I'll take a very long post over a YouTube video EVERY day of the week!

Thank you for taking the time to share memories.

in what seems (to us) a relatively short period of time. My grandmother was born in 1883 and died in 1981. I'm not sure she ever quite adapted but she saw a whole lot in her lifetime, including two world wars, a depression, cars and airplanes and television - and we have seen even more and in a shorter period of time. I had a college classmate who had a brace on his leg from polio (I saw him at a recent college reunion and he still has it, some 50 years later). My mother, a nurse, saw kids in iron lungs.

Cars didn't have seat belts until the '60s. We ate oleomargarine instead of butter because there was some weird thing having to do with how it was taxed vs. butter. You had to squish the plastic packet it came in to mix the dye into it to turn it yellow. We put mercurochome on cuts and played with the mercury blobs from broken thermometers. Almost everybody smoked (I was fortunate that my parents did not, but they were the oddballs in the neighborhood in that respect). I was given a transistor radio when I was about 12 and I thought it was the coolest and most modern thing ever.

There were sonic booms that scared people and some neighbors had fallout shelters. They announced the strontium-90 counts from atomic tests on the radio. And we had duck and cover drills. Then there was the Cuban missile crisis. Lots of shit happened - but it always does.

I was about 4 years old and I knew when there was a plane flying over there could be that awful noise. It scared the daylight out of me, but most things did.

Thanks for reminding me of that.

Last edited Sat Mar 21, 2026, 02:41 PM - Edit history (1)

We all had a memory or three!

Looking back sometimes I don’t know how I survived. Thanks for the memories.

I've recently moved and having a hard time with it Found a nice GP that's is kind of laid back and tells me when doesn't know about something. He seems to respect my research methodology. Took a lot of Statistics in college and rely on peer reviewed studies. Now he tells me he is retiring in 6 months, so here I go again. Some of the best for everyday problems have been NPs PAs as they take time to listen to me. I use "Rate Your Doctor" site to begin my search. 5 stars with 50 or more people seems to work.

I've often wondered how I was so aware of polio at such a very young age and all I can figure was that I saw the news on the black and white television. It's amazing to think we once lived in a time of dial phones and telephone operators. Television reception was via rabbit ears first, then advanced to aerial antennas. Made my grandmother's day when she could watch Lawrence Welk with minimal snow. LOL. I've been reflecting on things, too, and I'm glad I lived during the period I lived.

I’m 70 and remember it all. Great post!

I remember practically everything you mentioned except I don’t remember kids wearing braces on their legs. I do remember lining up outside the school with my parents and sister to be given a sugar cube with the polio vaccine in it. I remember once or twice practicing for a possible air raid in school. We had to crouch under our desks with our hands over our heads. I remember hearing a sonic boom a few times while playing in our back yard.

Since I was raised Catholic, we never, ever ate meat on Fridays. That was a big no-no and my sister and I thought we’d go to Hell if we so much as ate a baloney sandwich on a Friday. Tuna casserole was a common Friday supper. When my mother took me and my sister to church on Sunday, we wore our best dresses, shoes, gloves, and mandatory hat. The Mass was said in Latin. My mother had a mink stole and lots of women wore those hats with the netting that came down over the forehead. My dad never went with us, he always stayed home.

In Ohio the Sohio gas stations used to post a paper in the window, a list of Ohio license plate numbers. It changed every week. If your plate # was on the list, you won something, like $5 or a prize of some sort. Every week we went there to see if we won anything. We did win one time, a set of plastic mixing bowls.

Supermarkets and most other stores were closed on Sundays. Drug stores were open with limited hours.

Everyone smoked. You could smoke in restaurants, doctors’ offices, on an airplane. Bizarre to think of today.

TV stations (all 3 of them) signed off at midnight and came back on at 6 am.

Thanks for the memories!

I always wondered why school lunches were fish sticks or some other fish on Fridays.

I was a public school kid, too. My mother sent me and my sister to catechism on Saturday mornings.

I never thought eating fish on Friday was a sacrifice! I always liked it.

I was just curious about it. I also had heard Catholic kids talk about Catechism but didn’t really know what it was.

It would be interesting to see schools keep kosher or halal (which is close to kosher iirc) for Jewish and Muslim kids. Somehow I think that would cause an uproar.

cuts through a gas station to cut around a traffic light. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sniglet

track star and his record for the mile may still hold.

I remember when the vaccine came out and it was given free at our town hall. Mine --- the fuckin needle separated from the glass tube and I was stuck with a needle in my arm while the doctor proceeded to screw a new tube onto the needle. Normally, this would have resulted in the screaming Meemees but behind me was Barbara and I didn't want to be crying or nothin in front of her.

On Saturday afternoon, when I was 6 and 7, my Mom would give me a quarter, and the 2 kids next door would join me for the 6 block walk to the movie theater. The entry ticket was 10 cents. And then I had to struggle with my decision-making. I could popcorn (10 cents) and a nickel candy bar; or I could have a soft drink (10 cents) and a nickel candy bar; or I could have 3 nickle candy bars; or a nickle plus a 10-cent candy bar. What I couldn't have was popcorn AND a coke. Those are heavy decisions for a 6-year-old. OH, when we entered, our ticket was torn in half. I kept half and half was put into a big, bingo-like tumbler. At intermission (the space between coming-attractions and cartoons and the movie) the tumbler was brought on stage for a drawing. I don't remember what the drawing was for. But I do remember, I never won.

I remember now. We had cartoons before the movie!
We also played in the neighborhood completely unsupervised, rode our bikes for miles, made things, and played hopscotch and jacks. It was great!❤️

I remember painting my ouchies with that.
My dad was the first on our block to have seatbelts installed in our old Chevy.

that she used on all of us 6 kids' skinned knees or scrapes. She always said, other people use iodine, but this is better, it doesn't sting as much. It hurt like crazy. Since I was a girl, I wore dresses or skirts to school (1950's), that had asphalt for basket ball, volley ball courts,etc. but, also, no grass on the fields where you played kickball, soft ball, base ball, for foot ball. I came home with skinned knees quite frequently.

(We also were not allowed to walk on the grassy areas between rows/hall of classrooms. There a wooden paddle in the office hung on the wall and it would be used if you were sent to the office for misbehaving.)

I would clean my knee at school with water and a paper towel, they didn't hand out band aids unless it was actively bleeding. I'd get home my mom would scrub my knee and then put Mercurochrome on and would get mad, if I I said it hurt, but she always said, she was doing the right thing. I still have scars on my knees and shins from then. Umm, I wonder if the mercury is related to my autoimmune issues today. (Sarcasm)

Thanks for the walk down memory lane. My MIL was only 59, behaving a little oddly, she missed her hair salon appointment, who called to check on her. FIL found her unconscious, ambulance to hospital, exploratory surgery, died two weeks later from liver cancer that had metastasized throughout her body. (1973)

It is so wonderful and amazing how far things have come. I know several people, in the last 10 years, who would ended up like my mil, if the new technologies like ct scans and mris were not available.

Gas stations had price wars and offered all kinds of premiums, like scratch-off game cards and tiger tails to stick on your car to show you had a "tiger in the tank." Up here in winter, they also gave out fluorescent orange Styrofoam balls that you could stick on the top of the car antenna so people could see your car coming from behind the high snowbanks. My parents were loyal Esso customers so we never went to other gas stations even though I begged my parents to fill up at a Sinclair station because they gave away inflatable brontosauruses. I was really big into dinosaurs.

... Esso had to change its name to Exxon because somebody dropped the ball and neglected to update the trademark or some such oversight. This was back in the early seventies, I think. I believe it's still Esso in Europe, I'm not sure.
An inquiry just a few minutes ago gave a reason that didn't jibe with my recollection at all. But then, I learned long ago never to trust corporatism; they could easily fabricate a false narrative that would be less embarrassing. Whatever. It's done.

Couple weeks ago, I got to wondering where Brylcreem went, and figured it went away with the yellow that disappeared with Pepsodent.

My big brother sported a 'flat top' for decades. I recall asking him if he ever considered switching from butch wax to that Brylcreem stuff the girls would prefer running their fingers thru. I was 11, he was fresh out of the Coast Guard and not amused with my advice for his love life.

Hated the cigarette smoke everywhere. One of my chores was scrubbing icky sticky brownish film off the walls. I banned smoking from my apartment when I moved out on my own. My mom was shocked to learn the ban stood even when it was -30 and snowing when I moved to Montana. She thought I would bend the rule for her in that weather. Nope. You insist on lighting that thing up, you do it outside, always. Payback is a bitch, even from the 'quiet, compliant child'.

AND "you'll wonder where the yellow went, when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent!"

In 1976, when I joined the Air Force nurse corps, I got stationed in San Antonio TX. I had lived in western New York State since I was 5. Maybe we didn't do much grocery shopping on Sundays, because I don't remember roped off aisles.

Texas felt very alien to this Yankee in many ways. Seeing aisles in the grocery store roped off was just one of them. It seemed illogical that you could buy food, but not pots and pans to cook it in, silverware and dishes to eat it with, nor dish soap to clean up with.

I would not be able to count all the times my mother, a nurse, recounted her terror of polio. Everyone was so thrilled when the vaccine to prevent this dreadful disease became available. I don't think anybody gave a rap about potential mild side effects.

I well remember Mercurochrome and merthiolate. They both stung like hell. Bactine didn't sting.

And I have very clear recollections of my dad asking the Texaco attendant for "a dollar's worth" of gas.

When our sons (born in 1990 and 1992) were little, some restaurants still had smoking areas. If we had to walk the that area to get to the non-smoking section, they would hold their noses as we went thru. I never asked them not to, as I was just fine with smokers seeing the forthright opinion of young children.

There were several air raid sirens in Seattle that would go off for a couple of minutes every Wednesday at noon. The cold war was always on peoples' minds and we feared being bombed by the Soviets.

And my parents were terrified of polio. When the Salk vaccine came out they were so relieved. They gave us the vaccine shots at school -- the entire class lined up to get the shots.

And the entire class lined up to get the smallpox vaccine also. For years I had the scar from it. I don't remember when the scar disappeared from my upper left arm.

We were an Esso family when I was a kid. It was Humble before it was Esso, actually and there was an Enco in between Esso and Exxon. I didn't look it up and I think I may have missed one somewhere.

Humble, if it existed at that particular station was in relatively small letters above the right-hand most garage bay. We never had Enco here, but I used to see it on the maps we got from Esso. I think it was a different region appellation.

My parents, knowing we were probably going to smoke, added 30 cents a week to our lunch money.

Remember "Green stamps" and the book you placed them in?
I remember buying comic books for 10 cents and when you took them back to the store you got a nickel back. So if you brought two back you could get a new one. My favorite was Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge - the Beagle Boys!

Remember my mom licking them and filling up her books to redeem for things she needed around the house.

And milk delivered to our house in the milk box on our door step. And, my dad smoked “Larks”.

It was a different world back then.

In Philly we had S &H green stamps and yellow Top Value stamps. It was wild…

My dad smoked Kent’s and my Mom smoked Kool’s. We had milk and breads/cakes delivered: Bond Bread and Freihofer’s.

Candy bars from a machine were 10 cents, and a pack of gum was a nickel.

My Mom taped a little sign on our front door that said, "No Smoking."

I was watching a show on the History Channel the other night about turn of the century medicines. You could buy morphine over the counter. When too many people became addicted, they started selling heroin over the counter as an alternative because it was non-addictive.