Yesterday vs Today

Yesterday vs Today

Things acceptable years back, that are taboo now:

1. Children were far more independent. I walked to and from school, alone, from the age of six. It was about a mile each way.

2. Mobile telephones were the size of a briefcase.

3. International news was severely limited. An example, the Iran-Iraq war in which around 1.5 million people died over a 10 year period was barely reported in New Zealand.

4. Watching shows on a black and white television.

5. The house phone was a revered object. Kids didn’t touch it.

6. Pizza Hut was a full blown restaurant where you actually dined. They had a wait staff, arcade games, drinks cart.

7. One TV per house, maximum of 2.

8. Full service gas stations were everywhere. Don’t want to get out of the car and fill the tank, have the gas station attendant handle it.

9. Hitch Hiking was common and safe.

10.7-Eleven was a place to hangout. Kids would sit out in the front of the store drinking pop and reading comic books.

11.Media was seriously restricted. In New Zealand, we had 2 TV stations, state owned, and a handful of radio stations.

12.Smoking in planes, restaurants and movie theaters was pretty normal.

13.Lawn darts were free to use for any kid who waltzed into a backyard party.

14.International phone calls were prohibitively expensive. Think something like $100 for a 30 minute phone call to the other side of the world.

15.The radio had plenty of music to choose from, but somehow everything was on AM, FM wasn't popular then.

16.Anybody could buy cigarettes, so your Mom might send you to the store. Or you could easily start smoking at age 13.

17.Photocopying was rare. At school, a duplicating machine would churn out copies that smelled of alcohol.

18.People were much tougher, mentally and emotionally back then and took pride in being tough.

19.No soon to be father ever went into the delivery room to watch the atrocity that is childbirth.

20.Evel Knievel. As our biggest pop culture icon of the 1970s.

21.Smoking and drinking alcohol during pregnancy were no big deal.

22.If a man had a female co-worker who he was interested in, he’d say something to her to make it known. It wasn’t considered sexual harassment, it was considered a compliment.

23.The food pyramid said eat as much white bread as you like. It is good for you.

24.There was a far greater sense of freedom in the 1970s than there is now.

25.Newsreaders had the status of the Lord Almighty. Everything said was believed without question.

26.There were no cell phones back then so parents couldn’t call their kids every hour to find out where they were, who they were with or what they were doing.

27.Pornography was much more underground. Playboy would only show T&A. Penthouse was a bit more risqué.

28.In the 1970s, we wore lumberjack shirts, army surplus clothes, real blue jeans that weren’t pre-faded or pre-ripped. We wore earth tones.

29.Big, bad bush - few women and no men trimmed the down below.

30.In the 1970s, most high school boys had hair down to his shoulders. Girls had long straight hair. Many blacks wore big round afros.

31.Seat belts were pesky items that got in the way when you sat in the car. No one would wear them. As a kid the back of a station wagon was a playground for you and your friends.

32.BB guns: never permitted in our home, with 4 boy, 1 girl.

33.Sugared cereal and Hawaiian Punch tasted so much better back then!

34.Racial mockery was the basis of much TV/radio humor.

35.People were thin. Like skinny for some odd reason.

36.Friday night fights: boxing matches every weekend.

37.Secondhand smoke everywhere.

38.Black and white TV with the Indian head test pattern after midnight when all stations went off the air.

39.Being the proud owner of a Pet Rock.

40.Bows and arrows - with real points.

41.Let’s just say that in most countries levels of personal hygiene were considerably lower than they are today.

42.Learned to water-ski on the turd-filled muddy Mississippi.

43.Loading 8-track tapes into your car.

44.Homes and office buildings were insulated with asbestos, long before attorneys and asbestos removal firms became millionaires from it.

45.We were groomed at a very early age on what to think, say, behave and how to live our life with little thought of what we want.

46.Working on the USS Admiral, was required to check for floaters under the port paddlewheel every morning by opening the trash slot over the water.

47.You could literally go inside someone’s house to get candy on Halloween. No one stopped you from entering the foyer.

48.Teenagers still in school who had never worked had no vote in national elections.

49.Being oblivious to stranger danger.

50.Friends and relatives died a lot.

51.For older kids, biking on summer mornings and disappearing into the neighborhood for the day without a hint of worry or anxiety from parents.

52.Construction sites were wonderful if dangerous playgrounds for kids. Unsafe, with nails sticking out, deep ditches and holes to avoid. Taught caution and the value of tetanus shots. Learned aromas like the smell of wet concrete, rebar, freshly cut wood, mountains of dirt for King of the Hill games, playing war with wooden toy 1904 Springfield rifles in literal miles of dug up ground for the interstate highways.

53.No air conditioning. Vornado floor fans, window fans blowing over block of ice, or car rides with windows open.

54.Wanting to get your hair cut like one of the Charlie's Angels.

55.Waiting for the phone.

56.Kids shot rifles as a matter of indifference. Safely too, because safety was taught, responsibility was demanded … and disobedience was both unthinkable and unacceptable.

57.Complete and utter obedience to our family’s Commanding Officer who actually posted duty rosters for my 4 siblings, girl was exempted, which I was required to enforce as senior NCO.

58.The colors on clothes/fabric were so bright! Like it shined. Beautiful yellow, green and blue were so bold.

59.Life felt simple because of limited choices but was never dull. TVs, radios, books, albums, Atari, board games. Everything was 1–1 connected not 1–1 million as it is today.

60.Sticky asphalt from the tarred streets that would permanently ruin any carpet in a snooty home.

61.U.S. Army chemical warfare testers sprayed my hometown with zinc cadmium sulfide, a fluorescent additive of some kind and a possibly radioactive agent to secretly study possible bio/chem weapon vectors, later explained to protect us from potential Soviet attack.

62.Staying up late to watch some of the very first episodes of Saturday Night Live.

63.The world was no less dangerous for kids in the 1970s than it is today, your parents just weren't as freaked out about it. Many of you weren't warned that every unfamiliar face might mean you harm. So you made friends with just about everyone, even random adults that you didn't recognize.

64.Raking and burning leaves either in the curb or in our own home trash bin, a large ugly concrete bathtub, for burning all wastes, beside the separated garage.

65.You could call the airline to make a reservation, long in advance, but you didn't have to pay any money until you bought your ticket at the terminal.

66.We lived in an apartment, most of my neighbors’ doors were unlocked. If I needed something I would open their door, announce myself and make my request.

67.I used to go to the YMCA when the pool was open. We always swam naked. It was a blast. I don’t remember anyone watching over us. I don’t remember anyone being offended.

68.Coal shuttles in basement windows to fill the coal bins for the furnace that kept you alive in subzero weather.

69.Classmate who later became a Japanese citizen used to play records advocating anti-Communism from John Birch.

70.The police couldn’t intervene in domestic affairs back then.

71.There were 7 TV channels then, counting Channel 13 which was either educational or public. Everything stopped at midnight.

72.Ice trucks for the ice box, which was the refrigerator of the day. Great fun to persuade the iceman to chip you a sliver, possibly unsanitary, in the steaming summer.

73.Local stenches were many and varied. Worst were from the fish processing plants and cattle/pig stockyards, with the nicest smells being chemical fumes from riverside plants.

74.People talked to each other a lot more. They had to. If you needed to know some information that you couldn’t find in the library, you had to ask someone.

75.Television news shows were for 15 and then 30 minutes eventually morphing into entire hour segments.

76.If you could walk fast, you could show up at the ticket counter a few minutes before the airplane doors were closed, and still make your flight.

77.TV showed stereotypical characters in every show like: the Howdy Doody Show, Kukla, Fran & Ollie, Texas Bruce’s Wranglers’ Club, Lone Ranger, Cisco Kid, Zorro, etc.

78.Our perception of time was different. Expectations of instant access and seamless transitions didn’t exist.

79.Bicycle helmets not being required, if you wore a helmet while riding a bike during the 1970s, it meant either that you were recovering from a serious cranial injury or you were terrified of even the most minor of accidents.

80.Amused myself by playing war battle games with bottlecaps.

81.People tanned themselves relentlessly in the 1960s and 1970s.

82.Television wasn't available 24 hours a day during the 1970s. At some point at night, or very early in the morning, the station would sign off and some sort of test pattern would appear. Sometimes it would be an American flag, sometimes, a portrait of a Native American.

83.Waiting in gas lines for hours.

84.Most cars were big and unweildy in the 1960s, at least in North America. Smaller and more reliable Japanese cars finally caught on in the early 1970s.

85.Kids everywhere, dirty, yelling, playing, fighting, the postwar baby boom.

86.Moving the TV antenna for better reception.

87.Everybody in the '70s had just one phone in their house.

88.Fast food was a treat. It was a big, big deal to eat a meal at McDonalds or KFC.

89.Turning on the lights to visit the bathroom in the middle of the night and watching hundreds of roaches scurry across the floor into the corners and cracks.

90.Adults would drive to work in the morning in cars that had no airbags and may or may not have had seat belts in the backseat.

91.Doctors often made house calls in the 1960s, that gradually stopped happening in the 1970s.

92.Our parents didn’t watch us or organize things for us.

93.We did things together. Ate our meals together, went shopping together and we had a single TV and we watched shows as a family.

94.CEOs and Wall Street traders made only a small fraction of what they do now. Ditto for pro athletes in the Major sports.

95.Stores were smaller. Malls were a new thing. Big box warehouse outlets didn’t exist.

96.My mom didn’t work, nor did the other moms on our street. So having stay at home moms was something far more common.

97.If you did buy your ticket in advance, you most likely did so at one of the airline's city offices. These were usually located in busy commercial districts, or sometimes in large hotels.

98.Drinking before you’re 21. Wisconsins law at one point was guys had to be 21, their date could be 18. That was sexist.

99.Kids that lived close enough to school to walk there did walk there could and did do it alone.

100.Crack Cocaine did not exist, if you wanted to smoke your cocaine you had to freebase it yourself.

101.Pay half the minimum hourly wage for a cup of coffee.

102.Casual sex became common in the late 1960s and 1970s.

103.Friends played card games together - or board games.

104.No air conditioning. My parents believed that air conditioning was only for the weak or the sick.

105.The news we heard was usually true.

106.Party line telephones were the norm, where if you picked up the phone one of your neighbors may already be using it. It clicked real loud so you always knew when someone picked up; and you literally dialed the phone.

107.We had to pedal everything; then we got motors.

108.Riding Honda 3 wheel ATVs.

109.Looking for a telephone booth.

110.They had usually never heard the F word said out loud.

111.They weren’t watching movies where the bad guy won.

112.Most everyone smoked, second graders could walk in the store with a six pack of deposit bottles they picked up along the street and in the creek, and turn them in for enough cash to buy a pack of smokes.

113.Road Beers. People would load a cooler of beer for any drive longer than an hour. To put the cooler in the passenger seat of your pick up and the kids in the for a road trip was not uncommon, without the cooler seeing kids in the bed of a pickup would rate as common.

114.They were proud to be American.

115.Communities were being contaminated by toxic waste buried by processors of uranium for the first nuclear weapons.

116.There were far less choice of things you could buy at the grocery store. Health food was just beginning to explode and there was little choice of anything exotic.

117.Mirroring tailgaters. Before Day/Night rearview mirrors in cars, it was possible to adjust the mirror to share the experience of the jerk behind you, driving with his high beams on at night.

118.Beer Gardens at Volunteer Fireman's annual picnics. $5.00 would buy you a string of tickets 20' long ( 50 glasses ) at such events, That was awesome.

119.You had to manually crank your car windows up and down, and in the front side, there was a small triangular window on each side, called the vent window. Most people crack this open as they drove to get fresh air in the car, which was essential, since almost all adults smoked in the car.

120.Being bullied and nobody caring about it.

121.We listened to the radio and bought long play albums. They amounted to about 20 minutes of music on each side, but only the very best albums had good songs over the entire 20 minutes, so you had to get up and attempt to move the needle without scratching the record or missing the begining of the desired song. And you needed really good eyesight and deft calm hands to find the right spot.

122.Cars had two different keys, one for the ignition and one for the trunk. You had to manually unlock the doors with your key.

123.Take no responsibility for your dog.

124.The biggest difference really though that you now only rarely see is honest racism, and this is not a good thing. The racism has not changed, but it is not pervasive as it seems anymore than it was, but what is bad is that by making it illegal, people’s ability to choose to evolve their thinking of their own free will has been taken away from them.

125.Everything we do now on the internet didn’t exist. When you wanted to chat with friends, you met up at someone’s house, or the park down the street. Games were not of the video variety, they were either active running around, or when the weather was too bad, inside. We played them on boards, or with cards, or with static imagination toy sets like Lego, Erector, Lincoln Logs, Hot Wheels and model trains, girls had Barbies and boys had GI Joes.

126.Oh, and we didn’t care that the treats back then might have carcinogens in them, they tasted great.

127.They ate hamburgers, french fries and drank cokes and malts, and didn’t get much exercise, but didn’t get fat. They had never seen a really obese person. The wheat, rice and corn wasn’t mandated to have synthetic vitamins in it. Early on, lard was still pork fat. Nothing was low fat. They drank tap water.

128.Owning or shooting a gun, especially when young.

129.Diagraming sentences, made me hate school even more.

130.Use cotton diapers and wash them yourselves, Safety pins?

131.Houston, Texas actually had kind of a good football team.

132.Eat TV dinners.

133.Make ethnic jokes - Polish jokes were huge back then, for some reason.

134.The Rock and Roll guys, the Disco guys, and the Country Music guys all hated each other. The Rock and Roll guys smoked dope, the Disco guys did coke and the Country Music guys drank Jack Daniels. The Disco guys got all the girls and the Rock and Roll guys got beat up by the Country Music guys.

135.Divorce was still kind of a taboo, in that people would talk about those who were divorced but it was pretty much commonplace by the end of the 1970s and no big deal.

136.KAAY Little Rock, AR Clyde Clifford. Anyone who was cool listened to it. Best radio program ever.

137.Gas Wars. Gas stations had price wars to take business from the competition. I was a pump jockey in 1970, we pumped gas at a full service Holiday gas station for $0.19.9 a gallon.

138.The guy they would call the fat kid would only be a little husky by today’s standards.

139.Buy mechanical or disposable cameras.

140.Have a civics class in school.

141.The speed limit on highways and interstates was 55 miles per hour, and it took forever to get to grandma’s house…with no phones, no personal stereos, just sitting there. Parents would give young kids a tiny bit of alcohol mixed in with their juice so they would sleep.

142.Giveaways. Towels came in laundry soap, Gas stations gave away various items, baking pans came with certain pastry mixes.

143.If you got out of line in school you’d get your ass spanked by the gym coach who wielded something that looked like a ping pong paddle with holes in it for speed.

144.Put leaded gas in your car, or be able to choose whether or not you would.

145.Wait till 3:00 p.m. for the TV to finally start broadcasting.

146.There were only 3 networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC. If you lived in the big city you might have a few extra UHF local channels. They mostly played reruns.

147.If you liked a movie, you had to pay to go see it in the theater only. You couldn’t get it on home video at all. You pretty much had to wait a few years before they showed it on TV.

148.Think a 21" TV was large and a 26" TV was gigantic.

149.Write letters.

150.All the good cartoons were on Saturday morning only.

151.Smoke clove cigarettes

152.After we graduated from paying marbles on the sidewalks, the never forgotten aroma of the lightly powdered flat bubble gum accompanying Topps baseball cards used for flip card contests.

153.Beer and soda cans had pop tops. See #156

154.Call adults Sir or Ma’am.

155.We had fewer drugs. I’m talking about the legal type. We had asprin. I know Tylenol came out in 1955, but, for example, I don’t think it was commonly used until the late 1960s or 1970s. No Advil or later drugs.

156.Soda & beer bottles had metal tops that you needed to use a bottle opener to open.

157.Riding in the back of station wagons and other large cars.

158.Cook at least one hot meal per day for your children virtually without exception.

159.Littering wasn’t a thing, and the only people who recycled anything were hippie eco-freaks. If you were driving along a rural highway and you finished your snack or your drink, you simply tossed the empty wrapper or cup out the car window no muss, no fuss.

160.Apologize for your child’s bad behavior.

161.Jungle gyms were tall blocks of hard unadorned steel pipes over bare dirt dusty in summer and frozen in winter.

162.Always open the door for anyone who it might help.

163.Going to a circus.

164.Riding in the bed of a pickup truck.

165.Only dialing 7 digits to complete a call.

166.Wear an apron.

167.As for illegal stuff, I had never heard of ectasy or crack cocaine until the ‘80s. Meth addicts came even later. Fentanyl is even newer. Wow, what a killer. Pot was popular, but much weaker than what you get today. Hippies loved LSD and psychedelic mushrooms. Gays were into nitrous oxide. Snorting cocaine quickly accelerated in popularity throughout the 1970s and ‘1980s. There has always been alcohol and a few heroin addicts, but there was less binging than now.

168.The place my dad worked at had annual Christmas and Easter events for the employees. You got pictures with Santa and the Easter bunny and an age appropriate toy.

169.Waiting in line for gas, on a day that was decided by the last digit of the license plate.

170.Not take math very seriously as fundamental to getting a good career.

171.Take family portraits each year. Although this could also cover a lot of the 1980s too.

172.Drive without worrying what gas cost.

173.Use paper maps.

174.In 1979, Houston Gay Pride Parade was first held in Neartown, Houston, and all the straights turned out to watch. It was a hoot and a good time was had by all. Everything wasn’t such a big deal back then. If you wanted to do your thing, why not? Make some signs, get in a convertible, wear a funny outfit, and go for it.

175.Wait by the phone for it to ring. A phone that was located in it’s own little nook near the front door or in the hallway.

176.Know what Chicken a la King is, and eat lots of dishes with cream in them, like cream soups, Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup seemed to be in everything …

177.Not use corn syrup, so gross and only in Karo syrup that nobody used.

178.Got to know all the neighbours, their names, their kids names, and often where they worked.

179.Mend clothes - such as darning socks.

180.A sneeze blows air out of your nose at 100 miles per hour.

181.Pay for everything with cash or cheque.

182.The biggest difference by far is no internet, it was strictly military industrial complex property, which includes Federal Government, not state or municipal, and select University level educational bodies.

183.I graduated in 1971, Our high school had a student smoking lounge, that would never happen again.

184.Have pensions, and Assume that what with a pension, every chance to have good earnings, and social security, you would be secure in your old age.

185.Get paid in cash, in an envelope, each week, payroll trucks were common armed robbery targets.

186.Shout into the phone when talking long distance

187.Go into a bank to deposit/withdraw money, and keep track of it with a balance book, updated by writing in pen.

188.Be so terrified of the cost of long distance calls that your relatives were effectively on the moon.

189.Buy a newspaper from the paper boy who would walk the streets with his cart each Sunday.

190.Return your milk bottles once empty and rinsed out.

191.Fear the draft and becoming cannon fodder in inane wars.

192.Have a swimming pool without thinking it would raise your insurance exponentially.

193.The average woman was a size 10 or a 12. Now she is a 16.

194.Pizza was a treat on a birthday.

195.Dunce Caps in school.

196.You or your parents reading a newspaper or magazine.

197.People drank when thirsty. There were no water bottles, and soda containers were much smaller.

198.Spend a lot of time outdoors, whether walking to friends’ houses and other places or playing sports or games.

199.If you were a single woman, you might purchase a cheap ring to wear on your finger before visiting the doctor to ask for birth control.

200.Not know anywhere you could get good coffee.

201.If you were 10 pounds overweight, you did calisthenics daily and gave up second portions. No woman would ever touch a weight, which would make her look like a man overnight.

202.Have a P.E. class in school.

203.Horrible stories of people being raped and murdered always happened somewhere else, far away.

204.Drink bottled water or energy drinks.

205.It wouldn’t occur to you to buy coffee or lunch out on a work day. You would have to pay with cash, and you would quickly be broke.

206.Buy pornography in a store. A lot of Dads and Uncles had a stash of porn that they thought was well hidden. You saw it for the first time at age 15.

207.You would put your name on a waiting list at the library for the latest best sellers.

208.As kids, explore the real world around them regularly, going to places they don’t know.

209.You might call a local radio station to request your favorite song, then wait for it to play.

210.Talk across political divides as if the other person were a devil or a complete cretin. Communist or John Bircher were usually the worst it got.

211.Your sister or your Mom might make your prom or wedding dress.

212.Use corn syrup everywhere, including where you would never suspect.

213.Leave money on the front porch to pay the milk and bread delivery guys.

214.Not prefer Japanese cars.

215.The microwave was introduced in 1974, could only be used on a 220v line, heavy, and costly average price $400.

216.Own a computer.

217.Sex with no condoms. AIDS really ruined sex.

218.Wonder why anyone would care about privacy.

219.If your friends or family drove you to the airport, they could come to the gate to see you off, and you might all have a meal or drinks together in the concourse restaurant. To be fair, the concourses weren't nearly as crowded then. If they allowed visitors onto the concourse today, I doubt they could accommodate the crowding.

220.Ask you how you feel if you’re male.

221.During air flight, you got a meal, of course, if the flight was long enough.

222.Believe almost any college degree would likely lead to a prosperous life and an even better life for our children.

223.Cap guns: actual gunpowder explosives were loaded in a tight roll to be fired by your Lone Ranger or Cisco Kid cap gun. Bangs and sparks with gunpowder’s sulpuric stench.

224.Eat sushi … or any Japanese food that wasn’t teriyaki chicken, Be unable to even find chop suey on a menu.

225.Racism was acknowledged but not celebrated. Had black school/playmates, parochial school, and babysitters who all lived in a nearby section of the city.

226.Fill in their swimming pools due to liability concerns.

227.The Bicentennial celebration in America.

228.Have soda and candy machines in school.

229.Lots of crime. Deathwish came out. Judges lost their testicular fortitude. They didn't want to lose their jobs for being racist.

230.Think having a small number of people in a class meant you had more chance of learning the material.

231.The fact that our society and economy is funded through the profits from human suffering, and that’s why the hatefulness one sees today is something we didn’t have in the 1970s, not like this.

232.Get hip surgery, knee replacement, or cataract surgery or dental implants.

233.The military became the dumping ground for juvenile delinquents.

234.Take martial arts.

235.Payphones were really your lifelines.

236.If you were female, become a doctor rather than a nurse.

237.Buy your meat from a butcher, fruit from the fruit shop, and cold cuts from a deli.

238.Collect breast milk at work.

239.Leave the front door unlocked, or even wide open when the weather was nice, whether you were home or not.

240.If you were male, carry your wife’s purse or push a baby carriage.

241.Pop the foil top off the milk bottle & lick the cream off it.

242.Build things without consideration of environmental impact.

243.Paper bags for the groceries, not plastic.

244.we carried pocket knives to school and nobody thought a thing about it.

245.Grocery shopping only on a Thursday night or Saturday morning. Outside 9–5/Mon-Fri, that was the only extended trading hours we had. If your father took the only car to work each day, it was the only time your parents could get grocery shopping done.

246.Watch a ton of television, mostly cop shows and westerns.

247.Black music stars didn’t rap. Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross, and Sly Stone for example.

248.Lease cars instead of buying them.

249.There was popular music was about being a child of the universe, Rednecks and hippies met in the middle with Cosmic Cowboys, like Willie Nelson, Space Cowboy Steve Miller: and Long Haired Country Boy Charlie Daniels, and Jesus Christ was a SuperStar.

250.Salaries for men and women doing the exact same jobs were different. Women made less because they were not seen as the breadwinner. Men made more money, and if a company needed to lay someone off, it was almost always the female employees.

251.We had commercials teaching the world to sing in perfect harmony.

252.Have a heart attack and just get over it.

253.You didn’t have to stay 6 feet apart with a mask on.

254.Have huge classroom sizes.

255.The public had respect for the police and laws.

256.If you were female, become a police officer or a fire fighter or a pilot, commercial or otherwise.

257.People had a sense of humor. You didn’t have to be politically correct, people could laugh at themselves as well as at others.

258.Let kids run wild in public places.

259.You could have a civil, logical discussion with a liberal, and remain friends.

260.The minimum wage (in 1965) was $1.25 per hour. You could eat out for dinner, nothing fancy, for around $2-$3, and a 25 cent tip was reasonable.

261.People enjoyed helping others.

262.Talk without shouting on a long distance call.

263.It’s difficult to convey just how open and tolerant the atmosphere was back then. It’s yo thing, do what you wanna do. We’d been through the riots of the 1960s, the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, and it was a time for love and healing.

264.Pollute without fear or consequence.

265.Getting caught skinny dipping didn’t make you a sex offender.

266.You always needed to carry a dime in case you needed to use a pay phone.

267.The quality of life was simply far, far greater in the 1970s than it is now. The level of independence kids enjoyed back then is unheard of today. Adults enjoyed a far greater sense of freedom as well. Suppose you were a businessman and went to lunch with a client and you both had a couple gin and tonics or martinis or whatever it might be. That was fine. You weren’t going to get into trouble for drinking during the work day unless you took it to the point where it impaired your performance. If you’ve seen the TV series Mad Men, the drinking and smoking at work is something that really happened! Most jobs didn’t have people drinking in the office, but you absolutely could smoke cigarettes at your desk and close to half of all adults did.

268.Girls had to wear swim caps if they went swimming at a public pool, unless they had a pixie cut. Boys did not, even if they had long hair.

269.Tuition at the University of Texas was $200/year, $1,000 today, and Texas A&M was $198, $996 today. Rice University was $1200/year, $6,000 today.M

270.Shooting rats at the town dump.

271.The parking brake in a car was on the floor, on the left side of the driver. There was a little button on the floor of the driver’s seat, also on the left, that you tapped with your foot to turn the bight headlights on and off.

272.Almost no one used seatbelts in cars. Many people took the seat belts out of cars completely since they didn’t use them anyway.

273.Riding around town on my bicycle with my 22 on my back at age 10 to 12.

274.Streaking was a thing. The Rice U quad in particular.

275.File nuisance lawsuits.

276.Firecrackers.

277.Have their parents schedule their activities tightly.

278.Drug stores had soda fountains in them, which were little lunch counter restaurants.

279.Being in my high school parking lot, first day of duck season, looking at buddy's new shotgun. Being spotted by the principal who came over and said: Remingtion, nice gun.

280.People fixed their own cars in their driveways, and there were no smog checks. A few gas pumps at stations still read ethyl. You could customize the hell out of your car, even drive around with a big ol’ supercharger poking up through the hood, and it was totally legal.

281.Basically all that goes with being a free range kid in a smaller town in the mid 1960s.

282.Kill whales.

283.In the U.S.A. Amana introduced a home microwave in the late 1960s. Sharp introduced a less expensive version in the 1970s. All ran on 110v home service.

284.Being told to go outside to play and not come home until lunch time unless I was bleeding.

285.Own a pit bull.

286.Going many miles from home on my bike, well before age 10.

287.Most restaurants had a sign that read: We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone. Try doing that today.

288.Buying ammunition at age 10, riding to the store and walking in with the 22 on my back.

289.Call the Time Lady to get the exact time.

290.We had gazilcher wars. A bucket with long loops of surgical tubing would fire a water ballon 75 yards with athletes operating and an engineer specifying the firing angle.

291.If you were male, cook.

292.Vape? We didn't do it.

293.Cutting lawns at age 10 to earn money to buy ammunition. I would take the lawnmower, push it up the street until I found a house that needed my services, knock on the door. I would get 50 cents to cut the grass, a box of shells was 49 cents.

294.To Consider tofu was just wrong.

295.A coffee cup filling scoop of vanilla at Borden Ice Cream factory was 25 cents.

296.There were no leash laws, so most people just let their dogs out to roam when they needed to go out, and they came back whenever. No one scooped-up after their dogs.

297.Guns on gun racks were common.

298.Everyone knew cigarette smoke stank, but nobody complained about it. You could fire up a Carolina J in a restaurant, and even torture your kid with your stink, and nobody would object. Many kids themselves became regular smokers before age 12, and nobody panicked. Cigarettes themselves had much higher tar levels, and magazines and billboards had plenty of ads with sexy women and macho men smoking.

299.You could get affordable concert tickets the day of the concert even for the Stones, Dylan, Led Zeppelin. Cost me $8 @ day for Woodstock.

300.The 1970s were the Golden Age of Parental Sadism. Parents routinely punished their kids with beatings. Parents also got a big kick out of playing mean spirited pranks on their kids and feeding them things that tasted disgusting. And a lot of other things which would result in a visit from Child Protective Services if they pulled stunts like those today.

301.Picking up my father's cigarettes from the store for him up to about age 10.

302.Parking was never a problem.

303.People fixed their own TV sets. Those built before 1973 still had vacuum tubes in them, and you could take the tubes out, test them using the tube testing machines they had at drugstores, and buy replacement tubes for the bad ones. You could also smack the side of your TV set to get the picture back if it started rolling or if you got snow. Color TVs were around since 1962, but in the 1970s, they were still a big deal.

304.If someone robbed you it was their fault, instead of your fault for leaving the door unlocked.

305.Some girls didn’t wear bras, and were intriguingly bouncy.

306.Everyone said Hi when you passed them on the street. There was a sense of community, even in a big city.

307.Songs about being a love everybody, spirit filled, hippie:Listened to records. And the clever people had record changers, where the stack would drop one record at a time, to give variety at parties.

308.It was common to see people going around barefoot.

309.We said man or mun, and cool a lot, plus chill, baby, groovy, far out, right on, trippin, chick, psychedelic, bummer, groove dog, and jammin. Far out man, like right on, that’s a groovy chick, she’s cool.

310.We didn’t lock our cars or houses.

311.Swearing was taboo. Today the phrase F*ck You is common.

312.We didn’t sit in traffic. One side of Houston to the other was 15 minutes at a steady 70 mph. People moved over to let you in from the entrance ramp instead of cutting you off.

313.Riding around with my cousin in his truck. He was 9 or 10, me about 6 or 7. We would travel several miles from his farm, go into the little village to pick up mail and groceries. Often included cigarettes and beer for my uncle and father.

314.When the fuel shortage came along, the price of gas went from double digits, like 63 cents a gallon, to the first time it when over a $1.00. This was a huge problem because gas price signs only had room for 2 digits, so for a while if a gas sign said 12, it meant $1.12, until new signs were made and installed.

315.Another common sign: No shirt, no shoes, no service.

316.No one under 40 was fat, and girls were stunning. There wasn’t a fast food joint on every corner, and high fructose corn syrup wasn’t a thing.

317.Parents often had no idea where their kids were, or what they were doing.

318.The cigar girl was a common fixture at supper clubs.

319.Fireworks and spray paint were freely available to anyone with the money to buy them.

320.Overeating just didn't happen.

321.Someone pumped your gas, checked your oil, and cleaned your windshield for you. They had real, handy, free air hoses.

322.Kids walked to school on their own or in small groups, and walked home as well

323.You weren’t allowed to burn trash, that went out in the 1950s in California), but if it fit in a standard 33 gallon trash can, you could throw it away, and it would become landfill. You could even throw live ammo and radioactive waste into the trash with no repercussions.

324.I never knew why pistachio nuts back in the 1970s were dyed red, but I remember the sodas and chocolate milk we drank in the 1970s no longer tasted good when they started yanking safrole and all the other carcinogens out of them.

325.My motorcycle had fiberglass bags and I once got 5 people on the bike and rode the sidewalks.

326.During the gas shortage lines got really long at the gas station, and so if your license plate ended in an odd number, you could only fill up your gas tank on odd-number days. If your license plate ended in an even number, you could only fill up your gas tank on even-number days.

327.Kids were outside all day playing. They could buy alcohols any time of the day or night from bootleggers.

328.People might have known one or two with heart disease or diabetes.

329.Mothers were often stay at home, so my family must have been pioneering, as my mother worked part time at the local dentist. The mother from next door worked at the real estate where my parents paid the rent each week, in cash. By the mid 1980s, all my school friend’s mothers worked either part time or full time jobs.

330.Things weren’t packaged in plastic.

331.Beer Soda can pull tabs, You know what they would do after pulling off the tab? They’d throw it on the ground. Then, you’d ride your bike over it and get a flat or it would pierce your foot and you’d have to go get a tetanus shot from the doctor. It’s even immortalized in Jimmy Buffet’s song Margaritaville: Stepped on a pop top/Blew out my flip flop.

332.Some of them knew of at least one person who had had polio.

333.Toy guns still exist, but at a tiny fraction of them, the cultural attitude has seriously shifted on that toy.

334.Electric ride on toys for kids were really rare, and proliferate now.

335.The only vaccine they got was for small pox.

336.Their clothing wasn’t made of petroleum.

337.The craze for German cars was more a of 1980s phenomena, although, they gradually became more popular, along with Swedish cars throughout the 1970s.

338.They didn’t know anyone with cancer. It was extremely rare.

339.Suddenly around 1980,, punk fashion became mainstream along with piercings. Later that decade many guys wore mullets while girls went for big puffed out hair. Then tatoos came along becoming more and prevalent in the 2000s. At some point in the last decade vaping became the badge of the youth generation.

340.They had measles and chicken pox. Not manmade viruses such as COVID19.

341.Political elections, both local and national, were more honest, and never stolen.

342.For a dollar you could get in to the movie, and for a dollar more, you could get a popcorn, soda, and a box of candy.

343.Parents didn’t have to worry about the children, we headed out in the morning and just had to be home by dark or when we got hungry.

344.Falstaff, Budweiser and a few Stag, strewn from the 6 pack dad chugged every night. Didn’t realize he was a drunk until years later.

345.Kids only went to G-rated movies. A theater wouldn’t let a kid in to see a PG or R movie.

346.Parents would tell their kids: Be back in time for dinner. As a result, we grew up learning to be far more independent than kids of today. We had to develop a certain amount of common sense, or what you might call street smarts. I believe this was a highly positive thing that benefitted us greatly both then and later in life.

347.There were no cell phones, video games, or cable, so people spent their time riding bikes, playing Frisbee, doing casual sports, or just walking around.

348.Forget about all the other fads, crazes & styles of dress from the 1960's, the one that really won me over was hot pants (and body suits).

349.Used to be that if a store or business had a Help Wanted sign in a window, you could walk in, take the sign with you, say I'm your person , and they hired you on the spot. No need to fill out a 25 page resume stating everything you did since birth. Things were better then.

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