@lily316

i bought lips and mustaches recently. Grands were here and we did pics!

That’s my oldest son in background. Kids and grands know i’m a bit crazy!

I haven't seen the mustaches in a while but party stores often have the wax lips.

Wow! Who knew wax lips were still a thing. I remember we loved getting them. I also remember little wax coke bottles that I guess had coke in them.

Cake and ice cream at kid's birthday parties. Birthday cakes have gotten more elaborate but you seldom, if ever, see ice cream served with them.

That leads to room mothers in elementary school celebrating holidays and special days providing home made goodies. Now everything has to be commercially made, wrapped, peanut free etc.

Using a pencil to rewind and salvage a tape cassette that had come unwound in the player.

The milkman.

Not sure about wax lips but a lot of old fashioned candy is sold by Cracker Barrel.

Calling into the local radio station to request a song to be played.

Dixie ice cream cups with movie stars' pictures inside the lids.

Rewinding VHS tapes

Not being able to dance too hard to the music as the bouncing would cause the needle to skip on the record.

Teleporting! I used to fall asleep on the couch and wake up the next morning in my bed. Never happens to me anymore!

The seltzer delivery man, the knife sharpener and fruit man coming down the street by horse drawn wagon; the "Dugan the baker" shouts (local to NY brand-great cupcakes)

Wow, first I have to say it's completely by accident that I seem to have started a copycat thread.

Anyhow, one thing that doesn't happen anymore is kids watching 16mm films in school. I would have been one of the last generations of that. By the time I was a HS senior, my AP history teacher bemoaned that the county now insisted on sending videotapes instead of reels. That would have been in the mid 90s. I was the "AV kid" who could always get the projector going again LOL. A few years ago I even thought of buying one on ebay for nostalgia's sake but I'm glad I didn't.

I haven't had time to read the whole thread but I am compelled to follow up on something. About low flow toilets. I'm all for conservation and protecting the environment. My electricity is 100% from panels on my roof. BUT...I feel very lucky to have heard a call in radio show sometime in the late 90s/early 2000s period. It might have been Car Talk, which I used to listen to, or some other general purpose show where people called in about home maintenance issues. A plumber called in to say that low flow toilets had been the greatest boon to his drain pipe cleaning business ever. It's quite logical to see why. The drain pipe slope of houses up to the 90s was clearly design for a certain volume of water to move waste and toilet paper along. Cut that volume way down, and it won't. He said - and I remembered it forever because this was a time period I was starting to see the innate duplicitousness of some professions [as an aside, alas, it took me decades to recognize the far more dangerous duplicitousness of some people] - that if you flush a low flow once for every wad of toilet paper, you will never need drain cleaning work. This guy was basically willing to share advice that could reduce his new found cash cow! So, sorry, call me a wasteful evil American, but that's what I do! I live in an area with plenty of water, so I don't feel bad about doing this at all. Because guess what I have an older house, and I've never needed the drains cleaned or fixed for over 15 years. And I know a LOT of people with older houses who have, including on my own street.

Going out to the grocery or other stores in the morning or afternoon and seeing a lot of women shopping with their hair in curlers sometimes covered by a babushka - remember them? How about the plastic rain hats that tied under your chin , with accordion-folds which you would snap fold after drying and replace back into the little tiny sleeve with advertising on it from local places which gave them out.

Well, indigo, I saw those plastic scarves on my mother until she was no longer able to go to the salon. (Her stylist was so sweet, came to the house a time or two after work to do her hair. Eventually the caregivers did it.)

marilyn_c - No my grandmother wouldn't have been caught dead looking like that. She was an adult by the start of WWII. She was thin, had a nice figure and wore fashionable clothes her entire life. I remember being fascinated by her pretty, dainty high heals.

LOL Marilyn, a few years ago I "clicked here" to see someone's grandmothers secret homemade cake recipe. It was basically, use melted butter instead of oil in your cake mix. A "grandmother's secret cake recipe" should not involve a cake mix!

I understand, Raye. I grew up in a Quaker community, and all the old ladies looked like those in the picture. They were all older than my mother, who was born in 1904. My mother didn't look like that either, not that she was fashionable to any degree, but the women I remember looked very much like those in the picture. I remember my mother's sister came to visit from North Carolina, and she wore those old lady shoes like two of the women in the picture are wearing. They were black, lace up and had about a two inch heel. This was in the '50's, but she still wore those kind of shoes.

Using the key (fastened to the top of the coffee can) to wind around a strip of metal to open the coffee can. And my aunts saved those skinny metal strips, covered them with paper, and used them as hair curlers.

Bookbags and pencil cases in grade school.

Home perms

Poodle skirts

Newspapers delivered in the morning and afternoon (I hope the day doesn't come when we add

printed newspapers to this list).

Pinsetters at the bowling alley - duck pins, candlestick pins

Putting a playing card onto your bike with a clothespin so that it 'clipped' as you rode

Drive-ins

American Bandstand

Televisions stations that 'went off the air' at night - Test Signals

Practicing hiding under your desk at school in case of a nuclear bomb

Mercurochrome and Tincture of Iodine

My Italian great grandmother, born around 1888, looked like those ladies. My grandmother, born in 1922, her daughter in law, would often scoff at my footware choices, saying, Those are from Nonna Anna's time. So that tells you all you need to know about where I stand in the fashion world.

“Newspapers delivered in the morning and afternoon (I hope the day doesn't come when we add

printed newspapers to this list).”

The day is not far away I’m afraid. We are down to having printed newspapers delivered 2 days a week. Wednesday and Sunday mornings. Tampa FL

Maddielee - that is so sad and Tampa is a good size city. We still get the Philadelphia Inquirer and our County newspaper delivered every day and I read the online versions of NYT and WSJ.

a full night's sleep!

Children still use book bags. They are called back packs. And pencil cases are used around here.

I had one grandmother who dressed similar to the ones in the photo posted by marilyn_c and another who fit the description given by Raye Smith.

Really today is no different. Some grandma's wear fashionable clothing, some wear loose print tops with elastic waisted polyester pants and some live in snug jeans, boots and tees like me. So which grandma will take her place in history as the stereotypical grandma 50 years from now? Marilyn's grandma is what I would say most people envision when the word grandma from the 40s/50s comes up.

Here's one you don't see anymore. Girls dressed for school in what would be considered semi professional office wear today. I walked to school in a pencil skirt with matching sweater, nylons and small heels or flats. With a girdle underneath it all even though I weighed around 100 pounds dripping wet.

Both my grandmothers wore those black lace-up shoes and housedresses with aprons. Their daughters made the jump to shorts and halter tops and short skirts. They're all dead now.

Granny shoes had a surge in popularity in the 60s.

My brother delivered newspapers in our neighborhood for many years, on his bicycle. It was a 7 mile ride for 14 customers...he did it after school in the afternoon. And on Sunday a.m.'s we'd have to stop at the local pharmacy to pick up the NY Sunday papers for some customers. Very little tips involved, but it sure made him fit and strong. I remember one time, someone's 3 large dogs got out of their fenced yard and attacked him, dragged him off the bike and started pulling on his limbs in opposite directions. I was always amazed that that never put him off being a dog lover or afraid of dogs.

I am really enjoying this thread and can relate to almost every post.

To expand just a bit on the afternoon newspaper; I remember getting the afternoon paper delivered and that I would read it as I sprawled out on the floor and opened to the comics page.

I also remember the seltzer delivery ( and the blue and clear bottles). We didn't get seltzer though many others in my apartment building did. I remember the delivery men would carry wooden crates of the glass bottles on their shoulders and sometimes even walked up flights of stairs. We did get soda delivered. I think about it how much of a difference it made when they switched to plastic bottles.

@blubird I remember the Dugan's truck but also that maybe later on it was sold in supermarkets. I can still taste the bran muffins. Never had any as good and have given up trying!

What did you do with delivered seltzer water? I've never heard of such a thing. Was it to drink instead of water, or for making cocktails???

I have no personal familiarity but isn't seltzer water just carbonated water? Sold in various forms in grocery stores for as long as I can remember, different from club soda which has other things in it. Also made at home by many using the SodaStream products.

We buy bubbly water and sometimes have it delivered (in bottles and cans) by Ready Refresh who deliver our bottled spring water. It's very popular throughout Europe too, usually as carbonated spring or mineral water. Perrier, Gerolsteiner, San Pelegrino, Spa , etc.

DH and his brother shared a paper route. My paper boy was Jordy, mornings before school and afternoons after school, before dinner.

I remember boys and girls changing out of school clothes into afterschool clothes. very few wore gym shoes to school, those were for play. Girls wore skirts and dresses, boys wore button-front woven shirts.

Seltzer is very, very popular now, but most people buy it in single serving cans. Now it comes in lots of flavors, but back then it was plain only. There was a company that delivered chips, snacks and soda drinks like the dairies did. I seem to recall my grandpa getting his seltzer bottle charged too.

I still have some of those cans. We ate lots of their pretzels and potato chips.

P.S. They still exist

charleschips.com

I can still get someone to fill my gas and clean my windows at one grocery store gas station here. You pay an extra penny or two per liter but it's worth it to stay in your car. Do people actually "roll down" their windows in their cars, or slam the phone down when they're mad at someone and want to hang up on them when you're mad? Takes all the fun out when you can't do that anymore...

Japanese grocery truck from my childhood in S. California. I don't ever remember actually going to an Asian food store until we moved to NV and then we had to drive all the way to Reno to find one, an hour away. When we lived in San Pedro, there was a big, dark green delivery truck that came with all kinds of Japanese food and my mom bought a lot of stuff from the guy.

Watching the news and not having any idea what that person's political affiliation was. Those were the days....

I have friends who have seltzer delivered. I like my sparkling water with minerals, so I buy cases of that instead.

I used to see a Charles Chips truck on my road, but never saw who they delivered to. I remember thinking that who ever it was must be rich. That was in the mid '60s.

Thinking such niche delivery services are making a comeback,...?

@Olychick Re the seltzer delivery back in the day--- I grew up in Brooklyn in an apartment house. The vast majority of people there ( like probably 98% no joke) were of Eastern European origin- Ashekenazi Jewish. Seltzer was just an ordinary beverage mostly drank straight, the way some people drink soda or pop. (If it was mixed with anything, it was Foxx's Ubet to make an egg cream. Not big cocktail crowd).

One thing that doesn't happen any more is the Eatons Santa Claus parade in Toronto.

I don't see regular bifocals any more...and I don't see people with the coke bottle glasses that were necessary for the elderly after the old cataract surgery. I don't see older women wearing their stocking rolled to their knees...before the invention of knee-hi stockings...DH's grandmother always wore them that way.

We had seltzer delivered too. Yesterday, I was in an antique store, and there were several old seltzer bottles. I picked one up--it weighed a ton. That poor deliveryman! I always wanted a bottle of my own--remember the old slapstick comedians squirting seltzer? Of course, people nowadays have Sodastream instead.

I've always heard "seltzer water" but never saw it in real life, that I was aware of at any rate. Thank ya'll for the education! :-)

Full service department stores with Notions, shoe repair, hat trimming, hair salons, travel and ticket agencies, Post Office, tailoring, camera and film developing, watch and jewelry repair, framing and more than I can recall - and then their own delivery trucks that brought your merchandise to your home - free.

I remember accompanying my Mother to the Hosiery counter at the department store while she selected new stockings. The sales person would place one of the small, flat boxes on the counter and my Mother would carefully place her hand inside the nylons to check the color.

When we shopped at department stores, our parents would leave us to browse the toy dept. while they did other shopping. The candy counter was always a special treat.

pre-pandemic ... when no one complained because one wasn't wearing a haz mat suit and a mask ...

t forgot about the hosiery coming in those flat boxes.

Also though not entirely extinct, remember bringing shoes in to a shoe repair place ( that was a normal storefront in every neighborhood - just like a candy store or dry cleaners) and even getting "lifts" or a full sole.