Are you this old?

[oosik]

The couple that homesteaded my land gave an old "player" to my folks. A rather large wooden box with a large metal "speaker". You wound it up - it played music off round tubes made of something like bakelite. These tubes were the size of large toilet paper tubes.

The bear came over the mountain - Stars and Stripes forever - I'll take you home again Cathleen. It still works but many of the tunes are "warbley". The tubes are no longer perfectly round. I have around 18 tubes.

 

[Bird]

How about gasoline @ 36 cents per imperial gallon?---
---and I drove a VW 'bug' back then! (about$2.00 /full tank)

There was a time when I was selling gasoline for less than 30 cents a gallon in Texas. Many times I thought a VW might be a money saver and good idea, so I'd go by a dealer and drive one around the block and didn't want a VW for another year or two. And in 1965 my cousin bought a new VW. Early one slightly rainy morning, we were in that new VW and he was clowning around on a paved parking lot by yanking up on the park brake and sliding around. But then he ran up a short unpaved road and tried that, dirt piled up against the wheels and over we went. That's the only time I've been in a car that turned over. It turned over on my side, driver's door on top. He got it open and climbed out, stepping on me in the process, then was saying, "Well, come on and get out." I way lying in there laughing too hard to get out. I had been telling him he was going to do that.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

When I was young. We went to the drive in twice a week because we did not have a tv. They only changed the movies, twice a week.

The good old days at the movies. Double features. Short subjects. Serials. Newsreels.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

I would put the penny on the back of the tone arm, cause our cheap GE turn table had no counter weight and the styis would just wallow through the grooves. Some folk would put them on the needle end to keep the needle from skipping. My dad had 78s, and had a turn table that used what looked like sewing needles. That was MONO. And I remember the explosion of tech to dual channel sound and how amazing that was.

I still have the original mono pressing of "Yakkity Sax" by Boots Randolph. The world is full of people who think Monte Python invented that music.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

Soda pop was 5 cents. Dispensed from a giant ice chest where the bottles hung in slots. The opener was on the front of the chest.

The grain warehouse in town had one that persisted into the early '60s. Six ounce bottles.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

Here's an oldie: have you ever seen a hypocaust? That was a basement furnace with a big octopus of 8" ducts that went to every room in the house and circulated air by convection - no furnace fan. It was deluxe in the days before electricity. It would burn about anything; wood, coal, my dad had a cousin with one. He had converted it to a sawdust burner because sawdust was free.

 

[the old grind]

I wonder if our coal furnace was originally of the hypocaust type. We'd lived with Grandpa until moving to Flint for Dad to open the TV station. Visiting years later the huge 'pot' and ducts were still there but Grandpa had a gas conversion upfitted with blower and eventually AC. The several 12" or so ducts reduced headroom in ~1/4 of the basement. There never were any cold air returns, but the house heated evenly anyway.

 

[JasperFrank]

Seen one of those in a friend's house in Seattle. He called it the "Octopus" heating system also. It was weird to look at it, and how it worked.

 

[GeneV]

Oak Forest HS

Still live about 15mins away.
South suburbs are pretty nice still.

Ah, you were south burbs, and I was nw burbs. Now I'm far nw burbs, Barrington area.

 

[milkman636]

How about gasoline @ 36 cents per imperial gallon?---
---and I drove a VW 'bug' back then! (about$2.00 /full tank)

I’m younger than most on this thread, but my earliest gas station memories are of my dad pulling in to the local service station and telling one of the owner’s sons to give him $3 worth of gas. That was the usual amount he’d buy. They pumped the gas, checked the oil and tires, and washed the windshield for that $3. It was a big deal for me to be the one to say “$3 please”.