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aunt_audrey

Age-O-Meter

Age-O-Meter:

How many do you remember?

1. Blackjack chewing gum

2. Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water

3. Candy cigarettes

4. Soda pop machines that dispensed bottles

5. Coffee shops with tableside jukeboxes

6. Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers

7. Party lines

8. Newsreels before the movie

9. P. F. Flyers

10. Butch wax

11. Telephone numbers with a word prefix (Olive - 6933)

12. Peashooters

13. Howdy Doody

14. 45 RPM records

15. S&H Green Stamps

16. Hi-fi's

17. Metal ice trays with levers

18. Mimeograph paper

19. Blue flashbulbs

20. Beanie and Cecil

21. Roller skate keys

22. Cork popguns

23. Drive45;ins

24. Studebakers

25. Wash tub wringers

If you remembered 0-5 Cheer up - you're still young

If you remembered 6-10 Hmmm - you're getting older

If you remembered 16-25 You're older than dirt!

Comments (31)

  • 14 years ago
    last modified: 11 years ago

    I remember 13. I can't recall BlackJack chewing gum, but I loved Black Cat that tasted like black licorice.

  • 14 years ago
    last modified: 11 years ago

    Jasdip, we used to chew Black Jack and then form it over our front teeth so it looked like they were missing. Silly for sure, but we'd laugh our heads off.

    I remember everything except #23. Is that supposed to be drive-ins? If so, I remember them all and wish they were still around.

    #2, the coke shaped parafin bottles reminds me of a time when I was at a drugstore with my 4-year old niece. When we got to the check out (where they stock stuff to tempt kids), she asked really loudly, "CAN I HAVE SOME WINE BOTTLES?" I wasn't sure what she meant until I saw her pointing to them. Boy, did I get weird looks.

    Personally, I miss a lot of those things.

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  • 14 years ago
    last modified: 11 years ago

    If "23. Drive45;ins" means drive-in movies, then my answer is that I'm older than dirt as I remember them all.

    Shirley

  • 14 years ago
    last modified: 11 years ago

    Hmm, we never had a party line but my great aunt did and I would love to listen in on other people's conversations. So, I remember every single one of these things and am proud to be part of the Dirt generation.

  • 14 years ago
    last modified: 11 years ago

    Blackjack chewing gum also tasted like licorice.

    My favorite was Beamans chewing gum

    Early coke machines were like a large cooler chest and they had a top grate with slots. The bottles sat in a bath of cold water with just the tops extending up through slots in a metal cover. You slide the bottle of your choice through the slots over to the dispenser, dropped your coin in the box then lifted your bottle up through the dispenser trap. As kids we used to go to the gas station and when the man was out pumping gas we would pop the top off a bottle, then use a straw to sip it dry while it was still in the machine, Later they went to the upright machines where the bottles were horizontal with the tops extending out, we used to get a large cup and pop a top off and catch the soda as it poured out, leaving a half empty bottle on the rack....LOL

    Bean shooters were a nickle and a pound of navy beans was 10 cents...we could terrorize a neighborhood with one...I used to cut the bean shooters down to about 2" long so I could hide it in my mouth..then sit in school with the bean shooter and a half dozen or so beans in my mouth, when the teacher turned her back to write on the board,,,whammmmmm...I would nail her with a bean....LOL

  • 14 years ago
    last modified: 11 years ago

    OMG! Just dig a hole and push me in. I have no idea what #1 and #23 are and vaguely recall PF Flyers and Beanie & Cecil but I've definately been hanging around much too long.

  • 14 years ago
    last modified: 11 years ago

    Yes # 23 is suppose to be Drive-Ins. LOL Don't know how that got there!

  • 14 years ago
    last modified: 11 years ago

    I remember them all! I will be 62 on April 8th and Blessed to have lived so long.

  • 14 years ago
    last modified: 11 years ago

    I was a teenager when all of the above were around, there must be another category for me. I remember the 33 1/3 record's or the old 75's I think it was.

    Sue

  • 14 years ago
    last modified: 11 years ago

    20. Beanie and Cecil

    I didn't think anybody but me would remember them they were my favorites!!!!

    We never had a party line either but Chicago had prefixes on Tel numbers like Plaza

    I remember them all very fondly

  • 14 years ago
    last modified: 11 years ago

    I remember all of them, we had 2 Studebakers (not at the same time of course, this was the 50's)
    the last one was a Studebaker President...top of the line.
    We had no party line that I can recall, Beany & Cecil when I was already in high school.
    Older than dirt must be 65....

  • 14 years ago
    last modified: 11 years ago

    They were 78's marilyn lol. I can even remember my old phone number Dickens 28865 Reseda LOL

  • 14 years ago
    last modified: 11 years ago

    When I was 10, we had a phone 'alert' that was two short rings and one long ring to make us aware the ringing phone MIGHT be for our family - we had 3 different families on our party line. LOL

  • 14 years ago
    last modified: 11 years ago

    I loved black jack chewing gum.

  • 14 years ago
    last modified: 11 years ago

    Butch Wax?? If it's Butcher's Wax, I have a tin in the pantry. I use a thin coating on painted shelves to prevent books, etc., from sticking. Otherwise, I have no idea what Butch Wax might be.

  • 14 years ago
    last modified: 11 years ago

    Oh my!!! I remember all but 11!!
    Kind of funny...but sad.
    Wish so many kids today could recall some of the fun we had with those things.
    I also have to admit that black jack chewing gum was also a favorite of mine! Loved it!

  • 14 years ago
    last modified: 11 years ago

    LMAO at Alisanse nope. Butch wax was used on a haircut called a Balboa. Was cut long on the sides, waxed up and back, then the top was a flattop.

  • 14 years ago
    last modified: 11 years ago

    I remember all 25. I am older than dirt. I will be 70 in April.

  • 14 years ago
    last modified: 11 years ago

    I remember numbers:

    3. Candy cigarettes
    4. Soda pop machines that dispensed bottles
    14. 45 RPM records
    15. S&H Green Stamps
    17. Metal ice trays with levers
    19. Blue flashbulbs
    21. Roller skate keys
    22. Cork popguns
    23. Drive45;ins
    25. Wash tub wringers

    But, then I did NOT grow up here in the US.... just been here since 1972.

    Moni

  • 14 years ago
    last modified: 11 years ago

    I remember all of them except the phone. My grandparents had party lines and when Grandpa wanted the phone, he just picked up the phone and said--This Mr. O. and I am making a phone call and I do not want you listening in. All you heard was click, click, click, and believe me NO ONE listened. But then he did not make many calls. This was in the early 40's

  • 14 years ago
    last modified: 11 years ago

    I remember:

    1. Blackjack chewing gum
    2. Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water
    3. Candy cigarettes
    4. Soda pop machines that dispensed bottles
    5. Coffee shops with tableside jukeboxes
    9. P. F. Flyers
    12. Peashooters
    14. 45 RPM records
    15. S&H Green Stamps
    16. Hi-fi's
    17. Metal ice trays with levers
    18. Mimeograph paper
    19. Blue flashbulbs
    21. Roller skate keys
    22. Cork popguns
    23. Drive45;ins

  • 14 years ago
    last modified: 11 years ago

    Oh gosh, I remember all of these..

    We had a drive in movie theater around the corner from our house. We had a bunch of kids on our street and we would all take a blanket and pillow and walk over. We would lay on the front hump with the speaker on the ground. Great memories of my childhood.

  • 14 years ago
    last modified: 11 years ago

    I'm older than dirt! I'm 70 so I remember them ALL

  • 14 years ago
    last modified: 11 years ago

    I'm in the "you're getting older" category! (I guess it's better than a "are you still alive" category!)

    The Vermont Country Store sells Blackjack AND Beemans AND, my favorite, Teaberry gum. (About 15 years ago, I wandered into a restaurant/bookstore in Winston-Salem, N.C., and saw Teaberry gum on the counter for sale. Thrilled! But somehow the taste was no longer familiar...)

    45rpm records? Remember the plastic fill-in spacers you needed to set in the hole to make them play on a regular stereo turntable? The gift shop at the City Museum in downtown St. Louis -- a fabulous place with lots of interesting old stuff -- sells jewelry made out of them. (And I see via Froogle.com there are other jewelry/accessory items using the shape of it.)

    And S&H Green Stamps! I recall what I bought with them: A mobile or some other room decoration for my oldest nephew's room when he maybe was just starting to walk (he's 38 now!), and a soft-sided weekender bag for myself. Do you recall the stamps came in different "denominations"? I loved to fill up whole pages with the smaller stamps and actually felt a little "cheated" when I got a bigger-value stamp that you needed fewer of to complete a page.

    And I remember the metal ice trays w/levers. We didn't have plastic ice trays when I was growing up -- or a fridge that had "ice in the door." I recall selling them at a tag sale (a little girl actually thought they were cute and asked her dad for them!).

    My older sisters remember the "word" telephone numbers.

    I wonder what a list similar to that would include for today's teenagers when they reach 45 and beyond!

  • 14 years ago
    last modified: 11 years ago

    I remember our first phone # 185M

  • 14 years ago
    last modified: 11 years ago

    I recalled all but 3, so I'm older than dirt.

    Here's a few more from my era.

    1. Model A Ford - we owned and drove 2 in my family.

    2. 1932 Ford Roadster, rumble seat, V-8 engine and suicide doors. My friend had one.

    3. Oleomargarine without color added. The colorant was in a capsule with the bar of Oleo. Before opening, you crushed the capsule and kneeded the bar of oleo to mix in the colorant. This was not universal, but in the dairy state of Wisconsin, the butter industry had lobbied and got passed a resolution to make it illegal to sell colored oleo. That law was still in effect in 1960. It eventually expired.

    4. John deere tractors that were started by cranking the engine by hand. It was cranked by grabbing the exposed flywheel. (There were finger grips hidden inside the rim of the flywheel.)

    5. Ice boxes, ice delivery, and a diamond (square) shaped delivery sign. When you needed ice, the sign was displayed in a window facing visable from the street. The corners of the sign were marked with different amounts of ice, e.g., 25, 50, 75, and 100 lb. The sign was displayed with the corner up showing the amount of ice you wanted.

    6. City ice plants and cold storage.

    People living outside small town limits did not have electricity (unless you owned a home light plant) and therefore did not have refrigerators. Freezer compartments could be rented at the ice plant.

    7. All bicycles were single speed.

    8. Allis-Chalmers was a big name in farm tractors.

    9. Greyhound buses served almost every town that was on a US highway.

    10. Route 66

    11. DC3 airliners.

    12. Jet planes were unheard of.

    13. Threshing machine and threshing crews made of neighbors who processed each other's crops.

    14. Inner tubes and tube patching kits.

    15. Kerosene sold from 55 gal drums at filling stations. You brought your own container and filled it from a hand cranked pump on the drum. Measuring continers were used.

    16. Blow torches. These worked on the same principle as a coleman camp stove.

    17. A set of flat irons for ironing clothes.

    18. Starched clothes and household items. Items that you wished to retain their shape after ironing was heavily starched. Typical starched items were dolies, croched decorations, and sometimes curtains.

    19. Tire chains.

    20. Cistern and cistern pumps.

  • 14 years ago
    last modified: 11 years ago

    Sadly, I remembered all of them,,,I must be older than dirt...LOL

    But now, in reviewing those questions a few more came to my mind...
    For those of you who remember Howdie Doody, what was the name of the sea capt puppet? I think I remember all the other characters on the show,,,MC= Buffalo Bob, then Clairabelle the clown, Chief Thunder Thud the indian chief, the indian princess was Princes Summer,fall, winter, spring, and the puppets were Flub-a-dub, Phineas T. Fillibuster and that darned sea capt I can't remember.

    Anyone remember the Winkie Dink show? and if so, did you have the plastic overlay for your TV so you could draw on the screen?

    Jemdandy,,,I not only remember all the above items but all that you posted as well,,,

    not only do I remember the Grayhound serving nearly every community, if you lived in the country on the buss route you could stand beside the road and raise your arm, and the buss would actually stop and pick you up,,imagine that.

    How about soda fountains where you could get a phosphate, or how about a cherry coke, vanilla coke, chocolate coke or lemon coke? And the cokes were a nickle.. A banana split was 25 cents, but who ever had that kind of money to spend?

    I grew up on a dairy farm and our neighbor had a John Deere A that you started by turning the flywheel...People today would not have a clue what the flywheel was for? They have never seen flat belt drive stationary machinery..

    I began working on the threashing machine crew at 7yrs old. I worked the grain sacker and operated the stack blower or drove a team of horses hauling the grain in from the fields.

    Not only were the bicycles single speed direct drive, they all had those wide 24 or 26x 2.125 tires.

    In our town when you got a bicycle you had to take it to the police station and pay $.50 to register it. They turned it upside down and got the serial number off the main crank housing and a description, make, model, color etc, plus your name, address & phone number, and they issued you a small metal license plate (like the metal license plate shaped name plates the sell as novelties). The plate was a miniature version of the regular car plates issued by the state and you had to attach the plate on the back of your seat so the number was visible from the rear. If you got caught riding a bike without a license the cops would impound it and make your parents bring proof of purchase to get it back, plus you paid a $10 fine and had to register it before you got it back.
    On the other hand, bicycle thefts were almost unheard of because everyone knew the cops had the serial numbers recorded and could find out if you owned it.

    Remember when 8 or 10 boys would get together on a vacant lot with a ballbat, a ball and maybe a glove or two, and we played ball all day. We didn't need any special leagues coaches or schedules to have fun.

    Remember when you "Word Processor" was made out of wood and had point on one end and an eraser on the other?

    How about "Book straps" for toting your school books?

    Remember when you could always tell which houses the young girls lived in cause there was a hop scotch drawn on the sidewalk with chalk....

    How about playing jacks on a rainy day?

    And talking about all the regulations on lead today,,does anyone remember when we had a lead melting pot on a little electric hotplate and a mold to cast our own lead toy soldiers? And we used to go to the grocery store and steal the lead balance weights off ppls car tires while they were shopping to have lead to play with...LOL

    Does anyone remember when we had a dress code in school?

    Oh, and here is a flash from the past, do any of you remember in the 50's when we had the "Duck & cover" drills? For those who don't know what that is, we went to school in the early days of atomic weapons and the cold war, and they had a special signal in school, when you heard it you ducked down under your desk on your knees, head face down between your knees and hands clasped on the back or your kneck to protect you from the blast of an atomic weapon.

    The continued to make the green stamps until well into the late 70's. By that time I was driving a company owned tractor trailer and when on the road I only stopped at truckstops that gave the stamps. I would buy $50 or $100 worth of fuel on a P.O. number from the company and I kept the stamps..

    They also made some Yellow trading stamps..

    Cigarettes were $.23 a pack but the vending machines took a quarter so they packs had two pennies under the exterior cellophane wrapper.

  • 14 years ago
    last modified: 11 years ago

    I'm older than dirt also. 23 I remember

  • 14 years ago
    last modified: 11 years ago

    Older than dirt here too! Remember it all.

    lazypup, I didn't know that you could 'buy' a pea/bean shooter. We made ours from the branches of elderberry bushes. The pith was easy to bore out with a screwdriver 'borrowed' from Dad's tool box.

    I do remember the duck and cover dills, as well as the air raid drills during W W 2. We lived next to the school house. A telephone call to our house with a coded message would alert that a test drill was underway. My Mom or Dad, sometimes my older sister, was in charge of blowing the school house siren when that call came. A series of short blasts of the siren alerted the small community to turn off all lights and lay low. A second phone message would give the ok to blow the siren for one long blast signaling all clear. Of course this was always at night and the commotion in the house along with the siren always terrified this 3/4 year old.

    As a kid, outside was such a wonderful place to be. Do kids still play ball just for the fun of it? Jacks, hopscotch, tag, hide and seek, climbing trees, walking 5 miles to the swimmin' hole are lost to today's youth. So sad.

  • 14 years ago
    last modified: 11 years ago

    Oh, gosh, I'm older than dirt. I'll be 60 this year. I remember all of them. We had a candy store two blocks away that sold "Penny Candy." Yes actual pieces were one cent, some two for a penny,etc. Double-stick popsicles were 5 cents. My best friwend Andrea and I would go in with a dime and come out with a popsicle (which we broke in two) plus a big white bag of candy to share. My favorite candy bar in those days (late 50's, early 60's) was the "Sky Bar" which had four pieces of chocolate, all with a different filling. Also Mallowmars, which had a paper coupon inside with a coin designation. Save a dollar's worth, mail to an address and get a coupon for a free Mallowmar.

  • 14 years ago
    last modified: 11 years ago

    I'm 22 for 25. One foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.

    Jemdandy, we had a John Deere with the fly wheel crank and my Grandpa did custom threshing all over the county in the late Summer. Good memories!

    Ron