dead air" to be broadcast. I remember my DJ friend that invited me saying that there was a HUGE thing amongst all the senior DJ's as to who would get the honor of playing the station's first CD and which song it would be and who would be allowed in the booth, etc. My friend who was a sophomore at the time was chosen and could invite five people. Even though it was in 1991, it was a big deal for the little station.

EDIT: Yeah, I remember cars with no seat belts, and gas at $0.76/gal and complaining when it went up to $0.82. And stamps were $0.15 and thinking the world would end when they went up to $0.17 :) And our first phone, in the late 70's early 80's was a party line, but only for about a year. I remember my great-aunt going to Dallas and saying she had been to this thing called a strip mall. We all thought she had gone off the deep end and went to a strip club.

Answer 5

Telephone party lines. The telephone with the beautiful ringing sound. Later, the princess phone and the wall set chimes with the kitchen phone. The phone company owned the phones but later on we could buy them. The Helms Bakery truck going through the neighborhood with all the goodies to buy. The Jewel Tea man. The Fuller Brush man. We seemed to have a lot of men selling things. Those were the days!

Answer 6

I'm not a senior yet, but I vaguely remember gas at 25 cent per gallon! TV dinners were expensive and tasted about as good as the package.

Games - Mystery Date was my favorite - you didn't want the "bum." Saturday morning cartoons were great and they were an event. We would look forward to the new line up each year.

We also had TV with only a few channels that we got with an antenna on the roof. There started to be a couple of independents stations that cropped up in the early 1970s.

Oh, ya, no seat belts in cars!

The cool things were that we never had to lock our doors, kids walked to school without parents, kids could play in the streets without fear & neighbors looked out for each other (you really knew your neighbors). There was personal responsibility vs. looking for a handout!

Answer 7

So many. I could have lived an easier and comfortable life. Everything now is done by a push of a button. I remember doing the laundry by hand (no washing machine at that time) and had to squeeze the water out from wet clothes (no spin dryer) before hanging them out to dry in the back yard. Then, there were the beepers, now we have cellphones. We also had pocket calculators however, we do calculations by using our cellphones now instead of these gadgets. Then, we didn't have digital cameras or digital clocks or watches. No video cameras to record memorable events or occasions in an instant. All we had were cameras that needed flashbulbs to take clear pictures specially when there wasn't enough light. We had hair curlers and hair nets. We used tea towels to wipe dry our dishes or utensils, now we have dish dryers. Oh, lots of changes in my life. And I'm pretty certain there are more to come.

Answer 8

Remember gathering around the radio, before TV was a household word.
The boxy thing on the wall that you spoke into while holding a thingy next to your ear (we were "1 long, and 2 shorts")
First mobiles I remember were carried on the back of the "radioman".
Men were men, and women weren't ?
Majority of childrens parents were married -- to each other
A daughters date was aware that paw had a shotgun, a shovel, and 40 acres of good farmland
Cuban missle crisis
38th parrelel Korean issue
JFK assassination
Woodstock
The rise -- and fall of the Berlin wall (Berlin airlift)
Stockholm/Andria Dora collision
Loss of the Edmund Fitzgerald
1St Moon landing
1st man in space/sputnik
James Jones catastrophy
Viet Nam retreat (by civil order)
Valdez oil spill
Isreali olympic atheletes shot down
Various IRA / Brit confrontations
--and bunches more.........

Answer 9

Victoria does not have any secrets any more
Had a 17 year old the other day who did not know what an 8 track tape was
I remember when I WAS the remote control for my dad
You did not used to have to step on the brake to start a car
Cigarettes were 50 cents a pack
The worst thing you could do in school was run in the hall or chew gum in class
They pumped your gas, checked your oil, tires and washed your windsheild for 29 cents a gallon
No helmets, then helmets then no helmets for motorcycles
No helmets knee pads or elbow pads for bikes
Banana seats on bikes
sidewalk skates that you had to have a key to fasten onto your shoes
Rat tail combs
When pic nic shoe string potatoes were the BOMB They are nasty now
and on and on and on

Answer 10

I remember when Sundays were a day of rest,nothing was open and if you had run out of milk,you would have to have black coffee till monday.
I remember when airplanes had propelers and flying was just another priviledge for the very rich
I remember in grandmothers house,her alternative to a fridge was a box with a thin mesh around it.(it kept feta cheese white for more days than todays fridges....)
remember the ''ice man'' delivering ice for the ''modern''ones who had fridges
Remember spending the whole day away from home ,during the summer hols,and our moms would'nt be worried about us
remember watching on black and white telly the moon landing
thats all for now...

Answer 11

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