If you were born in the 1950s or early 60's you probably remember these...

The milk was a milk truck not a horse carriage.
The neighbors got the fresh milk daily from the truck, all of ours was store bought.
I remember getting our first color TV, and our first phone.
The phone was a such a cool thing, it was a rotary on the wall.
When it rang us kids raced to get it as excited as anyone could be. I won a few phone races by reaching over my sisters shoulder because she was actually in front of me at the phone finish line.
 
I remember my dad had a few 78 rpm vinyl records. Our turntable had a 33,45,and 78rpm setting. I want to belive it had a 16rpm too, but my memory is a little fuzzy there. I only remember using the 33 and 45rpm, sometimes we played a 45 at different speeds just for kicks.
 
Being born in 1943 I remember all of those and much much more very well. :D
 
Yes sir, I remember all those, except our Milk was deliver via Hood's Dairy Truck, we had our chickens for eggs, our beef, pork and chicken meat came from my Dad and Uncles doing the kills and butchering. We had fresh orange juice from our Orange grove. I knew all the land owners in my area and had access to over 100,000 acres of woods to hunt and fish in. It was the greatest time of my life. :booya:
Worse thing to happen to Florida was the arrival of the Air Conditioner and retirees.
 
My step dad was a milkman for Adohr Farms. Nothing like ice cold milk in glass bottles.
Some of the older milkmen still had Divco trucks.
I even remember the Helms man. :)
 
Candy cigarettes still existed as of the mid 90’s atleast. I bought some off an ice cream truck when I was younger. My mom was...annoyed.
 
Bobw said:
I'm not a old milk man but I had a Divco. No portholes or shag carpet but it was far freakin' out.....
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The milkman would let us ride in the milk truck to the next house, in the summer the ice made it a cool ride (AC in houses was uncommon back then).
 
Wow. Horse drawn delivery wagons were long gone by the 1950s. More typical to have a box truck (Divco was popular). But milk was delivered in glass bottles. The milk company supplied an insulated metal box that sat on your doorstep, and you paid via subscription.

That telephone (pictured) is also pretty old - you might have found one like that back then at your grandparents' house. But phones were all rotary back then. Party lines were still in rural areas... busybodies used to stay on the line to listen in.

The pictured TV was black-and-white, and although color TVs first came out in the mid-1960s they didn't become common until the early 1970s - and often their pictures were on the greenish side. Broadcasts were often black-and-white until the early 1970s too... the transition from black-and-white to color in the middle of "The Wizard Of Oz" was a dramatic introduction for many people.

It seemed to me that kids quit playing outdoors all of a sudden. We always played outdoors, and could hear kids all over the woods around our neighborhood. But when I came home from college after being away for a couple of years (1980) I noticed how quiet it was... all of our old trails in the woods were overgrown... and the kids were hanging out in a couple of shacks they'd built in the woods where they could smoke pot...

It is true that prices were lower, but not necessarily cheaper - you've got to put it into context of the cost of living vs. typical wages. Dad used to say that in the 1950s if he had a couple of dollars in his pocket it was a hard decision whether to buy a few gallons of gas for cruising, or a pack of cigarettes so you'd look cool while cruising...

Like DUN24 says you could get candy cigarettes easily well into the 1990s - and you can still find them today in specialty candy stores. I only bought them once - didn't like the taste. Same thing happened when I tried cigarettes... good thing, I didn't ruin my lungs.
 
Here in LA, a lot of the single-family post war houses had pockets built into an exterior wall near a side entry door. The pockets were galvanized lined and had little galvanized doors on the inside and outside. The milkman would put your milk, cheese, butter, etc into the pockets and the homeowner could retrieve the items without going outside.
 
BobbyFord said:
Here in LA, a lot of the single-family post war houses had pockets built into an exterior wall near a side entry door. The pockets were galvanized lined and had little galvanized doors on the inside and outside. The milkman would put your milk, cheese, butter, etc into the pockets and the homeowner could retrieve the items without going outside.
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Great idea. Would have liked to have had that - sometimes we'd forget to check our milk box... until the stench reminded us...
 
Milk never had a chance to go bad in my house between my two brothers and I. Dad often commented about buying a cow. Something I learned and repeated from him was ''close the door, I'm not paying to heat/cool [depending on the season!]' outside!''
We had a color tv in the mid fifties, not many shows were in color but when Bonanza came along it was a BONANZA! They were one of the first shows to be shown in color.
 
I remember a milk truck story my cousin told me:
Some of those milk trucks had just one fold-up seat for the driver, and were laid out to be driven standing up (to make frequent deliveries easier). They also had a granny gear, and using that the driver could leave the truck creeping along while he went back and forth to it getting milk and leaving it on porches.

The main road through my cousin's neighborhood was pretty flat and straight, so the delivery man used to use the creep-along method. Sometimes he'd let an older kid stand behind the wheel and "drive", and other kids could ride along, while he did deliveries. I thought that was pretty brave of him, but even if a kid figured out how to take real control of the truck they were so slow that you could catch them on a bicycle...
 
I remember 1,2,4,5 and 7. They need to bring the candy cigs back so the kids can have them with their mary jane gummy bears.
 
When I was 12-13 I would run milk with my step-dad in the Los Feliz area. We had keys to a lot of the houses and we’d put the dairy products in the refrigerator while the occupants slept. Route started around 3am.
 
Most of my friends started smoking in middle school. Some would use their lunch money for cigarettes. My brother started that way.

There was a pantry store similar to a mom and Pop 7 and 11 store. They sold cigarettes to anyone they didn't care how young you were.
I even remember walking to the store to buy cigarettes for my dad or some his friends, they would give me enough money to buy myself a little candy as a reward.
I can't remember a store anywhere ever refusing to sale them to me because I was a kid. .
 
For entertainment me and my best friend would go to the Mr Zip store and buy a drink and brown bag it like it like it came from the liquor store. It would be a Gatorade or something like it, we would carry on like drunks. My friend could do the best **** face drunk act you ever saw.
My dad would play the guitar sometimes and ask me to get him a beer out of the refrigerator. For the most part he didn't drink, but I got enough exposure sneaking a sample or too, I always hated the taste.

My bother was another story. He kept beer at a hidden spot in the creek to keep it ice cold.
 
Greg said:
ask me to get him a beer out of the refrigerator. For the most part he didn't drink, but I got enough exposure sneaking a sample or too, I always hated the taste.
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Oh, that brings memories. My grandparents had a weekend place on the water. When I got big enough, my job was to open the bottle and bring them a beer. I couldn't have been more than 7 or 8. My reward, the very first sip out of the bottle. The two of them usually went through a case during the weekend.
 
TexasRaceLady said:
Oh, that brings memories. My grandparents had a weekend place on the water. When I got big enough, my job was to open the bottle and bring them a beer. I couldn't have been more than 7 or 8. My reward, the very first sip out of the bottle. The two of them usually went through a case during the weekend.
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I remember once my dad wanted something to drink on a Sunday while we were in Georgia. He drove down some dirt road, found an old freind and paid him. The man opened his car trunk pulled a bottle from his stock and sold it to my dad.

I had an uncle that passed away a few years ago. Later on my mom told that he had been arrested for making moonshine years ago, I never knew.
 
Greg said:
For entertainment me and my best friend would go to the Mr Zip store and buy a drink and brown bag it like it like it came from the liquor store. It would be a Gatorade or something like it, we would carry on like drunks. My friend could do the best sh!t face drunk act you ever saw.
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lol, reminds of a story while I was in college. We used to have open parties at our house (that we rented from the school) mostly with beer... but some people would bring their own stuff. One night a new loud guy was waving around a Grain alcohol bottle that he was chugging from... we figured it was just an act. He set his bottle down on our bar and turned away to talk to a girl, and one of my roommates noticed that we had the same brand Grain alcohol - but ours was real. So he switched the bottles. The guy turned around and made another big show of chugging some Grain - started choking and swearing and practically ran from the house. Yeah, his bottle was filled with water...
 
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