Random childhood memories

The incident when I performed a scene from Flashdance outdoors in the Fun Fountain and my uncle’s reaction and my revenge. I’ve posted the story before.

[quote] I’ve posted the story before.

Link please.

I was born in in '72. My grandmother had the exact vacuum you describe. And she had a beautiful set of matching pink furniture she'd bought in 1957 that she didn't allow anyone to sit on.

I had two uncles who were only 15 years older than me, so I spent a lot of time playing with their cast-off 1960s toys. ViewMaster discs with stills from Ray Harryhausen movies, old Peanuts compilation books, and so on.

As a kid in the 70s I remember commercials really stressing the value and economy of their products. That seemed to go out the window in the 80s when people were encouraged to spend as much money as possible

Not "mustard Yellow or brown": Harvest Gold or Burnt Orange

And Avocado

Oh, I was just thinking about my favorite aunt. In the early '60s she'd come over and always had peppermints, lemon drops and butterscotch candy in her purse.

R1’s story from another thread:

This is a dirty deed

I’ve told this before in other threads. I was obsessed with Flashdance when I was 8 or 9. My friends and I would pretend we were in the movie while playing in the fun fountain in my yard. One day my uncle is on the patio watching us. He stands up and boos after my Flashdance performance. I was so mad. Later that day I took a shit in his baseball cap that he left outdoors on the patio.

I was born in 1966. I missed out on all the gorgeous mid-century stuff I assume my older siblings grew up with. By that time I could remember our furniture was early American colonial stuff. Lots of brown and beige, wagon wheels, door knocker drawer pulls, etc. Our "nice" furniture in the living room, which no one ever used and was never sat upon, had a print similar to the linked photo. I thought it was all ugly when I was six, and I still do.

I was born in 1963. I remember watching TV on a black and white TV set.

R10, I was born in 1961 and we also started out with B&W tvs only. I remember a show was about to begin on NBC and the announcer said "Brought to you in living color" with the peacock spreading its tail feathers. I got all excited and thought we would see color but my older brother had to bring me back down to earth by telling me you had to have a color tv in order to watch a show in color. Sad day, indeed.

What’s “fun fountain”, precious? What’s “fun fountain”?

One I've told before. The East 70 drive-in's marquee advertised that they provided In Car Heaters. One week it read:

BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING

IN CAR HEATER

The next week it read:

HOW TO STUFF A WILD BIKINI

IN CAR HEATER

As a kid, formica tabletops with chrome bottoms and vinyl chairs were the popular kitchen table set.

What country did you live in, darlings? I don't recognise any of your dear memories.

I remember visiting my grandfather's house and they had a huge ornate glass and silver ashtray with matching lighter and cigarette box. They had bought it in Spain and it was all silver filigree. All the adults would get a cig out of the box while having martinis. I thought it was terribly glamorous. The women were impeccably coiffed, made up and dressed.

I was a child of the 70s. My grandmom's house had wall to wall carpeting that made me itchy. I have no idea what it was made of, but it felt like laying on an upturned hairbrush. You asked for a random childhood memory, so....

Carpeted bathrooms. What sicko convinced homeowners this was a good idea?

Our living room furniture had plastic slipcovers - this was the late 60's. It was thick and if you fell asleep on the couch, you would sweat like a hog and be stuck to the plastic when you woke up.

The boys on the block playing with those old toys called tops that were wood and you wound with string and threw onto the ground... you watched them spin.

I went to Catholic school, and the nuns had transitioned to "modern" headwear and clothing - a white band with a scarf part on the back to cover their hair and a knee length plain dark dress. One summer we had a trip to the beach and our teacher was Sister Carol, one of the younger nuns - no more than 30 years old. All of our eyes bugged out when she took off her dress and had a red bathing suit underneath. This was about 4th or 5th grade and it was a shock to see that she was also a woman and not just a nun. It's been a million years and I can still see Sr Carol in the bathing suit.

R 14 I remember Formica . My little sister used to say it’s “for mica” - a person named mica,

Very old. I remember my older sister playing a tape for me on our huge tape recorder ( think last picture show)

“You have to listen . There’s this new group called the Beatles . I taped this from my radio ( transistor ). They’re going to be on the Ed Sullivan show”

My dad had a retail clothing store . He raffled off tickets to the concert in dodger stadium

What does 60 possess?

R19 here - This link should show the nun's headgear

Watching "March of the Wooden Soldiers" every Thanksgiving on WPIX in NYC. They still show the movie every year, 40+ years later.

Beating the shit out of the asshole calling me fag

Going to the beach and my dad carrying the big metal cooler, loaded with ice, soda, sandwiches for the day. Plastic coolers and coolers on wheels didn’t come until much later. It was a long walk from the parking lot to the beach.

I also remember getting sunburned and when I would go to bed with a sunburn, the sheets felt scratchy.

I am a child of the Mad Men era and we had these gold leaf glasses. I saw them on a Mad Men episode and it brought back such memories.

R26 we had those too! Not the little caddy though.

Popcorn balls in colored cellophane..blue, red, and yellow. Lime green popsicles from the ice cream truck. White go go boots. Yellow orange work 🥾 boots. Colored chalk on a black blackboard.

Mr. Softee Ice Cream truck.

Sears candy department.

Sears restaurant.

R23 - when I was a kid in the very early 70s we would go to my mom’s great aunts house in Fort Lee NJ for Thanksgiving. Everyone in that family was a football nut, so there were back to back games on the big wooden console (color - second cousin ran a bank) TV all goddamn day long.

I always hated football so each year I’d decamp to the semi-finished attic where there was a B&W portable with rabbit ears to try to watch “March of the Wooden Soldiers” — but the reception for WPIX was so shitty it was more like two hours of static as I constantly fiddled with the antenna.

The gold leaf glasses are beautiful. Thanks for reminding me of those, R26.

R9, that fabric is called toile.

I am thinking of papering my guest bathroom in this paper, but in sangria.

Earliest memory is very random but I probably remember because it was kinda traumatic lol. I was about toddler age, and was upstairs in our house. I think my older brother was supposed to be watching me but he was downstairs. I was out in the hall and attempted to come downstairs. I fell all the way down, luckily the stairs had a thick shah carpeting, so it wasn't too rough but I remember landing at the bottom just as my brother comes running in with an "Oh shit I'm in trouble!"Look on his face 😆

At my grade school the "grand finale" of 6th grade (end of grade school for us at the time) was a weekend campout nearby, lots of cool activities, a dance Saturday night, 6th grade campout was the stuff of lore from older classmates & siblings. Unfortunately, my 6th grade class was so rambunctious and unruly the entire school year, and had racked up a record number of detentions (Several were mine) and suspensions for a single class in a school year, that camp was canceled in lieu of a lame "day camp" that was hosted by our D.A.R.E. officer.

[quote] thick shah carpeting

Was it Persian?

What’s “ D.A.R.E.”, precious? What’s “ D.A.R.E.”?

[quote]Was it Persian?

Well done, r36, I bow to your wit!

In the 1970's when ALL gasoline stations were full serve- in fact I never heard of that phrase until they all became self serve- and they would clean your front window and sometimes your back window too.

[quote] would clean your front window and sometimes your back window too.

Is that a euphemism?

What does 1970 possess?

We had little cartons of chocolate milk mid-morning in first grade. It was ice cold and so good. We weren't allowed to make that squeaky sound with our straw when we were down to the last drops of milk. I always made the sound with my straw trying to get every last drop of the delicious chocolate milk and then the nun would come over and slap me. I don't know why I was so belligerent.

Also, we sat on the floor in a circle learning to read in those "See Jane Run" readers and we weren't allowed to use our fingers to point/guide us as we read the sentences. I would use my finger sometimes to point to the words as I read the sentences and this little bitch named Seraphina who always sat next to me for some reason would raise her hand and report me to the nun "he's pointing, he's using his finger" and get me into trouble. Whenever I see Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck's daughter Seraphina I am reminded of that little tattle tale bitch.

I remember the mail being delivered in a blue station wagon in the early 1970's and I have vague memories of the mail being delivered twice a day- a few years ago I asked my father about this and he confirmed it was true. Now in my area they no longer even have Saturday mail- oh well.

Ice cold homemade lemon limeade, playing mother may i and statues. Swimming almost daily.

What does 1970 possess?

1970-ish, went with my dad to car shop. At the Ford dealer he was looking at a station wagon in the showroom. This was when Ford had the "two-way tailgate" that you could open down like a traditional tailgate or with a different latch open it as a door that opened to the side. At that moment the salesman opened the tailgate in the traditional manner. Little me wondered what would happen if the other latch were pulled at the same time. The whole tailgate came off of the car and if it weren't for the salesman's deft catch, that tailgate would have been mighty damaged.

I also pushed every floor button on an elevator upon entry. Numerous times :)

You were an ass, R46. I hope your father didn’t buy the car.

Born in the late 70s. I remember the harvest gold appliances in my grandma’s kitchen, the matching floral wallpaper and her little countertop radio. She had copper jello molds hanging on her kitchen walls. My parents had a station wagon where a backwards-facing third row seat flipped up in the back. We loved sitting in that seat, and waving at the cars behind us. Even in the late 70s, we still had a black and white TV (but a color tv in the living room).

We didnt have cable or a remote until the mid-80s, so I remember my dad asking me to get up and change the channel or move the rabbit ears around on top of the television set.

Our living room had wood paneling, one of those huge hanging rope/macrame/wooden bead things, and a hanging wicker lamp like this one:

Thanks for sharing so many memories. Some of them coincide with mine.

We had a huge color tv/record player/radio console with built-in speakers in the living room while my brother and I had a small B&W set in our bedroom. The telephone was in the corner on the stainless steel kitchen counter bit a 20-foot cord. My dad would get mad if he came into the kitchen and had to straddle the cord.

Itchy rug? My great grandmother had a mohair area rug her living room. Us kids weren’t allowed on her furniture, so we had to sit on that itchy rug. My mom’s stepmother used to leave a butter dish on the table in her kitchen. One day we were visiting her and I went into the kitchen and saw her chihuahua licking the butter. I was totally skeeved out.

The stairs to our basement were covered with linoleum and had metal edges. One day my brother was chasing me and I fell *up* the stairs and lacerated my forehead on the metal edge. Trip to the hospital and six stitches later, I was afraid my dad would spank me. One night our family was watching TV and I was seated next to a window. I was absentmindedly picking at the putty when *boom* the glass fell into the room and shattered on the floor. I started crying and Mom yelled at Dad about how she had asked him over and over to reglaze the windows.

Going with my mother to the Green Stamps store in Mamaroneck New York ca. 1970 to buy a record player.

Going with my parents to see the premiere of Superman in December 1978 and going to a variety store ( remember those before CVS sprouted like weeds) and getting a movie theater sized chocolate bar ( really large) like a Nestles Crunch Bar and sneaking it into the movie which all three of us enjoyed. We all enjoyed the movie not the chocolate bar because I ate it ALL myself. I enjoyed both the chocolate bar and the movie.

Everyday at elementary school we had to stand up and pledge allegience -

I pledge allegience to the flag of the United States Of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God with liberty and justice for all.

I might be leaving some of it out. This is ca. 1975 so I can't be expected to still remember all of the words.

R52. Stand up and place your right hand over your heart.

My non-American friends are completely weirded out about this practice in American public schools. They still do it today.

The day I almost set fire our house. I was about 10-11 and was looking for my shoes under my parents bed. I told my mother it was too dark to see under the bed and she gave me a book of matches(!?). I lit one and laid down on the floor - a bunch of threads were unraveled from the box spring and my 10-11 year old self decided to put the match to one. The thread burned and disintegrated. Not finding my shoes, I went to search downstairs. Minutes later, my mother starts screaming from the 2nd floor "fire!!! get some water!!". The bed was on fire! I flew upstairs with a pot of water and my mother was able to stop the fire. That thread I touched was not a good idea. The mattress was trashed and the house filled with smoke.

I never confessed that I had accidentally/on purpose set that fire.

R53 From what I’ve read, before WWII American students would hold their right arm out with the hand extended. But as this happened to be the exact same “Heil Hitler” gesture that the Nazis used, this was changed after WWII to the “hand over the heart” gesture.

R 53 — I never heard of that — thanks - I need to google

“And to the Republic for Richard Stands, one nation under God invisible; with liver, tree and just taste for all”

“and lead us not into Penn Station, but deliver us from evil.”

My mother dropping me off in a park before driving to the department store to do some shopping. This was ca. 1971 I was about 5 years old.

Going to the A&P with my mother and she would buy large glass jars of Ann Page Pineapple Preserves and Strawberry Preserves.

This song playing on a cafe jukebox in Alamosa, CO.

Op is full of BS…or can’t fathom that for most folks on DL these aren’t random memories, but rather part of the very fiber of their lives.

Lame EST attempt 2/10

My parents finally got a CD player around 1989-1990ish. I remember the CDs in the longbox packages.

R61 What is EST?

One summer day my mother took us to Prospect Park - late 60's, five kids. Somehow my oldest sister (maybe 13 at the time) got separated from the group. Sister was found safe the same day and I don't remember the circumstances of how all this exactly happen as I was very young but I can remember my mothers panic.

Going to the Sears Roebuck in White Plains NY in October 1977 to shop for winter coats. My mother encouraged me to go with them which was her, my father and my brother. They already had some of the Christmas decorations up. I was sitting in the tv section watching Carol Burnett and Friends which was the syndicated version ( older episodes) of The Carol Burnett Show when I hear this woman with a heavy New York accent say- See I told Ya Havee Koman's a FAG!

It was rather shocking to my 12 year old self- she said it in such a nasty tone. I never told anyone about it. By the spring of 1978 I knew I was queer ( not a word a heard of yet but that's how I felt, I HATED extremely strong attraction to boys. My mother did not end up buying our coats at Sears but at a store called Morsans.

Those half-globe brushed silver ashtrays mounted in office buildings, often next to the elevator. You were welcome to smoke wherever you liked indoors, just not in the elevator.

Even my college had them and I used them between classes. You'd stub out the cig on top, then press the little lever (here on the left) and the top would separate in two and the butt would fall into the lower chamber.

Anyone under 30 has probably never even seen one, much less knows its function. But they were ubiquitous.

I completely forgot about those!! ^ They used to be everywhere.

Several of my relatives had sunrooms on their old houses. Decorated colonial style, winterized at various effectiveness, and with televisions. Venetian blinds. Soap operas were watched during the week and sports during the weekend. There was possibly a den in the house with a TV as well. No TV in the living room or salon. Family rooms didn't exist. When the 70s rolled in and me and my cousins were older, there were basement rec rooms with television, stereo, pool table, darts, foosball, air hockey, pingpong (not all these but a selection), beanbag chairs, unloved danish design furniture, maybe an inflatable sofa. There was no attempt at synthetic design, my New England family existing between monied blue collar aspirational and rich pretentious - both those strata were really into themed decor, which I enjoyed and envied even.

I was molested.

Ahhhh…sneaking brandy slush at bitch-face Grandma’s house.

Anyone else’s family make such a ridiculous Christmas concoction? It was basically Slurpee ice soaking in brandy.

I remember my parents having people over (which was rare). My mom was making daiquiris in a blender and gave me a sip to try. I was probably 10, 12 at most. I thought it was delicious. Yes, I did sort of turn into an alcoholic, but did quit drinking a few years ago.

Around this time of year, I always get this commercial and the music stuck in my head and am reminded of childhood Christmas season excitement.

R70 My grandmother used to serve what she called "Sneaky Petes," which were made in a blender with ice, (cheap) whiskey, and her home-made lemon-lime mixer. Always with a Maraschino cherry. By the time I was 10, I was asked to make them for everybody. Naturally, I got hammered by the end of the afternoon.

R65 is a liar. Carol Burnett & Friends did not exist in 1977. That version was created well after the CB show ceased airing in 1978.

We were having my fathers family over for a dinner party - they were middle class 2nd generation Jamaican folks. My mother decided to be fancy so instead of a "regular" meal with appetizers/snacks and then a meat and a couple of side dishes, she decided on paella of all things, which she never made before. All of us kids had to ask what paella was and I remember thinking "why this stuff?" My mother was always wanting to seem refined. Oh, and she brought sangria to go with it.

i remember feeling embarrassed when I went by the dining room and all of the relatives are sitting around looking dazed with nary a cracker or a chip or pretzel, waiting for this one-pot entree to be served. It seemed like hours looking at them waiting for something edible.

R75 Haha! That reminds me of the time my sister decided to make Beef Wellington for the first time. She invited my parents and me and her parents-in-law to dinner, which itself was a rarity. (She is the queen of substitutions, btw.) She called us to the table, we sat down, and she placed a platter of what looked like a loaf of bleeding bread on the table.

She cut into it and blood and gooey, unbaked dough oozed out and overflowed the shallow platter. The beef was raw and still cold in the middle. The crust did not bake. She insisted that it was supposed to look and taste like it did. It was a disgusting glob, not that we did not try to eat a bite or two each.

It turns out that she bought a cheap chuck roast instead of a tenderloin, did not sear and cook it first, and did not use puff pastry for the crust.

I wasn't a child when this happened, but still, this memory is seared into my mind.

I remember visiting my aunt who had what I can only describe as the ugliest furniture on earth which was velveteen with a brownish floral pattern on the cushions and the frame of the furniture was dark brown exposed wood… I still shutter at the thought of such hideous furniture touching my skin.

^ Oops meant shudder, as you can see the memory is painful.

[quote]R61: Lame EST attempt 2/10

I don't see how OP can be characterized as an 'Elaborate Scenario Troll', since there's no 'scenario' in his post - just random memories.

[quote]R15: What country did you live in, darlings? I don't recognise any of your dear memories.

These seem like United States memories. I'm more or less familiar with most of them.

Your spelling of 'recognise' is British.

[quote]R53: My non-American friends are completely weirded out about this practice in American public schools. They still do it today.

Hmm. Where I live (North Texas), the practice seems to have ended in public schools after 1973; 3rd grade was the last year I was required to say the Pledge of Allegiance. I graduated in 1982. Perhaps they've resumed saying the Pledge since I was in school.

[quote]R12: What’s “fun fountain”, precious? What’s “fun fountain”?

See link below.

[quote] this memory is seared

Unlike the chuck roast.

My parents entertained a lot and I remember sampling the cocktails. My mother did fantastic frozen daiquiris. She tried replicating them once at my request but they were not the same. I suspect the dreaded HFCS in the frozen pink lemonade she used is the culprit.

It’s called a whiskey sour

Driving to local soccer practice I was 12 or 13 and my best friend in those years was a rough, but charming and early maturing Polish-American boy. (He was a kingpin in school before HS when the smart kids and richer kids took over.) I knew what his big hard cock and pubes looked liked because we went camping and did sleepovers, and anyway back in those days showers were nude gang showers. Even though we never did anything sexual. So he turns to me and says "you got your cup in?" then winked and grabbed his crotch which seemed gigantic to me with his big hairy junk and cup all in there on his 13yo body. I turned beet red.

I have cunty Brit blocked. I normally block for good reasons and I suspect this one is one of the Sussex hating BRF stans so, yes, just a troll who should well know it is mainly Americans posting here. Probably that surviving angel creature.

WHET to the "pet" troll who used to troll those threads?

Junior high physicals. Urinalysis was confusing to some kids. The school nurse told us to “urinate into the container.” My friend Mark clearly didn’t get it so she finally looked at him and said, “Pee in the cup, sonny.”

The “microphone” taillights on my Dad’s boss’s 1956 Imperial. Also the radio in it with a motorized tuner. Not just push buttons - it went looking for the next station on the dial.

Seeing turds floating in the water as we took the tender out to our boat moored in the harbor. There were no holding tanks back then. People just pumped the shit out of the toilets on their boats into the ocean.

My mother on her way to a party in a long black ball gown with a red satin rose on one shoulder. She looked good. I had an eye for fashion when I was five or six years old.

Recovering at home following a tonsillectomy. Post-op care consisted of antibiotics and ice cream and the family doc stopping by to check on me every day.

Lining up with my siblings on Sunday afternoons to talk to our friends on a long-distance call after they moved to Detroit. The rates were cheaper on Sundays.

Riding on the newly built interstate highways. There were never any traffic jams. Everything moved so smoothly. A “Sunday drive” was a thing then - you weren’t going anywhere special - the ride itself was the reason.

The dining car on The Merchant’s Limited, the afternoon train between Boston and New York City. The train left both cities at 4 pm and took four hours back in 1960. A full dinner was $2 or $3, depending on what you ordered.

Ted Williams refusing to give a bunch of us kids his autograph at the Sportsman’s Show. My Dad said he only did it for sick kids, “so be glad you’re healthy.”

Grabbing and tossing my brother’s Mickey Mouse ukulele out the car window when he played it so long and so badly that he annoyed everyone.

Listening to a priest giving the seventh grade boys the sex-ed lecture on a cold, snowy night in February. All the kids in front, all the Dads sitting in the back. When the priest says that instead of masturbating, “You should be outdoors on a night like this shoveling snow” my friend Paul put his hand up and said, “Sounds great, Father, but what do I do in July?”

My grandfather owned an early 50s Buick Roadmaster Woody which they referred to as the "beach wagon."

[quote] I have cunty Brit blocked.

Congratulations.

My earliest memory, maybe - making Christmas cookies with mom and sisters while the Association's "Cherish" played in the background.

Standing next to my sister talking to my grandfather, who was in bed, dying of cancer.

Going to pick wild berries on the side of the road with my mom and siblings....other than Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas, this is the only memory I have of doing something where all of us were together.

My dad taking mom and me to the little bar-slash-restaurant in town. My alcoholic dad would have a pitcher of beer and we'd eat a pizza that was about 70 percent salt, 20 percent sauce and a few slices of pepperoni.

School clothes shopping. Ugh, I hated Toughskins.

Watching soaps with mom and, later, with my friends after school. (It was the 80s and for a time, it was very much A Thing One Did, especially where I lived.)

Watching our old, fat cunt neighbor with the Ann Romano bundt cake haircut stand in her doorway on her Slimline phone, gossiping with other old, fat cunt neighbors.

Summertime, sitting outside with my handsome next door neighbor (think Don Draper, but Italian) and realizing how thrilled I was at seeing the black hair on his chest, as well as the very substantial amount of black hair peeking out of the top of his shorts.

Setting up Christmas eve luminaries in our yard. It was a special ritual we did where I grew up that seems to have gone by the wayside since the 80s.

The excitement of the ice cream truck rolling around.

The excitement of hiking through the woods and, later in fall, the fields.

Stealing corn from said fields to go raiding with in October.....I can still hear the plunkety plunk of corn on the aluminum siding of the houses we got.

PS in reply to posts about re drinking

My dad was an alkie but he almost never drank at home. BUT my best friend's parents were very much the party couple on the block. There wasn't a day where they didn't make a drink, or have friends over. My parents were very austere, almost Amish, and together they seldom entertained, but what I learned about parties, drinking and entertaining I learned from my friend's parents.

We learned to freshen their drinks as teenagers and while they weren't saying "Bottoms up kids!" to encourage us, the alcohol was well within our reach to make a drink or open a beer if we were so inclined.

I can remember my friend getting a driver's license and going to the State Store (where one bought hard liquor) to pick up his mom's order for the week, and they gave it to him, no questions asked.

(My older siblings never seemed to drink much.....but they were all into pot.)

R88 those are nice memories. We used to do the Christmas Eve luminaries too. A couple years ago we started making a tradition of it again with our kids. Brown paper bags, a scoop of sand and a tea light candle (we use the battery operated ones now).

It was so nice as a kid to look out the window on Christmas Eve night and seeing the luminaries line the sidewalk

Having a door-to-door salesman walk into our backyard and then our house, trying to sell my mother some household cleaners, etc. I remember he pulled out an air freshener spray and told us kids to spray it, leave the room and count to five, then go back in and we'd smell the fragrance. We all did it and were amazed. Don't remember if my mother made a purchase from him but I do recall that she had a very stiff smile on her face as she didn't like surprises and being put on the spot like this.

My brother had hundreds of those small green plastic army men and would spend ages setting them up on the floor in various configurations and then used some random object to bomb them.

[quote] My brother had hundreds of those small green plastic army men and would spend ages setting them up on the floor in various configurations and then used some random object to bomb them.

He sounds sweet.

Those gold leaf glasses were free in every box of powdered clothing detergent which is why so many people had them.

God no, r47. He looked at the Ford but bought the Mercury. Colony Park. And I was warned, do that again to our car and your butt will be the color of a lobster.

The 80s, when fit, in shape men were seen at our local public swimming pool in Speedos - a look that unfortunately fell out of favor in the late 80s and has never returned to American shores.

R7- Don’t you mean Pocketbook?

R97 In that day and age "pocketbook" meant pussy.

R74- Wrong 😑.

Carol Burnett and Friends premiered October 4, 1972 and was on the air until January 31,1978. It was a syndicated, truncated version of the Carol Burnett Show showing only the sketches.

My cousin riding her 10-speed over to our house to babysit in the summertime...we would put on a pretend cooking show while making Kraft Mac and Cheese, play games and listen to the radio or watch Video Jukebox on HBO - pre-MTV.

Visiting my grandparents' farm with aunts, uncles, cousins...they would play cards after dinner at the formica kitchen table, while the kids watched Family Feud, That's Incredible, Love Boat, etc. on the "davenport." I think my grandparents were the glue that kept the extended family in contact with each other...when they were gone, it was never the same.

Going into town with grandma and shopping at Ben Franklin or Pamida. I would usually get some crappy toy like a wooden paddle with a rubber ball, or one of those plastic frames with the little metal balls you had to manouver into the right holes.

What’s your source?

As if the CB & Friends would go into syndication while the actual CB Show was still a prime time network hit? You must have hit on same lame AI or other crap site…you make little sense.

Only at the end of the final season ‘77-78, as Wiki makes clear: the comedy sketches of the show were re-edited into freestanding programs; the resulting show enjoyed success for many years in syndicated reruns as Carol Burnett and Friends, a half-hour edition of selected 1972–77 material [but most definitely the syndicated version did NOT start in 1972]

Do you ever google your childhood home? Mine sold last year and it was neat to see the wood paneling still there (although painted over)

R88, ugh, your Toughskins reference gave me a flashback of how much I hated them. WTF was up with those hard, built-in knee pads? I guess that’s when kids played outside and were more likely to put the knees out of their jeans. I remember how happy I was to get my first pair of Wranglers in 5th grade.

Being a four-year-old flower child in the Summer of Love, helping my older sisters paint my mother's old VW van with peace signs and hippie slogans for our drive to San Francisco. Beatles, Stones, The Doors, Aretha Franklin, The Young Rascals, Stevie Wonder on the radio and my first sight of the Pacific Ocean. Dancing in huge circles of people holding hands in Golden Gate Park. Frisbee. Cutoffs. Funny smelling smoke in the air and It's It ice cream sandwiches at Playland-at-the-Beach.

Let the sunshine in, r106.

Cussing at the TV when it was announced Dionne Warwick would be liip synching / stealing another performers top 10 hit after the commercial break

My first 45 rpm record...

R102- There were plenty of shows that were still on the air that had older episodes in syndication- Laverne and Shirley was called

Laverne And Shirley And Company

Happy Days was called Happy Days Again in syndication. When I was in the 7th grade they would have happy days again playing on the tv in the lunchroom at around 11 am. My lunch period was VERY early in the 7h grade.

Sixth grade. All the girls from my class went into another classroom and the boys from that class joined us for a filmstrip (whatever happened to filmstrips)? It was time to learn "The Story of Life."

Lots of cartoon drawings of the inside of boys' bodies and girls' bodies and an explanation of how babies were made. There was also a cartoon of a boy showering with a boner and the narrator explained in this weird New England accent how the penis was made up of a "spongy" material and chambers that filled with blood. We were told this was very normal and if it happened to us, ignore it and it would go away.

Later on the playground, we compared notes with the girls. They had an actual educational movie that was sponsored by Modess, and they learned how to put on a pad and belt.

Yes, I remember MASH being in after school syndication before it ended.

This was when local stations would program the 4 to 6 pm block with shows, because news (theirs and the network's) was 6 to 7, and 7 to 8 was always game shows. Now most areas have one solid block of news from 4 to 6 or 7.

FFS, Google anyone?

Carol Burnett & Friends, the 30-minute syndicated show comprised of sketches from previous The Carol Burnett Show airings, began airing in Fall 1977 while The Carol Burnett Show (hour long show) was still in production.

I was born in Xixax, on my mama's farm. My father was a junkie. Und wir war'n sehr arm. My brother was a soldier, by the war in Vietman. My uncle was a spy in the Soviet Union.

Did he attend one of Mr. Brezhnev's reunions?

Shitting in the garden

MARY!

Whites only drinking fountains. Those were the days.

My first word was gape

I wouldn’t eat yams after attending a mud truck pull event and seeing piles of shit inside a port-a-potty

When the teacher brought out Mr. Wiggles

We lived in a three story house that had a bathroom on the first and top floors. Our bedrooms were on the 2nd floor and our parents furnished us with a white porcelain chamber pot to use at night.

Native NYer who lived through all three of the blackouts. I remember that during the first one, we sat down to dinner by candlelight and dinner was something that tasted weird. Then us kids were sent to bed since there was nothing else to do.

Second blackout took place just as it was getting dark on a summer night. I was in my bedroom as the lights went out and I stuck my head out the window and saw that the whole block was dark and it was not that a fuse had blown in the house. I remember screaming "oh no!" The rest of the night is a blur.

In the early 70s I remember Denise, a beautiful sultry blonde friend of my parents. She wore her sunglasses in her hair, called everyone darling in her somewhat raspy voice, chain-smoked and drank whiskey, spoke 7 languages, and had traveled the world with her flamenco dancing guitar playing husband, living on a kibbutz for a year. She is for me is the embodiment of the 70s.

My friends and I rode our bikes for hours and hours through the New England countryside. The adults didn't care how far we went, we were not little snowflakes.

I threw a big fit in a toy store once when I was told no

R124, how many weeks ago was that?

Listen motherfucker, this isn’t AMA

Water fountains everywhere. We went upstate to Bear Mountain one day and my mother wouldn’t let me drink out of the water fountain because she saw some black kids and was afraid they’d drunk out of the fountain. She wouldn’t let us use a public bathroom either. When I absolutely had to pee she would put toilet paper all over the seat before she’d let me sit down because she was afraid black women had used the toilet.

Can you imagine being such a racist? Her whole family was fanatically, obsessively racist. They were poor white folk, proving LBJ’s famous quote.

Shitting in the punch bowl

I'm 60 and I first saw color television in 1968, in my aunt's apartment. The TV was encased in an early American wood cabinet; "The Flintstones" was playing in the background. I had no idea "Wilma" was a redhead. My aunt, whom I loved (she passed away in 2021), always had more money and could afford it. She was my mother's twin sister. We were poorer, but we had the necessities and more modest toys. We didn't own a color TV until 1974. I was envious of my cousin because he had "Legos" but my parents couldn't afford them.

Fulton Street was the shopping area when I grew up - there were a variety of stores for all income levels. The higher end stores were A&S and Martin's, then it went down to Korvettes, Mays, an Alexanders for a couple years, and Modell's. Lower end was Woolworth's and McCrory's.

If we were good we would stop at McCrory's for a waffle/ice cream sandwich in summer or pistachios (from a heated case) in the winter. Back in those days, pistachio shells were dyed red, and your mouth and hands would be stained the rest of the day.

"Camping out" in a friends backyard. Campfire and random discussions.

Sucking Zach’s dick

October, when we went "raiding" as teenagers.

Which meant throwing corn at houses, soaping their windows and, on Devil's Night, covering cars with TP and shaving cream.

We had a NuTone Central Vacuum and a NuTone intercom with AM/FM radio, thank you very much. We also had skeleton clocks built into the kitchen and living room walls.

A neighbor of ours had the vacuuming and intercom systems. Always wondered how they held up over time.

R134 we had those too. I remember the long long hoses.

"She wouldn’t let us use a public bathroom either. When I absolutely had to pee she would put toilet paper..."

She'd be surprised who her husband was fucking behind her back.

R137 or that her husband was probably slurping on some BBC

[quote] covering cars with TP

What's "TP", precious? What's "TP"?

R133 We didn't call it "raiding," but we did the same things. Corn fields abounded where I grew up and feed corn was left in the fields until November, or later. We went to the fields and picked ears of it, then got blisters on our thumbs getting the kernels off the cobs. The corn went into old tube socks to carry around.

As for soaping windows, Ivory bar soap was the humane brand to use. It went on less smoothly than others but was easy to wash off. Oily bar soaps like Dove or Lux went on the windows smoothly, but they were a bitch to wash off. If you really hated somebody, you "soaped" their windows with paraffin. Almost every household had some for canning, and that shit needed to be scraped off with a razor blade.

The convenience store/carryout in our town purposefully stocked a lot of bar soap for October knowing damned well it was being used to soap windows. Corning houses and soaping windows started a couple weeks before Halloween, usually when the time changed (which used to be in mid-October) and continued until Halloween night.

In my town, it was all fun and games until one night when I was 14 or 15 years old, some bitter, old widow lay in wait for the kids and, after they corned her house, ran outside and shot at them with a shotgun. That was the end of it for my childhood. It was great fun while it lasted. Such a powerful bonding experience for kids.

Making book covers from brown paper bags during first week of back to school.

R140 I agree, it was a good bonding experience.

I was the little sissy in the neighborhood and generally didn't get along with the other kids, but there was a stretch where we were more friendly (if not exactly friends) and that was always a fun bonding thing. Hearing the "plink" of the corn as it hit all the windows and siding was kinda thrilling.

We bonded over that.....and also when we walked by the house of one of the older kids in the neighborhood (probably 18 or 19) and saw her giving her boyfriend a blow job. That was sort of a wide eyed, ooooh moment for all of us.

For the idiot at R139…he stayed in his room every weekend. Never went to a football game or keg party in high school

Doodling on your Pee-Chee folder.

If I remember correctly, the tennis player had a fart shooting out of her ass to lift her aloft, the football players were about to hump each other, and the lead guy in the relay race was holding a bag of money while the two behind were yelling "Stop thief!".

My parents were horrified to see "(my sister's name) gave (a boy's name) a blow job" on our living room window. Turns out, while my brother and I were out corning and soaping, she blew her boyfriend on the sofa in the rec room in the basement. The basement window were small, but uncovered. lol

Corning was an equalizer experience. The sissies, prissies, jocks, band members – everybody participated. Sometimes our group reached dozens of kids and we pelted the hell out of the high school principal's house. And the cranky old Lutheran minister's.

r145 = Edie McClurg

[quote] lol

LoL! :)

Our milkman was named Burt. He wore short shorts as part of his uniform and I can remember running to the service porch when I heard the truck outside so I could check out his bulge as he crouched to set the milk down. I couldn’t have been more than 8 or 9.

Mmm, milk!

My big sister taking my brother and I ice skating at Zeckendorf Plaza.

[quote] Our milkman was named Burt. He wore short shorts as part of his uniform and I can remember running to the service porch when I heard the truck outside so I could check out his bulge as he crouched to set the milk down. I couldn’t have been more than 8 or 9.

Hilarious and so cute!

I went to a school friend’s house and for the first time saw some end tables and a coffee table like this. I thought, “Oh, no no no. No no no no no.”

(to be clear, the end tables were the hexagon type with doors)

R152, early examples were made of heavy olive wood and had lattice couch and chairs to match. Later models made use of molded plastic!

One of my earliest memories was my mom’s beautiful apricot sleeveless suede slip dress - it was so smooth and simple with a satin lining.

She couldn’t wear it after giving birth to my younger brother. Her arms were too flabby anyway.

[quote]r154 early examples were made of heavy olive wood and had lattice couch and chairs to match. Later models made use of molded plastic!

I have an illogical hatred for this 70s Mediterranean style. It just LOOKS cheap, even though it’s sturdy as all hell.

One person online was begging for advice on how to maybe salvage some via repainting. She bleated, “I have 2 rooms full of this indestructible crap! Help!!!”

Another person replied that you can sometimes pry the ornate trim off… which at least will leave you with a plainer piece.

Another memory is of the scent of Evening in Paris perfume, worn by my maternal grandmother. I would always get a giggle when she would come to visit and tell my sister how fat she was getting. It made my sister so mad. Once when she was about 14, my sister sassed her back and Grand slapped the shit out of her.

"Evening in Paris", a classic 50s fragrance. The champagne of drug store brands.

It smelled awful, IIRC.

Katy Winters

I might still have an empty Evening in Paris bottle Grand let me have as a child. I thought they were very glamorous!

the gift set

Jean Natè soap sets as gifts to the female schoolteachers

R145 we egged houses. Corn is for hogs.

MARY!

Naugahyde. Kids in shorts always got stuck to it.

*kathunk*

My great aunt said I was allowed me as much Coke as I wanted (mom stopped me at one) whenever we visited.

It was usually August. The sound of the latch catching on her mammoth refrigerator when I closed the door was, “kathunk!” It was the coldest pop I’d ever had.

The refrigerator door made a popping sound?

Getting down on my knees

When I was about 7, I was playing in the sprinkler and noticed a rainbow. I ran inside the house and came back out with a big spoon because I wanted to dig for a pot of gold. I started digging at the end of the rainbow and hit a rock and a saw a flash of gold. It was an ordinary rock. To this day I wonder what that was about. There were witnesses who still remember it happening so it wasn’t something I imagined.

Mandela Effect

DD

R43 I don’t remember the mail being delivered in any car. The mailman walked and carried a big leather bag over his shoulder. There were no leash laws and the mailman had to fight off German shepherds and beagles. My best friend’s dad next door was a mailman. They had five kids and the mom didn’t work. They had a fairly large 2-story house. That was the 60’s. (I was born in the late ‘50s.)

I don’t remember anyone in our neighborhood with the shag carpeting, ugly-colored appliances, etc. No one really had that kind of thing. Our house was kind of traditional, somewhat Colonial. But we were in small town New England.

I made friends with a kid because he had color TV. Then his mom would never let us watch it except once a week - I could come over and watch Batman.

I loved being home sick watching daytime TV. All the Anacin, Tide, Playtex and Kraft commercials, the game shows (Concentration, the Price Is Right, Truth Or Consequences, Queen For A Day, Password), the news with Newman...Steve Allen...The Lucy Show reruns.

* Newman

* Newman

(Is the name E-d-w-i-n forbidden on DL? I keep typing it and it keeps getting deleted.)

[quote] Is the name E-d-w-i-n forbidden on DL?

Yes.

What does 60 possess?

I was born 1991 and I remember bugs bunny

Waking up on a winter morning and, before you even opened your eyes, hearing the unmistakable scrape of a snowplow and knowing there would be no school that day.

“Hey Mediterranean, hold my beer.”

— The Bicentennial

“Two Hundred years ago today….”

Speaking of The Bicentennial, a day I’d been obsessively anticipating for YEARS, July 4, 1976 fell on a Sunday - I couldn’t believe my mother actually made us go to church first. But after church we went to the harbor to watch the Operation Sail parade of tall ships. Then a day long block party barbecue before being loaded back into the station wagons to watch the fireworks that ringed The Battery

[quote] Is the name E-d-w-i-n forbidden on DL?

Unfortunately yes, since it's the government name of a hated, mentally ill troll aka Moobs McSeacow.

Waking up at 5 am on Xmas morning wanting my folks to get up and unwrap presents. Being told I’d have to wait until 7 am. Getting pissed off

R185, I hope you no longer have these extreme anger issues.

R186 have you started eating my ass yet?

Being embarrassed in first grade when I let out a loud fart in the middle of class.

Ooooh. First grade triggered a memory.

It was raining during recess, so we staying in our classroom. The teacher left the room and a girl (who later was relegated to special education) was standing in the aisle next to my desk. She reached under her skirt and fidgeted, then a small, hard turd fell to the floor. Just then, the teacher came back and told us to take our seats. She began reading to us and walking around the room. She walked up the aisle between desks and noticed the pellet on the floor. She knelt down and picked it up, raised it to her nose, then made a sour face. She walked over and dropped the turd into the trash can, where it landed with a loud “plunk.”

R185- Dawn Davenport

R127- I remember going to a rest stop on the highway- it was in either New York State or New Jersey and being in the Men's room and that each toilet stall required a coin to use- those are LONG gone.

I was about 5 or 6 years old in ca. 1971 so I was not driving or going alone mind you.

I was bullied relentlessly in junior high school by a girl named Tammy. She would come up to me and ask “Are you a fag? I heard you suck men’s cocks,” or “Are you going to the docks after school today?”

The harassment progressed to more physical lewdness, like making obscene gestures and squeezing her bosoms at me. One day I had to stay after school and I guess she must’ve seen me go into the bathroom because she followed me in there and cornered me. I was of slight build and she was a larger girl. Not obese, but just kind of big.

She made me lose my balance and I ended up on the floor with her holding me down and straddling my head. I could see that she wasn’t wearing underwear and I knew what she was about to do, so I told her I would scream. She called me a fag, punched me in the stomach, and ran off. The bullying stopped after that, but she would always give me dirty looks when she saw me.

I was humiliated and ashamed. Fortunately she moved away before we started high school.

R192, how did she know about the docks?

R193, it’s a very old joke/insult.

R168 I wasn't the original poster of that description but old refrigerators had metal hinged doors handle with a spring and when you opened and closed they made a pop like sound.

We had a Bendix...

The neighbor girl suffocated in a Bendix that had been left for trash pickup.

I like the metal high chairs. Something comforting about that mid century design.

In elementary school in the mid-sixties hearing not the fire drill but the air raid alarm when we had to get under our desks in the 'duck and cover' position for when the atomic bomb hit. I remember thinking 'who wants to survive an atomic bomb?'

Riding in a Ford Country Squire to our cousins' house who had an above ground pool. We'd swim all day, not wear a drop of sunblock because it hadn't been invented yet. Begging our mom for change for Slurpees from the 7-11 where we'd run across 4 lanes of traffic in our bare feet. Coming home sunburned and mom slapping Noxema on our noses and shoulders.

Living in one of the four housing options in an East Coast suburb and thinking 'this isn't it'. Moving cross country to a rural house on five acres thinking it was slightly chic-er but not really 'it'. I think what I really wanted was a penthouse view.

Four years old. Parents and friends over to see the new house my parents just bought. Night. Rain slamming down, lightning and thunder. No furniture in house yet.

They are all talking in a circle in the foyer facing a large living room. No curtains on windows. The window I am staring at looks out to a dark woods beyond, the eves are dripping.

Outside one window and staring into the house a middle aged woman. White blonde hair shaped like and color like Harlow's, wearing heavy eye makeup, roughe, red lipstick. Uncontrollably sobbing and crying and frighteningly bone dry even though she was standing under a dripping eve, and looking right at me.

She was a ghost.

We had two cops on our block (calument city) when we moved away.

Years later, I returned to the old neighborhood. I saw both cop wives with blackened eyes and missing teeth.

Was that neighborhood always a mean place or did it get meaner?

Cops wives often have it bad. We had a neighbor who was a cop, who beat his adopted children. they moved away as soon as they could. He later was caught being a peeping Tom by neighbors.

[quote] the eves are dripping.

That’s what happened when Thranduil fucked Legolas.

Oh. You said “eves”.

My father would read the Sunday paper in a living room chair and as he finished a section, he would lay it on the floor. When I was quite young, before I started school, a picture caught my eye. I asked him what it was and he said The Sphinx. He told me it was thousands of years old so I asked him what it was for and he said no one really knows. I was enthralled.

R204 = Erich von Däniken

R204 what a better father he could have been.

My father also would read the Sunday paper. …in a living room chair. As he finished a section, he would hand it to me and ask what could I read or what did I see?. When I was quite young, before I started school, I was reading at a level several years ahead of my classmates.

[quote] We'd swim all day, not wear a drop of sunblock because it hadn't been invented yet. Begging our mom for change for Slurpees from the 7-11

I remember sunblock before I remember Slurpees.

Slurpees were invented in 1966. Who knew they went so far back? I always thought it was an '80s invention.

[quote] I ended up on the floor with her holding me down and straddling my head. I could see that she wasn’t wearing underwear and I knew what she was about to do

What was she about to do? Piss on you?

Sorry you got bullied so badly.

One of my mother's friends had a sunken living room, all white + gilt accents, with wall-to-wall deeeeep shag carpet...in BLOODY CRIMSON. Oh, and a painting of Black Jesus.

She had a Shih Tzu, a gift from her son who worked at ARAMCO in Saudi Arabia. Dog was so smart he knew all the words he hated (bath, flea/tick, medicine, doctor/vet) in English AND Arabic.

But what I remember most is that beautiful dog's entire underside was a permanent deeeeep BLOODY CRIMSON, from that horrific, insanely expensive carpet.

I remember how drinky drinky my best friend's parents were.

It was always a party at their house. They fed me so many nights, always a Coke for us kids. So many nights out at restaurants.

I remember my friend, at 16, being able to pick up their booze order from the state store.

My friend's parents had separate bedrooms. (They had 8 kids, so they did have sex.) Anyway, the mom had a large, round bed, like Sue Ann Niven.

Fast forward maybe 20 years and I'm working in an after-school program. One of the kids is the daughter of my friend. I asked the little girl: "Does your grandma have a round bed?" The look on her face was hilarious.

R208, she was going to sit on my face. I thought that was obvious.

[quote]I thought that was obvious.

It wasn't.

I remember my Green Machine and how much fun it was to ride! I would go real fast and then flip the gears and do a 360° spin out. All the neighborhood kids were jealous because they had Big Wheels!

Crying when asked to watch little house on the prairie

Red weirdos

Having an aerobics party/gathering for me and my plump friends in the 4th grade.

[quote] Having an aerobics party/gathering for me and my plump friends in the 4th grade.

It didn’t work.

Writing ex letters to my hot 20 yr old next door neighbor when I was 9 yrs old. Using my parents binoculars to watch him sunbathe on his roof wearing only speedo.

^^^sex letters

Hosting pool parties in the summer. Making up conditions for swimming in my pool - no pissing in it

I remember loving TV. Few channels but there was always something worth watching. I saw some truly excellent movies, because of the limited options. I think I was even more addicted to TV, because my mom disapproved of how much I enjoyed it. Parents were very concerned with how much time your kid spent in front of the TV back then. She was always threatening to take the TV away and occasionally she did! Drove me nuts.

I remember hours spent reading horror comics. My friend who lived across the street from me had a brother with a truly massive collection. The stories were so good! My friend’s house was this huge old Victorian that was always creaking and making old house noises. It would scare the crap out of us after spending the afternoon reading those comics.

R222 are you a serial killer today?

Well, yeah.

[quote] Having an aerobics party/gathering for me and my plump friends in the 4th grade.

FFWOA

Future Fat Whores of America!

[quote] My big sister taking my brother and I ice skating

Oh, dear.

The most surprising thing about this sentence is that Rupert didn’t write it.

R221, I wish I’d thought to make my childhood pool guests take B vitamin pills before swimming. I know those sneaky bastards were peeing and lying 🤥

In the 70s, before cable was available in my area, the local PBS station was the only place to find movies without commercials. I remember my mother and I watching "Night of the Hunter" on PBS one Saturday night. It's still one of my favorite movies.

R228’s mother used to refer to those Saturday night movie watching sessions as The Nights With the Iguana.

That's a standard rule, r221.

[quote]The most surprising thing about this sentence is that Rupert didn’t write it.

No, Greg, I did. I realized my error right after I hit post.

Having my first crush on my 5th grade teacher, Mr. Kisebach. He was not a looker, he was kind of balding, slightly pudgy and wore glasses, but he was the first male teacher I had after years of having nuns as teachers. He used big words like "erudite" and explained their meanings, and that was wonderful to me, as I loved learning new things.

Pretending I was Olivia Newton-John on stage singing to my husband Matt

when i was 4 my grandma told me to get dressed to go out for lunch, i misheard her and sprinted back into the kitchen butt naked. threw my arms up and yelled "ta-da!'

Yes, we all did our time singing into a hairbrush, I’m sure!

^^ re: r233

[quote]Pretending I was Olivia Newton-John on stage singing to my husband Matt

[quote]Yes, we all did our time singing into a hairbrush, I’m sure!

I was Cher. "I've Got You Babe" / "All I Really Want to Do" Cher.

This

Which I LOVED.

I was in first grade in the fall of 1962 in the DC suburbs. The Cuban Missile Crisis happened in October of that year. Looking back on it, I can’t imagine how frightened my mother must have been during those Missile Crisis days, sending me off to school with the threat of nuclear war at any moment. I remember her telling me that, if there was an “emergency” – the word she used, never “war” – I must stay at school, not try to come home, and she or Dad would come to get me. That was what parents were told to tell their kids, and it must have taken guts for my over-protective and nervous mother to give me that instruction.

I also remember her taking canned goods and things down to the basement of our house in case of “emergency”, while my father helped but was very quiet. He knew. Eight miles from the White House in the days of 10 megaton bombs. No chance at all.

Fingering my pussy at the Dairy Queen. Come on, pucker up!

Me, Mom and my older sister gathering around the TV watching Colombo, Mannix, Barnaby Jones, McCloud, Cannon, Ellery Queen, MacMillan & Wife, etc.

Do you'll see a pattern?

R241 you were all women?

One summer, the local TV station played Dark Shadows every weekday afternoon. We loved the show. The character Barnabas made quite an impression on us. We amused ourselves by calling out his name in a ghostly manner.

R243 refers to his multiple personalities as “we”.

When our neighbor drove his big paneled station wagon around and Mr. Wiggles came out to play.

Really dramatic nelly boy moved into my neighborhood. Claimed to see ghosts that I later realized were just famous old movie stars he had seen on the Teevee. Didn't believe him, by the way, at the time.

Bloody Mary came to me.

When I’d go over to a friend’s house for a sleepover, I’d bring my pajamas and toothbrush in a paper grocery bag.

I don’t do this today.

You use a 5 cent sack from Kroger’s

The phone, rotary, sitting on a table with a chair attached to it. Not sure if there was a name for such a piece of furniture, designed strictly for use with a corded landline.

And the phone was always in the foyer. There was only one in the whole house.

My parents avocado green sectional with a lazy Susan in the middle, filled with booze. We used to take the bottles out and stuff my sister in it, then spin it around..

R183 Which harbor?

R250 We had one of those phone tables. But we didn’t have a foyer.

r250 it was called a gossip bench or telephone table

You’re all a bunch of liars!

Scandinavian Designs still sells one.

We had a dry sink in the foyer.

Cool! Thanks r253, r255

We had Connie Stevens’ spread legs in the foyer. Repeatedly.

She was a neighbor.

R250 Why would you have the only phone in the house placed in the foyer? You must have lived in a warm climate.

[quote] Why would you have the only phone in the house placed in the foyer? You must have lived in a warm climate.

R259, and in a one-story house.

One night I woke up and folded all the blankets and towels..In the living room...Then barged into my dad's room to ask if he wanted ketchup...Also...one night I called 911 and had a conversation with the dispatcher because I was alone.....Eventually down the road I was stoned outta my mind because my dad sold weed and would have gatherings where I would just be hanging out with the windows closed....this was the 80's....I have a to of stories

My grandparents only had one phone in their small ranch-style house, which was a black rotary wall phone which for some reason was located at the end of the bedroom hallway with a chair underneath it. Grandma loved to talk on the phone with her lady friends and she’d go running to the phone from the kitchen whenever it rang. It’s a wonder she ever got anything cooked at all.

Sometime in the late 70s the government, I guess it was, started allowing people to buy and use their own phones rather than having to lease them from Bell Telephone. I remember the telephone display at Ayr-Way (which became Target) as something new and marvelous. My dad got one for grandma and installed one in the kitchen for her so she didn’t have to do the 100 yard dash to get her church gossip fix.

The smell in cars with all vinyl interiors after being in the sun.

In the summer, going to the grocery with Mom for weekly shopping. Filling the cart up with pop tarts and popsicles and thinking she'd never notice. Mom arranging her coupons in the checkbook before she paid, then ordering me to 'put that back!' when she saw the junk I had. Instead the cashier would laugh and put it aside.

Baseball cards - getting them off the Ice Cream truck. That awful, stale gum we still ate.

Swimming - jumping in the water, cold for a few seconds and then just the best feeling, having to skim the pool to get the leaves out.

UK here. I remember when the currency was decimalised, and I had a new five pence coin to buy sweets with.

When I was growing up, about until I was a freshman in college, my family had GOBS of money. Then my dad lost it all. Anyway, now that I'm a poor, I remember all the stuff I used to have and do. The best memories are the times spent at our summer house in North Eastham, Cape Cod. Tennis courts and lessons. The swimming pool. A three story, 7 bedroom house on 30 acres. Private school. The list goes on and on. Sometimes I'll drive by our old house, really slow, get a little sad, and curse whoever lives there now. I'm sad and pathetic I know.

Hotels during road trips that had magical stars on the ceiling. Also known as popcorn ceiling with glitter.

R255 R257 Ours wasn't a backless thing, it looked about like this - a chair with a phone table attached.

You put the phone books on the shelf underneath.

Another one. I actually remember we had a phone like this (but I think without a dial. You had to call the operator. I don't actually remember it but saw it in photos of when I was maybe 3 or 4. My mom eventually moved the phone (and got one of those yellow dial ones) into the kitchen. Easier to hear from the back yard.

Phones were put where the phone line entered the house, so often they were in an odd corner of the back or the front if that's where it entered the house. Our's was in the back in the "breakfast room" off the kitchen. The opening of the "Donna Reed Show" famously had Donna breezing down the stairs to answer the phone--it was in the living room of a 2 story house, next to the stairs. My first apartment, a 1920s building had a wall unit in the kitchen which probably was the easiest place to wire through several tiers of apartments. My grandmother, who lived in a similar kind of building had hers next to her small kitchen in the dining area.

Getting an extension phone was extra and a bit of a luxury for many years. Once you could buy phones, it became popular to have multiple extensions, with people adding the wiring or hiring someone to do it.

You had a book of phones?

R271 Yes, and set of TVs.

[quote] The opening of the "Donna Reed Show" famously had Donna breezing down the stairs to answer the phone--it was in the living room of a 2 story house, next to the stairs.

That's exactly where our was, until my parents switched to the yellow wall phone in the kitchen (next to the breakfast nook).

I also remember sitting in the breakfast nook which had a window on the end, and my mom asking me, "Did the garbage man come yet?" The garbage man wasn't the same as the trash man (or men). The garbage man came and emptied the garbage pail, which fit in an underground metal thing with a flip top (see photo). This was before most people had what my parents called a "garbage dispose-all" in the sink drain. Also, you could not put garbage in your trash. This was also before plastic trash bags.

From the article:

Today, we use words like trash, garbage, refuse and rubbish interchangeably — but in Leydon’s day, garbage meant garbage.

"This is not going to be news to anybody over a certain age, but no civilized person would throw their garbage in the rubbish," he explained.

Rubbish was dry trash that would be tossed in metal pails for curbside pickup — much like today. Garbage, on the other hand, consisted of food scraps and organic material — all that gross wet stuff. And it was the garbage — specifically — that these receptacles were designed to keep hidden away until it could be dealt with.

Me again:

The main trouble was that maggots would get into the trash can, once in a while. I remember my mom going out with a kettle of boiling water to kill the maggots.

(The can and lid usually looked a lot better than the one in the picture, which is out of use and old.)

R273 was it a matching set?!

When I was a kid I was fascinated with all the different service people who came to the house (we were just regular lower middle class, I guess). The mailman, the milkman, the trash men, garbage man, the guys who fixed the wires (in those days they climbed the poles), the guys in the street sweeper, the guy who delivered bread, the man who rode a bicycle with a box on the front, who sharpened knives. The door-to-door salesmen (encyclopedias, bibles, other goods), the Avon lady, the guys who delivered pop in a wooden case, the Seventh-Day Adventists, the guy in the pharmacy delivery car, the kids selling magazines, the Girl Scouts, people collecting for the Heart Fund, Cancer Society, etc.

We had to separate paper trash which we'd burn in the incinerator.

R279 was a very bad seed.

R279 We couldn't have incinerators, for some reason (illegal).

A lot of people did have those brick or stone backyard barbecues, though. Left over from the 50s, I think.

I remember when you had to call the phone company to send someone over to install a phone, and once installed it was there for good. For the longest time, we had one wall phone in the kitchen. Then my parents got a second phone installed in their bedroom, and that was when the phone repairman installed modular phone jacks in every bedroom and the den. After that, we purchased cheap carshaped novelty phones and transparent plastic ones with neon lights from RadioShack and plugged them in.

Visiting my unmarried grandfather in NH with my two sisters for the weekend without our parents. He took us on a drive and pulled over on a lone highway road abutting a very steep hill so we could use our new sleds in the newly-fallen snow.

We trudged up the steep incline again and again to literally come flying down to the bottom until we we were exhausted and the sun was going down. I cannot recall ever again being so satisfied with my day.

Spinning like Wonder Woman in my front yard to get attention. Flipping off the old man across the street.

Playing board games with my friends on a rainy summer day.

Caroms!

Stratego!

Stratego was fun.

Lite Brite

X-rated Candyland

R278, and don't forget the doctors who made housecalls.

Old St. E’s —I had on overnight stay in the children’s ward at 4 years old…a hernia operation. My oldest firm memory. My parents snuck in orange soda for me, and my room looked out over the trees. I can still remember a little girl with second-degree burns on her neck/arm…it looked sorta like pizza.

R292: I had a hernia repair (along with a tonsilectomy) and shared a room with a child who'd had severe burns, as well. I was 5 1/2 The poor kid cried all the time--it was a sad experience. I didn't eat much of the food and lost weight even though I was only there for a week. They had the old stapled dressing which was painful to remove. My mother did all the right stuff--read me a book about being the hospital, let me know that some of the staff would be different from us (not white--we lived in a lily white suburb), but nothing could prepare me for the boy with the burns. He didn't seem to have many visitors. Sadly, my mother died a month later.

Sounds like me, except for that lousy ending. Sorry.

Are you my Single White Female?

P.S. to this day, I wonder how I got a hernia at four? 🤠

R288 It was da’ bomb—as the kids say today ;)

Phones used to be hooked up in the foyer. I lived in an Edwardian apartment in San Francisco. In the entry area, there was a small nook or alcove where the phone used to be.

^ My aunt had a telephone nook with a white Princess phone.

R291 That was a few years before my time, actually. One time I was out sick from school for almost three weeks, though, and the teacher stopped by to see how I was doing.

I remember photographers used to come to people's houses to take pictures of the kids, rather than your always having to go to the studio.

In general, there were more people coming to the house.

And - people used to always visit without calling. My mom always had to keep the house looking good. Then again, she didn't work when I was growing up. On weekends, especially, people just always used to drop in. I also remember a huge party my parents had - the only big one they really ever had, that I can recall - inviting all the neighbors, old friends, relatives. I remember helping my mom put up those plastic colored covers for the lights strung around the yard.

I remember being on vacation near Traverse City when I first started puberty. We went to the local drug store. I saw a Playgirl magazine on the magazine rack. I knew what that meant. I surreptitiously looked inside it and saw a nude black man with a heavy bush leaning on a piano. I quickly closed it, fearing someone would see me. Little did I know it was NFL Hall of Famer Jim Brown.

Soap box derby

I had to have my urethra enlarged when I was a very little kid, very painful. In retrospect all they needed to do was just cut the the opening at the tip just a bit more. Anyways, shared same room as kids getting tonsils removed. The odd thing back then is even something as simple as that kids under age were not allowed to visit in the room. Remember looking at my older sisters throw a door window down the hall. And adults has something like 15 minutes. Forget about the idea of someone sleeping in a chair near by.

[quote] The odd thing back then is even something as simple as that kids under age were not allowed to visit in the room.

I remember my younger sister having a surgery and not being able to go into her room (as a child). Her room was on the ground floor and I looked at her through a window. Sometimes, that memory seems more like a dream than reality.

Who in the hell wants a bunch of screaming kids visiting sick people in the hospital anyway?

Back in the 70's, there was "the soda truck". It was an open, rickety truck with shelves full of bottles of soda in crates. The truck would drive slow and you'd hear the hundreds of the glass bottles tinkling against each other. The picture I found could be the truck that would roll through the neighborhood.

The truck had regular customers who would get deliveries to their home - usually Saturday afternoons. The driver would stop and a kid of about 15-20 would be riding on the back; he'd hop down and pull out a number of bottes or a case of whatever the customer had requested. I remember me and my siblings being envious because my cheap father would NEVER allow such a luxury. Finally, we got together and saved our allowances and were able to purchase a few bottles of soda from this truck. We felt like ballers for the day.

I remember having a milkman, a Home Pride Bakery truck, and the Fuller Brush man. There was also a blind man who went door to door selling brooms.

Helms Bakery Truck

Sparkletts Water Delivery

Alta-Dena Dairy milkman

I was the only kid in my neighborhood who didn't have my tonsils out and there were a lot of kids. I believe that they all weren't necessary.

R306 want you being gay enough home pride?

^^Wasnt

[quote]Fuller Brush man. There was also a blind man who went door to door selling brooms.

Yep, mom always on the look out for the Fuller Brush man. Brooms always sold by the blind. I wonder now if that was just a shtick. The guy cheeped me out so maybe that's how he got his jollies. Telling all these house fraus he was blind. Handicapped people were still expected to worked back in those days, so maybe it was true.

I remembered a little girl I went to elementary school with whose name was Shannon. She had cancer and her mom had her wear a bonnet to school to hide the fact that she lost most of her hair from chemo. Her mom also made her sister who was a year older wear a bonnet as well, and would pass both daughters off as "Little House on The Prairie" fans as to not make Shannon stand out among her classmates. I felt bad for Shannon, but I thought it was wrong of her mom to force the sister to wear a bonnet too. The song "Shannon" by Henry Gross would play on AM radio and it made me think of her. Several years later as I was visiting a graveyard in my hometown I stumbled upon Shannon McKinney's grave.

R308 Me too. Was just talking about this with a co-worker on Friday. Almost all my friends had their tonsils out. It's interesting because most people in town went to the same doctor. I didn't go to that doctor, I went to my parents' doctor in the city they were originally from. However, I did end up getting tonsillitis when I was around 28. It was horrible. Still have the tonsils, though.

Fingering myself alone in the moonlight

Nobody has their tonsils out, anymore.

Just read this:

"Even though tonsillectomies are somewhat less common today, surgeons in the U.S. still perform over 500,000 procedures every year."

Turning tricks so I could afford to go to Cony Island with my church youth group.

You couldn’t afford to buy a vowel—could you? You gave lousy blowjobs!

R317 what would you do?

Snow days. We'd get out our sleds or flying saucers and slide down a steep hill and walk back up and slide down again, over and over. There wasn't a fat kid among us.

R320 Why don't kids still do this (or do they)?

Climate change!

Watching Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color on Sunday nights.

When it started snowing on a school night and you still had to do your homework - just in case. The endless list of school closures announced on the radio in the morning as you waited to hear if yours was on it.

One morning, when I was about 11, there had been a decent, but not overly deep snowfall the night before. At breakfast I asked my mom if the school was closed, and she smiled and said "No, but you're not going anyway." She took my sister and me to the local sled hill at a golf course and, since school was open, we were the only people there -- we sledded for hours. It was a wonderful day and is a wonderful memory.

I remember begging my mom for a quarter to ride the little rides outside the grocery store. What happened to those?

R321 Technology has made them sedentary is my guess.

R324 what a wonderful memory for you. Done times those random, unexpected adventures can be out most cherished and memorable

R 325..They have them outside some stores still. 99 cents only in Central CA. As a kid, I remember gumball machines right next to those rides…

I found an old beat up dildo on the ground when I was 10. I ran right home and shoved it up my ass.

An older neighbor with arthritis had all kinds of deliveries--Omar Bread Bakery (I think they were semi-national), Jewel Tea (related to the Chicago grocery chain but in many other places--sold dry groceries and cleaning items), Cook Coffee (a local version of Jewel), and any number of dairies. My guess is that she would do some sort of introductory promotion, because the dairy kept changing and Omar, Jewel, and Cook Coffee weren't there all the time.

Avon didn't show up unannounced around us--usually people sold it in their workplaces or among friends. We had a neighbor who was a high volume "Avon lady" who had friends in all kinds of places. Fuller Brush did show up (usually around dinner time). My mother shooed them off with gusto. The encyclopedia sales people usually relied on personal networks and referrals--we never had them come by. One of my teachers sold World Book on the side--not a great teacher but she knew how to sell those encyclopedias. People would sell magazine subscriptions--for charities, Boy Scouts, schools, etc. People would drop-by---relatives who happened to be in the area, neighbors, etc. People used to live closer to more family and know their neighbors, so it was not always an inconvenience.

"The Wizard Of Oz" would be televised one night a year on CBS. Mom would set out a big bowl of potato chips and a bowl of pretzels and we'd sit on the floor in front of the tv drinking our Brookdales soda. My father would sit in his recliner and annoy us by asking stupid questions about the movie (which he did every year), and before it was over, we'd all have a bowl of ice cream. Then it was off to bed because the event always happened on a Sunday night and there was school the next day.

When I was 7 (1973), I started getting an allowance. My dad called me into the kitchen and explained that every Friday would be my payday and I would get 35 cents a week to spend however I wanted. He then made himself a cocktail and poured me a 7-up.

My grandpa took a job delivering magazines - he would drive around and they were hung on the door in plastic bags. When it got to be winter I got roped into helping him, so I would have to go up the icy driveways and steps to hang these stupid magazines. And he would give me a lousy dollar a day for helping him.

We never got an allowance. I started working when I was a teenager, cleaning vacation rentals and houses.

[Quote]35 cents a week

r332 you must be joking.

I hate the heat. I don't take it well. Even when I was a kid. One day it was extremely hot in September. My mom came and picked me up from school. Said she forgot I had a dentist appointment. I got in the car and she said "no dentist, we're going for rootbeer floats then to sit by the lake in the shade." I'd give everything I have for five more minutes with my mom.

R336 I get you. My mum used to pick me up from school.om Monday afternoons and take me shopping and get a burger. I miss her very much

Little House on the Prairie, Monday nights, the whole family. Without fail God we loved that show.

My mom would make me wait alone in the heat during the first few weeks after school. All of the kids, bussed, teachers had left and then there would be my mom coming in her olds 98. She’s say something like I was on the phone. Then she’d drive to the grocery store and hand me a list along with cash or a signed check. After buying stuff we’d go home where I could decompress for a bit

I remember my mum driving by school to show off her latest perm (her hairdresser was just around the corner). It was the early 90s and perms were super popular!

In the 90s? Where?

The outer Hebrides?

^l totally rocked a spiral perm, bitch!

And if questioned, ,she would tell anyone who asked she just wanted her little homosexual son to see her 'do first.

Haha R343 maybe!

When I was 11 I told my parents I was ready for some action and needed satisfaction. I let them know that I was growing up and needed to have fun with boys. I probably wasn’t going to be spending every evening at home playing video games or tv. I was gonna get some fun.

I wish I had known you, then!

My brother and I used to take turns blowing into the tube so Dad could start the car.

"quick like a bunny". That's what my mom used to say when we were in a hurry or we were moving to slow. Even when she was exacerbated she couldn't be anything but sweet. 🐰

I think you meant exasperated, not exacerbated.

HI mom!

Charles Chips. And for a moment didn't Charles Chips also deliver Entenmanns?

My mother putting black pepper in my mouth after I used a naughty word.

R17- You used a word that makes me CRINGE 😬

Grandmom

You can’t say instead grandmother 👵

Or at least Grandma

A friend who grew up in Liberia, roughly my age, got the same advice I did as a child in the 1950's: always wear clean underwear because you might get hit by a bus.

At the age of 7, she said, it had also occurred to her - as it did to me - that had either of us been hit by a bus, shitting our pants would probably be the least of our problems.

R281, incinerators weren’t allowed in our neighborhood, either, but everyone burned their raked leaves in the fall when I was very young. The air would smell so strongly of burning leaves on weekend fall days that it’s still an evocative smell to me. The county outlawed this practice sometime in the mid- or late ‘60s, I think.

When we moved into the house where I grew up in 1962, we got a visit from the Welcome Wagon lady. I don’t remember much about the visit except my mother saying she had given us some coupons and a map marked with local shopping landmarks.

Apparently, this practice continued until 1998 (!), although I don’t remember receiving any such visits or “gift baskets” with any of moves I made as an adult in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

R321, yes, they still do. Kids going sledding is a regular feature on the local news when it snows. However, I suspect they are sledding in places carefully pre-approved for safety, always with adults right there watching over them. When I was an older child, we went off by ourselves with our sleds and sledded down a hill that, in hindsight, I realize was too long, steep and dangerous, ending as it did with the brick wall of the elementary school. It's a wonder we survived, but it was a lot of fun.

We’d let our dog roam the subdivision unleashed, which sounds totally unthinkable and irresponsible to me today. Once two girls knocked on the door to tell us they’d seen our dog down on the main road a half mile away. I started crying because I thought she had run away or might get hit. Mom reassured me she was in the house in another room, so it was either another dog or ours had made it home safely already.

I once put a pair of Fruit of the Loom briefs on her with her tail sticking out the fly and let her out. She returned some time later without the underwear on. Our neighbors had a pair of shelties named Salt and Pepper who’d walk around their unfenced yard together. They got spooked by fireworks once and ran away. They were missing a few days then returned home, still together.

Yes r356! My mom was a Welcome Wagon lady in the 70s. I always assumed this was a volunteer thing, but reading the Wiki she must have been getting paid.

She was screwing neighbors left and right behind your father’s back.

You’re Welcome!

The beige rotary phone of my grandmother. I love to give it a spin, dialing numbers at random…

..but then sometimes you’d hear a “Hallo?!” because I had dialled an actual phone number!

Riding in the first car of the biggest roller coaster at Six Flags. With my hands up! My friend too.

Lying awake at night listening to my parents argue about everything…including my “faggot behavior”. Good thing they were too cheap to buy pillows for my brother and I. Mine would have been soaked with tears.

Oh god r363.

When I was in junior high school there was a guy I had a major crush on who lived in the house behind ours. The house had a master bedroom with the windows looking into their backyard. This was the parent's room and they always left the drapes open. We had trees that covered our property, but you were able to peek through them without being noticed. Some nights I used to peek through and watch his dad undress and stroll around nude while the bedroom lights were on.

How big was it r365?

Delbert Botts!!

R366 It was short, very thick and bounced around when he walked. He was quite hairy too. I probably got the biggest boner of my life when I first saw it.

Ewww r368. I’m sorry I asked.

R369 are you female? Sounds like it.

No I’m not female but I’m not an old motherfucker either. Hairy, tiny dick bouncing…. Not attractive Some perv window peeper? Not.

R368 did your mother give birth to you in a ditch?

R325 They’re still there.

I was not turned on by adults as a child. The thought of a hairy dad walking around naked also makes me say “Eww” and I’m not very young.

R374, see what a beautiful world this is? When I was junior high school age (which I guess is what you mean by "as a child"), like R365 I was very turned on by hairy older men. In fact, I never gave a moment's sexual thought to boys my own age, and a hairy chest was a sine qua non for me until I was far into adulthood.

And yet, amazingly, I don't say "eww" when I hear about others' crushes on their fellow pubescent students or even on hairless twinks when they still express such urges as adults. It's a big, wide, wonderful world full of people with different tastes. Otherwise, it would awfully boring, wouldn't it?

When I was a kid I used to walk around naked hoping my hot, married neighbor was watching me. He’d need binoculars as there were about two acres between our houses.

I remember when I was three how I would look very closely at the flowers in the yard. Lily of the valley, four o'clocks, cherry blossoms, petunias. It was how I discovered nature.

I saw an old Life magazine in our shed with Virginia Dare's story. My mother explained. I was horrified.

I stayed up alone the night of the Kennedy-Nixon election and watched the results on TV. I was six.

The mosquito fogger truck - an old steaming, smoking, rig, would come by in the evening after dark. I remember kids running and playing in the noxious fog as the truck went slowly up the street. I must be reincarnated because I would think of Lincoln's funeral train. I didn't know anything about Lincoln's funeral train.

I hated hearing my heartbeat in bed when I was four because it sounded like the footsteps of three men coming to get me. I have no idea where that came from.

My mom never once did anything like allow me to stay home from school for no reason, or take me out of school to get ice cream, her style was more that I had to do what everyone else had to do, too bad but that’s life, make the best of it. But in the summer she took me to the beach, which we both loved (and which was free or very cheap, back then, practically everywhere in MA, ME, and NH, btw). Other times she’d say “let’s get lost” and we’d drive somewhere unfamiliar and try to find our way home.

[quote] I once put a pair of Fruit of the Loom briefs on her with her tail sticking out the fly and let her out. She returned some time later without the underwear on.

What?

R375 Why direct your post at me? I was merely agreeing with the person who was grossed out, I wasn't the original poster.

Going every Christmas to see a Walt Disney movie in the glamorous, old downtown movie theater,

Not a Christmas movie, or a Walt Disney movie, but I remember going to downtown DC with my parents and grandparents to see My Fair Lady. The film opened in October of 1964, but this was probably the winter of 1965, since my parents never liked going to crowded theaters and always waited until any hit had been open for a while.

There's a picture of us, all but my grandfather, who probably took the picture, standing outside the Warner Theater on 13th Street NW. We are posed in front of the movie poster, dressed in our finest day-in-the-city attire. I remember the day, and the movie, very well.

*Insert sentimental, bittersweet line about nice memories but everyone except me being gone now.*

Being sent to the Principal’s office in first grade, and told I was meeting someone to talk about school. It turns out it was an IQ test and a visit with the district psychologist for evaluation as a gifted student.

When later I was told that I would spend part of the day in a different classroom with a smaller group, I cried and said I didn’t wanna do it! Waa!

I loved the gifted class—we wrote poetry, read high school novels and the LA Times. We even published a “newspaper”—I wrote an editorial opposing the war in Vietnam …aged 6🤷🏻‍♂️

Jr High-level*

I remember my friends who had sisters being given a Toni home perm by their mother. Man, that shit smelled toxic.

R383 Exact same thing happened to me. Only I was 5. Or maybe 7.

R383 that's the pilot episode of Malcolm In The Middle!

Both you and R386 did being in the gifted class help with your later lives?

In the 70s I remember the local high school once or twice a year would have a kids movie day in the auditorium on a Saturday. It would usually be a Ray Harryhausen type fantasy like the Sinbad movies.

When I was 13 or 14 and my voice started changing I was able to make my voice sound like an adult woman. My impression of Jaclyn Smith was spot on so I would make numerous prank phone calls with friends. I would call agencies, studios and restaurants and raise hell pretending I was Jaclyn. People on the other end were really convinced I was her so the results were often hilarious. My friend did a great impersonation of Juliet Mills and would call limousine services to neighbors on my street and we'd watch them show up.

Throwing a tantrum one Christmas morning when I didn’t get the Charlie’s Angels Tree House playset. Instead I got a Tonka dump truck. My mom thought my tantrum was hilarious and snapped a pic of me with my tongue out, flipping her the bird. I was 5 or 6.

5 TV channels - CBS, ABC, and NBC, one local network channel, and one public television channel.

If you were lucky, sometimes when you turned the TV dial to UHF, you could see something amidst all the snow, usually the signal from a local station in a bordering state.

R391 I remember trying to watch The Addams Family on UHF Channel 52. It was never on any of the regular channels.

R391 I guess there was no chance of seeing a naked man anywhere among that snow?

R393 Not back then. No way.

R392. Ch. 52 also had Felix the Cat reruns, plus Speed Racer…and Kimba

It was Channel 40 in northern CA, where the afternoon lineup was Clutch Cargo, the Banana Splits, Ultra Man, Speed Racer, and I Love Lucy.

Re channel 52 Los Angeles

Born in 1963:

Moon landing

Reruns on Channel 11 (or 5) in NY metro area after school: Batman, Lost in Space

The 4:30 afternoon movie on WABC. When I was home sick from school...The Morning Movie at 10 am

The Million Dollar movie on channel 9 (WOR) with the theme song from GWTW.

A dime in the meter to park your car

matrons in movie theaters on a Saturday afternoon.

Going to B Altman (Altman's) Department Store for Christmas shopping.

Listening to WABC AM radio in a car

The anticipation of Christmas morning

I think back in the '70s, UHF was the only place we could watch reruns of Davey & Goliath, Gumby, Beany & Cecil, and Rocky & Bullwinkle. The main VHF channels were all about Looney Tunes and Hanna Barbera cartoons.

I also remember Tom Hatten and his "Popeye and His Friends" show before moving on to "The Family Film Festival," which seemed to have a hard-on for Jerry Lewis films and Pippi Longstockings.

Weird one...but I have the distinct memory of being on the beach aged maybe 8 and carrying a large rock and as I passed my mother who was sunbathing I considered dropping it on her head. Very fucked up but I'm pretty well adjusted and successful and often wonder WTF that was all about. Any thoughts?

When city parks were cleaned regularly so we could have picnics not even four blocks from our house.

R399 Not the case in Southern California.all were in VHF stations.

Out of nowhere, the theme song for the 60's cartoon "Captain America" popped into my head and I found myself trying to remember the lyrics. This lead me to Youtube, where I was compelled to look up all of the cheesy theme songs for the superhero toons of the times: Iron Man, Submariner, The Hulk, Batman, The Amazing Spiderman, Thor, Wonder Woman. Whoever wrote those songs is either genius or mental, especially for poor Hulk.

Channel 56 in Boston had Gilligan's Island reruns on offer from the time I could watch tv until I left home in 1981. I watched them the whole time, although sometimes I'd switch to channel 38 to watch Hogan's Heroes.

I took Steno in high school so I could quickly write down lyrics from songs. Only boy in the class. I was quite good at it and could have made a short lived career out of it.

R406 didn't you wish there were a few guys in the class for you to drool over?

Why ? It wasn't like the shorthand class was isolated from the rest of the school. There was plenty of time to drool in every other class, in gym..and on and on.

Born in 1863

Shitting on dirt

I grew up in the 1070s and I can remember the milk man coming to our house to deliver milk. I recall driving with my mom sitting next to me, curlers in her hair and a thin scarf pulled around them as we drove through an old town to a butcher to buy meat. I liked going to the butcher because it was cold inside his shop and in the heat of summer, it was so refreshing.

The smell of cigarette smoke along with fresh cut grass reminds me of being a kid, playing softball on Saturday mornings while the parents sat on the sidelines smoking and cheering us on. Then, drinking ice cold root beer from the rough, red plastic glasses at the pizza shop we would go after the game. I listened to "Please Mister, Please" over and over on the juke box or my Dad would pick some Neil Diamond song.

I'll never forget the feel of the burning hot pavement just before sunset when my friends and I would have water fights with hoses or squirt guns. It still seems like those fights lasted for hours.

I was sitting outside a movie theater getting ready to see Star Wars for the first time. My father had picked me up after soccer practice with my big sister in tow to go see this movie that EVERYONE at my school was talking about. He and my mom had to see if first to make sure it was ok for me to see at 8 years old. My dad sat my sister and I down on the curb while we waited to go inside and said, "Now, there's a part in this where a weird alien gets his arm cut off with a light sword but it's fake, ok?" I still laugh because that's the only scene I remembered for a long time after seeing it. Thanks Dad. Too bad you turned into a monster.

Ooops! 1970s!^^^

R404, don’t forget “The Mighty Hercules”, just about the gayest theme song ever.

“Softness in his eyes, iron in his thighs, virtue in his heart, fire in every part of the mighty Hercules!"

The theme was sung by Johnny Nash, who had a #1 hit in 1972 with “I Can See Clearly Now”.

Muscular Dystrophy Carnivals.

In the DC area, kids who put on a carnival sometimes got to appear on Captain Tug, an afternoon cartoon show hosted by the supposed captain of a tugboat in the Potomac. I don't remember how the kids were selected to appear - maybe those who raised the most money?

Also, we had a local version of American Bandstand, much cheaper and cheesier, with a small set that looked like it was made out of carboard. I wish I could remember the name of it. Did most big cities have something like this? (This was in the mid- to late '60s.)

Watching free channels on the lone television. Learning facts, names, dates, places, and how to write and compute. Typing. Eating egular, non-microwaved food. Jumping off high-diving boards instead of getting on water slides. Walking to school. Reading for fun. Playing board games and cards with others. Roller skating down wonky sidewalks and falling onto lawns to stop. Chalking a hopscotch game and playing with pieces of slate. Going to summer "ice-cream fairs" at school.

IOW, OP, childhood memories---for many if not most---consist of more than what color furniture, fixtures, and appliances were. Most children, when children, aren't miniature interior decorators even to take such notice, let alone to judge.

Sp: "egular" is "regular."

r410 r411 stop lying. we all know you meant 1870s

R412 I loved HERCULES! It was so terrible that it was brilliant!

R412..."iron in his thighs?"

I'd say from the looks of him, Hercules skipped Leg Day. Massive upper body but so-so legs...very little iron in those thighs.

When I was in 8th or 9th grade, in the early 70s, my mom took me to buy school clothes in a men's store in the next town. After we'd looked around a while, Mom said to the man behind the counter, "Do you have anything else in back?" The guy went back there and came back with a couple of boxes. He said recently they had found these boxes of shirts in the store room that hadn't been opened. One was from Arrow and one was some other brand. They were from the '50s. They were the best shirts, colorful, with stripes and patterns. (Young men's shirts.) They charged us very little and we bought 7 or 8 of them. Everybody at school commented positively on the shirts. Thanks. Mom.

Acting like a bitch to some boys I was at a birthday party with at a restaurant in NYC when I was 10.

My mother was very religious. In a good way I like to think. Anyway, whenever we went to the beach, or on a hike, or a lake, anything in nature really, right before we left, she would give us garbage bags and we had to walk around and pick up trash or anything like that. She would say it was our little way to thank God for giving us such a beautiful place to spend the day. She was one of those people who found her god in nature. Shed do stuff like have us come outside to the porch to watch a thunder and lightening storm and things like that.

Aged 7 or 8 (so mid-late 1950’s) I got lectured to by my mother about not eating everything on my plate at dinner. She said I should “Think about the poor starving children in Europe” instead of wasting food.

I told her to wrap up my plate, send it to them, and to take the cost of the postage out of my allowance.

My dad on hot days making us ice cream with white lemonade poured over it.

The day I snapped of baby Jesus's head from my grandmother's chalkware manger set. I carefully glued it back together and no one ever noticed.

In the days before seatbelts I'd pick my nose with my face hidden in the crease of the leather back seat of my parents car. I loved the smell of the leather.

Felix the Cat when I got home from school…in the summer they’d binge show Felix and Hercules…Channel 48 in Philadelphia!

R421 your mother sounds very special X

Wetting my pants on my first day of school - kindergarten or first grade. I was horribly shy as a kid -- I would run and hide when my grandparents visited because I would become inhibited even seeing them. So, sitting on little chairs in a totally new environment with a bunch of kids and teacher (a nun) I didn't know was stressful. Too scared to ask about bathroom, I sat on my chair and let go.

The teacher eventually noticed the puddle on the floor and went to the girl on the chair next to me, having her stand up to check if her uniform skirt was wet. Then it was my turn...caught. I remember the teacher being a little angry but not yelling and taking me to the bathroom. I lived around the corner from the school, so my mother was called to come get me.

The Felix Chevrolet sign near USC

In fourth grade I called a friend's house around 9 am and his mom asked me why I wasn't in school. Turns out it was the first day of school but my parents thought it was tomorrow! I think I was dressed and in the classroom within 10 minutes!

I remember being in summer day camp and having drills where we were instructed to kneel on the floor under tables. I didn't really understand why at the time, but figured out later it was in the event of a nuclear attack. I don't remember being scared, so I presume us kids were not told the real reason for these drills.

Kneel underneath tables? I do this every Friday afternoon under my bosses desk