An auger and bits for bring holes in wood.

Wood plane and hand saw.

Kerosene lamps and lanterns.

Kerosene cook stove.

Shoe lasts and last-stand. In the past, shoe heels were attached with shoe nails. The nail heads were recessed in holes, but when a heel wore down to the nail, the nail would begin to poke the wearer's heel. This could be repaired using a shoe-last to get a couple more months wear.

A wood or coal burning stove in the living room for heat.

No running water and no bathroom.

Pitcher pump.

Inner tubes and tube patching kits.

Foot treadle sewing machine and a quilting frame.

Splitting firewood with an axe, maul and wedges.

Using a 2 person crosscut saw.

Writing on large, wall mounted, chalk boards made of real slate -- Chalk erasers.

Writing with a dip pen and ink bottle.

Picking corn by hand using a corn-pick.

Smoking tobacco came in small cloth bags; The more expensive tobacco came in cans with friction fit lids.

Graveled roads.

Making hot pads on a small weaving frame.

LOL jimdandy we have/use many of those NOW!!

Jemdandy - you just reminded me - clapping erasers and the big cloud they made.

A Church Key

In a car the head light dimmer switch on the floor next to the break pedal.

School desks with ink wells that the teacher filled when students were leaning to write with an ink pen. By the time I started school there was pre filled ink pens, so the wells were no longer used, but those desks were still in use.

Jemdandy, thanks for the reminders, used most of them myself.

stomping grapes, having a job at age 13

lgmd, I remember sitting at the wooden desks with holes for inkpots, decorative wrought iron frames, and with the back of the seat forming the front of the seat behind. That school had been built in 1923 IIRC, and I was there in the early 1960s - still had the old desks.

Ink cartridges for fountain pens. We did not have access (in school) to ball point pens until the late 1950's.

I am only 50 but we had party phone line, Rural Route mail address, milk delivery ( one of my kids actually gets milk delivery) and I think we could here. We have a farm market I go to which has the same creameries products so I buy there. A real telephone operator; we would call them on every holiday to wish them a happy whatever and one of my brothers had one sing Happy Birthday to me once. I basically grew up in Mayberry

maire_cate, you can still buy the looms and loops to make potholders, but now they offer them in a larger size as well as the original size. I made a lot of these when I was 5-7 years old, and I would give them to my teachers and relatives. I enjoyed combining the colors and making new patterns. I used about three different weaving patterns, including a sort of twill. Generally, I did not weave a loop as one piece but divided it into two strands, at least for the warp. The weft had to be a complete loop, however.

HamiltonGardener, you can still buy paper folding maps, but they are not as ubiquitous as they used to be. I generally have to order them, as I have a very difficult time finding them in service stations these days. I've had less trouble finding them in Mexico.

We get our paper maps from AAA.

Lars - that link brought back so many memories. I think our looms only made a 5 or 6" potholder so we'd sew 4 together to make them large enough. How nice to see that you can still buy them.

For Christmas I ordered a tabletop loom from France for my 37 yr. old daughter. She's the artistic and crafty one in our family and since she's furloughed she's has plenty of times to work on projects.

You mentioned report cards with grades for penmanship. My handwriting was legible but definitely not the Palmer method and I still remember getting a D in penmanship in 4th grade.

counting back change ...

Carbon paper for typewriter

Transistor radio

Phone booths

Playing outside

Record players

110 film for Kodak Instamatic camera

Poloroid camera

This thread has been such fun! Gas stations with the ding-ding as you drove over the hose, with a number of neatly uniformed attendants all working at the same time, checking tires, fluids, washing windshields and filling the tank...ln later years their give-aways of drinking glasses,, and at grocery stores, entire sets of china, piece by piece.

Coal rumbling down the metal chute into the basement of grammar school. Every child going home for lunch at that same school - no cafeteria.

The 'hot line' -dial a certain number and other teens would be yelling 'hello' or their phone number until someone was clear enough to answer (you could hear others in the distance.)

One car towing another with a rope or chain.

Racing downhill at breakneck speeds on wooden sleds with poor steering, metal runners, some with sharp points in the back

Wax lips

Chemistry sets in basement with glass test tubes and hazardous chemicals.

Constantly adjusting the color on the tv to minimize orange or other off color faces.

Hops

No, not beer. The school dances.

you can still buy paper folding maps, but they are not as ubiquitous as they used to be.

Lars,

You can buy them, but kids would be baffled on how to use them to navigate the world without Siri’s voice telling them which lane to be in and when to turn.

Cloth diapers pinned on with a big safety pin. Diaper pails.

Evidently, they might have trouble folding maps as well.

Ice delivery. The truck comes down the street and on a hot day the driver lets the children grab pieces of ice to suck.

Rag man comes, usually on a truck, shouting to ladies, bring out your rags (don't remember the words)

Scissors sharpener man with his cart (there is still someone here! -- every few YEARS)

burning autumn leaves in the street

Planning ahead with the Operator to make a long distance call

Coal furnace. Father goes down to the basement to stoke the FURNACE when we've all been out the whole day.

Grandma's old oak crank up wall hung telephone on a party line still in use until at least the early 1960's.

DSII & I were having a text conversation about various things including dogs. I used the word 'bowser' & he texted back, 'Mom, I don't know what a bowser is.' He's a smart kid w/ a couple of degrees, does creative writing so he's literate & fairly well read for a youngster...

Guess he was telling me, 'Mom, you're getting oooollllldddd!

Bleusblue2-In my area the ragman just yelled, "Rags.....Rags...."as the beat up truck slowly went down the street. Then there was the Fuller brush man, and the garbage men who would go around into backyards, step on the ground level garbage container, remove the inner pail, hoist it up, carry to the truck, and return into into the ground.

That link above to the Ellen show was hilarious!

Bronzed baby shoes....common in the 50's. Usually with a picture frame, book ends or other item. Thought they were cool when I was a kid yet never did it with my three children's shoes in the 70's. Guess the trend had faded.

Indigo, I had a row house with a sunken garbage can. Bad news for us, good news for raccoons! Even dirty diapers in the mix didn’t deter them. All us 11 homeowners kept our trash in the alley garage until trash day! THEN we dropped it into our sunken cans for the garbage man.

That row house also had a milk door. It was painted shut on the inside, but the outside was handy for holding my gardening gloves, weeder, and trowel.

Waiting for the phone rates to go down to call someone long distance.

When our son was 3 or 4 and we were teaching him his phone number, we made sure to include the 1 at the beginning, because you needed to include it then. When he was giving it to someone, he would say “1”, and wait for them to write it down. They didn’t, because it was understood. He’d insist on “1” before he would continue with the phone number.

no masks

Someone upstream mentioned chalkboard erasers. Sound of fingernails being dragged across chalk board. There always seemed to be one kid in class that would do that.

Thomas Guides. Had one in every vehicle.

DH wanted to add savings bank book...he grew up in NYC and remembers the guys with horse-drawn wagons selling fruits and vegetables.

Shorthand.

Alleyways behind your house. We had a simple two-track alley that was used for garbage collection and service people to use. We kids used them as shortcuts to out friend's houses. Often there were sheds facing the alley. One neighbor had a huge vegetable garden that edged along the alley. All the veggies within arms length went missing.

Eventually the alleys were no longer used and one person's backyard adjoined their neighbor's in the back.

Clocks on the wall -- analog, not digital. Thermometers hung outside the window so you can see what the temperature is. Hard copy calendars to note future appointments. Cameras that only take pictures, no other function. Things kids today (and me too, now) use cellphones for (well, mostly...!)

Having to pass a Civics test in the 8th grade to move on to high school.

Mandatory homemaking for girls and shop class for boys in 7th and 8th grade.

Dress codes - Boys had to have their shirt tucked in and wear a belt. Girls had to wear skirts or dresses, even on cold winter days. No tee shirts.

Mimeograph in the school office for making copies.

In kindergarten the milk lady would come by with a little red wagon with individual cartons of milk and graham crackers. Kindergarten was only 3 hours but snacks and rest/nap time on floor mats were the norm. During rest period the teacher would either play records or read stories.

Lunch ladies cooked the cafeteria food onsite and a lot of it was really good.

Room mothers would bring home made goodies for celebrations and holidays.

Wild child, in my elementary school, every classroom k-6, 2 classrooms per grade, had their daily milk person. In k-2, 2 kids. We'd go down to the kitchen, load the radio flyer with milk cartons, bring it back, roll it among the desks so everyone got their milk, and took the empty wagon back to the kitchen. Very exciting to be in the hall and, ooh, the little kitchen, with no adults around! We didn't have a cafeteria, kids who ate at school bright their own.

We had lots of jobs at school. Cleaning the blackboard at the end of the day and clapping out the erasers, washing the blackboard on Friday with a bucket of water and a rag, putting our chairs up on our desks at the end of the day so the janitor could sweep (but we also could not leave any pencils, tissues, paper scraps, nothing, on the floor). Before long weekends or vacations we moved all the furniture to the edges so the floor could be properly washed and waxed. The older kids were assigned to raise and lower the flag outside the school.

But, teachers ate their lunch in the classrooms with the dozen or so kids who stayed.

We had two recesses a day, plus an hour for lunch, in a 6-hour day. Starting in 4th grade we got one recess plus lunch. And yet, our generation created the internet and electric cars, so we used all that free time developing our creativity!

The six-hour work day. This was an option up to 1945-46, and it was abolished over the wishes of most of the workers -- two-thirds at General Mills (for example), and especially female employees. This was when nations began to depend on consumer buying to float their economies. Mass advertising taught people to sacrifice leisure time, working longer hours to afford to buy nonessential 'stuff' that had to be replaced by the 'newest stuff'. Until then, only the upper classes were driven to compete with 'The Joneses'.

(I never knew about this turning point before yesterday, reading an essay on BBC America, taken from MIT. I've always wondered how we got into this rat race to consume landfill.)

Been watching some old TV, and a couple things have come up that made me think of this thread.

Phones- when they were attached to the house and you had to pay local bills and extra for long distance charges. Physical phone booths being commonly found everywhere and used pocket change for a call.

Game show prizes, people got stuff from blenders to fur coats, cars to tea services, and more random stuff- and people were thrilled about it no matter what the prize was.

Intersting stuff, Chisue! Thanks for posting. I hope the pendulum is turning back the other way--many 30-somethings are eschewing "stuff" these days.

Beesneeds, not only were phones hardwired, but you didn't own the phone. It was leased from the phone company. THE phone company, there was only one. And if you weren't home to answer it, you were out of luck. You'd never even know someone tried to call. And kids raced to answer the phone! My kids never answer the phone. Their own phones that are in their pockets.

Oh my bpath, now that you mention it... I remember mom getting mad as hell once when we were kids because someone broke the phone and she had to go to the office downtown to get the replacement. I was too little to remember who broke it. But I remember going to the phone company office with her to get the new one- it was an interesting building of the time. She probably got mad at all of us at some time or another for long distance once we were all older, lol.

And leasing... leasing cable boxes, and by golly if every cable and remote battery wasn't packed in there, there would be fines to pay, and it was dropped off in person.

an oral thermometer

encyclopedia

plat books

Pogo stick, Hula Hoop; Cat’s Cradle string game; Hop Scotch; skorts (pleated ultra mini skirt with attached bloomer panties); crinolines to “pouf out” a droopy skirt or dress); sparkly little girls’ plastic high heel shoes; “Tiger in the Tank” furry tails (always attached to your car’s radio antenna; large piece of formal-looking furniture housing your radio and record player with storage for records; washing machine with a wringer; hand crank meat grinder and a similar machine to peel apples (for Mom to make her own apple sauce); little girls’ patent leather shoes with ankle straps; saddle shoes (only for teenage girls); coupons in cereal boxes to redeem for dolls and stuffed animals; Tea bag boxes with animal, butterfly and bird cards (good for exchange); baseball card collections. No doubt some of these things are still around but I have happy memories of these things dating to the 1950’s and 60’s. Still remember my mother applying a thick coating of strong-smelling wax to strip her hair legs (yuck and ouch). Long distance phone calls were horrendously expensive (first 3 minutes was all my parents would permit for calls and after that the phone call was terminated. Next call would be many months later. Most news was shared on a flimsy airmail piece of stationary (cheapest way to mail a letter).

A juke box -- some with selection boxes at your table at the teen hangout.

Knob on your steering wheel. (Something we've concluded on the KT were necessary only along with bench seating, so your boyfriend could still steer while he had his arm around you.)

Trading cards. Marbles.

I still have a mercury-filled oral thermometer. Did you every play with the mercury from a broken one? I did -- which is *why* they've been banned!

Glass drinking straws with a bend in them. Autoclaves for *reusable* medical instruments.

Wood venetian blinds.

Whirlagig clothes dryers.

Autoclaves are still in use in most hospitals. We had an asbestos glove for removing items from it!

I still have a Mercury thermometer. I like it because the batteries never die! And yes, we played with the mercury back in the day. Who knew!

A science teacher that allowed us to build Estes model rockets and send up mice.

That allowed us to "try" to make nitro while not quite allowing us to succeed.

That allowed us to bring hotdogs, etc. and cook in the back room, likely tricking us into thinking we weren't learning when we were.

That allowed us to hold a water drinking contest... not long before the long bus ride home.

That taught us to make black powder (charcoal, sulfur, saltpeter?) and back in those days a person could buy the ingredients at the local drug store without being put on a terrorist watch list.

That took us to watch/feel the Apollo 16 launch. And helped those of us who couldn't normally afford such a trip earn the money.

Getting by with skipping school the first day of squirrel season.

(And yes, I remember the feeling of mercury rolling around in my hand too.)

A two-seater outhouse

I'll add a few more.

Sears and Roebuck catalog

Using a Sears and Roebuck catalog for toilet paper (in an outhouse).

Corn cobs soaking in kerosene in a can on the back porch used as a fire starter for the kitchen stove.

Kitchen matches (The last kitchen match made in the US was about 2 years ago.)

Blow torch

Bump starting a car engine. (It should have a manual transmission for this. This can be accomplished with a few automatics if the transmission has a rear oil pump. The vehicle has to be pushed fast enough for the oil pump to engage the transmission clutches tight enough to avoid slipping.)

Setting the output of a generator on a car engine by moving a control brush.

Fountain pen.

Dictionary.

Marchant calculators. These could extract square roots. This was accomplished by a series of subtractions while keeping count of the number of subtractions. It took several seconds to do this. It was using an oddity of the number system: Adding a series of odd numbers, starting with 1, returns the square of the number of odd numbers. Isn't that neat.

1 1

3 4 [1+3]

5 9 [4+5]

7 16 [7+9]

9 25 [9+16]

************

By the way, the proper lubricant for a slide rule is talcum powder or body powder. The object is to have the static friction as close as possible to dynamic friction to reduce a stick-slip action. When these two frictions are equal, the slide rule action becomes smooth. Slide rules made of bamboo usually do not require lubricants, and in my day, were more expensive.

Engineering slide-rules have vertical cursor lines on both sides of the rule. These are adjustable and should be checked for alignment before using the slide-rule. These two cursors must be aligned with each other, in other words, when the cursor on one side lies on its index, the other side must also be on its index line. The index line is at ends of the scale. The reason for this is there are calculations that use both sides of the device and will be in error if the two lines on the cursor glasses are not aligned.

A 10 inch slide-rule can only calculate to 3 places. Sometimes, it can do a 4th place if the answer lies between the 1 and 2 on the scale. A 20 inch slide-rule adds one more place. I have seen only one of these in my lifetime. It was a special issued by GM to some of its engineers in the 1950s.

************

Kitchen matches must have had quite a stock made before they stopped making them... they are still commonly found in most grocery and hardware stores, and usually in the seasonal (grilling) section and often the camping goods sections of stores too.

Non mercury oral thermometers are common too- they were out of stock for a long time with the pandemic, but are getting back in stock in the stores now. And even thermometer covers to boot :)

Plat books are still a thing as well. In paper form at the office and a lot of places are putting plat maps on line in addition to keeping the books. Personal ownership isn't a thing, but government offices having them isn't uncommon.

Mercurochrome. We were fascinated. Painting it on our open wounds.

Here’s a memory I had the other day. One block away from school, there was an old fashioned candy store. The old couple and their daughter were behind the display cases. You could go in with a quarter and come out with a small paper bag full of candy. Every kind of loose candy. The little waxy containers that looked like bottles with colored sugar water ( I guess), pixie sticks.... All sorts of penny candy.

That’s all they sold. They had a line of kids each and every day after school.