Well, if the lights are on, it doesn't necessarily follow that the current is on, does it? I mean, we're all familiar with gaslight and oil lamps, right?

Well, you oldie goldies, I was born in 1946 and remember the lumps in the powdered milk concoction we kids were forced to drink while the family was living in Athens. Goats were lead past our front gates each morning, but we American kids had to drink the yucky dry stuff.

I also remember flying from El Salvador to Panama on military planes in the mid-50's wearing a life vest, the requirement of additionally wearing a parachute waived due to my size.

I remember the bread man in Holland bicycling up to the house on a three wheeled cart, into which we kids leaned on tiptoe to choose our favorite rolls. Don't even get me started on the selection available from the door to door flower cart!

Back in the States at age 15, I remember being fascinated by American Bandstand and learning to dance with a doorknob. I also remember being able to go into a little booth to listen to records before choosing which one to buy.

Trying hard to become a cool American teen, I cut a long lock of blond hair from a old doll and bobby pinned it into my auburn hair. When I sashayed across the living room floor, displaying my sexy new blond streak, my father, over my protests, promptly threw me into the shower fully clothed with orders to wash the blond out!

croque

Ah yeh S & H green stamps you'd stick in a booklet and then take to redeem for some now considered tacky item that i probably have in my utensil collection i inherited from my folks. Sperry and Hutchinson stamps.
Anyway ironically just after i made the original post today i went to the nearby Rite Aid to get some wine and the clerk asked for my birthday - in the US it's ridiculous they ask for your birthdate even though you're obviously an old fart when you buy booze - it's really a managerial policy where they don't trust their cashiers to make any judgment, an over-reatcion to rather draconian alochol-age-sales laws that severely penalize stores that get caught selling to underage - anyway he asked for my birthdate and i said 1948 and then he pondered a bit and asked me did you watch I Love Lucy (tv show) when you were a kid - wondering if kids liked it - yeh i said that i was so old that i saw them when they were new - and that with Jackie Gleason's Honeymooners i saw them broadcast live; I realized that i was really old in this young clerk's mind - i said yeh we liked them - everyone watched them and there were only three channels to chose from so we had to watch them. Well i remember having no car or tv - guess that makes me feel about like i felt about my parents who remembered riding horses and pre-electricity in a comparable sense. And, as i now tell my son, we didn't even have remote control - that's how primitive we were. And that i walked 8 miles to school each way.

Adoptionisfab, did you live in or near Hackensack, NJ? The reason I ask is that I was born in Hackensack, and there was an Arnold Constable on Main Street. In fact, I remember all of those stores. There used to be a hair salon in Best & Company, and that's where my parents took me to get my hair cut when I was little.

And, Korvettes was the abreviation for Korean Veterans that started the chain store. I got my first album at the Alexanders in New Jersey that had the big tile op-art painting on the front of the store.

I'm not that old, (I'm a baby boomer too) but I do remember when penny candy only cost a penny. And, the milk man delivered milk to our house in 1968 in bottles and put them in a metal box by the door.

I remember black and white televisions, prior to and later with remote controls. I remember my grandparents would put colored cellophane on their console TV set to have a colored picture. I remember sitting in my grandparents living room on a Sunday and watching man land on the moon. I remember the Beatles first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. I remember the blackout on the east coast in 1965.

Here's something that makes me feel old. A friend of mine was at a family reunion which was held at the home of an elderly person. This elderly person still has a rotary phone. A teenaged girl at the reunion wanted to make a phone call. She had never seen a rotary phone before, and someone had to show her how to use it. Geez, I felt gray hairs sprouting out of my head when I heard this story.

OK, so I don't like to think I'm old, despite how old I feel and what my husband tells me!

BUT....I do remember as a child, having to sit for what seemed like an eternity and like those damn green stamps and put them into the books. My mom would then inspect the books to make sure I hadn't put too many on a page!

I also remember my first trip to the UK, 1976, I thought that my Nana's house was the neatest thing on this planet....Not only did they have a toilet outside, but they had an electric meter that had to get fed change in order to provide electric to the house. I spent the entire summer following after people and collecting loose change so that I could sit under the stairs and feed the meter! They must have had electric for a year after I left.

I was quite upset on my next visit in 1980 and the meter was gone!

I'm enjoying this thread very much. Thanks!!

Guess I should preview before posting!

I was actually licking the green stamps, not liking them!!

sojourn, no NY. I forgot Lit's Brothers, Strawbridge & Clothiers and Wanamakers in Pa. Where was Arnold Constable, was it 34th Street?

What a fantastic thread! So many memories all of you have brought back!

I think the one I love the best (because I hated it so much at the time) was the margerine in a plastic bag with the yellow dye). Believe this started during WWII because it was impossible to get butter during the war.

Hi! I want to thank you all for this thread!! I was born in 1963 - when the Beatles were storming the USA and my first trip to Europe will be this Fall. But I love hearing all this -- just tonight my mom was just telling me stories of going to see the big bands in NYC when she was a teenager and then we went through my father's photos from the Navy when 17 and serving during WWII. This makes it all so real to me and makes me feel closer to my parents.

Sojourn - I currently live in Bogota, NJ and was raised in Tenafly -- not only do I remember Korvettes & Alexanders, I also remember NJ before there were malls. I remember both Garden State Plaza and Bergen Mall when they were both open. I remember Woolworths in Bergenfield when they still had a lunch counter (bought my first album -- Grand Funk for their version of Locomotion -- at Woolworths). I remember the old fashioned diners (Jersey, after all, has diners everywhere).

Thanks again for this thread!

I'm so old that ...
I've walked ON the Parthenon.
I stayed at Hotel Montalembert [Paris] BEFORE it was $300 a night.

Tuck, my trip was in '61! After doing 8 countries in 6 weeks,I went home from Paris via Cherbourg, QE I or Q Mary, again I forget which!
Robespierre, my first car was a 63 VW, with a sunroof!

For those of you who want to know how we dressed as visitors to Europe in those days, rent Rome Adventure--kind of a corny story, but we really did wear those "shirtwaist" dresses when we traveled. And Al Di La still brings back memories of that summer in Europe! Sigh!

Sojurn: I grew up in central NJ and we had an Arnold Constable (upscale) and Korvettes (my family's level). I remember my best friend would buy her clothes at Arnold Constable and my mother would buy the knock offs at Korvette's!!!!

Green stamps, home delivery of milk, Fuller Brush man, only one Mc Donalds a few towns away and years before they built more. Good Humor truck and the bell rining so you knew he was coming down the street.

Great memories

Sojourn and Islandbeachangel, I was right near your towns. I remember the Arnold Constable in Hackensack, too. I don't like to post certain kinds of personal details on Fodors, but I had a strong connection to your current town, too, IslandBA.

Green stamps, yes! A drinking glass inside the box of detergent. Volumes of a children's encyclopedia sold one per week at the supermarket. Little Golden Books. Classics Illustrated comic books. Door prizes at the movies.
Scariest movie I ever saw, for a long while: The Incredible Shrinking Man.

When JFK was called Idlewild ...

Oh man, all sorts of memories are coming back - I remember when the McDonalds in Hackensack (the only McDonalds in our area of the county)didn't have indoor seating - you had to eat in the car. McDonalds was a big treat for my brother & I - only went for special occasions. We had family dinners every night when my Dad got home from work.

On Halloween, I remember being able to trick or treat with my friends all over town (all day when Halloween was on a weekend)without parents.

On summer nights I remember playing outside with all the kids from the neighborhood until it got dark. We had a group of at least 20 neighborhood kids and we had the best time.

Is it just me, or was it really more fun back then? I can't imagine growing up like my neices & nephews with play dates and computer games.

I feel like my area of NJ was a Norman Rockwell painting. It won't be long until I'm telling my neices and nephews about walking to school two miles barefoot in the snow uphill both ways...

I apologize if I sound a bit too nostalgic at the moment, but life has just us thrown one of it's curves and this forum came at the right moment.

IslandBA, when I moved to your part of NJ in 1956, it felt so terribly modern to me, compared to Brooklyn and the little town in PA where I'd lived before! It ws hard to adjust to suburbia, where malls were being built, and people drove everywhere and didn't take walks every night.

Leather gloves on the Ponte Vecchio were selling for about $3.

The train from Nice to Paris took forever, and evidently the many tunnels it went through were not adequately ventilated; the conductors ran through the compartments slamming the windows shut.

The shops on the Champs-Elysees were lovely.

Seeing Aida performed at the Caracalla Baths on a warm Roman night was spine-tingling. (For many years after that timie they stopped using Caracalla for performances because of damage to the antiquities, but I heard they were considering opening them again for operas, etc.; anyone know anything about that?

One overnight ferry route across the Channel was Harwich-Hook of Holland.

There were some murals at Pompeii that only the men in our group were allowed to see.