THINGS THAT HAVE COME & GONE IN YOUR LIFETIME

Echo139er

One thing I missed the most is low prices on vehicles. Even with price inflation adjustment, the cost of a new vehicle is way more than than what it used to be. Cars are all about electronics gadgets. I saw one with wifi in it. Wi-Fi!!!! Why? Gear shifting has gone to a knob on the dash or buttons on the steering wheel. The manual transmissions is just about gone too.

 

plasticjunkie

 I can recall a few things that have come and gone such as:

How about 8-track tapes, anybody remember those ?..............

And there are webstores that sell replacement metal sensing tapes for repairing 8-track tapes, so someone must still use 'em.........

People are still using cassette decks. Quality cassette tapes are no longer manufactured by the big name producers but a company called National Audio Company is offering 'em and has received good reviews on the Tapeheads.net forum. 

Ovaltine in a glass jar.  I found it at the supermarket the other day in a plastic jar, bought it, and it tasted like plastic.

Ditto on sodapop.  I quit drinking it when it went to plastic, probalby for the best, at least my Dentist thinks so.

Then Budwiser started experimenting with plastic beer bottles.  Ok, time to draw a line that should'nt be crossed.

Not just a lifetime,  come and gone during my professional career!

1981 -  I was working as a computer analyst at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.   Did some work in support of STS 1 -- the first Space Shuttle mission.

2016 -  I'm looking forward to retirement in a few months and the Space Shuttle program ended a years back.   I've outlived it by 5 years.

Of course, I remember Columbia and Challenger.   I remember when the Shuttle replaced the guidance package on the Solar Max satellite (one of my projects).    But overall the bulk of the shuttle missions seemed to be work-a-day payload delivery (which it was intended to be) missions.

By my reckening, car prices have kept up with inflation fairly closely since I was a teenager in the fifties, about a factor of 10.

Model kits have a much broader range of prices than they used to, but that same inflation factor does work for simpler kits today, repops of older kits with less detail and complexity.

I miss the good old days when you could buy a model at almost any store.  Back in my very early teen years, I used to get my models at Sears.  My parents broke up and my mom had to take a job at Sears.  Money was tight back then but she never denied me the opportunity to get a model.  Her 10% employee discount always helped.

Nowadays, I can't even find them at the Target nor Walmart stores in my area.  The Ben Franklin store about 30 minutes away from here closed their doors years ago.  They used to be a good store to pick up some inexpensive kits but, sadly, no more.

Eric

Losts of stuff has come and gone:

Beta, tang, flavor straws, the Edsel, B&W T.V., Saturday morning cartoons, 5.25" computer disks, duck and cover drills, Lazer Disks, steel slinky's.....I could go on forever...........

As for car prices.......my first new car was a lot bigger hunk of my yearly salary than the one boought last year....don't know whether that speaks well for my career (and current pension), or cars ?

And wow, have computers changed............my first in the early 1980's required multi page documents to be stored in multiple files, (or use the tape drive as a RAM) now my photo-backup of nearly 10K photos is on a single thumb-drive and it isn't half full.

But I do miss "SkyKing"..................

See ya!

I miss old-fashioned, downtown department stores. I grew up with F&R Lazarus in Columbus, Ohio. Our family bought most of its clothes there - along with tools, appliances, hi-fi equipment, wrist watches, toys, books, and all sorts of other stuff. It was six stories high. The toy department, on the sixth floor, had had a good stock of models - plastic and wood. I must have bought hundreds of books in the fifth-floor book department, and just about as many classical records in the second-floor record department. A trip to Lazarus was an indispensable part of Christmas shopping - as was a visit to the big ground-floor show window, with the electric trains and other kids' gifts. (I'm reminded of Lazarus every time I watch one of my favorite movies, "A Christmas Story.")

Also - home milk deliveries in those wonderful old milk trucks. And weekly visits from the Omar bread man, who parked his truck and walked up and down the street with his basket full of goodies.

jtilley

............ And weekly visits from the Omar bread man, who parked his truck and walked up and down the street with his basket full of goodies.

 

Used to be a guy walking through the neighborhood pushing a cart calling for people to bring out their knives to be sharpened. Dang! Hadn't though of that for years.

The post fron J Tilley reminded me of the milk truck and other things. I used to ride with the milk man during the summer months. It also reminded me of two delivery men who came to our home. One was a meat truck. You could pick out the meat you wanted. he weighed and packaged it in the back of the truck. The other delivery man came every Friday with fresh fish. I also remember the drug store which has a soda fountain where you could buy ice cream cones, a sundae or a frappe (like a milk shake), and fresh poured Coke and Moxie. The local newpaper store also sold ice cream cones. They cost a nickel for one scoop and a dime for two scoops. Jimmys or chocolate sprinkles as most people call them cost two cents more. Yes those were the "good old days." 

There was a small drugstore two blocks from our house. It was called Gickler's and it was run by the pharmacist, Mr. Gickler's, and his wife. It was a little tiny place, but had a huge assortment of merchandise. Medicines, ice cream, grooming products, cigarettes, cigars, soft drinks, baseball cards, magazines, comic books, office supplies....At the soda fountain Cokes cost a nickel, ice cream sodas and milkshakes a quarter, and burger plates less than a dollar. We bought our film at Gickler's, and brought it back for processing. And Gick saved empty cigar boxes for my brother, who used them to store his butterfly and beetle collection. (He retired a couple of years ago after a 30-year career as a zoology professor.) And the store always had a small assortment of plastic kits - along with Testor's paint, glue, and brushes.

I know I'm looking at those days through 65-year-old rose-colored glasses. But I sure wish places like Gickler's were still around.

Hope and belief in dreams.

What a waste of time, energy and a LOT of money that was! Cool experiences though!

Boohoo!

Anyway...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8LaT5Iiwo4  

Hair and hearing.

Well :

I didn't revive this one , BUT , I do have to be like others and reply . Most things have been just things ,Ah , But good things . Many were mentioned already  .Others no . How about this .

      The ability to get up , have no pain and get on with the day , not stopping till sunset ? How about my two great wives who are now Angels I hope . They earned their wings putting up with me all those years .

 My children . One should not outlive or be shunned by those remaining .That's me . How about cars that you could work on with a basic wrench set and screwdriver set . How about neighborliness and concern and respect for others and their property.

 I could go on , But you get the picture . Ah , 73 this May , ain't life grand ? And I still awaken and tackle life outside the house . That's why the position on the Board of the local Train Museum and now a Friend of the Library . great things to look forward to .

 To stay young in this world is simple . Read good books . Love Pretty and Intelligent women who like to hug , and eat well , drink well and never go to bed angry ! Oh and very importantly , Build Models . It is good for the Hands and Mind !  Tanker - Builder

Plymouth and Pontiac have gone away, Saturn has come and gone. Boom box, walkman, yeah, they are still around just not as popular.

NucMedTech

.............. Boom box, walkman, yeah, they are still around just not as popular.

 

Meanwhile, an argument rages among audiophiles regarding the possibilty of a new production quality cassette deck. 

So far, no name calling..............

NucMedTech

Plymouth and Pontiac have gone away....

 

Nah....Plymouth is just 20 minutes down the road from me...and Pontiac is about 1/2hr-45mins away!

Oh ! Fermis , that's a good one .Of course , you are in that area !  T.B.

Real, true country music is nowhere to be found nowadays, except on XM/Sirius. Hank is probably rolling over in his grave with what what is being portrayed as "country music" now...........

Carburetors are extinct. I miss those things. I can remember when I could rebuild a ThermoQuad in about two hours, including the time it took to soak it in a vat of carburetor cleaner after disassembly.............. Well, you didn't soak the plastic body, of course.....

Points and condensors are gone, too. Anyone remember setting the dwell on the points?

Dippity-Doo ain't no more, either........

Is Brylcreme still around?

I haven't seen SOS pads in many years. I used to use those to clean the white-walls on my tires (if they didn't have raised white letters). I always made sure that the raised white letters showed on my cars when I bought new tires. Speaking of white-walls, they're gone, too.

Remember Zayres Department stores? We used to have one in the Frayser area of Memphis back when I was growing up. Always went there to buy my models with the money I earned from my PAPER ROUTES! I actually had three routes at the same time for quite a while. Nowadays, you have to have a drivers license to get a paper route. I had a bike, and, if that wasn't available, I had two feet to carry me along my routes. 

TV sets with CRTs (cathode ray tubes - or, the picture tube)! Two to three minutes to warm up before the picture showed up, but the sound was instant.

Are control-line aircraft with the Cox .049 engines still around?

Dawg

I certainly remember Zayres. They bought out Masters in about 1966 when I lived in Miami. Masters and later Zayres had a HUGE model/toy department. I can still recall the rows of plastic models and tons of GI Joes and their equipment sets specially during Christmas. Wonderful memories from the past. 

Gone are the ink pens I learned penmanship with.  They were not even fountain pens.  The inkwells in school desks were functional.  You had a bottle of ink.  A pen was a tapered wooden stick with a steel penpoint inserted in the large end.  The point had a slit in it with a hole at the top of the slit.  Capillary action drew ink up the slit to fill the hole, and you wrote until the ink was gone- then another dip into the inkwell to refill.

Devil Dawg

Are control-line aircraft with the Cox .049 engines still around?

 

 

While control-line aircraft are still around, new half-A engines are not.  Electric power has done away with smaller fuel engines.  The smallest I have seen lately for sale new is a 0.19.

Don, I'm not familiar with the term "half-A". what does that mean?

I miss the Burma-Shave road signs!

Do they still set valves with feeler gauges?

We were the last ones in the neighborhood to get the "plastic" sheet to put on the TV screen to make it look like color.  Looked terrible.

Jim  

I hate Bosco,

It's full of TNT.

Mommie put some in my milk

To try and blow up me.

But I fooled Mommie,

I put it in her tea.

And now there is no Mommie

To try and blow up me!

The air hose on the ground at the filling station that you drove over.

crown r n7

Orange blossom hobbies in Miami Fl.

 

wing_nut

 

 

crown r n7

Orange blossom hobbies in Miami Fl.

 

 

 

 

 

Wow!!!  That's my 1st hobby shop.  Early 70's. I remember a guy name Gus worked there.  I think a Buzz too.   Joined IMPS though that shop.  Jeez the memories flooding back.  Thanks man!

 

That was one heck of a Hobby Shop! I used to be there for hours looking at the books , the built models on the display case out front and talking to the guys there.  I don't remember the guys you named but I do remember Willy, Mike, Charlie, Gary Cruz, Pat and Augie. I also remember Lester over in Rc and Tiny in trains.