Those were the good old days

[Lightning Rod]

I can remember
remember
remember
a time when I bought
gasoline for 19 cents a gallon
I was sixteen in my first car

And when I was five
my mother used to send me to the store
for cigarettes. They cost 35 cents a pack.

Now gas is three fifty a gallon
and
five-year olds can't buy cigarettes
even for $3.50 a pack.

what has this world come to?

and

what do you remember from the good old days?

[abcrystcats]

Well, I'm younger than you, L Rod.

I remember gas at .29 cents a gallon.

I remember when it went up to almost a dollar and people panicked at the pumps. My mother rousted me out of bed to go and buy my gas EARLY because there was already an hour's wait at the local station. People were FREAKING because of an assumed gas shortage that never happened.

I remember candy bars at 10 cents apiece. I had a quarter for my first allowance and that meant 2.5 candy bars. Wow.

My parents first house in San Jose cost them $18,500 in 1962. The same house sells for over half a million today and you know what? It's less than a 1000 square feet. BTW, I remember when a street in that neighborhood called "Farm Hill Way" actually had a farm on it! Not any more. Not for years, now. I still remember the horses pastured there because one of them bit my hand by accident.

*I remember TV in black and white, not color.

*I remember when people had Hi-Fis, not stereo systems.

*I remember when women stayed home and vacuumed and made supper, instead of working full time jobs.

*I remember a time when blow dryers hadn't been invented yet. You used to have to set your hair with rollers and let the air dry it, or else go to the beauty parlor.

*I remember that sheets used to have to be ironed.

*I remember that records were made of a glassy substance and they could break if you dropped them.

*I remember that the insurance agent would come to your house and sit down with you at your kitchen table.

*I remember the big VW bus with the moon windows, and driving home from my the hospital in that with my mother, holding my baby brother in my arms.

Now he's six feet tall and he fights fires.

[mnaz]

Back then, everything was much more affordable, and I was
clueless.

Now, everything is much more expensive, and I am clueless.

I think that about sums it up.

But I do recall gas at 25 cents a gallon, in the recesses of my memory...... Oh the places I could have gone....

[Zlatko Waterman]

When you're really, really old, kids ( like mtmynd and me) you can remember when Monopoly game houses and hotels were made of wood.


--Z

[Lightning Rod]

yeah Z, speaking of wooden houses

A few years ago in Dallas, I used to walk in the neighborhood

There was an old man who reminded me of William Burroughs

who also walked. He was about 80 and wore an overcoat and a pork-pie hat.

We would fall into step sometimes and talk.

One day we passed a site where some condominiums were being constructed. Just the frame was up.

The old man pointed to the framing and said, "that's the trouble with the world today, there ain't no more two-by-fours."

And he was right of course, today a "two-by-four" measures 1 and 3/4"
by 3 and 1/2"

And not only that, an Almond Joy is an illusion because of that cardboard tray that they put in the package.

[Artguy]

10 cent chocalate bar
$20 blue jeans
album cover art...with posters
my $500 car
my $250 motor bike.....

[Rat Bag]

1987 Fuel wars
27c per Litre

1 and 2 cent lollies and even 2 lollies for 1 cent when I was a kid

that's all I remember of the good old days

oh and things 'build to last' like our 30 year old couch

[knip]

back then we didn't have internet with which to complain about

[abcrystcats]

Artguy, you reminded me: "Dittos" jeans in high school. Everyone had them (except me). They were supposedly French cut jeans in a sort of saddle pattern. Very sexy. My mother wouldn't buy them for me -- too expensive.

[V-Agent]

I aint as old as you guys, my memories mainly go back to the 80s.

I remember red communist passports with which you couldn't get into any western european country,

I remember pop music made by musicians that I actually liked,

I remember magazines dedicated to the science fact of a hypothetical future regailing us with possible multi-Mach passenger planes by the mid-90s and Moon colonies not far after 2000,

I remember personal freedom of expression being a lawful right,

But most of all I remember musical subcultures consisting of no more than a few thousand people worldwide outside of the influence of the majors.


Sad really, because reading those magazines I couldn't wait for the "future" of 2000, and now that I'm in it, I don't think I like it - mp3 players and hi-rez first person shooters on cheap PCs are a sad trade against being able to fly from Frankfurt to New York in 45 minutes and holidays on the moon...