I grew up in a poor family, in rural Indiana. My grandparents didn't have indoor plumbing. But when you're a kid, I it's an adventure to go out of the screen door with lightening bugs flashing and a flashlight to go do "your business". When I was 10 or so I went out in the dark but was too scared to find the faith to put my rear end on the wooden toilet stool so I shined the light down into the abyss and lost the thing. My Grandfather brought down the Grapes of Wrath the next morning onto me. I have no idea how many paychecks that torch cost him...

I remember most of them. Some of them I didn't experience although I'm sure they were around: we never bought soda from a machine, didn't like bubblegum, and I've no idea what McDonalds cost when I was a kid because grown ups paid for everything. I do remember their sign saying "Over xx million sold". The lowest gas price ever saw was 15 cents/gallon -- rival stations were having a gas war.

I remember everything but the gas price. I never had a car until I was in my mid twenties.

I remember them all as well as little wax bottles with flavored sugar water.

tj

Remember all.

Wacky Plaques were in my area, not Packs. Small cardboard signs with wisdom like

"Be True to Your Teeth and They Won't Be False to You"

or

"Your Teeth Are Like Stars, They Come Out At Night"

"Your Good Ideas Are Like Diamonds. Very, Very Rare"

I vividly remember every single one and the wax bottles with sugar water. They were the good old days and I really think so.

I remember them all....except gas was even cheaper as I recall...Dad carping when it hit 21 cents/gallon...and it was cheap enough that the 9/10ths of a cent made a difference...at $4.50, not so much.

Our prefix was AMhearst. And my best friend and I shared a party line so we were able to "conference in" other girlfriends long before there was such a thing as a conference call.

And while baseball cards were a thing, our thing was Beatle cards.

33 1/3, 45s and we had 78s too.

All of them, more or less. My mothers washer was auto but my grandmother had a wringer and I would help her with the wash when we visited. It was outside on a covered back porch.

I had my first hamburger from a McDonalds when visiting her too. There must not have been any franchises close to my states quiet area - she was in Los Angeles. I couldn't tell you what it cost, same with the gas. I began driving in 1965 and must have bought gas. My mother felt generous enough loaning her car, I'm not sure she would have filled it for me ;)

I remember all of them!!! Yikes!

I don't remember the cost of things and I don't remember newsreels or jukeboxes beside tables. When you're parents are raising 6 kids in the 60's there wasn't money for entertainment or going out and I don't think it was as common as it might be today. I do remember the party line and when my sister stuck her finger into the wringer of the wringer washer my mom picked up and yelled at whoever was on it to get off so she could call our neighbour who was a nurse.

The prefix for our phone number was CRestwood when I was young and then when we moved it became AMherst.

Almost all

ETA: gas was $0.68 when I started driving

seagrass_gw Cape Cod I remember the hobos waving to us kids from the tops of the boxcars pulled by steam locomotives. Diesel trains were taking over but a few steam trains were still in service and it was exciting to see them.

I was in junior high when I had my first McDonald's burger on a shopping trip with a classmate's family and I was not impressed.

I remember staying in mountain cabin "resorts" where food was kept chilled in a wooden icebox with a block of ice.

Also remember 78 rpm records.

We had some 78s in the house, but they were ”old-fashioned” music and opera, whereas my Broadway musicals and children’s pops records were all on 33s. The pop music was on 45s, and we had the plastic insert or the alternative adapter to play them on the big cabinet stereo.

Which reminds me, who remembers when your media was a piece of furniture?

Remember 15. Grew up in Queens, NY, a sort of Archie Bunker type neighborhood, mostly Irish, Italian. No shopping centers, just a few small stores. Had to take City buses to get most things.

There was a White Castle hamburger place near my high school. No McDonald's.

My father died when I was 6 and my mother never drove, so I have no idea what gas cost. I don't remember a ringer washing machine. I do remember she hung clothes outside on a clothesline or in the basement in winter.

No party line phone. Everything else, I remember.

Jane

Got married in 1968. In-laws gave us $500 to do with as we pleased. So we bought our first color TV which was in a huge but lovely cabinet (as big as a sideboard). Had it for many years -- it had a switch on the back that could control whether it was on or off (beside the regular control on the front). Made sure our kids did not know about that, so I could have the TV non-functioning when I deemed that they had watched too long. They always wondered why it didn't work all the time! LOL.

As a teen, I had 78s, 45s, and 33s. In fact, they are somewhere in this house. My mother had a wringer washer when I was very little but then got an automatic. She never had a dryer or a dishwasher. She hung all her clothes outside and I still do although I've always had a dryer. We had the worst black and white TV in the universe, a Sylvania because I liked its "Early American" cabinet. As if there were TVs back then. It always broke down. But my mother had a massive piece of furniture that took up half her living room and had the record player, record holder, and radio. I left it at the house when we moved her out. I do remember gas wars when it was 25 cents and we drove a VW Beetle so we'd get two dollars worth. My dad was the manager of the phone company, so we had a private line and three phones. The number was 808. But my friend had a party line and we listened to people's conversations.

I remember 9 but the others are all US things we never had. I was ten when we got our first TV. Our neighbours had one but they had no fridge. So I went to their house to watch T V and they kept stuff in our fridge. I used to see the adverts in the back of National Geographic, which my father brought home from work, and be amazed at the size of the cars, TVs, fridges etc in the US.

Just 7 but a few of those only because other people talked of them or was at a 'retro' place not an original.....I don't know about burgers buy back in the day a McDonald's shake was $.25 and they were the best on the planet.

I remember all of them. And how about those photo booths with a little seat and a curtain where you got 4 pictures?

And I remember the old fashioned cash registers where you had to punch in the numbers separately. I had a toy cash register as a kid.

Another favorite was, I always wanted to be a librarian so I could use the little date stamp and the stamp pad...I had those as toys too .

DH says he remembers shopping at the local mart where the guy added up the items in pencil on the brown paper bag, and if he made a mistake in addition, it was always in his favor!

I remember loving it when Dad got rye bread at the bakery because they'd run it through the slicing machine which I found fascinating.

And I remember the market with the big butcher shop in the back where he would freshly grind the beef so you could choose how lean you wanted it...his white apron always mottled with stains.

The photo booths still exist. Well they do here, anyway. Except that as well as getting physical photos the images are also uploaded to the cloud and you get a code so you can access them for any documents you need in future meaning you can apply online for passports, driving licences, etc.

For my first passport I went to an actual photographer's studio. Even the booths were not around where I lived.

I remember all of them, except the fries were 12 cents.

The jingle went "47 cents for a three course meal at McDonald's, the drive-in with the golden arches." Burger - .15; shake - .25; fries - .12

All of them for me plus many more I could tell like ice boxes. ragman, iceman, tv, etc.

I remember all of those things.

I'm also thinking about how much more personal contact we had with one another in those days. We walked to and from grammar school, and home for lunch. We walked to a corner store. We spoke to a butcher inside a privately owned grocery store (an IGA). A traveling salesman (Fuller Brush, etc.) came to the door, as did the milkman. (All over since women joined the workforce and there's no one home.)

I think of the energy expended on 'wash day' -- a whole day of laundry with a little assistance from an agitator washing machine, but soaking in laundry tubs, bleaching, bluing, wringing, lugging baskets of wet laundry up from a basement to pin onto a whirlygig clothesline.

Telephone manners, speaking to the operator, placing a call, waiting for a trunk line, excusing yourself for interrupting the other person on your 2-party line -- or sometimes being invited to join in the conversation!

We have so many labor saving inventions. Why don't we use some of the free time to talk to one another?

Like Annie, I thought stamping papers would be a dream job, only my model was to work behind the window at the post office, where there were whole racks of stamps to employ, for destinations all over the world.

McDonalds' first burger shop was in the small city next to where I grew up. Great location near a township high school with 4000 teen appetites. Birthplace of Fast Food. (Food?)

I don't think Canada ever had green stamps, nor do I remember phone numbers with a word prefix, but I remember the rest. We had a party line when I was 14/15 years old back in the mid-70's. What a pain in the butt that was, especially for my dad who owned his business and the 3 other housewives who shared our line were ALWAYS on the phone, which took business away from my dad when his customers couldn't get through. They quickly learned to not hog the phone lines... LOL I remember the milkman and the man who delivered fresh bread as well. I have a wringer wash machine! I don't use it, but I have one. I don't know about the price of McDonalds burgers as I never had one until I was about 20 years old, if not older. I rarely if ever ate fast food up until I started back to work after having all my kids. I don't recall newsreels before the movie, I'm assuming at a movie theater??

Yes Deb at the theater....and in even older days they would run serials. I never saw them in the movies, but I did on early TV.

Deb - I'm probably older than you because in BC on the coast, we definitely had phone numbers with word prefixes. Or we could have just been slow in upgrading. We moved in 1961 and that's when we got the AMherst prefix, I don't remember when the number technically became known as 26-.

I also remember that you could tell where someone lived in the city by the prefix of the number. If you moved you got a new number. Now you just take the number with you if you have a landline.

I remember all 18, but we never had word prefixes to phone numbers here. My Mom saved Top Value stamps from the Kroger supermarket. I can remember some things she got with them in the 1960s. I don't think Green stamps were ever popular in our area.

My mother nearly had her arm broken by the heavy wringer on her washer; it came loose, swung around and hit her forearm. You had to be careful feeding clothes into the wringer, because it could grab your fingers and pull your arm in too. I was so glad to see the end of those machines.

Also, I remember when gas was much cheaper than 35 cents a gallon...I'm really old.

There's a photo booth at our local mall. I thought how quaint when people are taking selfies now all the time. When we were married in our early 20's (how crazy that now seems!!), we were poor. Although he just graduated from Penn State and I had 3 and 1/2 years of college, his salary was under 5K a year. I had a baby and stayed at home. Green stamps were my passion since we did not have discretionary money to spend on frivolous stuff. We never asked either set of parents for one dime and never went into debt. So I dutifully collected the stamps, put them in the books, and took a bus with my baby to the nearest store to buy a fun thing for the house. I perused all the items for an hour before purchasing and carrying home my treasure. Now I can buy what I want when I want it but it's not nearly as satisfying as my green stamp goodies.

I remember all 18.

Phone was a brown wooden box on the wall with mouthpiece like a tulip sticking out the front, receiver a tube hanging on a spring-loaded metal fork on the side, which raised to turn the battery-powered phone on when one lifted the receiver. You knew the combination of short and long rings to call everyone on your line and turned the ringer crank to make the short and long rings to call the phones on your line: ours was three shorts and a long.

To call someone on another line, push a black pushbutton on left side while turning the ringer crank to call central to have her push one end of a short wire with a plug on each end into your line and the other end into a line leading to half a dozen or ten or so other subscribers and ring the long and short signals of the folks you wanted to talk to.

ole joyful

I remember them all. That was a ridiculously easy quiz.

I refuse to consider any other reason why I can remember them. 😳

All of them.

Saturday Kiddie Matinee at the local movie theater. Two movies, a newsreel a few cartoons and a stage show where there would be a contests and/or a raffle. Whole afternoon of fun for 25 cents and a dime for a soda and popcorn or candy.

Along with green stamps there were Blue Chip stamps.

When I was a teen in high school, I spent my summers working for Sperry & Hutchinson, the S&H people only in a different division from the green stamps. But I saved and saved the stamps and bought a lava light with it that didn't work right. The bulb was too hot so the "lava" would rise to the top and stay there. :(

All of them but have to admit that at that young age I didn[t pay much attention to the price of gas.

I remember all of them. I don't remember a Fuller Brush man ever calling at our house, but there were other traveling salesmen.

I also remember when 'self-serve' grocery stores came into being. What a novel concept! To be able to pick out your own items rather than standing at the counter and having the grocer get them for you.

And "Oleo-margarine" was white and came with a small capsule of food coloring of some sort that you mixed into it to make it look like butter.

In the fall, raking the leaves into huge piles and jumping into them. Eventually burning them and the smell of smoke from burning leaves on crisp fall air. . . . . . sheer heaven!

And food rationing. . . . . . . . .

I'm sure I could come up with a lot more it I put my mind to it.

Rusty

Rusty, I grew up in Illinois and vacationing in Wisconsin. When we crossed the state line, there would be huge signs announcing ”OLEO!”, since it couldn’t be purchased in ”America’s Dairyland”.

Our milk man was Emil, he came while we were having breakfast. and Tony was the mailman, he came to the mailbox which was next to our breakfast nook buring lunchtime, when we were home from school for lunch.

I remember Mom leaving us in the car while she ran in to the small grocery for one or two items, but we went in with her to the other store for the grocery shopping.

A big treat was going to the meat market. The front doors were on the street, but we drove there so we parked in the back and went in the back door, down a ramp, and we could see over the ramp sides to where all the carcasses were being carved up. Nothing else separating us from them! There was sawdust on the floor, the men in their not-so-white coats would wave. Once in the storefront, we would get a slice of bologne/baloney, rolled up, while Mom selected our meat from the shopkeeper. Nowadays I don’t eat baloney often, but rolled up is still my favorite way to eat it!

A trip down memory lane. In ottawa, canada ph no started with sherwood. Still remember the entire sequence, but dont remember any other ph numbers we had since. Except my current cell!

May i ask what are green stamps! Oh and does anyone remember putting things on Lay away? So much better than going into debt!

I remember all, although I don't know if I actually ever saw a pre-movie newsreel - I know that I did see pre-movie cartoons, though!

TopValue "yellow" stamps were in my area along with S&H stamps.

I remember $.19/gallon gas, but think that was during a price war - when I was in high school. Actually, remember gas price wars? LOL!

But I also remember being paid $0.75/hr for my first job at the movie theater...

It wasn't until I watched "Seaside Hotel" that I finally understood where the term "ring off" your phone call came from. By my era, the party line phone at my aunt's farm was disconnected by clicking the button twice, IIRC.

Likestonehomes, green stamps (and the others mentioned) were given at the checkout counter when you bought something - a sort of reward for shopping at that store. When you collected enough of them, they could be redeemed for all sorts of thing. Same concept as credit card points today!

I also remember collecting Betty Crocker coupons for the same reason - my sister got her first set of silverware that way.

I still have a glass plate that my grandmother won at the movies back in the 1920s or 30s.

raee_gw zone 5b-6a Ohio My Mom got some good things with those Top Value stamps, including a beautiful lamp.

The only green stamps I remember was S&H Green Stamps. They worked the same as Top Value Stamps, but I don't know how you redeemed them. Top Value had books that you glued stamps into, and a catalog showing how many books of stamps were required for different items. When you saved enough books to get the item of your choice, you would then go to the Top Value store, redeem your stamps and receive your item.

There’s a Brady Bunch episode where the kids combine their stamps, but can’t agree on the prize. The boys want a boat, the girls want a sewing machine. The deciding factor is the winner of a House of Cards contest. The boys win and come home with…SPOILER ALERT…a color television in a nice console cabinet for the whole family.

And my parents got a floor waxer.

I don't remember penny candy, the Fuller Brush man, or 15-cent McDonald hamburgers – we did not have McDonald's where I grew up (We had Dairy Queen), and I still have never been to one and have never had any of their food. I remember 19¢ hamburgers at Jack-in-the-Box when I moved to Houston, but before that, I did not pay attention to the cost of food.

I do remember 17.9-cent gasoline (19¢ was the normal price) and the rest. It's much harder to remember 35¢ gas, since that was much later. We did not have traveling salesmen in the rural area where I grew up, and we did not have milk delivery, but we did have milk cows.

We still have a diner here in Los Angeles that has a tableside jukebox, with 45s from the early 1960s.

My grandmother made a point to shop only on double stamp days for green stamps.

Has anyone remembered the dishes you got with oatmeal, etc? I also remember the beautiful glass items, in vibrant colors, you got with gasoline purchases.

Phyllis, I don't remember dishes with oatmeal, but I still have and use the "Swedish Modern" glasses that my mother collected from Duz detergent! I've seen very few sets of glassware that I like as much.

I remember having several "Dolls of the World" that came from one of the gasoline chains - Humble or Sohio maybe.

Do you remember toasters, etc you got at the bank for opening an account? And the encyclopedia door to door salesmen (World Book for us)? And Electro-lux too?

I still have a set of 8 blue goblets I got for opening an account at the Savings and Loan. They are perfect when we make pudding, mousse, sundaes. Remember Savings and Loans?

Phyllis Leritz I do remember the dishes that were in oatmeal. I have a Fire King cereal bowl like the ones my Mom got in oatmeal. She had a whole set of beautiful, emerald green glassware from a gas station. Her future son-in-law worked there and brought it to her, a few pieces at a time. She also got towels and wash cloths in detergent boxes.

I remember them all. I still have my 33 1/3, 45s and a number of 78s.

I think it was Dolly Parton and Porter Waggoner who did ads for the towels in boxes of laundry detergent. What was the name of that detergent? i could never figure out how they fit a whole bath towel in there!