If you remembered 0-5 Cheer up - you're still young
If you remembered 6-10 Hmmm - you're getting older
If you remembered 16-25 You're older than dirt!

I remember everything except #23. Is that supposed to be drive-ins? If so, I remember them all and wish they were still around.

#2, the coke shaped parafin bottles reminds me of a time when I was at a drugstore with my 4-year old niece. When we got to the check out (where they stock stuff to tempt kids), she asked really loudly, "CAN I HAVE SOME WINE BOTTLES?" I wasn't sure what she meant until I saw her pointing to them. Boy, did I get weird looks.

Personally, I miss a lot of those things.

Shirley

My favorite was Beamans chewing gum

Early coke machines were like a large cooler chest and they had a top grate with slots. The bottles sat in a bath of cold water with just the tops extending up through slots in a metal cover. You slide the bottle of your choice through the slots over to the dispenser, dropped your coin in the box then lifted your bottle up through the dispenser trap. As kids we used to go to the gas station and when the man was out pumping gas we would pop the top off a bottle, then use a straw to sip it dry while it was still in the machine, Later they went to the upright machines where the bottles were horizontal with the tops extending out, we used to get a large cup and pop a top off and catch the soda as it poured out, leaving a half empty bottle on the rack....LOL

Bean shooters were a nickle and a pound of navy beans was 10 cents...we could terrorize a neighborhood with one...I used to cut the bean shooters down to about 2" long so I could hide it in my mouth..then sit in school with the bean shooter and a half dozen or so beans in my mouth, when the teacher turned her back to write on the board,,,whammmmmm...I would nail her with a bean....LOL

Sue

I didn't think anybody but me would remember them they were my favorites!!!!

We never had a party line either but Chicago had prefixes on Tel numbers like Plaza

I remember them all very fondly

3. Candy cigarettes
4. Soda pop machines that dispensed bottles
14. 45 RPM records
15. S&H Green Stamps
17. Metal ice trays with levers
19. Blue flashbulbs
21. Roller skate keys
22. Cork popguns
23. Drive45;ins
25. Wash tub wringers

But, then I did NOT grow up here in the US.... just been here since 1972.

Moni

1. Blackjack chewing gum
2. Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water
3. Candy cigarettes
4. Soda pop machines that dispensed bottles
5. Coffee shops with tableside jukeboxes
9. P. F. Flyers
12. Peashooters
14. 45 RPM records
15. S&H Green Stamps
16. Hi-fi's
17. Metal ice trays with levers
18. Mimeograph paper
19. Blue flashbulbs
21. Roller skate keys
22. Cork popguns
23. Drive45;ins

We had a drive in movie theater around the corner from our house. We had a bunch of kids on our street and we would all take a blanket and pillow and walk over. We would lay on the front hump with the speaker on the ground. Great memories of my childhood.

The Vermont Country Store sells Blackjack AND Beemans AND, my favorite, Teaberry gum. (About 15 years ago, I wandered into a restaurant/bookstore in Winston-Salem, N.C., and saw Teaberry gum on the counter for sale. Thrilled! But somehow the taste was no longer familiar...)

45rpm records? Remember the plastic fill-in spacers you needed to set in the hole to make them play on a regular stereo turntable? The gift shop at the City Museum in downtown St. Louis -- a fabulous place with lots of interesting old stuff -- sells jewelry made out of them. (And I see via Froogle.com there are other jewelry/accessory items using the shape of it.)

And S&H Green Stamps! I recall what I bought with them: A mobile or some other room decoration for my oldest nephew's room when he maybe was just starting to walk (he's 38 now!), and a soft-sided weekender bag for myself. Do you recall the stamps came in different "denominations"? I loved to fill up whole pages with the smaller stamps and actually felt a little "cheated" when I got a bigger-value stamp that you needed fewer of to complete a page.

And I remember the metal ice trays w/levers. We didn't have plastic ice trays when I was growing up -- or a fridge that had "ice in the door." I recall selling them at a tag sale (a little girl actually thought they were cute and asked her dad for them!).

My older sisters remember the "word" telephone numbers.

I wonder what a list similar to that would include for today's teenagers when they reach 45 and beyond!

Here's a few more from my era.

1. Model A Ford - we owned and drove 2 in my family.

2. 1932 Ford Roadster, rumble seat, V-8 engine and suicide doors. My friend had one.

3. Oleomargarine without color added. The colorant was in a capsule with the bar of Oleo. Before opening, you crushed the capsule and kneeded the bar of oleo to mix in the colorant. This was not universal, but in the dairy state of Wisconsin, the butter industry had lobbied and got passed a resolution to make it illegal to sell colored oleo. That law was still in effect in 1960. It eventually expired.

4. John deere tractors that were started by cranking the engine by hand. It was cranked by grabbing the exposed flywheel. (There were finger grips hidden inside the rim of the flywheel.)

5. Ice boxes, ice delivery, and a diamond (square) shaped delivery sign. When you needed ice, the sign was displayed in a window facing visable from the street. The corners of the sign were marked with different amounts of ice, e.g., 25, 50, 75, and 100 lb. The sign was displayed with the corner up showing the amount of ice you wanted.

6. City ice plants and cold storage.

People living outside small town limits did not have electricity (unless you owned a home light plant) and therefore did not have refrigerators. Freezer compartments could be rented at the ice plant.

7. All bicycles were single speed.

8. Allis-Chalmers was a big name in farm tractors.

9. Greyhound buses served almost every town that was on a US highway.

10. Route 66

11. DC3 airliners.

12. Jet planes were unheard of.

13. Threshing machine and threshing crews made of neighbors who processed each other's crops.

14. Inner tubes and tube patching kits.

15. Kerosene sold from 55 gal drums at filling stations. You brought your own container and filled it from a hand cranked pump on the drum. Measuring continers were used.

16. Blow torches. These worked on the same principle as a coleman camp stove.

17. A set of flat irons for ironing clothes.

18. Starched clothes and household items. Items that you wished to retain their shape after ironing was heavily starched. Typical starched items were dolies, croched decorations, and sometimes curtains.

19. Tire chains.

20. Cistern and cistern pumps.

But now, in reviewing those questions a few more came to my mind...
For those of you who remember Howdie Doody, what was the name of the sea capt puppet? I think I remember all the other characters on the show,,,MC= Buffalo Bob, then Clairabelle the clown, Chief Thunder Thud the indian chief, the indian princess was Princes Summer,fall, winter, spring, and the puppets were Flub-a-dub, Phineas T. Fillibuster and that darned sea capt I can't remember.

Anyone remember the Winkie Dink show? and if so, did you have the plastic overlay for your TV so you could draw on the screen?

Jemdandy,,,I not only remember all the above items but all that you posted as well,,,

not only do I remember the Grayhound serving nearly every community, if you lived in the country on the buss route you could stand beside the road and raise your arm, and the buss would actually stop and pick you up,,imagine that.

How about soda fountains where you could get a phosphate, or how about a cherry coke, vanilla coke, chocolate coke or lemon coke? And the cokes were a nickle.. A banana split was 25 cents, but who ever had that kind of money to spend?

I grew up on a dairy farm and our neighbor had a John Deere A that you started by turning the flywheel...People today would not have a clue what the flywheel was for? They have never seen flat belt drive stationary machinery..

I began working on the threashing machine crew at 7yrs old. I worked the grain sacker and operated the stack blower or drove a team of horses hauling the grain in from the fields.

Not only were the bicycles single speed direct drive, they all had those wide 24 or 26x 2.125 tires.

In our town when you got a bicycle you had to take it to the police station and pay $.50 to register it. They turned it upside down and got the serial number off the main crank housing and a description, make, model, color etc, plus your name, address & phone number, and they issued you a small metal license plate (like the metal license plate shaped name plates the sell as novelties). The plate was a miniature version of the regular car plates issued by the state and you had to attach the plate on the back of your seat so the number was visible from the rear. If you got caught riding a bike without a license the cops would impound it and make your parents bring proof of purchase to get it back, plus you paid a $10 fine and had to register it before you got it back.
On the other hand, bicycle thefts were almost unheard of because everyone knew the cops had the serial numbers recorded and could find out if you owned it.

Remember when 8 or 10 boys would get together on a vacant lot with a ballbat, a ball and maybe a glove or two, and we played ball all day. We didn't need any special leagues coaches or schedules to have fun.

Remember when you "Word Processor" was made out of wood and had point on one end and an eraser on the other?

How about "Book straps" for toting your school books?

Remember when you could always tell which houses the young girls lived in cause there was a hop scotch drawn on the sidewalk with chalk....

How about playing jacks on a rainy day?

And talking about all the regulations on lead today,,does anyone remember when we had a lead melting pot on a little electric hotplate and a mold to cast our own lead toy soldiers? And we used to go to the grocery store and steal the lead balance weights off ppls car tires while they were shopping to have lead to play with...LOL

Does anyone remember when we had a dress code in school?

Oh, and here is a flash from the past, do any of you remember in the 50's when we had the "Duck & cover" drills? For those who don't know what that is, we went to school in the early days of atomic weapons and the cold war, and they had a special signal in school, when you heard it you ducked down under your desk on your knees, head face down between your knees and hands clasped on the back or your kneck to protect you from the blast of an atomic weapon.

The continued to make the green stamps until well into the late 70's. By that time I was driving a company owned tractor trailer and when on the road I only stopped at truckstops that gave the stamps. I would buy $50 or $100 worth of fuel on a P.O. number from the company and I kept the stamps..

They also made some Yellow trading stamps..

Cigarettes were $.23 a pack but the vending machines took a quarter so they packs had two pennies under the exterior cellophane wrapper.

lazypup, I didn't know that you could 'buy' a pea/bean shooter. We made ours from the branches of elderberry bushes. The pith was easy to bore out with a screwdriver 'borrowed' from Dad's tool box.

I do remember the duck and cover dills, as well as the air raid drills during W W 2. We lived next to the school house. A telephone call to our house with a coded message would alert that a test drill was underway. My Mom or Dad, sometimes my older sister, was in charge of blowing the school house siren when that call came. A series of short blasts of the siren alerted the small community to turn off all lights and lay low. A second phone message would give the ok to blow the siren for one long blast signaling all clear. Of course this was always at night and the commotion in the house along with the siren always terrified this 3/4 year old.

As a kid, outside was such a wonderful place to be. Do kids still play ball just for the fun of it? Jacks, hopscotch, tag, hide and seek, climbing trees, walking 5 miles to the swimmin' hole are lost to today's youth. So sad.

Jemdandy, we had a John Deere with the fly wheel crank and my Grandpa did custom threshing all over the county in the late Summer. Good memories!

Ron