I remember when..............

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swifter

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I remember when- My dad used to give me a 50 cent piece and I would walk down to the Indian gas station with a metal 1 gallon gas can and fill it up and on the way home I could get a order of french fries at the A & W with the change!!!!!!!!!! I'm 47 yrs old now---- Tells us what you remember from your past that would freak the kids of today out and they wouldn't believe it!!! \\:D/
 
Buyin Marlboros or a gallon of Sunoco 96 for .75 cents a gallon,....1978,...I was 16

For 5 bucks you would get sick at McDonalds,...( at my age now, you still can)...

I worked for Minumum Wage,...$3.25 an hour pumpin gas, fixin flats and drivin a wrecker,...that was a good job and good payin wages as well,...
 
I remember when tv's were only black and white,8 tracks were new technology,only 3 channels on tv,10.00 filled up the gas tank on my Torino with change left over,pro trac performance tires,disney world [orlando] was brand new. 53 years young now.
 
I am only 16 and i could mess with alot of kids heads. I remember when cd's came out, rotary dial phones, stuff like that.
 
Pumping gas at 54 cents a gallon in 1974 at my first job.
 
hey dodger, I appreciate your sense of history (and literature) but, CD's came out in the early 80's, long before you were even a gleam in your daddy's eye.

That being said, I remember returnable bottles and gas under a dollar. Also, I was a latch key kid. Both my parents worked and my sister and I were at home by ourselves from the age of 8. No helicopter parents in those days.
 
I remember gasoline below .25 that's "a quarter." I grew up in Sandpoint, Idaho, and Newport WA and Oldtown, ID are just across a short bridge, the state line. WA always has had higher fuel taxes, and stations up there used to have "border wars."

Remember when Chevron had THREE pumps? "Custom Super Supreme" in the white pump? We'd get two, three of us, and drive from Sandpoint to Oldtown to fill up our cars because,,,,,,,.......a 283 power pack HAS to have the VERY HIGHEST octane, doncha know.

THREE channels? Hell we lived "in a hole." My home town was a BADLY spotty "long fringe area" and at our house, we got ONE channel snow free. 2, back then was ABC, and 6, NBC, were incredibly snowy and nearly unwatchable much of the time. Yup. "black and white."

Gunsmoke, "Have gun will Travel" and "The Honeymooners."

My Mom was ALWAYS goin' around getting "a dollars worth" of gas.

Here's a story. One family had the local "off breed" car dealership. They had tried everything that failed, Kaiser, Hudson, Nash, etc, and ended up with Chrysler, and sometime during when I was in the Navy, Datsun, one of their smarter moves at the right time.

So BEFORE I went into the Navy, so, about 67, the owner and head of the family was out of town for a weekend. They had a NICE 65? El Camino with a 365 hp 327 and 4 speed in the thing, and one of the sons had a 55 Chev that was just BEGGIN for an engine. YOU GUESSED IT. The son went right in the shop on the weekend, yanked the engine out of the El Camino and dumped it into the 55. Now you cannot PUT a 55 Chev engine back into an El Camino, because a 55--57 engine block does not have the side mount motor mount bosses. So, they found ANOTHER third car, yanked the 283 out of it, and dumped it and a 3 speed into the El Camino, THEN haywired the 55's 265 into the THIRD car.

I have no idea if or when the "old man" found out about that, but it sure woke up that little 55
 
Going to a cigarette machine in a laundry mat for my mom or grandmother for a pack of PallMall cigarettes and there was 2 cent's in the pack of cigarettes because they was 43 cents a pack.. Premium gas!! there was no such thing, White gas was the good stuff..
 
Still got 300 or so Vinyl LP's,...cost 2 or 3 bucks back in the day,....born in 62,...don't remember much about the late 70's or 80's,...but I was there,...
 
I remember buying gas at 18 cents a gallon during the "gas wars"
during the mid sixties. I'm almost 65 now.

I think smokes were $2.00-$3.00 a carton......not per pack

A good wage was $1.75 an hour for a high school grad. Mechanical
Engineers were paid $3.00 per hour right out of college.
 
Your post takes me back to when I would take my gallon can to the Sinclair station down the street to fill it up for 24.9 cents. That way I was able to mow enough lawns to buy my first rifle at $49.99 (it was a "Fair Trade Item") A box of Remington .22LR hollow points was 49 cents. A Hershey bar was a nickel and a Dr Pepper was ten cents. A MacDonalds burger was a whopping 18 cents! And then, by the time I had bought my first car gasoline had gone to 34.9!!
 
Penny candy at the corner store. And the "honor system" the cashier would use when we'd go to pay for it, i.e. she'd simply ask "how many pieces you got there sweety..."
 
Penny candy 1-cent candy, washing dishes $1.60 per hr, pick up hitch hikers,not locking doors,Shell gas station President coins
 
I remember when:
Ice cream containers were a gallon
Soda containers were 2 liters
gas was $1.20 (USD a gallon)
Cds were new technology
Big screen TVs, non of this thin flat screen stuff we have now.
when gas didn't have corn in it!
game boys were hot sh1t
Cell phones were a rarity
the food pyramid was taught
tamagotchis, they were cutting edge at the time.
Dreaming of one day having hand held tvs
not having internet
watching dale earnhardt race on tv
when there was no E-Z pass, yeah you had to take your wallet out to pay for tolls!
Oreo Os and doritos 3D were in supermarkets
beanie babies were popular (they still aren't worth crap)
And Ill leave you with, I remember when things weren't made in china!

all this an I'm only 22 years old (23 in a month)
 
Thrifty Ice cream was 10 cents a scoop, I bought my first gallon of gas @ .79 (.89 for Ultra 93) and a case of "Brew 102" was 'bout $4.20. $3.35 was minimum wage and no one had ever heard of a turbocharger or a CD in my high school. My auto shop still had a valve machine, a armature lathe, a Sun distributor machine that no one knew how to use, and a brake shoe sizer for oversized drums....and I remember shifting the 3 sp manual in my moms slant 6 Duster, sitting between them with no seat belt on...and Im still alive!
 
.50 cents! You were one of the rich kids! .15 cents would get you a can of pop at the laundromat, a dime would get you a pkg of Topp's baseball cards. Which we would promptly clip to the back wheels of our bikes.
We didn't dare tell our mother we were sick! She would break out the biggest spoon she had and dump cough syrup down our throats. I was 16 before I ever even saw a McDonalds let alone eat there.
Now I lived out in the country on a dairy farm, my wife was a city girl and still doesn't believe me when I tell her this. It took me years to drink milk bought from stores. That's another thing, I was shocked to learn that you had to pay for milk at a store when I was a kid. I thought everyone had cows when I was little.
 
When an eight year old could go to the store and buy smokes for his mom(think they were a quarter).....who walked 20 miles, uphill, both ways, to school, in three feet of snow, with just extra socks in her shoes, not winter boots! :D
Not knocking her life, I know it WAS way harder back then.
 
I remember buying Sunoco 260 for .37 a gallon filling up for under $10. Buying any candy bar for .05 and ice cream pop's for .10, White Castle burgers for .25 and the list goes on and on.
 
I am going to date myself here. LOL

The first T.V. I remember had a round screen.
Pop was 6 cents if you drank it in and 8 cents if you took it with you.
My first time to the tavern you got a cheeseburger and 2 12 oz. drafts and left a 10 cent tip for a buck.
My first car (72 Demon), gas was 43 cents a gallon and smokes were 43 cents a pack.
Penny candy meant that you got five pieces for 1 cent.
Dad drove his somewhat new car, (Plymouth) it had fins on the back quarters.

I remember the original FABO. Not many can say that.

There are a pile more, but you get the idea.

Jack
 
I feel like an old man reading some of these earlier posts. So here goes, are you ready for a list?

* My parents running a monthly tab at Eddie's Union 76 Station on Whittier Blvd. in Montebello, CA, when I was about 8 years old. Also 3 or 4 attendants coming out to pump the gas, check the oil and water level, check the air pressure in the tires, and wash the windows...of our Hudson Hornet. My parents also ran monthly tabs at the local dairy (complete with cows), and the local bakery.
* Sitting on my dad's lap steering the car while he worked the gas and brake pedals
* Walking to the local grocery store with $1 to get 3 pounds of ground beef
* Walking to the "Jap's" for vegetables - it was a produce-only store run by a Japanese family
* Walking over a mile each way to the local bakery for a loaf of bread
* The house I grew up in had a little door in the wall by the kitchen that opened into a tin-lined box inside the wall. There was another little door inside the house so you could reach in and take out the quart milk bottles the milkman delivered early in the morning.
* Our refrigerator was a Servel that ran on natural gas rather than electricity. It has a little freezer area in the center of the upper part of the refrigerator that held 3 individual ice cube trays. The only way to keep ice cream was to empty the ice and cube separators out of the trays and transfer the ice cream from the carton to the ice cube trays.
* The Helms bakery trucks that drove around all the neighborhoods each day full of loaves of bread, doughnuts and other pastries for sale. You walked out to the curb and stopped them if you needed to buy something.
* My mom driving around town to pay individual utility bills because it was cheaper than mailing payment
* S&H Green Stamps, Blue Chip Stamps, tube-testing machines in all the supermarkets
* Walking two blocks to catch the bus, take it to the end of the line and then take the streetcar to downtown Los Angeles so my mom and older sister could go shopping at the big department stores. These trips were never complete without going to Clifton's South Seas Cafeteria on Olive St. for lunch. And Christmas time was always the very best because the big department stores would decorate their windows with special displays for the Holiday.
* Watching TV laying on the floor of the living room and getting up to change the channel for my parents - no such thing as a remote control
* Leaving on my bicycle early in the morning on weekends and every day during the summer to spend time with my friends and not having to be back home until just before the street lights came on - and nobody worrying about where you went, what you were doing, or who you were with.
* Seeing a travelling 3-ring circus under a real "big top" tent that set up on open land
* Sheriff John, Engineer Bill, Skipper Frank, and Tom Hatton with their individual kids cartoon shows on TV
* Dick Lane broadcasting both wrestling and Roller Derby on local TV on Channel 5 - and a different name each week for the very same wrestling hold
* Gazing at all the model car kits at the local hobby shop - they were a whopping 98-cents each
* When it was a really big deal when the new cars came out at the dealerships, complete with big searchlights sweeping the sky to attract attention
* Getting a couple of buddies together to go cruising Whittier Blvd. in my best friends three-year-old '63 Impala SS with the 425-horse 409 and 4-speed - and each of us chipping in $1 for gas
* Out with my girlfriend - later wife - cruising Whittier Blvd and stopping at Bob's Big Boy; the carhops bringing us 2 Big Boy Combo's (burger, fries, and lettuce wedge salad w/bleu cheese dressing) and 2 chocolate shakes for a grand total of $3.40.
* The very best radio stations were on AM bands. The #1 station in SoCal was KRLA with the greatest DJ's - Hudson & Landry in the morning, Casey Kasum, Dave Hull, and Bob Eubanks
* Catching hell from my then-wife for buying Chevron White Pump Supreme gas for my '69 340 Swinger for 36.9 cents per gallon because it was 2-cents per gallon higher than other brands
* OCIR, Lion's, and Irwindale with their 32-car funny car shows
* Ontario Motor Speedway, Riverside International Raceway
* Standing at the fence in front of the stands for the entire race at the WinterNationals in Pomona, just to be closer to the cars

SoCal was a great place to be a kid back in the 50s and 60s.


 
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