Phone numbers were memorized, and there was no speed dial, caller ID, or voicemail. I still remember my home # and my best friend's # from 50+ years ago.

ethottly Report

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The world was way more colorful.

Cars were cool colors, not just gray, white or black. Like, a mall parking lot would look spectacular.


Now it seems like everywhere is just a ubiquitous, low profile, architecturally acceptable sea of blah.

robot_pirate Report

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That when you watched TV you had to watch what was on and if you wanted to watch something in particular, you had to wait for it to come on.

BreakfastBeerz Report

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Not that long ago, but you no security screening at airports. You could literally walk the person to the boarding area and watch them board the plane.

LCCR_2028 Report

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When the internet first came out, you couldn't talk on the phone and be online at the same time.

LosBrad Report

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My boss blew my young co-workers mind the other day when she explained that there is a special kind of black paper, that you can put between two regular pieces of paper, and when you write on the top one, it shows up on the bottom one!

mr_roborto Report

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MTV was all music.

TKERaider Report

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Tv stations used to just go off at midnight. They would play a test pattern and a tone until resuming broadcasting around 6am.

shavemejesus Report

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That it was normal for an entire household to share a single phone number.

AlexMango44 Report

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My 20 yo son liked this one:

When driving to anywhere new, you had to get directions or stop at the gas station and ask for them…

Or you could buy a map/atlas.

littlemissnoname- Report

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There were telephones EVERYWHERE. Streets, shops, sidewalk corners, etc., etc.

You paid for calls with COINS.

PawzzClawzz Report

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We used to make our Christmas or birthday wish list from looking in a Sears & Roebuck (or other store's) catalog. You could actually order and pay for things via snail mail, and it was safe to do so.

LeeAnnLongsocks Report

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My adult children and all their friends didn’t believe me when I first told them that married women weren’t allowed to have a credit card in their own name until 1974. Before that, they could only have one through their husband.

jmac94wp Report

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There used to be a phone number you could call to get the time. It would update every 10 seconds. “At the tone the time will be…”

GshNAttck Report

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All of us kids, as young as toddlers, used to pile into the open bed of a pickup truck and just be driven all over hell and gone by adults who didn't even have seatbelts in the cab. No one ever questioned this. It was a perfectly legitimate method of transporting small kids.

tarot_tarot_bo_barot Report

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Ashtrays everywhere. Homes, businesses, restaurants, hospitals, malls, schools (designated area), etc. Even if you didn't smoke you had ashtrays, at least on your coffee table, for guests.

oldcatsarecute Report

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No ATM or debit cards. You would have to withdraw enough cash to cover you for the weekend, since the banks were closed.

renushka Report

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Cigarette machines pretty much everywhere, as long as you put the money in you could get a pack of smokes no matter what age you were

No_Worldliness_6803 Report

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Leaving kids in the car to run into a store was no big deal.

shkilo Report

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(M69). Gas station attendants would put gas in your car, cleaned your windshield, and check your oil as a part of buying the gas. Then you paid him through your car window without getting out of your car.

Pop / soda came in glass bottles.

Grocery stores only sold food and the stores were about a quarter of today’s sizes.

When you needed wood and such for a home project, there was no Home Depot. You went to the lumber yard for wood and anything else, a small local hardware store.

3D-ironowl Report

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At one time, Top 40 radio was comprised of real musicians and singers.

Heavy-Week5518 Report

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People used to actually write letters, put a stamp on them, and mailed them to their friends and relatives! As a kid, I would write letters to my school friends over summer break just to tell them how my summer was going and most would write back telling me how things were with them.

I still remember when stamps went from 18 cents (US) to 20 cents and my Grandma complained about how outrageous that was. Today a first class stamp is 66 cents, and I only mail Christmas cards and thank you notes nowadays.

SiroccoDream Report

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We had a Tylenol scare where several bottles were tampered with. Those that took them died (if I remember that correctly).

Until then, nothing was ever protected. So you could open any bottle or box from drug store items like Tylenol all the way to food and drink.

I told this to my 34 year old daughter and she was shocked that there was a time when we didn’t worry about such things.

Prior_Benefit8453 Report

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There was a room called the “coal room” in the basement of our house. We’d shovel coal from that room into a coal furnace to heat our house. The coal was delivered by a truck that had a coal chute that was inserted through a basement window in the coal room.

Logybayer Report

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We went to the moon before we put wheels on suitcases.

greenwoody2018 Report

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A 15 minute phone call coast to coast was about $12 in 1977. Equivalent to about $60 today.

timeflieswhen Report

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When you went to a concert, you made sure to take a lighter — even if you didn’t smoke.

Nightmare_Gerbil Report

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Drunk driving wasn't a serious crime until a group of moms got together and advocated. (MADD).

MizzGee Report

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I'm just old enough to remember smoking on planes. It still blows my mind that that was a thing!

Linzcro Report

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That "Help wanted" ads in the back of the newspaper were a good way to find jobs, and they were segregated by sex.

randycanyon Report

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Houses in the same area had to share a telephone "party line". And you could listen in to their conversations.

Unless you sneezed or something...

mrxexon Report

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Whenever you wanted to download something online, you'd have to basically threaten everyone in the house with their lives if they picked up the phone during the amount of download time it took. It would take hours to download a game or an image, and if someone used the phone, the download would START OVER from the beginning. Plus, in the mid-'90s, you'd have to pay by the hour.

Shaydie Report

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There was such a thing as penny candy. A store near my school sold lots of it. Little Tootsie Rolls, many flavors of gumballs, and lots of other tasty things. A group of kids could come away with a big haul if one of them had a quarter.

newleaf9110 Report

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Every year I teach my students about Y2K and they think it’s hilarious.

pupsnpogonas Report

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Milk was delivered to your house every week in a gallon glass bottle.

walkawaysux Report

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