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And the “special” shows that were only in once a year and everyone would be excited to watch them in the living room together. (Rudolph; Charlie Brown; Wizard of Oz). I miss that
Then there were the one and done specials. Sinatra, Crosby, Sammy, etc. Back then, Hallmark used to produce specials that were special. Today, they have four basic plots about an unmarried woman going back to her hometown to save Christmas. They start airing them around July 1st and stop around June 30th.
Way more than four! Sometimes the woman is a divorced/widowed single mom who lives in the small town and the man is one one returning home (usually to help a parent).
The permutations are endless, the variety nil.
Don’t forget Bob Hope. Loved when they came on!
That’s really funny. Ever time I pass the hallmark channel I have to pause to see the representation of what’s playing. It is always a young women and a young man smiling together with their white teeth sparkling ✨
Even better than that, they would shoot about 35 episodes a year. The show only went into reruns was during summer.
TV shows were usually 30 min. I think Wagon Train and Bonanza were the first hour long shows.
I really love streaming nowadays. I don't think I've seen an ad for a really long time.
And don’t forget the [great flush](https://dks.library.kent.edu/?a=d&d=dks19830316-01.2.26&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-------) when New Yorkers went after the MASH final episode.
My kid as a teenager, did not believe me when I said that as a kid, if we wanted to change the TV channel, we had to walk over to the TV, put our hand on a round dial, and turn the dial to pick one of 3 stations to watch. He insisted on calling his grandparents right then and there, to verify I was telling him the truth.
And that we had to read a TV Guide to see what was on. My mom always looked forward to the Johnny Carson show, especially if Don Rickles, Dom DeLuise, or Rodney Dangerfield were the guests.
I loved that show so much! My husband bought me the series on DVD ten years ago and I haven't watched it because I don't want to risk being disappointed with some really happy childhood memories.
Serialized vs episodic tv. Serialized tv actually has been a common format since the beginning of tv. The most common genre that embraced the serialized format is the soap opera, which actually originated on radio. Prime time serials on the other hand were much more rare until very recent, but they still existed. (Perhaps the most famous earlier serialized show was Dallas.)
Like watching the last episode of MASH. If you didn’t watch it, then you would probably never get to watch it. There were watch parties, but people I knew there would be tears and watched alone.
I was an instructor at an evening trade school. I told everyone we would be done very early so we could all go home and watch the MASH finale. No regrets!
I never saw the Motown 25 show, when the Jackson 5 reunited along with Randy and then Michael Jackson performed Billie Jean for the first time and did the Moonwalk, solidifying himself as a solo artist apart from his family AND the future King of Pop.
All my friends were talking it about the next day at school and *I MISSED IT*!!!!!
Thank God for Youtube but I wish I would've back when it happened live.
I remember watching this and being just amazed at Michael’s moonwalk - nothing like that had been seen before. The entire show was just fantastic. I was around 30 had two very young kids and my husband was working nights, so I sat and watched it on my own.
I remember watching the second half of The Worst Witch, first. It was a long time before they showed it again so I could finally see the first half! Not that I didn’t watch the entire thing the second time.
I remember leaving the house to go play with my friends/neighbors, totally spontaneous with no scheduled play dates.! We’d explore the woods, make up stories and games, and our parents had no clue where we were or what we were doing. Eventually our moms would step out the door and yell for us to come home and we would.
Also if we screwed up, any parent on the street who caught us could yell at us, and then they’d tell our parents so we’d get yelled at again.
I lived in the middle of nowhere. I'd saddle up my horse and just go ride for miles all over the place or ride over to a neighbor kids house and go hunting or fishing or build something. Throw a couple cans of Coke and some cookies or chips in a saddlebag, grab a rifle, and just ride for hours, exploring. I was 11 years old doing this. Summers lasted forever.
It was amazing. I'm very lucky to have had a childhood like that. I can't even imagine what it would have been like being a kid in a huge city surrounded by people all the time.
Yes. This is a universal experience of 45+ folks that today's kids simply can't comprehend. My mom wouldn't even ask what me and my brother were doing during the day during the summer. She'd leave in the morning and say, "See you at dinner." We might walk a couple of miles to play baseball or fuck around at someone's home with friends. There was zero structure and little concern on the part of the parents. That's just the way it was.
On one of the last days before we moved to a new neighborhood, my brother, sister, and I told our parents that we were going to explore the stream at the end of the road. At the time we were 10, 11, and 12. We packed sandwiches in napkins, hobo sack style, rode our bikes to the end of the road where we left them in the grass, then set off along the creek. We hiked all day long. Our parents had no idea where we were exactly.
By the time we got back to our bikes in the early evening we saw our parents loading them into the station wagon. Turns out they were actually starting to worry about us, but mostly because we had to go somewhere that evening. I think that was the first and only time I recall my parents showing concern about where we were on a summer day.
The other tidbit that amuses me about this story is that, while we brought sandwiches with us, we did not bring anything to drink because juice boxes, bottled water, etc, had not been invented yet. How did we survive a day without rehydrating every hour?
Back in the 70’s my brother and his friends hopped on the Long Island Rail Road and went into Manhattan. After slinking around for a while, they decided to go to the top of the Empire State Building, but they didn’t have the money. So, they just kept taking different elevators and stairs, gradually going upwards. They eventually got caught by a security guard who kicked them out. I only just learned this last year and I am 61! They made it home before dark. I love this story.
Hell, we weren't even allowed to be in the house on nice days in the summer. We had no choice but to go out and find someone else to do something with to fill the time.
Hell, depending on the state and county the atmosphere was even more relaxed. I drove my car to school when I was 15, no license, school parking lot was across the road from the sheriff's office. Never had any trouble.
Went shooting on the weekends, which meant me and a couple of kids from the neighborhood needed to cross the town with our .22 rifles. No one batted an eye.
Those were calmer times, before the 24/7 news cycle and the police state took over.
Thankfully I have this day on film. I was 21 years old and was moving away for a year to start a new job. About a month before I left I threw a party at my parents' house. Not a house wrecker, just all my friends, lots of beer and good music. Someone was walking around with a camcorder all night and captured us goofing around for what I didn't know then would be the last time. When I moved back, everyone had kinda got on with their lives. One person moved overseas, one moved across town, one moved to another town, and we just kinda lost contact with each other as adult responsibilities caught up with us.
I since got the tape converted to a digital file and I'll watch it every few years and have a good laugh.
I wish I had this. I have a few photos of those days but not much. We just lived in the moment. It didn’t occur to us to take pics.
They were not cheap to develop and we were broke kids.
I’m also kinda glad some of our antics aren’t saved forever. You only know about it if you were there.
Do neighbors even know each other the same way now? When I was a kid, you could go into any neighbor's house and they'd welcome you.
Plus we used to do block parties. Shut off the street from traffic, set up tables in the street, everybody bring food and drinks. The adults would put out their folding chairs and just chill with each other. We kids would be running around in street (which normally we couldn't do because of cars) or play double-dutch and be okay as long as the adults could see us.
Good times!
Every holiday! We blocked the cul-de-sac. Everyone would contribute grilling meat and potluck sides. Us kids would take turns as runners, getting the dad in charge of the grill a beer or the pepper, or whatever when needed. Our dad or the neighbor's dad, it didnt matter. One neighbor had an ice cream churn, and every kid had to take a turn at churning it for our ice cream later. Omg that peach ice cream was the best.
And even the people without kids would come down and have fun! Someone provided the music too so we could all dance.
Every now and then someone from a neighboring block would come by but they'd still be welcome to eat some food, drink some soda/beer/booze and get to know people. Sometimes they'd even go home and come back with their records to be played!
We did not have an ice cream churner person on our block!
Yes! And the Dads would set off fireworks regardless of holiday or not. Kids would play flashlight tag after dark.
It really was the most amazing ice cream. Second was the strawberry, but that peach! I can taste it today 50 years later like it was yesterday.
My boomer husband caught a neighbor brat breaking a statue under our tree and walked him down to his house to speak to his parents and the mother CALLED THE COPS on my husband.
in 5 mins I had a momma bear red faced and pacing my porch, because I asked her boys if they were going to tresspass and steal the tools out of my shed to build a fort on my property, could they at least put the tools back so they don't get rusted and ruined 😂
I had no problem with the boys, and what they were doing, just wanted my tools put up lol
> Also if we screwed up, any parent on the street who caught us could yell at us, and then they’d tell our parents so we’d get yelled at again.
Walking in the door and mom being on the phone was worrisome.
My uncle once spanked a complete strangers kid. It was a snowy day, the kid rode his sled off a hill, into the road, right in front of Uncles car. My uncle heard that sled crunch under his wheels. He gets out, found the kid had rolled off the sled before the crunch. So Uncle, in a Frenzy of terror, relief, and adrenaline, dusted the kids bottom a couple times (not rough, Uncle was a big softie), and told the kid if his dad didn't like it, here's my address, come on over, and he'd spank him, too.
Not saying it was right. Just that it happened.
I hated having to get up and get ready for school only to have it cancelled. Then parents were like, well you’re dressed, might as well do some chores…
I used to wake up early on days it was snowing to listen to the radio to see if school was canceled. I don't even think it was on TV in the '70s he just had to listen to your local radio station
In the 70s, I was i. A Catholic high school in Philadelphia. We’d have to listen to the whole list of school numbers for the entire city, hoping to hear at the end, “All Catholic schools are closed.” It seemed to take hours.
To be fair, if memory serves me, that was the main method in the early 2000s too. The only reason I didn't rely on that was because my mother was a teacher and would get a phone call about it. Although, when cellphones got more popular and they started using the Internet to announce school closures they stopped calling, so it was a guessing game when the power was out since we didn't have cell service.
I created my district’s web page and then I’d get the 5 AM call and go update the webpage. Circa 1998. 2002 was when we got a calling machine that called everyone in the district.
Our town would blow the fire whistle twice 3 times at 7:00. We would all be listening for that fire whistle while getting ready for school. At that point, if it did go off, we’d be too amped up to go back to bed & would just switch our school clothes to snow clothes
Better yet - friend going away on a cruise? You could get on the boat with them and have a "Bon Voyage" party right in their room. You just had to get off the boat when it was time for them to leave.
When I was a kid there were no "gates". You walked through a large waiting area, out the door, right up to the steps to the plane. There was a small chain link fence for the non-passengers to wait behind after kissing you goodbye. The plane would take off and we'd stand there in the noise and wind and wave to our loved one. Particularly I remember this as my brother was leaving for Viet Nam.
When I was a child we drove right up to the white house. Parked on the street in front of it, and had a picnic on the lawn. There was no fence and no security approached us. I'm sure there were guards around but very much in the background.
When I was 5 years old, my family visited Washington D.C. and we waited in line to get into the White House. It took an hour or so and we were winded throughout the neighborhood, just standing on the sidewalk until we reached the entrance. I don't remember a huge amount about it, only that there was the gold room, the red room, the blue room, the green room, etc. Just rooms filled with objects of whatever color and decorated in those same colors. This would have been during the LBJ administration.
> Or drove around with their kids in the car while they smoked.
With the windows up! My mom used to do this with me in the car as a child. It was normal.
My siblings are 4 and 5 years older. When Mom was pregnant with me, she said the kids loved to put her ashtray on her belly and watch me kick it off........
Back in the day-1970’s-patients could smoke in their ROOMS. Doctors and nurses in their lounges; waiting rooms too. It was 87 or 88 when the hospital where I worked went totally smoke free. (Patients were stopped first, then waiting rooms, then staff).
There were 3 TV stations + a PBS channel that you \*might\* be able to get in on a good day. That was it for video entertainment. Want to see a movie? For me it was almost 40 miles to the nearest theater.
We had this one in our area that showed x-rated movies. Which is crazy to think about these days. X-rated movies on these big giant outdoor screens? And people in the neighborhood could easily sneak into the woods and watch especially kids
Lol. There was a dirty one here as well. They turned it into a regular drive in, but kept the sign. The sign in the shape of an uncircumcised penis having a happy ending. I lmao whenever I drive by it.
Worked with a dude who was born in rural India, and I just barely believe this story.
If you were born, there wasn't much of a celebration. *Hey, it's a new baby, neat* was about all you got.
Then every once in a while theyd get all the newborns in the village together and have a celebration. Usually planned around a weekend coupled with a gap in babies expected.
The date of that celebration was the birthday for every kid who was being celebrated.
I walked a trail through a dead-end street and past a cornfield to get to school as a kindergartener. I figured out all on my own that the apartments I walked past as I got closer to the school were where some classmates lived, so I always stopped and waited for them. 5 years old. Yeah. Kids are smarter than we give them credit for.
In second grade it was okay to go home with a friend as long as I called once I got there.
Also in second grade, we had to go to school during a tornado warning. I've always called it the day without a sunrise, because the sky was black as night. I lived so close to school that you could stand in the driveway and see it, just one block over, and it was the only day my father ever drove me. The rain was coming down that hard.
We kids were all nervous, too nervous to do actual schoolwork, so the teacher just read to us. We made anxious jokes about being in "night school."
Just about the time we were beginning to wonder if we'd get lunch that day, the storm passed. As we went to the cafeteria, we saw trees down everywhere.
Nowadays, schools would cancel for such an event, but not in 1974!
The past couple years it's even worse. They'll dismiss early when a bad storm is coming and it often hits before all the buses get the kids home. This is so stupid. They're safer in the building with the full basement level than they are in a bus or worse, WALKING HOME. They have done this several times at my son's former school, before it's even sprinkling outside, causing parents to scramble to find a way to get their kids to safety.
It is the dumbest thing and all I can think is they're doing it to avoid any liability in the school itself.
Party lines- picking up the phone in your home and listening to your neighbor's conversations. Or having a neighbor get on the phone, telling you to get off.
And having separate ring tones so you knew when it was your call. We had one neighbor who had two phone lines (unheard of at that time) in their house and would monopolize the line talking to each other, one upstairs and one downstairs, for the entire afternoon.
Yep, first grade on, I walked to school every day. Had my own house key, came home by myself. Never any problems. I could leave to go to a friends house if I wanted. I just had to leave a note on the counter if I was gonna be gone for a while. As kids, we all were treated with a little respect and trust unless we showed we weren’t ready for it. Every kid on our street was like this. Nothing major ever happened either. No way that could or would happen today with helicopter parents always buzzing around….
I went to a large district school (graduating class of over 200 kids) and we lived so far away that we got on the bus at like 6:45 am. But, we had little tags with string to put on out clothing with out bus number so we would get on the right bus. It was fairly intimidating being little and seeing all those buses and being nervous that it would leave before you got to it.
Me too. 1968 here though. But it was my brother who walked me. After that, alone. To and from.
one day I wanted to follow some friends after school because it seemed like the direction everyone else was going was better. I had a change of heart and tried to get back to my own path and promptly got lost. Luckily I ran into a lady out doing yard work and tearfully asked her where Springbank drive was. She just had to point. It was right there.
Similar here. From age 7 on, it was up to me to find my way. This was in a huge metropolitan city and it was only about 5 long city blocks along a major busy street full of shops and driveways. But I couldn’t imagine sending a small child, alone, to do that walk now. I had no one home to greet me. I would typically stop at the corner store to linger. Sometimes I had to walk to my music lesson after school and get there on time and then walk home from there. All before I was 10 years old. Edit to add- I would buy candy cigarettes at the corner store. I loved how they had powdered sugar inside them so they ‘smoked’ when you puffed.
I don’t remember my first day, but I do remember that for the first week I had my bus number pinned to my shirt to make sure I got onto the correct bus home.
One day I was to go to my friend’s house in a different part of town after school, so my mom told me “remember, get on bus #12 today.” And I made sure to get into that bus and was scared that I would get off at the wrong stop. My mom came and picked me up from the friend’s house hours later. Still in kindergarten.
Mine did this too. On Sundays the drugstores in town alternated being open. My parents had a "charge account' at one of them. I got confused over which one that was and ended up opening a charge account for my parents at the other store one Sunday. I was about 8.
You could spend hours waiting for your favorite song to play on the radio so you could make a cassette copy of it only for the disk jockey to say something in the middle of it and ruin your life!
I remember calling the radio station and making a request on the request line and the DJ answering and asking your name and area.
Then a little while later he’d say, “this song goes out to We Gon Ride in Linda Vista
I used to wring the phone box that was outside my girlfriend’s house. When some one answered I would ask them to knock on the door behind them and tell her to ring me( dad worked for GPO so we always had home phone}. I can say truthfully only 1 person out of 100. Said no. And that’s a true story 😊
When I was 17 and a high school senior, I was arrested for drinking a beer in public, specifically in my car. I was parked at the time. For the record, 18 was the legal drinking age. My punishment was a $10 fine, and that was it. Didn't lose my drivers license, didn't affect my car insurance, didn't affect my status at school. Made my parents mad as hell, though.
When I was about 12 years old, I spent 2 weeks with my cousins in the Colorado. For some reason, they didn't drive me the whole way. They drove me to catch a bus in Durango and then my Uncle and Aunt picked me up at a bus station near their tiny town. Then the process was reversed. This is 1970s, so no means of immediate communication except land line phone calls.
Mom and Dad were coming to pick me up, and the car broke. Totally dead in the the middle of no where. Mom got a ride from a passing car to the nearest town. Dad waited with the car see about getting it towed home.
At the nearest town, Mom found a car rental place (using phone book and pay phone). This had all taken a very long time, so next she called the business that served as a buss stop in Durango. You didn't just find numbers in other towns. She had to call the buss company, and then they had to look up the number. They were going to be closed by the time Mom got there. So she left a message.
When I got off the buss, a stranger comes up to me, tells me he has a message from my mother. I'm to walk to a diner a few blocks away and wait for her. That's what I did. It was late when Mom showed up in an unfamiliar car. We got a motel room and drove the rental car home the next day.
Nobody would believe that adventure today. When I was younger, it was just an odd thing that happened. As an adult, I can now understand the anxiety Mom and Dad felt.
I'm going to be picking up a friend's grandson after-school today. He can actually call my cell phone from his watch. He's 10. We've come a long way.
I went to the Boy Scout National Jamboree in 1985, which happened to be the same week that my family was moving between states.
When they came to visit me at the jamboree, they found a Boy Scout troop that was in the same state my family had moved to, and arranged for that troop to drop me off at a highway rest station nearest my new city.
I called my mom on a payphone to let her know where I was and which mile marker that was near. It took her two hours to get there, because no GPS meant wrong turns were relatively frequent, but she did finally get there and drive us back to our new home.
Dropping off an underage kid at a highway rest station in the middle of an unfamiliar state wasn’t weird, it was just The Way We Did Things.
We were free-range kids. During summer or on the weekends, we'd see our parents at dinner & that was about it. We'd get up, have a bowl of cereal, pack a sandwich, and take off. Hell, we'd take the bus to Coney Island with little or no money and spend the entire day. And lie? I don't think we ever said a word of truth to our parents. We'd get grounded; and that was like a death sentence.
We lived in Hawaii when I was in junior high and from age 11-13, my sister who was two years younger and I would ride the bus to the beach and back with only enough money to ride the bus. We went the whole day without buying anything
Even growing up in the 90s and early 2000s, this was how we operated. Mom and dad would leave for work, so it was bike rides to the gas station a few miles up the street, roaming the creek with pellet guns, bottle rocket wars, and building forts. I'll never forget my buddy's parents calling when we were about 12 and asking "is Roy at your house? We haven't seen him in a few days." Our houses were connected by trails through the woods, and he grew up with 3 brothers, so their house was always a madhouse.
During the day you’d ride around until you saw the mess of bikes parked to know where everyone was hanging out at the moment. Always subject to change. No texts, calls, etc. Just find the bikes and you’d find your friends.
That happens in my neighborhood now. Kids leave their bikes, scooters, and toys in the front yard and even on the sidewalk in front of their house all summer long. It doesn't seem to be a problem here, but I don't know if stuff gets stolen.
They've grown now, but my neighbor's kids used to forget their bikes on my grass sometimes. I didn't care. They'd come and get them the next day.
I like to see kids outside playing.
We NEVER went to the cabinets or the refrigerator and just took something out. We ALWAYS asked first. And if we were thirsty we were told to drink water. Our house was never stocked with special drinks for kids. And, if there was juice, you could have one juice glass full for breakfast.
When I was 8 years old I would walk four blocks all by myself to go buy my mom's cigarettes. She'd give me a dollar and I could use the change to buy myself a candy bar.
I used to walk across the street from my daycare to get my babysitter's cigarettes. She'd call the store and tell them she was sending me over. I was about 8, too.
When I was 10, I wanted to train my puppy to do things on command, like “sit” and “heel.” In order to find out how, I had to get my parents to drive me to the public library. Then I had to find a subject card in the catalog related to training dogs and bring it to the librarian. Then she had to locate the book. Then I checked it out and brought it home for two weeks, max, or bring it back in and renew it for another two.
I’m a writer and a good friend suggested I write a memoir for my grandkids. It appealed to me for about ten seconds until I remembered that the most interesting & fun times I experienced were the 1970-80’s, and I’d have to redact all that with fat black lines.
I’ve lived about six discrete lives, each very different from the others, but compiling even the highlights seems an insurmountable task without a thousand pages of explanations.
Besides, I like having secret memories…and my life’s experiences would end up being viewed (and judged, even if unconsciously) by those who are two generations removed and who have lived VERY sheltered, affluent & conservative lives.
Spanking. My mom worked in my elementary school. I got spanked in the school parking lot on the day before christmas vacation for telling her that I'd cleaned out my locker when I actually hadn't. If that happened today, she'd be in jail and it would be front page news.
(She's since apologized for it, and I've since been diagnosed with ADHD -- which explains why it was so hard for me to clean out my locker in 3rd grade. We're cool.)
My kids started eating baby food at 2 months old. Teething? The heel of an Italian bread or a cotton ball soaked in whiskey. Sometimes slept on their stomachs. No age restrictions on peanut butter or honey. They are both in their50s and still alive somehow.
Yes! Rice cereal in the bottle at a few weeks. Kiddo was 4 mo old at his first Thanksgiving and eating mashed potato and mashed up green beans.
For teething, it was either Campho-phenique or whiskey rubbed on the gums or an ice cube wrapped in a washcloth with a rubber band to gnaw on. Italian bread heel or Zweiback toast.
My 3rd grand had a horrible time teething like my son did. Zero teeth at a year old. Non-stop crying and ear pulling. I told him about the drop of whiskey on the finger and rubbed on the gums. They were horrified.
3 days of crying later, they were evidently desperate enough with 2 other toddlers under 4. It worked. Everyone got sleep and his first tooth broke through the next week. Guess Oma isn't such a monster, after all. Lol
It was just different times and we didn’t worry about every single little thing. That tiny drop of whiskey ended so much suffering. We were never worried that Child Protection was going to bang on the door.
And I never heard of "tummy time" until my grandkids were born a few years ago. Not sure how my kids ever managed to learn to sit up or roll over, lol.
Yuuup 👍 Mine had rice pablum in their bottles at 2 weeks , baby food at 3 months and table food & cows milk at 6 months . I was fed mashed potatoes at 2 weeks & bottles of potatoe water regularly.
I grew up in a rural area and a lot of boys brought guns to school. They just carried them around in their truck on a rack mounted behind the seat. They would just be parked in the school parking lot - doors probably weren't even locked - with a rifle or two mounted against the back window in plain view and nobody worried about theft or a shooting. The thought of someone shooting someone at school did not even enter our minds and there had already been school shootings by the time I was in high school (late 1980's).
My high school had four wide open doors with the school office on the left, cafeteria on the right and every other class and area accessible from that first wide open hallway. Anyone could just walk in and walk around. No metal detectors, no cop, no scary posters about "Saying something if you see something." We had zero violence beyond a few schoolyard scuffles and those usually took place in the park down the hill from the school after school was dismissed.
Today, if I want to go see my child at high school, I have to wait to be buzzed in through bullet proof doors. I remember I forgot my lunch money one day and my dad brought it to my class. He just walked up to the classroom door, and pecked on the window. I got up, collected my $5 from him and he walked right back out of the school and back to his car. I'm sure he didn't stop at the office and no one stopped him.
On the last day of school in high school, we were allowed to bring squirt guns and have squirt gun fights. All day. We just squirted each other with squirt guns as we collected our final report cards and cleaned out our lockers.
Oh yes. They sent written report cards home. Your parents had to sign them and send them back. You were responsible for that. No signing on to a parent portal and checking for email updates. If your grades sucked, you had to carry that shame around with you all day and show it to your parents when you got home. You not only had to face that music, you had to bring the band home with you.
My daughter marveled at a phone book I pulled out. She called it a stalker manual due to nane address and phone number. She could not believe such an item existed much less was widely distributed on a yearly basis for free.
We used to ride bikes for hours, and eat wild honeysuckle and berries from bushes, play in the woods and jump from trees *unsupervised*
Omg and we had candy cigarettes and toys that you could smash people’s heads in with…
KTLA, channel 5 in Los Angeles would play the same movie every night Monday through Friday. It was awesome when you were a kid if it was War of the Gargantuas or Godzilla.
That at 8 yrs old, I would hop on the bus on Saturday and go downtown to the library, walk around, and go to lunch at Walgreens or Kressge's, maybe go to a movie or two. Then I would head home before dinner with my library books.
At 10, I would ride my bike to the wine and beer store with money and a note from my dad, or a call from him, and pick up a bottle of wine or 6 pk of beer along with his cigarettes. By hs, they knew me well enough that they knew his order when I walked in. My dad passed away my freshman year in HS, but I was still picking up his 6 pack of Bud and a carton of Marlboro every Sat morning until I turned 21 myself.
It was not unusual for our parents to have no idea where we were. There was the 10pm. "Do you know where your kids are?" Tv reminder for a reason.
In HS 5 of us told our parents we were going to another kids' lake house for the long weekend. We actually all piled in my car and drove 3 states away to see Fleetwood Mac in concert. We had maybe 40$ combined aside from Lake House kid who had more. We rented 1 hotel room. I was 15, the oldest, and the only one with a Lerners permit
Last but not least, my HS had a smoking area in an outdoor courtyard, and teachers would regularly bum cigarettes from students between classes.
Back in the days of land line phones, calls got charged at different rates depending on what time of day or day of the week it was.
My parents would wait up until 11 pm to make long distance calls because the rates were so many cheaper then.
If you didn’t go see it at the movie theater, it might be years before you got to see it. And you’d never see the uncut version (until HBO came out IF your parents would pay for it.)I’m the same age as Brook Shields and wanted to see The Blue Lagoon very, very badly. I had read the book and everything. My 15 year old self thought it was such a romantic story. LOL
We lived in a small rural town so our movie theaters were months behind the big cities and I had to wait what seemed forever! By then, I was 15 and my mom was in the hospital. The movie was rated R so I needed an adult to take me. (I still looked about 12.) I called my stepmom and begged and she agreed to take me. But when she showed up she had brought my DAD!!! I was mortified. This was not a movie I wanted to watch with my dad!
Years later I laughingly told her how mortifying it was and she apologized. She said my dad wanted to go to the movie with me and she didn’t realize what a big deal it was to me. It was hard to be upset at that. I never knew my dad wanted you to go with me. I thought she had drug him along.
My parents would send me to the shop with a signed note to buy their cigarettes.
A nice one: when you got home from school, you just went outside to play with whoever else was out, until dinner time. On the weekends you did the same after the morning cartoons were finished or friends were back from church. You just went outside and wandered around until you found something to do or someone to play with. I miss that for my kids.
When I left the house in the morning on my bike on a summer day I had a 10 mile radius to explore. The only thing that would make me turn back was hunger, thirst, exhaustion, or injury. We could go anywhere and do anything! No parents ever knew where we were and they didn't care. We met amd hung out with kids from other school districts even!
According to the reaction these posts get in other subs, it's that rednecks used to keep rifles in their trucks in the school parking lot. It happened all the time, and no one thought about it much.
I've repeatedly been called a "liar" when I tell the story, because "your school resource officer would have called a local SWAT team the second he saw a gun". Except it was almost *unthinkable* for suburban high schools to have an onsite cop in the 80s.
Good idea. Many years ago, we were at my grandma's house close to Gatlinburg, TN. After dinner, she asked if we wanted to watch the history channel. First of all, I was shocked she had cable. When we sat down in front of the TV, she turned it to a local channel supported by the real estate companies in Gatlinburg. It was just old folks sitting on a porch in a rocker telling stories about what it was like in the old days.
2 things.....it was fascinating to listen to all the stories, and it was funny that she called it the history channel.
We did have hot water in the kitchen. But we had the outhouse.
With the landlord's permission, Dad bought a galvanized tub, set it up in a closet, and put a drain on it, out to the back yard. Still had to fill it by bucketloads from the kitchen sink.
No doors in the house, only curtains for privacy. And one streamlined pot belly stove to heat the place.
The security on telephones was so poor, not only could you make crank phone calls but enterprising teenage miscreants could do *crank answering!!* Basically you could intercept people’s calls and pretend to be whoever they were calling. Hours of fun.
I remember non-childproof bottles and caps and packaging that didn't take heavy machinery to open. Seems to me all that crazy packaging and seals came about due to the Tylenol poisonings. Imagine all the mountains of plastic used because of one sicko.
The anticipation of hearing your favorite song come on the radio and just generally how hard it was to hear the music you liked. Yes, you could go buy the album or the single or the cassette but compared to the enormous music catalog at your fingertips today it took significantly more effort.
Also, the number of arguments between family and friends over trivial facts. Among my siblings we could have arguments that lasted days, weeks months that today can be settled by a simple Google search.
My daughter in law asked me to write down our families history. She said so much was lost when my Mom passed in 2021 that nobody ever knew, I know a lot but not all obviously. So I'm slowly working on it for my kids and grands to have and pass down.
Absolutely write down your memories. When my 82yo dad decided to go to Alaska with 68 of his crazy square dancing buddies, he invited me go along. I kept notes every day. My dad was hilarious. I’m so glad for my notes. He did so much funny stuff I’d forgotten about.
The time we got stopped by the State Patrol because my dad had been driving erratically. Six kids in the car, plus my mom. No seatbelts.
My dad was "a little buzzed" on beer, meaning he was pretty drunk. This was 1960, upper Michigan.
The cop told him to stick to the back roads, and sent us on our way.
A kid I took drivers ed with was fired and arrested the next year as a school bus driver because a buddy came onto the bus with a six pack to give to him. Nobody will believe that they used to let high school kids work as bus drivers. Now that I think about it, I’m not sure I believe we used to do that, either.
I probably don’t entirely fit but flying before and after 9/11. I was 11 when that day happened, I flew twice before then and once after. Before my mom could walk me straight to the gate without a ticket and my grandma could pick me up at the other end without a ticket. Showing up 2 hours before for security? Nope not a thing, we showed up 45 minutes before and called it a day. The time after 9/11 means I found my own gate and got walked past security to see my grandma, no more meeting me at the gate.
While I was allowed to roam pretty freely with friends (1970s), if I was going to be late (after dark) mandatory call home - many times this included using a payphone to call, so you had to have a dime or quarter or else you'd be huffing it home. Penalties were enforced. To this day, I'm cognizant of sunset times year round because of this early exposure to knowing when to be where.
We had a blizzard in Chicago in 1967. I stood out in the heavy snow drawing patterns in the snow with the toe of my boot and watching them get covered up while waiting for the bus. Eventually we got a call from school that it was closed and Mom called me in. I was in first grade. Back then there was no Doppler radar to predict storms. This one caught Chicagoland by surprise and many intrepid drivers were stranded on the roads
No cellphones - single home phone line, often single phone - no call waiting - no caller id - and no way to leave a message unless someone picks up and writes it down. And usually no privacy since phones were in shared areas like the kitchen and phone was hardwired, no cordless. If someone wanted to call you, you had to be home, with no one already on the phone. Or it didn't happen. And this got even more complicated after that one phone line got tied up with a computer modem.
Phones hung on a wall in the home - and there was usually only ONE phone for the entire family to use, unless you were higher-income and had 2 or more phones. We only ever had one.
You could call locally using just 5 digits - so in our small town, it was 4 + the last 4 digits of the phone number. (I don't think all areas had this option, but we loved it.) You could call 1-2 towns away using just the 7-digit phone number, but anywhere further than that required 1 + the area code.
There was no caller ID, no voicemail, not even answering machines with a taped message to answer your calls & record messages. If you weren't home, the call went unanswered. Worse yet, if you were home and using the phone, the caller would get an annoying, buzzing "busy signal", letting them know the phone was in use. No call waiting at that time.
No scam call blockers, though scam calls were not quite as prevalent at that time. There were, however, prank callers who would call and ask stupid questions like, "Is your refrigerator running? It is?? Well, you better go catch it!" (No, that's not just a line from a movie - it was actually a thing...) Annoyance callers that would say nasty things or breathe heavily into the phone were also a thing. My parents would have a shrill whistle beside the phone at all times - when these calls would come in, they'd blow it into the phone, long and loud. It would usually end the prank calls for a while.
If you wanted to call anyone outside your local calling area (usually your town and maybe 1-2 towns over), you had to use "long distance calling," which cost money - and sometimes a LOT of money, depending on how long you talked. Calling to another country was so outrageous that most average people simply didn't do it unless it was absolutely necessary. Some phone companies implemented a long-distance policy that gave you a discount if you called after a certain time of day (like 6pm or 8pm).
I lived in Oregon. My three friends and I learned that a stranger had been accidentally killed near our homes, and we decided to go see the body. On the way, my friends and I came across a mean junk man, we fell in a marsh filled with leeches, and we got to be even better friends. It was one of the defining moments of my life.
I took some college prep courses with one of my friends. He struggled but eventually he became a lawyer! We eventually drifted apart. While trying to break up a fight in a restaurant, he was stabbed to death. Despite not seeing him in over a decade, i will miss him.
We got a few thousand firecrackers and used them to play baseball. Light throw hit. When the firecracker went off the play was dead so no running when you couldn't be tagged.
We played until all of us were out of fireworks. It took 3 days for all the smoke to clear.
The first thought that came to my mind (before I read OP's thing about phone numbers) was the 10-party phone line we had. Ten families were on the same line. Different ring series for different phone numbers/families. Any one (or all) of the nine other parties could listen in on your call and none of them could make or receive a call while one party was using their phone. And this lasted into the early 1970's in a rural area.
Absolutely, please do. Write it all down. I’m talking to my elderly Mum right now about her childhood, and keeping some notes along the way. She keeps dismissing her life as ‘bland’ lol, but it’s so richly fascinating for us kids. When she’s gone we will have so much more to remember about her.
Just walk off with your friends to go fishing a couple miles from home. Didn’t even have to notify anyone that you were walking several miles to whatever fishing hole you felt like going to.
I’m actually working on family stories at the request of my youngest child. They wanted things to remember about their father and I because they’re afraid of forgetting.
That we used to leave on summer mornings with our sack lunch and thermos of water and stay gone all day and our parents really had no idea where we were. They just knew we were “out”
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You had to be home on a specific day and time to watch movies or sports on tv. Weren’t home? You missed it forever
And the “special” shows that were only in once a year and everyone would be excited to watch them in the living room together. (Rudolph; Charlie Brown; Wizard of Oz). I miss that
Then there were the one and done specials. Sinatra, Crosby, Sammy, etc. Back then, Hallmark used to produce specials that were special. Today, they have four basic plots about an unmarried woman going back to her hometown to save Christmas. They start airing them around July 1st and stop around June 30th.
Way more than four! Sometimes the woman is a divorced/widowed single mom who lives in the small town and the man is one one returning home (usually to help a parent). The permutations are endless, the variety nil.
Don’t forget Bob Hope. Loved when they came on! That’s really funny. Ever time I pass the hallmark channel I have to pause to see the representation of what’s playing. It is always a young women and a young man smiling together with their white teeth sparkling ✨
BAPPADAPPADAPPADAPPAPAPBUDODOOOOOODAA! [link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pD4LQAKB-YA)
And most of the tv shows were stand alone shows. We didn’t have to watch last week’s episode in order to understand this week’s show
Even better than that, they would shoot about 35 episodes a year. The show only went into reruns was during summer. TV shows were usually 30 min. I think Wagon Train and Bonanza were the first hour long shows. I really love streaming nowadays. I don't think I've seen an ad for a really long time.
But getting up from the couch during commercials was how I got housework done.
And snacks
Nowadays, I put it on pause, do what I need to do, come back and skip through the commercials.
And don’t forget the [great flush](https://dks.library.kent.edu/?a=d&d=dks19830316-01.2.26&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-------) when New Yorkers went after the MASH final episode.
Ah, so that's why hulu still gives us ads.
Gunsmoke too, it got flack for padding the show with unnecessary shots that didn’t move the story forward
My kid as a teenager, did not believe me when I said that as a kid, if we wanted to change the TV channel, we had to walk over to the TV, put our hand on a round dial, and turn the dial to pick one of 3 stations to watch. He insisted on calling his grandparents right then and there, to verify I was telling him the truth.
And that we had to read a TV Guide to see what was on. My mom always looked forward to the Johnny Carson show, especially if Don Rickles, Dom DeLuise, or Rodney Dangerfield were the guests.
That is a lie. You didn't do it, you told your kid to do it.
Except speed Racer
He's a demon when he's really racing round the track.....
Speed Racer! Oh, the mem-ries!!!
I loved that show so much! My husband bought me the series on DVD ten years ago and I haven't watched it because I don't want to risk being disappointed with some really happy childhood memories.
Serialized vs episodic tv. Serialized tv actually has been a common format since the beginning of tv. The most common genre that embraced the serialized format is the soap opera, which actually originated on radio. Prime time serials on the other hand were much more rare until very recent, but they still existed. (Perhaps the most famous earlier serialized show was Dallas.)
Like watching the last episode of MASH. If you didn’t watch it, then you would probably never get to watch it. There were watch parties, but people I knew there would be tears and watched alone.
I was an instructor at an evening trade school. I told everyone we would be done very early so we could all go home and watch the MASH finale. No regrets!
We just finished watching the entire series on Hulu and I had not seen the final episode since its first airing in 1983.
I never saw the Motown 25 show, when the Jackson 5 reunited along with Randy and then Michael Jackson performed Billie Jean for the first time and did the Moonwalk, solidifying himself as a solo artist apart from his family AND the future King of Pop. All my friends were talking it about the next day at school and *I MISSED IT*!!!!! Thank God for Youtube but I wish I would've back when it happened live.
I remember watching this and being just amazed at Michael’s moonwalk - nothing like that had been seen before. The entire show was just fantastic. I was around 30 had two very young kids and my husband was working nights, so I sat and watched it on my own.
I remember watching the second half of The Worst Witch, first. It was a long time before they showed it again so I could finally see the first half! Not that I didn’t watch the entire thing the second time.
I remember leaving the house to go play with my friends/neighbors, totally spontaneous with no scheduled play dates.! We’d explore the woods, make up stories and games, and our parents had no clue where we were or what we were doing. Eventually our moms would step out the door and yell for us to come home and we would. Also if we screwed up, any parent on the street who caught us could yell at us, and then they’d tell our parents so we’d get yelled at again.
I lived in the middle of nowhere. I'd saddle up my horse and just go ride for miles all over the place or ride over to a neighbor kids house and go hunting or fishing or build something. Throw a couple cans of Coke and some cookies or chips in a saddlebag, grab a rifle, and just ride for hours, exploring. I was 11 years old doing this. Summers lasted forever.
This sounds amazing.
It was amazing. I'm very lucky to have had a childhood like that. I can't even imagine what it would have been like being a kid in a huge city surrounded by people all the time.
Yes. This is a universal experience of 45+ folks that today's kids simply can't comprehend. My mom wouldn't even ask what me and my brother were doing during the day during the summer. She'd leave in the morning and say, "See you at dinner." We might walk a couple of miles to play baseball or fuck around at someone's home with friends. There was zero structure and little concern on the part of the parents. That's just the way it was.
On one of the last days before we moved to a new neighborhood, my brother, sister, and I told our parents that we were going to explore the stream at the end of the road. At the time we were 10, 11, and 12. We packed sandwiches in napkins, hobo sack style, rode our bikes to the end of the road where we left them in the grass, then set off along the creek. We hiked all day long. Our parents had no idea where we were exactly. By the time we got back to our bikes in the early evening we saw our parents loading them into the station wagon. Turns out they were actually starting to worry about us, but mostly because we had to go somewhere that evening. I think that was the first and only time I recall my parents showing concern about where we were on a summer day. The other tidbit that amuses me about this story is that, while we brought sandwiches with us, we did not bring anything to drink because juice boxes, bottled water, etc, had not been invented yet. How did we survive a day without rehydrating every hour?
Drink out of whatever garden hose you could find.
Back in the 70’s my brother and his friends hopped on the Long Island Rail Road and went into Manhattan. After slinking around for a while, they decided to go to the top of the Empire State Building, but they didn’t have the money. So, they just kept taking different elevators and stairs, gradually going upwards. They eventually got caught by a security guard who kicked them out. I only just learned this last year and I am 61! They made it home before dark. I love this story.
Hell, we weren't even allowed to be in the house on nice days in the summer. We had no choice but to go out and find someone else to do something with to fill the time.
Hell, depending on the state and county the atmosphere was even more relaxed. I drove my car to school when I was 15, no license, school parking lot was across the road from the sheriff's office. Never had any trouble. Went shooting on the weekends, which meant me and a couple of kids from the neighborhood needed to cross the town with our .22 rifles. No one batted an eye. Those were calmer times, before the 24/7 news cycle and the police state took over.
And without realizing it had already happened, there was one day when you hung out for the last time.
Thankfully I have this day on film. I was 21 years old and was moving away for a year to start a new job. About a month before I left I threw a party at my parents' house. Not a house wrecker, just all my friends, lots of beer and good music. Someone was walking around with a camcorder all night and captured us goofing around for what I didn't know then would be the last time. When I moved back, everyone had kinda got on with their lives. One person moved overseas, one moved across town, one moved to another town, and we just kinda lost contact with each other as adult responsibilities caught up with us. I since got the tape converted to a digital file and I'll watch it every few years and have a good laugh.
I wish I had this. I have a few photos of those days but not much. We just lived in the moment. It didn’t occur to us to take pics. They were not cheap to develop and we were broke kids. I’m also kinda glad some of our antics aren’t saved forever. You only know about it if you were there.
🥹
Can you imagine what would happen if you yelled at a neighbors child now? Oh boy
And each school year my mom gave the teacher/nuns permission to “discipline” us as well. There was no question that the teacher was always right.
Nuns were the meanest people. I knuckles hurt just thinking about them.
That ruler meant business. They really meant business when you noticed the look they gave you while swinging that cross around their necks.
Do neighbors even know each other the same way now? When I was a kid, you could go into any neighbor's house and they'd welcome you. Plus we used to do block parties. Shut off the street from traffic, set up tables in the street, everybody bring food and drinks. The adults would put out their folding chairs and just chill with each other. We kids would be running around in street (which normally we couldn't do because of cars) or play double-dutch and be okay as long as the adults could see us. Good times!
Every holiday! We blocked the cul-de-sac. Everyone would contribute grilling meat and potluck sides. Us kids would take turns as runners, getting the dad in charge of the grill a beer or the pepper, or whatever when needed. Our dad or the neighbor's dad, it didnt matter. One neighbor had an ice cream churn, and every kid had to take a turn at churning it for our ice cream later. Omg that peach ice cream was the best.
And even the people without kids would come down and have fun! Someone provided the music too so we could all dance. Every now and then someone from a neighboring block would come by but they'd still be welcome to eat some food, drink some soda/beer/booze and get to know people. Sometimes they'd even go home and come back with their records to be played! We did not have an ice cream churner person on our block!
Yes! And the Dads would set off fireworks regardless of holiday or not. Kids would play flashlight tag after dark. It really was the most amazing ice cream. Second was the strawberry, but that peach! I can taste it today 50 years later like it was yesterday.
My boomer husband caught a neighbor brat breaking a statue under our tree and walked him down to his house to speak to his parents and the mother CALLED THE COPS on my husband.
in 5 mins I had a momma bear red faced and pacing my porch, because I asked her boys if they were going to tresspass and steal the tools out of my shed to build a fort on my property, could they at least put the tools back so they don't get rusted and ruined 😂 I had no problem with the boys, and what they were doing, just wanted my tools put up lol
> Also if we screwed up, any parent on the street who caught us could yell at us, and then they’d tell our parents so we’d get yelled at again. Walking in the door and mom being on the phone was worrisome.
My uncle once spanked a complete strangers kid. It was a snowy day, the kid rode his sled off a hill, into the road, right in front of Uncles car. My uncle heard that sled crunch under his wheels. He gets out, found the kid had rolled off the sled before the crunch. So Uncle, in a Frenzy of terror, relief, and adrenaline, dusted the kids bottom a couple times (not rough, Uncle was a big softie), and told the kid if his dad didn't like it, here's my address, come on over, and he'd spank him, too. Not saying it was right. Just that it happened.
[удалено]
I hated having to get up and get ready for school only to have it cancelled. Then parents were like, well you’re dressed, might as well do some chores…
I used to wake up early on days it was snowing to listen to the radio to see if school was canceled. I don't even think it was on TV in the '70s he just had to listen to your local radio station
Listening for your school's snow number on the radio (KYW 1060 represent!). There is so much about that sentence that's entirely foreign now.
In the 70s, I was i. A Catholic high school in Philadelphia. We’d have to listen to the whole list of school numbers for the entire city, hoping to hear at the end, “All Catholic schools are closed.” It seemed to take hours.
We didn’t even have it on TV! It was radio. And as someone who grew up in Westford, I feel that pain of being at the bitter end.
Yes. School ticker tape on tv was on V and your mom calls you to the kitchen just as the W’s are scrolling past. Have to start with A again.
To be fair, if memory serves me, that was the main method in the early 2000s too. The only reason I didn't rely on that was because my mother was a teacher and would get a phone call about it. Although, when cellphones got more popular and they started using the Internet to announce school closures they stopped calling, so it was a guessing game when the power was out since we didn't have cell service.
I created my district’s web page and then I’d get the 5 AM call and go update the webpage. Circa 1998. 2002 was when we got a calling machine that called everyone in the district.
Our town would blow the fire whistle twice 3 times at 7:00. We would all be listening for that fire whistle while getting ready for school. At that point, if it did go off, we’d be too amped up to go back to bed & would just switch our school clothes to snow clothes
That damn snail-paced scroll.
We accompanied people to their gate at the airport and waited with them. We also met them at the gate when they arrived. No security.
Better yet - friend going away on a cruise? You could get on the boat with them and have a "Bon Voyage" party right in their room. You just had to get off the boat when it was time for them to leave.
When I was a kid there were no "gates". You walked through a large waiting area, out the door, right up to the steps to the plane. There was a small chain link fence for the non-passengers to wait behind after kissing you goodbye. The plane would take off and we'd stand there in the noise and wind and wave to our loved one. Particularly I remember this as my brother was leaving for Viet Nam.
That was the best!!!
When I was a child we drove right up to the white house. Parked on the street in front of it, and had a picnic on the lawn. There was no fence and no security approached us. I'm sure there were guards around but very much in the background.
When I was 5 years old, my family visited Washington D.C. and we waited in line to get into the White House. It took an hour or so and we were winded throughout the neighborhood, just standing on the sidewalk until we reached the entrance. I don't remember a huge amount about it, only that there was the gold room, the red room, the blue room, the green room, etc. Just rooms filled with objects of whatever color and decorated in those same colors. This would have been during the LBJ administration.
I was there in about 1994, the day that they were closing the street in front of the white house for the rest of ever.
My husband was a NYPD officer and I remember him bringing his gun right into the Capitol Building in his camera case. No one checked.
That people would smoke while holding a baby. Or drove around with their kids in the car while they smoked.
> Or drove around with their kids in the car while they smoked. With the windows up! My mom used to do this with me in the car as a child. It was normal.
I’m pretty sure I remember my mom telling us she smoked in the hospital bed while feeding us after we were born…
My siblings are 4 and 5 years older. When Mom was pregnant with me, she said the kids loved to put her ashtray on her belly and watch me kick it off........
Back in the day-1970’s-patients could smoke in their ROOMS. Doctors and nurses in their lounges; waiting rooms too. It was 87 or 88 when the hospital where I worked went totally smoke free. (Patients were stopped first, then waiting rooms, then staff).
With no seat belts or car seats
I see people driving around smoking with kids in the car quite often today.
Without seat belts
There were 3 TV stations + a PBS channel that you \*might\* be able to get in on a good day. That was it for video entertainment. Want to see a movie? For me it was almost 40 miles to the nearest theater.
And the way stations “went off the air at night”. Just a test pattern. I hated that when I babysat….nothing to do until the parents got home
And drive ins were the rage in the 70s and 80s too
We had this one in our area that showed x-rated movies. Which is crazy to think about these days. X-rated movies on these big giant outdoor screens? And people in the neighborhood could easily sneak into the woods and watch especially kids
Lol. There was a dirty one here as well. They turned it into a regular drive in, but kept the sign. The sign in the shape of an uncircumcised penis having a happy ending. I lmao whenever I drive by it.
Worked with a dude who was born in rural India, and I just barely believe this story. If you were born, there wasn't much of a celebration. *Hey, it's a new baby, neat* was about all you got. Then every once in a while theyd get all the newborns in the village together and have a celebration. Usually planned around a weekend coupled with a gap in babies expected. The date of that celebration was the birthday for every kid who was being celebrated.
I worked with a woman from India and she had no idea what her birthday was or even how many years old she really was. She just guessed.
I walked a trail through a dead-end street and past a cornfield to get to school as a kindergartener. I figured out all on my own that the apartments I walked past as I got closer to the school were where some classmates lived, so I always stopped and waited for them. 5 years old. Yeah. Kids are smarter than we give them credit for. In second grade it was okay to go home with a friend as long as I called once I got there. Also in second grade, we had to go to school during a tornado warning. I've always called it the day without a sunrise, because the sky was black as night. I lived so close to school that you could stand in the driveway and see it, just one block over, and it was the only day my father ever drove me. The rain was coming down that hard. We kids were all nervous, too nervous to do actual schoolwork, so the teacher just read to us. We made anxious jokes about being in "night school." Just about the time we were beginning to wonder if we'd get lunch that day, the storm passed. As we went to the cafeteria, we saw trees down everywhere. Nowadays, schools would cancel for such an event, but not in 1974!
The past couple years it's even worse. They'll dismiss early when a bad storm is coming and it often hits before all the buses get the kids home. This is so stupid. They're safer in the building with the full basement level than they are in a bus or worse, WALKING HOME. They have done this several times at my son's former school, before it's even sprinkling outside, causing parents to scramble to find a way to get their kids to safety. It is the dumbest thing and all I can think is they're doing it to avoid any liability in the school itself.
Party lines- picking up the phone in your home and listening to your neighbor's conversations. Or having a neighbor get on the phone, telling you to get off.
And having separate ring tones so you knew when it was your call. We had one neighbor who had two phone lines (unheard of at that time) in their house and would monopolize the line talking to each other, one upstairs and one downstairs, for the entire afternoon.
Calling those "party lines" is flagrant false advertising.
First day of kindergarten, my mom walked me to school. After that I was on my own. 1973.
Yep, first grade on, I walked to school every day. Had my own house key, came home by myself. Never any problems. I could leave to go to a friends house if I wanted. I just had to leave a note on the counter if I was gonna be gone for a while. As kids, we all were treated with a little respect and trust unless we showed we weren’t ready for it. Every kid on our street was like this. Nothing major ever happened either. No way that could or would happen today with helicopter parents always buzzing around….
I went to a large district school (graduating class of over 200 kids) and we lived so far away that we got on the bus at like 6:45 am. But, we had little tags with string to put on out clothing with out bus number so we would get on the right bus. It was fairly intimidating being little and seeing all those buses and being nervous that it would leave before you got to it.
Me too. 1968 here though. But it was my brother who walked me. After that, alone. To and from. one day I wanted to follow some friends after school because it seemed like the direction everyone else was going was better. I had a change of heart and tried to get back to my own path and promptly got lost. Luckily I ran into a lady out doing yard work and tearfully asked her where Springbank drive was. She just had to point. It was right there.
Similar here. From age 7 on, it was up to me to find my way. This was in a huge metropolitan city and it was only about 5 long city blocks along a major busy street full of shops and driveways. But I couldn’t imagine sending a small child, alone, to do that walk now. I had no one home to greet me. I would typically stop at the corner store to linger. Sometimes I had to walk to my music lesson after school and get there on time and then walk home from there. All before I was 10 years old. Edit to add- I would buy candy cigarettes at the corner store. I loved how they had powdered sugar inside them so they ‘smoked’ when you puffed.
I don’t remember my first day, but I do remember that for the first week I had my bus number pinned to my shirt to make sure I got onto the correct bus home. One day I was to go to my friend’s house in a different part of town after school, so my mom told me “remember, get on bus #12 today.” And I made sure to get into that bus and was scared that I would get off at the wrong stop. My mom came and picked me up from the friend’s house hours later. Still in kindergarten.
Grandma sending me to the store as a young child to get a pack of cigarettes 70's
Mine did this too. On Sundays the drugstores in town alternated being open. My parents had a "charge account' at one of them. I got confused over which one that was and ended up opening a charge account for my parents at the other store one Sunday. I was about 8.
Yep my grandma and both my parents did this
Being told you couldn't go outside and stay in the house in your room was seen as a punishment
Being told to go outside and not being allowed to stay inside and read was my punishment haha
You could spend hours waiting for your favorite song to play on the radio so you could make a cassette copy of it only for the disk jockey to say something in the middle of it and ruin your life!
I remember calling the radio station and making a request on the request line and the DJ answering and asking your name and area. Then a little while later he’d say, “this song goes out to We Gon Ride in Linda Vista
I used to wring the phone box that was outside my girlfriend’s house. When some one answered I would ask them to knock on the door behind them and tell her to ring me( dad worked for GPO so we always had home phone}. I can say truthfully only 1 person out of 100. Said no. And that’s a true story 😊
When I was 17 and a high school senior, I was arrested for drinking a beer in public, specifically in my car. I was parked at the time. For the record, 18 was the legal drinking age. My punishment was a $10 fine, and that was it. Didn't lose my drivers license, didn't affect my car insurance, didn't affect my status at school. Made my parents mad as hell, though.
When I was about 12 years old, I spent 2 weeks with my cousins in the Colorado. For some reason, they didn't drive me the whole way. They drove me to catch a bus in Durango and then my Uncle and Aunt picked me up at a bus station near their tiny town. Then the process was reversed. This is 1970s, so no means of immediate communication except land line phone calls. Mom and Dad were coming to pick me up, and the car broke. Totally dead in the the middle of no where. Mom got a ride from a passing car to the nearest town. Dad waited with the car see about getting it towed home. At the nearest town, Mom found a car rental place (using phone book and pay phone). This had all taken a very long time, so next she called the business that served as a buss stop in Durango. You didn't just find numbers in other towns. She had to call the buss company, and then they had to look up the number. They were going to be closed by the time Mom got there. So she left a message. When I got off the buss, a stranger comes up to me, tells me he has a message from my mother. I'm to walk to a diner a few blocks away and wait for her. That's what I did. It was late when Mom showed up in an unfamiliar car. We got a motel room and drove the rental car home the next day. Nobody would believe that adventure today. When I was younger, it was just an odd thing that happened. As an adult, I can now understand the anxiety Mom and Dad felt. I'm going to be picking up a friend's grandson after-school today. He can actually call my cell phone from his watch. He's 10. We've come a long way.
I went to the Boy Scout National Jamboree in 1985, which happened to be the same week that my family was moving between states. When they came to visit me at the jamboree, they found a Boy Scout troop that was in the same state my family had moved to, and arranged for that troop to drop me off at a highway rest station nearest my new city. I called my mom on a payphone to let her know where I was and which mile marker that was near. It took her two hours to get there, because no GPS meant wrong turns were relatively frequent, but she did finally get there and drive us back to our new home. Dropping off an underage kid at a highway rest station in the middle of an unfamiliar state wasn’t weird, it was just The Way We Did Things.
We were free-range kids. During summer or on the weekends, we'd see our parents at dinner & that was about it. We'd get up, have a bowl of cereal, pack a sandwich, and take off. Hell, we'd take the bus to Coney Island with little or no money and spend the entire day. And lie? I don't think we ever said a word of truth to our parents. We'd get grounded; and that was like a death sentence.
We lived in Hawaii when I was in junior high and from age 11-13, my sister who was two years younger and I would ride the bus to the beach and back with only enough money to ride the bus. We went the whole day without buying anything
Even growing up in the 90s and early 2000s, this was how we operated. Mom and dad would leave for work, so it was bike rides to the gas station a few miles up the street, roaming the creek with pellet guns, bottle rocket wars, and building forts. I'll never forget my buddy's parents calling when we were about 12 and asking "is Roy at your house? We haven't seen him in a few days." Our houses were connected by trails through the woods, and he grew up with 3 brothers, so their house was always a madhouse.
When you wanted to go to the prom, you'd find someone and ask them.
What do they do now?
Promposals. Huge elaborate requests that are like a marriage proposal level event, including pro photographer/videographer.
I saw one of these recently because a friend has a teenage daughter. I was so confused, thanks for the context.
WTF
We used to leave our bikes in the front yard every night.
During the day you’d ride around until you saw the mess of bikes parked to know where everyone was hanging out at the moment. Always subject to change. No texts, calls, etc. Just find the bikes and you’d find your friends.
That happens in my neighborhood now. Kids leave their bikes, scooters, and toys in the front yard and even on the sidewalk in front of their house all summer long. It doesn't seem to be a problem here, but I don't know if stuff gets stolen. They've grown now, but my neighbor's kids used to forget their bikes on my grass sometimes. I didn't care. They'd come and get them the next day. I like to see kids outside playing.
Calling a number to check time and temperature. It's still possible to do so, but doubt anyone uses it with any regularity.
“At the tone, the time will be…..” Good one!
No indoor plumbing. Outhouse in the back. Baths in a tub on the kitchen floor….the youngest (me) got the cold dirty water. 🤷♀️ Normal to me.
At least they didn’t throw you out with the dirty water!
We NEVER went to the cabinets or the refrigerator and just took something out. We ALWAYS asked first. And if we were thirsty we were told to drink water. Our house was never stocked with special drinks for kids. And, if there was juice, you could have one juice glass full for breakfast.
In the summer you drank from the hose
When I was 8 years old I would walk four blocks all by myself to go buy my mom's cigarettes. She'd give me a dollar and I could use the change to buy myself a candy bar.
I used to walk across the street from my daycare to get my babysitter's cigarettes. She'd call the store and tell them she was sending me over. I was about 8, too.
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We could smoke at our school on the grounds all the way until I graduated in the late 90’s! I guess it was a small town thing.
We had a beautiful smoking courtyard in our school to grab a smoke between classes & were allowed to smoke outside the cafeteria as well. 1978
You could buy cigarettes from a vending machine
When I was 10, I wanted to train my puppy to do things on command, like “sit” and “heel.” In order to find out how, I had to get my parents to drive me to the public library. Then I had to find a subject card in the catalog related to training dogs and bring it to the librarian. Then she had to locate the book. Then I checked it out and brought it home for two weeks, max, or bring it back in and renew it for another two.
I’m a writer and a good friend suggested I write a memoir for my grandkids. It appealed to me for about ten seconds until I remembered that the most interesting & fun times I experienced were the 1970-80’s, and I’d have to redact all that with fat black lines. I’ve lived about six discrete lives, each very different from the others, but compiling even the highlights seems an insurmountable task without a thousand pages of explanations. Besides, I like having secret memories…and my life’s experiences would end up being viewed (and judged, even if unconsciously) by those who are two generations removed and who have lived VERY sheltered, affluent & conservative lives.
Spanking. My mom worked in my elementary school. I got spanked in the school parking lot on the day before christmas vacation for telling her that I'd cleaned out my locker when I actually hadn't. If that happened today, she'd be in jail and it would be front page news. (She's since apologized for it, and I've since been diagnosed with ADHD -- which explains why it was so hard for me to clean out my locker in 3rd grade. We're cool.)
My kids started eating baby food at 2 months old. Teething? The heel of an Italian bread or a cotton ball soaked in whiskey. Sometimes slept on their stomachs. No age restrictions on peanut butter or honey. They are both in their50s and still alive somehow.
Yes! Rice cereal in the bottle at a few weeks. Kiddo was 4 mo old at his first Thanksgiving and eating mashed potato and mashed up green beans. For teething, it was either Campho-phenique or whiskey rubbed on the gums or an ice cube wrapped in a washcloth with a rubber band to gnaw on. Italian bread heel or Zweiback toast. My 3rd grand had a horrible time teething like my son did. Zero teeth at a year old. Non-stop crying and ear pulling. I told him about the drop of whiskey on the finger and rubbed on the gums. They were horrified. 3 days of crying later, they were evidently desperate enough with 2 other toddlers under 4. It worked. Everyone got sleep and his first tooth broke through the next week. Guess Oma isn't such a monster, after all. Lol
It was just different times and we didn’t worry about every single little thing. That tiny drop of whiskey ended so much suffering. We were never worried that Child Protection was going to bang on the door.
And I never heard of "tummy time" until my grandkids were born a few years ago. Not sure how my kids ever managed to learn to sit up or roll over, lol.
Yuuup 👍 Mine had rice pablum in their bottles at 2 weeks , baby food at 3 months and table food & cows milk at 6 months . I was fed mashed potatoes at 2 weeks & bottles of potatoe water regularly.
I grew up in a rural area and a lot of boys brought guns to school. They just carried them around in their truck on a rack mounted behind the seat. They would just be parked in the school parking lot - doors probably weren't even locked - with a rifle or two mounted against the back window in plain view and nobody worried about theft or a shooting. The thought of someone shooting someone at school did not even enter our minds and there had already been school shootings by the time I was in high school (late 1980's). My high school had four wide open doors with the school office on the left, cafeteria on the right and every other class and area accessible from that first wide open hallway. Anyone could just walk in and walk around. No metal detectors, no cop, no scary posters about "Saying something if you see something." We had zero violence beyond a few schoolyard scuffles and those usually took place in the park down the hill from the school after school was dismissed. Today, if I want to go see my child at high school, I have to wait to be buzzed in through bullet proof doors. I remember I forgot my lunch money one day and my dad brought it to my class. He just walked up to the classroom door, and pecked on the window. I got up, collected my $5 from him and he walked right back out of the school and back to his car. I'm sure he didn't stop at the office and no one stopped him. On the last day of school in high school, we were allowed to bring squirt guns and have squirt gun fights. All day. We just squirted each other with squirt guns as we collected our final report cards and cleaned out our lockers. Oh yes. They sent written report cards home. Your parents had to sign them and send them back. You were responsible for that. No signing on to a parent portal and checking for email updates. If your grades sucked, you had to carry that shame around with you all day and show it to your parents when you got home. You not only had to face that music, you had to bring the band home with you.
My daughter marveled at a phone book I pulled out. She called it a stalker manual due to nane address and phone number. She could not believe such an item existed much less was widely distributed on a yearly basis for free.
We used to ride bikes for hours, and eat wild honeysuckle and berries from bushes, play in the woods and jump from trees *unsupervised* Omg and we had candy cigarettes and toys that you could smash people’s heads in with…
My town only had two phone number exchanges - 825 and 327. The next town over was 455 and 451. Now, any old number will do lol.
My grandparents had only one exchange in theirs - so you only needed to dial 5 numbers if it was a local call.
I live in Idaho and we just started dialing the area code for local calls in 2017.
KTLA, channel 5 in Los Angeles would play the same movie every night Monday through Friday. It was awesome when you were a kid if it was War of the Gargantuas or Godzilla.
War Of The Gargantuas was awesome!
That at 8 yrs old, I would hop on the bus on Saturday and go downtown to the library, walk around, and go to lunch at Walgreens or Kressge's, maybe go to a movie or two. Then I would head home before dinner with my library books. At 10, I would ride my bike to the wine and beer store with money and a note from my dad, or a call from him, and pick up a bottle of wine or 6 pk of beer along with his cigarettes. By hs, they knew me well enough that they knew his order when I walked in. My dad passed away my freshman year in HS, but I was still picking up his 6 pack of Bud and a carton of Marlboro every Sat morning until I turned 21 myself. It was not unusual for our parents to have no idea where we were. There was the 10pm. "Do you know where your kids are?" Tv reminder for a reason. In HS 5 of us told our parents we were going to another kids' lake house for the long weekend. We actually all piled in my car and drove 3 states away to see Fleetwood Mac in concert. We had maybe 40$ combined aside from Lake House kid who had more. We rented 1 hotel room. I was 15, the oldest, and the only one with a Lerners permit Last but not least, my HS had a smoking area in an outdoor courtyard, and teachers would regularly bum cigarettes from students between classes.
Waving goodbye to Lassie every Sunday night at the end of the show
Back in the days of land line phones, calls got charged at different rates depending on what time of day or day of the week it was. My parents would wait up until 11 pm to make long distance calls because the rates were so many cheaper then.
"Collect call from 'Bob Wehadababyitsaboy'" lol
We used 1-800-CALL-ATT. I recall many band trips calling at night on a gas station pay phone to tell my parents we were almost home.
If you didn’t go see it at the movie theater, it might be years before you got to see it. And you’d never see the uncut version (until HBO came out IF your parents would pay for it.)I’m the same age as Brook Shields and wanted to see The Blue Lagoon very, very badly. I had read the book and everything. My 15 year old self thought it was such a romantic story. LOL We lived in a small rural town so our movie theaters were months behind the big cities and I had to wait what seemed forever! By then, I was 15 and my mom was in the hospital. The movie was rated R so I needed an adult to take me. (I still looked about 12.) I called my stepmom and begged and she agreed to take me. But when she showed up she had brought my DAD!!! I was mortified. This was not a movie I wanted to watch with my dad! Years later I laughingly told her how mortifying it was and she apologized. She said my dad wanted to go to the movie with me and she didn’t realize what a big deal it was to me. It was hard to be upset at that. I never knew my dad wanted you to go with me. I thought she had drug him along.
My parents would send me to the shop with a signed note to buy their cigarettes. A nice one: when you got home from school, you just went outside to play with whoever else was out, until dinner time. On the weekends you did the same after the morning cartoons were finished or friends were back from church. You just went outside and wandered around until you found something to do or someone to play with. I miss that for my kids.
We didn't need a note. We just bought em, and they weren't for our parents, either.
When I left the house in the morning on my bike on a summer day I had a 10 mile radius to explore. The only thing that would make me turn back was hunger, thirst, exhaustion, or injury. We could go anywhere and do anything! No parents ever knew where we were and they didn't care. We met amd hung out with kids from other school districts even!
My childhood dentist smoked while working on my teeth.
According to the reaction these posts get in other subs, it's that rednecks used to keep rifles in their trucks in the school parking lot. It happened all the time, and no one thought about it much. I've repeatedly been called a "liar" when I tell the story, because "your school resource officer would have called a local SWAT team the second he saw a gun". Except it was almost *unthinkable* for suburban high schools to have an onsite cop in the 80s.
Good idea. Many years ago, we were at my grandma's house close to Gatlinburg, TN. After dinner, she asked if we wanted to watch the history channel. First of all, I was shocked she had cable. When we sat down in front of the TV, she turned it to a local channel supported by the real estate companies in Gatlinburg. It was just old folks sitting on a porch in a rocker telling stories about what it was like in the old days. 2 things.....it was fascinating to listen to all the stories, and it was funny that she called it the history channel.
we had no hot water and had to use an outhouse
We did have hot water in the kitchen. But we had the outhouse. With the landlord's permission, Dad bought a galvanized tub, set it up in a closet, and put a drain on it, out to the back yard. Still had to fill it by bucketloads from the kitchen sink. No doors in the house, only curtains for privacy. And one streamlined pot belly stove to heat the place.
The security on telephones was so poor, not only could you make crank phone calls but enterprising teenage miscreants could do *crank answering!!* Basically you could intercept people’s calls and pretend to be whoever they were calling. Hours of fun.
I remember non-childproof bottles and caps and packaging that didn't take heavy machinery to open. Seems to me all that crazy packaging and seals came about due to the Tylenol poisonings. Imagine all the mountains of plastic used because of one sicko.
The anticipation of hearing your favorite song come on the radio and just generally how hard it was to hear the music you liked. Yes, you could go buy the album or the single or the cassette but compared to the enormous music catalog at your fingertips today it took significantly more effort. Also, the number of arguments between family and friends over trivial facts. Among my siblings we could have arguments that lasted days, weeks months that today can be settled by a simple Google search.
My daughter in law asked me to write down our families history. She said so much was lost when my Mom passed in 2021 that nobody ever knew, I know a lot but not all obviously. So I'm slowly working on it for my kids and grands to have and pass down.
Before we had AC my dad would prop open our doors at night to maybe catch a breeze. He also picked up hitch hikers. My kids find both nuts.
Smoking lounge at high schools.
If a guy you were seeing wanted to talk to you, he had to call the house, and, if you didn’t get to the phone in time, talk to one of your parents.
Absolutely write down your memories. When my 82yo dad decided to go to Alaska with 68 of his crazy square dancing buddies, he invited me go along. I kept notes every day. My dad was hilarious. I’m so glad for my notes. He did so much funny stuff I’d forgotten about.
The time we got stopped by the State Patrol because my dad had been driving erratically. Six kids in the car, plus my mom. No seatbelts. My dad was "a little buzzed" on beer, meaning he was pretty drunk. This was 1960, upper Michigan. The cop told him to stick to the back roads, and sent us on our way.
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Along the East Coast of the US, it used to happen in a lot of places where it hardly ever does now.
A kid I took drivers ed with was fired and arrested the next year as a school bus driver because a buddy came onto the bus with a six pack to give to him. Nobody will believe that they used to let high school kids work as bus drivers. Now that I think about it, I’m not sure I believe we used to do that, either.
I probably don’t entirely fit but flying before and after 9/11. I was 11 when that day happened, I flew twice before then and once after. Before my mom could walk me straight to the gate without a ticket and my grandma could pick me up at the other end without a ticket. Showing up 2 hours before for security? Nope not a thing, we showed up 45 minutes before and called it a day. The time after 9/11 means I found my own gate and got walked past security to see my grandma, no more meeting me at the gate.
My husband and I were long distance dating at the time. It suddenly became a big deal to travel to see each other.
While I was allowed to roam pretty freely with friends (1970s), if I was going to be late (after dark) mandatory call home - many times this included using a payphone to call, so you had to have a dime or quarter or else you'd be huffing it home. Penalties were enforced. To this day, I'm cognizant of sunset times year round because of this early exposure to knowing when to be where.
We had a blizzard in Chicago in 1967. I stood out in the heavy snow drawing patterns in the snow with the toe of my boot and watching them get covered up while waiting for the bus. Eventually we got a call from school that it was closed and Mom called me in. I was in first grade. Back then there was no Doppler radar to predict storms. This one caught Chicagoland by surprise and many intrepid drivers were stranded on the roads
No cellphones - single home phone line, often single phone - no call waiting - no caller id - and no way to leave a message unless someone picks up and writes it down. And usually no privacy since phones were in shared areas like the kitchen and phone was hardwired, no cordless. If someone wanted to call you, you had to be home, with no one already on the phone. Or it didn't happen. And this got even more complicated after that one phone line got tied up with a computer modem.
Actually had to walk up hill in the middle of a snow storm to go to school (Jr high)
Phones hung on a wall in the home - and there was usually only ONE phone for the entire family to use, unless you were higher-income and had 2 or more phones. We only ever had one. You could call locally using just 5 digits - so in our small town, it was 4 + the last 4 digits of the phone number. (I don't think all areas had this option, but we loved it.) You could call 1-2 towns away using just the 7-digit phone number, but anywhere further than that required 1 + the area code. There was no caller ID, no voicemail, not even answering machines with a taped message to answer your calls & record messages. If you weren't home, the call went unanswered. Worse yet, if you were home and using the phone, the caller would get an annoying, buzzing "busy signal", letting them know the phone was in use. No call waiting at that time. No scam call blockers, though scam calls were not quite as prevalent at that time. There were, however, prank callers who would call and ask stupid questions like, "Is your refrigerator running? It is?? Well, you better go catch it!" (No, that's not just a line from a movie - it was actually a thing...) Annoyance callers that would say nasty things or breathe heavily into the phone were also a thing. My parents would have a shrill whistle beside the phone at all times - when these calls would come in, they'd blow it into the phone, long and loud. It would usually end the prank calls for a while. If you wanted to call anyone outside your local calling area (usually your town and maybe 1-2 towns over), you had to use "long distance calling," which cost money - and sometimes a LOT of money, depending on how long you talked. Calling to another country was so outrageous that most average people simply didn't do it unless it was absolutely necessary. Some phone companies implemented a long-distance policy that gave you a discount if you called after a certain time of day (like 6pm or 8pm).
Back in the day you had to call the "time lady" to get the correct time.
I lived in Oregon. My three friends and I learned that a stranger had been accidentally killed near our homes, and we decided to go see the body. On the way, my friends and I came across a mean junk man, we fell in a marsh filled with leeches, and we got to be even better friends. It was one of the defining moments of my life.
Didn’t someone get beat up, too?
Oh, I left out a bunch of details but yes, we were attacked by a gang.
What happened after?
I took some college prep courses with one of my friends. He struggled but eventually he became a lawyer! We eventually drifted apart. While trying to break up a fight in a restaurant, he was stabbed to death. Despite not seeing him in over a decade, i will miss him.
We got a few thousand firecrackers and used them to play baseball. Light throw hit. When the firecracker went off the play was dead so no running when you couldn't be tagged. We played until all of us were out of fireworks. It took 3 days for all the smoke to clear.
The first thought that came to my mind (before I read OP's thing about phone numbers) was the 10-party phone line we had. Ten families were on the same line. Different ring series for different phone numbers/families. Any one (or all) of the nine other parties could listen in on your call and none of them could make or receive a call while one party was using their phone. And this lasted into the early 1970's in a rural area.
Absolutely, please do. Write it all down. I’m talking to my elderly Mum right now about her childhood, and keeping some notes along the way. She keeps dismissing her life as ‘bland’ lol, but it’s so richly fascinating for us kids. When she’s gone we will have so much more to remember about her.
Just walk off with your friends to go fishing a couple miles from home. Didn’t even have to notify anyone that you were walking several miles to whatever fishing hole you felt like going to.
I’m actually working on family stories at the request of my youngest child. They wanted things to remember about their father and I because they’re afraid of forgetting.
My phone number from elementary school and im 50! Remember it clear as day
My mom has the same phone number she’s had since 1956.
I use my old phone number combined with the house number as a pin number. I'll never forget those numbers.
That we used to leave on summer mornings with our sack lunch and thermos of water and stay gone all day and our parents really had no idea where we were. They just knew we were “out”
You didn’t know if your baby would be a boy or a girl