Someone wrote about the time her father was cleaning out grandmother’s house brought her an old Royal Crown Cola bottle. In the bottle top was a stopper with a bunch of holes in it.
“I knew immediately what it was, but my daughter had no idea. She thought they had tried to make it a salt shaker or something. I knew it as the bottle that sat on the end of the ironing board to sprinkle clothes with — because we didn’t have steam irons.”
My husband’s doctor mentioned that he and his nephew were listening to that old Jim Croche hit, “Operator.” When the song was done his nephew asked him, “What’s an operator?”
Are you old enough to remember operators putting through your long-distance calls? And when phone calls cost a dime?
How many of these other long-ago realities can you recall?
— Head-light dimmer switches on the floor.
— Frost shields on car windows. (for vehicles in colder climates)
— Pant leg clips for bicycles without chain guards.
— Using hand signals for cars without turn signals.
— Candy cigarettes
— Coffee shops with table-side juke boxes
— Home milk delivery in glass bottles.
— TV test patterns that came on at night after the last show.
— Peashooters
— Ice boxes
— Metal ice trays with levers
— Blue flashbulb
— Roller skates
— Cork popguns
— Studebakers
— Wash tub wringers
Christine's Collection 
All of them. And a few of them were modern conveniences not available to our grandmothers 🙂
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I guess flashbulbs would be one. My first camera was an old box brownie and no such thing as a flash. And Bob’s Mom talked of doing laundry on a washboard, She was able to get a washing machine during the war years, with special permission from the local authorities because she was handicapped. Few general appliances were made because metal mostly went for war use.
Thanks for your comment.
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Yup, all of them. Funny to think of it now as the bygone days.
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Thanks for reading my list. We’ve lots of memories stored — I guess we should write historical novels. 🙂
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😀
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I remember quite a few. It would be fun to do hand signals when driving to see the reaction it gets – left, right, slow down!
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I fear no one would pay the least attention to hand signals. I suspect even bikers wouldn’t have a clue. But if you want to try, let me know how it works.
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