Shopping on weekends and after work hours.

Not being able to sleep in when I want to.

Time restricted holidays.

Cars that needed to be plugged in when it got ’kind of cold’ outside.

Rabbit ears on the TV.

Horizontal and vertical hold knobs.

Crank windows in cars.

Having to go to the bank to do banking.

White only golf balls.

Pennies.

I don’t miss any of them.

waiting until evening to use the phone because rates were lower then

"Kids who could read a clock"? I don't know any that can't...if they actually see

a clock that is. And, I'm wondering too...what "myth" about stay at home mom's?

Or maybe you aren't serious about your postings? Sorry, maybe I am slow at

getting the joke you meant.

Let's see if these postings bring our "flagger" out with their fun! Sorry, Now I

see that that post has disappeared too. Sigh.

Phone booths

Renting videos and video games

Cassette players in cars - and before that, 8 track tape players in cars - and stores that installed fancy sound systems in cars

Ashtrays & cigarette lighters in cars

Sanitized television - remember when the sound of a toilet flushing on 'All In The Family', and a joke about 'the pill' on the MTM Show were a big deal?

When ’flagger’ meant a person controlling traffic at a road construction site.🤠

No more Highway tollbooths, all easy pass (digital) now. Pretty soon will be no cash.

Walking and biking to school, the park, uptown, or just around the neighborhood at age 7, …without a grownup.

Everyone in the neighborhood let their dogs run loose -- dead dogs by the side of the road was a commonplace.

Kids organizing their own games and activities, outdoors most of the time.

Music in the classroom -- a piano would be wheeled in, and a music teacher would play and teach the class folk songs, campfire songs, holiday songs. A half-hour session every week.

Green stamps

At my grandparent's house: Outhouse, clotheswringer, kerosene stove, milk delivery

Roller skates

Large plastic haircurlers

Boomboxes

Old TV shows

The Good Humor man

No school shootings

polio sugar cubes at school

My mother's home made chocolate layer cake made on birthdays

Measles (maybe coming back)

Not worrying about Covid

Roasts 50 cents a pound

Nickel, my elementary school had a piano in every lower grade classroom. I think all teachers could play, at least something simple. We had songs almost every day about phonics, arithmetic, social studies, weather, and folk songs. And a music teacher came once a week, too. We learned so much through music. It is also a great tool for developing reading skills, and rounds develop listening skills.

School went from 9-3, with an hour for lunch, and a 15-minute mid-morning recess, with milk and a story after recess. Younger kids also had 15-minute recess in the afternoon, older kids no PM recess and ended at 3:20. So really, we were in class about 4 hours a day or less! And, we grew up to develop home computers, the internet, electric cars, pharmaceuticals, etc etc, on what would now be considered insufficient instruction time. Because we played. Made up our games, played with mixed age groups, lots of creativity and, I guess, collaboration (fighting and resolving!)

Indoor voices and behavior versus outdoor voices and behavior.

When background music was soft instrumentals instead of screeching cats.

My classroom experience was similar to bpath's. While there were state standards to be met, teachers were allowed a lot of leeway in how they taught. They brought their own gifts and skills to a classroom and shared them with students. I remember one who sang to us everyday. Another made sure time was made for arts and crafts. No air conditioning so sometimes we sat in the shade of trees outdoors on hot pre summer days.

Swimming in creeks, rivers, lakes, quarries and streams. If there was water there was generally public access. Now there are very few places left for that.

Like others have commented, some of the things others have mentioned are ones I too recall but don't miss at all. Progress is progress. Some things mentioned I know of but had know personal experiences with. Feelings of nostalgia can sometimes cloud objectivity.

I disagree with the criticism of using standardized curricula and test assessments. After so many different techniques have been tried and failed, these are the tools used in many (most?) areas to try to improve educational outcomes of students in low socioeconomic circumstances, in substandard schools and for those who have substandard teachers. A rising tide lifts all boats, as the saying goes.

“At the tone the time will be”

Sting-ray bikes

Mothers Iced Raisin cookies

Getting dressed up to go out to dinner or a show. I miss dressing up, my DH prefers the casual lifestyle.

Brach’s candy bins at thr grocery store.

Only a few years ago - The lack of ”no-seeums”, I have a terrible time with these. Got bit again Sunday.

Going home for lunch in NYC elementary school every day. We walked home and back BY OURSELVES.

Kindergarten was a half-day, as was first grade. We all managed to learn to read anyway.

Our classroom teachers taught us music and art and art history. We had a composer and an artist of the month, and we went on museum and concert trips with our class ON THE SUBWAY. When we were learning about Picasso, our 4th grade teacher took us to someone's Park Avenue apartment (the kind where the elevator opens into your foyer), and we all trouped through this lady's place looking at her Picassos. She had dozens.

Girls and boys had separate gym classes, even through high school, and we girls wore those horrid gym outfits with elastic bottoms that we had to pull up. My mother bought it big, so I wore the same one until junior high. I'm not sure that I miss that part of it.

My sister and I were talking just the other day about how when we were kids, how exciting to be a stewardess! So much more glamorous than the other standard female occupations of teacher, nurse, or secretary. LOL thank goodness some things HAVE changed!

(And yes, we all realize that women's roles change(d) at different paces for different part of the country and different social backgrounds. So if you or your family included a pioneer, that's wonderful -- thank them for all of us today!)

I remember putting your credit card in a metal plate and running the handle across to imprint it on the paper.

Taking shorthand and typing in high-school. I loved the spinner-ball in the electric typewriter. Selectra?

Walking to and from a couple of miles to school, to a one-room schoolhouse. My first 4 years were spent there. Great fun! We'd play out in the snow all afternoon, teacher would call it a snow day. In the fall we'd rake leaves into huge piles and jump in them.

Getting the oil checked when I bought gas

Helping the custodian round up the blackboard brushes so he could vacuum the dust off with a shop vac.

Riding the school bus and being one of the patrols who helped the kids cross the front of the bus safely.

I was going to say 'writing' but I still hand-write lists and my recipes that I keep. :-)

Bomb drills. Cold war era. Replaced now I suppose by active shooter drills.

6 passenger cars that actually fit 6 adults comfortably.

Parking the kids in the toy department while the parents did their shopping.

Wearing your Sunday best to go shopping downtown.

Old, usually, men giving a random kid money for candy. Just because it made the kid happy and not because they were a sickos.

Kids not interrupting adults when they were talking.

Plastic bread bags inside winter boots.

Tire chains.

Garbage men collecting the garbage from the cans at the back porch

Road side picnic tables.

Testing TV tubes at the drug store.

Nuns with steel rulers and they weren't used to measure.

Rifle teams at school

Even though it is simple, I still hate pumping my own gas.

The lengths of the skirts and dresses were always below the knee.

We have a drive-in theater in KY. It's in Paris. Fun to take exchange students to.

The mention of curlers reminded me of those bonnet home hair dryers that came in a case. We had one with flowers on the bonnet, IIRC.

And that just reminded me of fancy swim caps with chin straps 😃

You know, I think I heard it on a Radiolab episode - that no technology ever goes away completely. Many of the things people think are gone for good are still around somewhere in the world. There are still people who make stone tools, for instance.

Things, yes - people, no.

I do remember plenty of loved people that are no longer...

I have to agree about ditching the stay at home mom myth. Even in the rural country area where I lived after the children went to school the mom's found jobs. They tried to find ones that they could make certain the first few years their kids would actually leave home in the morning. Latch key kids even though most did not lock their doors were quite common. Many had been of age to "move to town" to work in various defense industries. Being isolated they welcomed being able to someone other than their immediate family and in farming communities money was always scarce. While many of the women could drive a tractor there was often only one vehicle and that was a truck used by the male members of the household so there was also a lack of driver's licenses. It all depended on where you lived and your social class.

The only thing I miss is Carnation Chocolate dry milk mix. Was too sweet for me but I liked a spoon of it in a cup of tea with hot buttered toast with enough butter or actually margarine that it dripped.

Those little booths in stores where you could get 4 pics for a quarter. Or maybe it was 4 quarters-so long ago I no longer remember.

Much less traffic

My father putting the pennies he had saved for months in little rolls to take to the bank

Twenty cents a gallon gas

ALWAYS wearing a dress or skirt to go into Manhattan--no pants ever. You just didn't wear pants to New York City.

One thing that I have not seen in years is a swarm of birds in the sky where the swarm moves and undulates into patterns across the sky. We used to have such flocks here where I live and it has been almost a decade since I have seen them. We didnt even have flocks of geese honking loudly as they fly over , this year.

And june bugs. Our front porch light used to be surrounded by june bugs in the summertime. It has been years since I saw the last june bug.

And ,also those little pill bugs. They used to get in on the lower level of the house and I would find them along the baseboards. Not seen a one in years.

We had some colonies of wood bees around and I think i saw just one all season. Not that I want wood bees around, but they have a place in this world, too.

When these little creatures disappear, you have to come to the grim reality that things are changing, and it does not bode well. I dont use any poisons or chemicals around the yard.

Frogs are another thing that I dont see anymore. When we were kids we used to play at catching them . I havnt seen one in a very long time.

One more thing that used to be is darkness at night. Of course I live in the suburbs, and not out in the country, so there will be lights. But, the calm dark of the evening has been blasted away with all of these super bright outdoor lights that people are putting up in their back yards and front porches and just about everywhere. These things are super bright and the light pierces the dark for a great distance like a freight train running through it. It used to be maybe a littel 60watt bulb . Now some are lit up like a prison yard. So, the peaceful dark of night is going away and I miss it.

I also remember when there were fabric stores full of good quality natural fiber fabrics .The fabric store has disappeared, for the majority across the nation.

I also no longer carry coins, ever, and rarely have any paper money , either.

All of these things have changed and some are sobering. The worst is the loss of the insects and birds. That bodes badly. These are stark changes and they are hard to not see.

Elevator operators

transistor radios

We still have an outhouse...

When we go to the car shows, the exhaust fumes from the old cars is stunning compared to today's cars.

Beatle cards

Sitting on the large heating grate in our home to warm up. It was about 3' square and in the living room...you couldn't sleep with the doors shut in the winter or you wouldn't have any heat in your room at all.

Cigarette smoke everywhere...stores, restaurants, offices, ugh.

Gas lines

The long paper strip above the chalk board in school showing how to write cursive letters, small and caps. And those pull-down geography maps like a roller shade.

Blocky wooden chairs and desks in school

Swing sets with flat wooden seats

Freezing legs going to school as girls weren't allowed to wear pants. Knee high socks only helped so much.

Hand crank can openers that were attached to the wall

Outdoor cement trash burners. Trash burning day.

Wearing a play outfit made by my mother. People sewed clothing.

Popcorn strung as a garland for a X-mas tree. Later fed to the birds.

I remember missing a lot of school and being absolutely miserable when I or one of my siblings had mumps, measles, chicken pox, german measles, whooping cough.

I'm not sure I understand the stay at home mom thing. There are currently stay at home moms, I know some and they are not myths. I also know a lot of working moms. I know a few folks that are homemakers and don't have kids. And a few that manage to be parents and run businesses from home, so not sure if that counts as stay at home parent or not.

I think the most no longers for me are places that used to be when I was a kid. Like eateries that we would sit up late at night in closed long ago and now are something else. The mall, bookshops, record stores, and arcades where we used to hang out are other now. Buildings demolished and now are something else. Remember when that was X place often comes up when I go back home and get around town.

I think the "stay at home mom" thing is a reaction to those 1960's sitcoms: Father Knows Best, Leave It to Beaver, Hazel, The Brady Bunch, etc. All featuring mothers wearing makeup and pearls to do the vacuuming. None of whom held jobs outside the house. Somewhere along the way, the idea got pushed that "everyone" in the "good old days" lived like that. Nope, of course not. Even those of us who did have stay at home moms, none of them I knew dressed or acted like those TV moms. So (in my opinion), the sometimes somewhat derogatory use of SAHM is a backlash against the untrue idea that the 1950s/60s were a universal golden age.

3-on-the-tree and 4-on-the-floor. I know you can still buy a 5-speed but they seem to be rare in anything but a small sports car. I wanted to teach my geandkids how to drive a stick but couldn't find anything to rent or borrow.

Book covers for school. And sometimes making your own out of paper grocery bags.

Come to my house if you want to see and hear bullfrogs, toads, spring peepers, etc. And just the other day I saw a huge flock of Canadas flying in a near perfect V to the SE, which would carry them toward a major lake nearby.

We get flocks of starlings and pigeons here that fly in large masses like claudia valentine describes, and I think it's ibises I see flying in V formations - we have lots of them here as well as wintering ducks that fly in Vs.

Filling the stoker hopper of a coal fired boiler and cleaning out the klinkers.

Helping teacher by clapping out the erasers after school.

Slide rules.

Mechanical calculators.

Punched cards and keypunch machines.

Venetian blinds with the wide, white slats.

Big Christmas sales the day after Christmas, not before.

The excitement to finally get a car with AC and an FM radio.

Free maps at gas stations.

Saturday morning cartoons.

Record stores selling both a stereo and a monaural version of the same album.

Stores closed on Sundays.

Toys made out of steel with metal lithography.

Mom starching shirts and using blueing, mixing it in water in a separate basin. (Not spray starch/still available/some still do this.)

Vacuum tubes and the tube tester at the drug store.

And for something risqué - the Ridgid Tool Company calendars

garter belts and worse, menstrual belts

birthday cake with wax paper wrapped money-then being told not to break a tooth while eating

on that topic, I guess blowing out birthday candles is a memory as well

hanging out (alone) with the man in the railroad switching station- He was very kind to me, but I don't think that could happen now, sadly

on that topic, Railroad switching stations, where someone would watch the tracks, run down and change the track

Every kid was the channel changer for their parents

Running around after dark plalying Hide & go seek, and other scarier games, and the moms shouting 'Time to come in' at around 9 pm.

Also moms calling 'Time for lunch' and, in my case, 'Lost in Space is on'... so funny now!

Just being outside all day long whenever possible.

Lat, in my neighborhood every mom had their calling method. Bell, horn, and my mom had a whistle. We all knew which sound belong to whose mom.

Empty lots

Running around in other people's yards playing with friends, and almost nobody minded - we used to walk along the seawalls behind everyone's houses too.

Sears catalog

carolb, I live in the Mid Atlantic and we usd to have large flocks of birds that would make their way from the fields in the county and back out to roost near the river. It has been years since I have seen that. It used to be quite a spectacle.

Maybe some parts of the country are different.

We still have a few geese. But we no longer see the big flocks.

I really enjoyed reliving some of these memories of things that used to be.

I remember when school buildings were not air conditioned, not even in places where it gets hot. No one ever told us not to go outside becasue it is too hot, or too cold.

Claudia, I have a house in Rehoboth Beach Delaware. We are over-run with huge flocks of birds. The Canada geese are here now (pooping everywhere!) the snow geese show up every year, huge flocks of black birds come rolling through - we have birds everywhere. Maybe all of yours moved here? 😆

Rotary phones and the noises they made always remind me of when I was a kid, as does picking up the phone to make a call only to find a neighbor already on it. Party lines were a source of annoyance and amusement.

Party lines

Yard Darts

Playing Ding Dong Ditch

Paying the paper boy

Finding the produce man to weigh and mark your bananas in the supermarket

Pay Phones

Getting your film developed at parking photo booths

CB radios in cars

Department store toilet stalls with coin slots Pay to enter

Pull tabs that pulled right off of cans

Jiffy Pop

Women shopping with curlers in their hair

Ash trays in cars, even in the backseat doors

Being sent to the corner in school

Drinking from the hose

TVs going off the air late at night

Girls taking steno class in high school

Metal fillings

Flash cubes on cameras, then seeing the floating blue dot

Buying film for the camera

Watching Live TV and waiting for a commercial in order to run to the bathroom, get a snack, or change into pjs

Colored tissues or toilet paper

Talking to friends last night....floppy disks, acoustic couplers, IBM PCs, the old drum-style fax machines, mag cards, punch cards, dictation belts, carbon paper, typed stencils....

I remember being able to go to the grocery store and they actually had what you needed and didn't have big gaping holes of emptiness in their shelves...HAHAHA!

Same here and adding gas station attendants and able to work on your car there. Oh, and the milkman delivering your milk to a crate on your porch or step.

common courtesy

public telephone booths

White wall tires

Saddle shoes

Hoppity Hops

Adams Fruit Gum

Oleo

Pepsi Light

New Coke

TV antennas

Transistor radios

Reel to Reel movies in class and boys in the AV club to help with the projectors

Penny loafers

Encyclopedias

Department store clerks offering gift boxes when Christmas shopping They also had a gift wrapping counter

Shag carpet

Mosquito zappers

Bathing caps, having free run of the town at age seven, walking to and from school four times a day for noon meal totaling over three miles at age 6, handwritten letters from family every week, wringer wash machines, roller skates with a key, milkman, Laundryman, penny candy, stores closing at 5 except on Friday and closed all Sunday, crinoline slips, book covers, calling when the telephone rates were cheaper.

wishiwereintheup...all my brother wanted for Christmas was the latest Ridge Tool Calendar! They gals were dressed quite nice in them....even I thought they were okay! LOL

How about teacher passing out handouts freshly made on a Ditto machine. We all loved the aroma of the purple ink.