The DU Lounge

1. Shoe store X-ray - nope
2. Mimeograph smell - absolutely. I used to run the copies of football plays for the coach in high school. My husband called these things “dirty purples. Military term, maybe?
3. Bank pneumatic tubes - my current bank still has these. First hospital I worked in after nursing school sent things from the pharmacy this way.
4. View Master - Yup
5. Full service gas station. My dad always went to Texaco - “You can trust your car to the man who wears the star, the big bright Texaco star. 🎶. He would often ask for “a dollar’s worth.”
6. Green Stamps - my mother collected them loyally. She was raised during The Depression and anything that made it possible to spend less money was beloved by her.
7. Aluminum ice trays - h, yes. Noisy things.
8. TV sign-offs. I worked the 3-11 shift and would watch Johnny Carson and then Tom Snyder after work, and turn the lights out after the National Anthem.
9. First color TV - no specific recollection
10. Slide projectors and home movies - we did not have either one, but friends who worked for KODAK (grew up in Rochester NY) had both. My husband still has several trays of slides and his projector.
11. Plastic couch covers - a neighbor a couple doors away had these, and lamp shade covers. She did not have a velvet rope barricading the entry to her Irving room, but it felt as if she did. I don’t think anyone ever went in there.
12. Returnable soda bottles - I remember them, but we almost never bought soda, so nothing to turn in.
13. The Sears catalog - oh my, yes. My father worked for Allstate, which either owned or was owned by Sears, so we got. 10% discount for many, many years. While in high school, I got most of my school clothes from Sears. They were fashionable and well made in the 1960s. Not so much later on. I still remember some of my favorite skirt and sweater combinations. My brother and I would pore over the Christmas catalog for hours.
14. Clotheslines and wooden clothes pins - yes. My husband’s mother raised a family of 4 kids without ever having a dryer.
15. Metal lunchboxes - for sure. My mother was one of the few working-outside-the-home moms in the late 19502 and early 1960s, and in an effort for mornings not to be too busy, we would make a week’s worth of sandwiches every Sunday evening and freeze them. Mon-Fri morning - take one out of the freezer and pop it in your metal lunchboxes box and it would have thawed by lunchtime. Take it from me - egg salad on white bread does not freeze well and thaws into a disgusting, soggy mess. To this day, I cannot eat an egg salad sandwich - YUCK!
16. Dizzies - vaguely. Also straws that had a flavor chip in them that would flavor the milk as you sucked it up.
17. Chemistry sets - had one.
18. Rabbit ear and tinfoil - been there, done that.
19. Drive-ins - going to the snack bar was always the highlight
20. Milkman - when I was 5, we lived in a very old rental house that had a little metal lined box in the wall with 2 doors - one to the outside for the milkman to open and put the milk in the box, and one to the inside for us to open and bring the into the house. I thought it was way cool.
21. Gas station giveways -no specific recall
22. Free toasters - no specific memory
23. Car blanket - again, no particular recall, but I do remember my dad covering the car engine with a blanket under the car hood on really cold nights. Not sure if this was of any benefit, seeing as the engine would not have been generating any heat for the blanket to hold in. Occasionally, he’d forget to remove it.
24. Formica kitchen tables - of course
25. The Yellow Pages - “lets your fingers do the walking through the - Yellow Pa-ages!” 🎶