Remember when...

Gas was $.85 a gallon



It was socially acceptable to wear these in public.



Slap bracelets were cool until they disappeared after becoming a cutting hazard.



Let's hear about your childhood / glory days memories.

I remember in the 70's among my friends Track Suits and Ankh Pendents were "cool." Couldn't remember why until last week when I watched the movie Logan's Run for the first time, since it came out in 76...and I realized that the track suits we wore were pretty similar to the uniforms the Sandmen wore.



And the ankh was the symbol of the runners.

I remember when it used to be socially acceptable to dress like this in public



while drinking this


and listening to this

Whoomp there it is!

OrdinaryAvgGuy said:

Whoomp there it is!

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One of my friends was just telling me how he used to sell these back in the day...

Hmmmm...I guess I must go back a bit further than most of you. I can remember during my freshman year in college I worked part-time at a gas station. On Sundays, the boss would close the repair bays, and all we'd do is pump gas. And the boss made sure we were a cent or two cheaper than any of the closest stations. And we sold gas for...wait for it...




TWENTY-SEVEN CENTS A GALLON! Most cars could fill up for about five bucks!

glenn514

Remember when they actually had music videos on MTV, and not all that "reality" crap they have on it now?

ffaoe said:

Remember when they actually had music videos on MTV, and not all that "reality" crap they have on it now?

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Remeber when they didn't have MTV, and you had to call your cable operator and say "I Want My MTV"

ffaoe said:

Remember when they actually had music videos on MTV, and not all that "reality" crap they have on it now?

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And I was there...well sort of. I was at the cable tv station I worked at while in High School with my boss the program director, and some of the production and sales people. Our company wasn't actually going to start carrying it for like another week for some reason even though we were set to get it when it came down from day one.

But we had a little party and watched it come down at Midnight.




Pretty cool. Think we watched in awe for only a couple of hours. And I think I went home and rubbed the chicken imagining a threesome with Martha Quinn and Nina Blackwood.

ffaoe said:

Remember when they actually had music videos on MTV, and not all that "reality" crap they have on it now?

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Yeah, I remember the transition. It went from good music videos to BET 3 to Reality TV.

Bell bottom pants.

glenn514 said:

Hmmmm...I guess I must go back a bit further than most of you. I can remember during my freshman year in college I worked part-time at a gas station. On Sundays, the boss would close the repair bays, and all we'd do is pump gas. And the boss made sure we were a cent or two cheaper than any of the closest stations. And we sold gas for...wait for it...




TWENTY-SEVEN CENTS A GALLON! Most cars could fill up for about five bucks!

glenn514

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Ah full service gas stations. I have a brief memory of when this era ended.

I recently stopped by an old school gas station and was approached by an attendee who reached for my tank lid. I was thinking.. WTF is this guy doing. Then I realized what was going on.

I guess there are still a handful of stations that still offer full service.

I think in Oregon you cannot pump your own gas. Been awhile since I was there though

Varmintman said:

I think in Oregon you cannot pump your own gas. Been awhile since I was there though

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Yeah, someone mentioned it on here recently, that they still do it, I remember that back 20 or so years ago when I went there.

In NJ you can't pump your own gas.

JeepDiver said:

Remeber when they didn't have MTV, and you had to call your cable operator and say "I Want My MTV"

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[ame]http://youtu.be/FDJPiUPZxdc[/ame]

Yuppers, we were a "full-service" gas station. We cleaned your windshield, checked the oil and radiator [overflow] and checked the tire pressure on all four tires! All for 27.9 cents a gallon!

glenn514

Back when you had to walk barefoot, up-hill, both ways, in the snow?

m_c_zero said:

Back when you had to walk barefoot, up-hill, both ways, in the snow?

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Over a barbed wire fence.

glenn514 said:

Hmmmm...I guess I must go back a bit further than most of you. I can remember during my freshman year in college I worked part-time at a gas station. On Sundays, the boss would close the repair bays, and all we'd do is pump gas. And the boss made sure we were a cent or two cheaper than any of the closest stations. And we sold gas for...wait for it...




TWENTY-SEVEN CENTS A GALLON! Most cars could fill up for about five bucks!

glenn514

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Up until when...the late seventies or early eighties the gas filler was behind the rear license plate! My first car was like that. '76 Chevelle with a 305.

Gas was $.79 when I started driving.

Remember 3.5" floppy drives & when a 486 machine was unbelievably fast.

Beernik said:

Remember 3.5" floppy drives & when a 486 machine was unbelievably fast.

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I remember when my dad had this time machine and thought he was awesome.

Still to this day he talks about overclocking it and upgrading the RAM.

Today, I teach him how to copy and paste.

Beernik said:

Remember 3.5" floppy drives & when a 486 machine was unbelievably fast.

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Or 5 1/4 floppy with a 286. My first computer was a Timex Sinclair. Yep made by watch company

OrdinaryAvgGuy said:

Over a barbed wire fence.

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and, we WERE THANKFULL and RESPECTFULL!

OrdinaryAvgGuy said:

I remember when my dad had this time machine and thought he was awesome.

Still to this day he talks about overclocking it and upgrading the RAM.

Today, I teach him how to copy and paste.

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A guy at work asked our IT guy a couple of weeks ago, if he has a floppy disk copy of DOS 6.1.....

the good news is, I don't need to go to the chiropractor to crack my neck for a week or so.....


DON'T EVEN ask why he was asking, I don't know........

...the kids would sit on the floor so the adults could sit on the furniture.
...I was with my dad in Southern Ohio when he bought gas for 19cents/gallon.
...we didn't use seat belts and all us kids slept in the back of the station wagon, seats folded down, going down the highway on family trips.
...Mom and Dad smoked in the car with us there - winter or summer.
...I actually was paddled in school or spanked by my parents - and I don't blame them, I did something to earn it and didn't repeat the action, especially the gettin' caught part for some things!

JeepDiver said:

Or 5 1/4 floppy with a 286. My first computer was a Timex Sinclair. Yep made by watch company

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You never forget your first. Mine was an Apple IIe. Upgraded it to a color monitor/TV. It was awesome!

My Dad's truck had running boards and big mirrors. When he would come home for dinner, if I was out and about, I would hop one the running board and ride to the house. His trucks always smelled like dusty vents too.

At the state fair Skoal would give away 10 packs of chew free

In College I could buy $.25 drafts on Tuesday, and Nickle pitchers Wed nights. Never ask what kid of beer it was.

Kids including myself could dive off the seawall into the St. Clair River

I remember seeing this ultra cool guy walking the streets.

OrdinaryAvgGuy said:

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I'll see you and raise you!

First "computer" I ever played with in Junior High in 78-80. Learned to program in basic, and saved on punch cards, or little little strips (on the left side of this machine) and thought we were hot **** because we could hook up one of these modems,



And play Star Trek Battles with kids at other schools through the "network."

God, I still remember the smell of brown recycled paper and hot machine oil.

Beernik said:

You never forget your first. Mine was an Apple IIe. Upgraded it to a color monitor/TV. It was awesome!

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My first was a Commodore 64. It's in my garage somewhere now.

In 1969 my parents managed the largest volume gas station in the Greater Sacramento area. My Dad broke his leg and was running around on crutches so he started offering a discount on the outside lane of pumps if you pumped your own gas. Within a year, he saw other stations around him start to adopt it.

Revvy said:

I'll see you and raise you!

First "computer" I ever played with in Junior High in 78-80. Learned to program in basic, and saved on punch cards, and thought we were hot **** because we could hook up one of these modems,

And play Star Trek Battles with kids at other schools through the "network."

God, I still remember the smell of brown recycled paper and hot machine oil.

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Wait, so you still own this time machine or did the pic come from elsewhere?

Pic on the web. The floor even looks like the "computer lab" in my Jr High.

It would be interesting to own one though. I could just imagining it catching fire just trying to print out one thread on this forum....

Remember the nice purple hue of the mimeograph?

Airplanedoc said:

Remember the nice purple hue of the mimeograph?

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Brings back memories of primary school. Seems these things were outdated even back then.

OrdinaryAvgGuy said:

Brings back memories of primary school. Seems these things were outdated even back then.

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Got sent to the principal in 4th grade for getting in a purple paper fight with another kid

I can remember in high school you could get a 1/4 of the good sticky icky for a 20 spot.

Not that I knew anything about it. Just knew this guy.

I don't mean to hijack this thread, but the duplicating machine pictured twice, above, is NOT a mimeograph machine. It is a SPIRIT DUPLICATOR. A mimeograph forced ink through a fine mesh "master." The spirit duplicator...my first few years of teaching, we had to hand-crank it...used methanol [or maybe ethanol...I don't remember] to remove a very slight bit of "wax" from the "master" and let it print onto the paper. Those worksheets ALWAYS smelled great!

glenn514

It just kills me that everything that was on the 586 tower I bought ~20 years ago for $1200 when I was in college could be put on my iPhone and I'd still have 15.5G of memory left over.

And then my 7 y.o. daughter says to me last night about my old iPhone 3S, "It's no fun without wifi."

I turned to her and said, "Imagine a world with no wifi. Phones were just phones. No music. No games. They plugged into walls. And you had to twist a knob to dial. That was what my childhood was like."

Beernik said:

It just kills me that everything that was on the 586 tower I bought ~20 years ago for $1200 when I was in college could be put on my iPhone and I'd still have 15.5G of memory left over.

And then my 7 y.o. daughter says to me last night about my old iPhone 3S, "It's no fun without wifi."

I turned to her and said, "Imagine a world with no wifi. That was what my childhood was like."

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What is even more interesting is the fact that you will likely have to pay to dispose of your $1,200 computer if you still had it today.