The latest GEICO gecko commercial fades back to the 1930s when pneumatic tubes were used for transactions.
Does anyone remember the pneumatic cashier tubes in the department stores?
There would be many sales clerks on the floor or floors in a department store but no cash register. The sales clerk would write up a sale by hand, take the money from the customer and place both in a large cartridge and shoot it by air in a tube to the cashier, who usually was located out of sight on another floor.
This is not unlike how drive in bank tellers take and provide cash to automobile customers.
The cashier would receive the cartridge, double check the sales clerk's figures, provide change and provide a receipt, which he or she then shot back to the sales clerk by the air line. There were air tubes running all over the place in a big store and us kids would amuse ourselves by watching the little "cars" shoot through the tubes.
I did some clothes shopping in downtown Coffeyville in 1975 and a department store was still using that process.
GEICO, by the way, is the Government Employees Insurance Company, a private company originally created in the 1930s to sell insurance only to federal government employees. The company figured that these employees would be less of a risk to insure.
Sometime around the 1970s, the company went "public."
Ahhhhh------Woolworths and J.C. Penny's comes to mind. I am sure that there were many others, but those two hit me right away.
Larryj
I know the JCPenney store at Coffeyville had these tubes when I was little, and Bradley's Variety Store in Sedan did, too. The Corner Drug Store at Sedan had a similar idea. They had a can on a string that went straight up, from the clerk on the ground floor to the pharmacist, John McKimmens, who worked upstairs. When the prescription was filled, he would let the can, which held the prescription, back down.
The one I remember was the JCPenney store on N. Broadway in Wichita. I don't know how long it was used because I don't know when that store was closed.
I remember them, it seems like a store in Eureka had them but I don't remember which one. I also like to watch the little packets zip through the clean tubes and wonder where they went and when they would come shooting back.
It seems to me the J. C. Penny store in my town had hidden tubes.
As a kid, I got to see Mr. Penny once when he came to the local store for a visit. I was quite disappointed because he was such a gray haired feeble looking old man.
By this time in his life he had only an honorary status in his own company, but we did not know that at the time. He was more of a public relations man visiting each of his many stores, notifying the newspapers beforehand for publicity, etc.
Supposedly, the first J. C. Pennys store is still open in Kemmerer, Wyoming, a town about the size of Eureka.
Sam Walton began his career working at a J. C. Pennys store.
I remember those very well. Woolworth's etc. The last one I remember still working was in the Newark Department store, well into the late 70s or early 80s I think, when the store finally closed. The big malls did it in.
Montgomery Ward in Wichita had them. A trip there was always a treat, whether to see your feet through your shoes in the floroscope at the shoe department, or a visit with Santa Claus complete with a copy of Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer, and a visit to the large display of electric trains, all running of course. Right then I decided that being a girl wasn't really all that much fun, cause I wanted one of those trains! And when one of my folks bought something we got to watch those amazing tubes. When I was in Jr. High, that is where my letter sweater came from also.
I believe the last one I saw in use was in Calverts in Augusta.
Sixdogsmom,
What you were too young to know about that fluoroscope machine, and what your mother did not know about that machine, and most importantly, what the shoe salesman who was the most at risk did not know about that machine, was that those x-ray machines were a potential major hazard to your health.
In 1957, Lionel issued a pink train set just for girls. It was a total flop.
Montgomery Ward created Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer when a Jewish employee wrote a poem about him for the company. That man's brother-in-law, put the poem into a song that Gene Autry made into the #1 hit of 1949.
Waldo, you are correct about the flouroscope; they have since been outlawed. But they were cool, just being able to see your feet and toe bones right through your shoes! The last flouroscope that I saw was in a doctors' office about 1961. And I can see why a pink train was a flop, just wouldn't be the same somehow. ;)
Those flouroscopes were cool. Too bad they weren't safe. :D
Interestingly and weirdly enough, I chose tonight to watch the show about the Chandler family and the Los Angeles Times which aired last month. I had seen it on the computer, but it was repeated on TV and I recorded it. While watching, I was taken back to earlier days when I first started there. What I forgot was the pneumatic tubes they used in the writer's area. The writers, reporters, editors would type out their stories, roll the paper up and stick it in a tube and send it to the composing department where the lino-type operators would pound out the letters needed to make up the page for the paper. This eliminated the copy boy who you might remember from the movies. The copy boy used to wait for the reporter to finish his story and run it to the composing department. Using the tubes saved a lot of time.
Larryj
I just remembered... the Penneys store in Coffeyville also had a man that ran the elevator for the customers.
I remember those operators also and was leery of riding "unmanned" elevators when they first came to our town.
Does anyone remember when merchants had counter checks for the convenience of their customers?
If one went into a store and had forgotten his checkbook, the merchant had a book of checks at the register that were imprinted with the customer's bank name. I believe these were provided free to a merchant by the banks. The customer tore the top check off, filled out the check with or without an account number, filled in the amount, signed it, and the merchant accepted.
At the place where I worked in the fifties, there were three banks in town—so we had a book of counter checks for each bank.
However, not every customer banked at one of these local banks, so we also had a book of blank counter checks on hand. A customer tore off a check, wrote in his bank's name, the amount, and signed. The merchant accepted.
No problem.
I believe Diners Club, American Express, and Carte Blanch were all in existence back then, but they were all for rich people and very few merchants other than some in the big city accepted these cards.
Counter checks were common in Howard when I was growing up in the 50s and 60s. My dad was a partner in the Smith & Goodwin store, and I would work there when needed, so I remember seeing the checks. Both Howard banks had books of them printed and probably neighboring towns' banks also because this store had customers from throughout the area. It was common for people to use them, and I'm not even sure people would always know their account number. They seemed to go through based on name and signature, only. There were also blank ones where customers would write their bank name in. We were not even aware of credit cards in those days.
Thanks for that reminder. I had forgotten that aspect of the past.
On the rare occasions that I got to go shopping in downtown Wichita with my friend's family, the elevators with operators in the big department stores were so fascinating to us small town kids. We would ride them up and down numerous times until the operator gave us the evil eye for messing around and making them work, I think!
When I was a little kid, I always had to go to the bathroom when we were in the Bundschu Department store.
There was nothing like telling your mom you had to go while she was shopping on the fourth floor, which was the top. Since the restrooms were in the basement, you always gladly used the elevator to get there.
When there was no one else on the elevator, there was something empowering about you being an eight year old telling the adult operating the elevator "basement" or "4" and he took you there immediately. No discussions, no arguments, no issues; he did what you told him to do. And, sometimes he took your stomach away getting there.
The first time on the elevator on any one day there was always a smile from the adult, but if you did it too many times there was a stern look. From the training children received back then, it was a look that told you that you better cool it or you were going to be in trouble.
Of course, some kids nowadays have figured out they can generally do what they want and an adult has no say so about it, legally or otherwise. But my mentality back then was that I did not have that kind of luxury—so when this happened I would take the stairs.
The counter checks I remember were pink for the Howard National Bank -- white for the First National Bank and a cream color for the Longton Bank. As far as I remember, we didn't have an identifying account number. But later, when the bank issued one, we were asked to put it on a counter check if we were writing one.
It is very difficult to cash an out of town check now, and there is a pretty hefty fee if you do, from the bank that is cashing it.
While we were RVing - we opened a small account in a Minnesota bank and one in a Texas bank. It made life much easier.
In order to get a telephone, one had to walk, drive, or take a taxi to the central telephone exchange. Once there you had to fill out extensive paperwork, pay a deposit, and schedule a hook up.
The phone man came on the designated day with a company owned instrument and hardwired it to the jack or he ran a line to the house, if the home had never had a telephone.
Our first phone was a black plain looking desk phone like those seen in 1930s movies. It had no dial. We had to tell the operator the number we wanted. We also had four other families on our "party" line. This meant that if one of those families was talking on the phone, we could not use it.
I was around 13, before I was allowed to use the family phone and then only with permission.
Eventually, we got a dial phone but you could only dial within the city. For calls outside the city, one called the long distance operator—something that only happened in emergencies because long distance calls were so expensive. We also had to dial the operator and say something like "6623 on this line please" if you wanted to talk to any of the families that shared the party line. When my folks moved within the city in 1963, they were happy to get a two party line. It did not become a single line until sometime after 1970.
Phones owned by the phone company were heavy, well built, took a lot of abuse, and were meant to last a lifetime.
If you moved you had to go back to the phone office and schedule a disconnection. The phone company came and got their phone.
At some point along the way when disconnecting a phone, the phone company began authorizing the customer to cut the phone cord from the wall with a pair of scissors and then bring the phone to the company and settle the account. About this same time when installing new service, colors became affordable and one selected the phone he wanted and took it home to wait for the phone man to come and hard wire it into the jack.
Then things broke wide open with plug in jacks, buy your own phone, etc.
One oddity to me was that my grandparents in downtown Howard did not have a phone, but my grandparents on their farm southwest of Howard had one. It was a huge wooden monstrosity with a separate ear piece and a mouthpiece sticking out from the cabinet. If one wanted to make a call, they cranked an automobile style crank a few times to wake the operator.
There is (at least at one time) a museum of telephony in Abilene, KS, that has all kinds of telephones on display including coin operated ones from the 1880s.
Did you ever get to see the other side of the phone line, where the operator worked? In the small town I grew up in, the switchboard was in a private home and could be handled by one operator. The homemaker usually did this herself, but they did hire a girl for certain times. One of the girls they hired was my neighbor and it was all right for me to drop in and visit with her while she was on duty. (That is how good my reputation was in this small town). It wasn't all right for her to let me handle any calls, but I got to see enough of what she did to understand how it worked. One of the benefits of small town was that you didn't have to know the number you wanted. You could just tell the operator who you wanted and if she didn't know the number she would look it up. One time, while I was visiting, she took a call that wanted to talk to "Triple A" Neither of us had ever heard of it and couldn't figure out how to look it up. Fortunately the boss was nearby and he explained that it was under AAA, then told us what it stood for. You could also visit with the operator over the telephone as long as you understood that when she had to go, she had to go.
Like Waldo, the telephone wasn't for the entertainment of the children. It was for grown up matters, like calling the doctor when the neighbor lady went into labor.
I never got to see that side of it. Our town had 36,000 people at the time and I am sure there was a building or buildings somewhere with a lot of women pushing and pulling phone jacks to make connections.
There was a movie starring Sissy Spacek as a telephone operator and she was located in a small house in a small town. I cannot recall the name of the movie but the phone company owned the house and she and her small boy stayed there and she was the only operator 24-7.
People without a phone could come to her house and pay her and then use the "house phone" to make a call. On a long distance call she would watch the clock and then say "times up."
This thread brings back lots of memories. When I was a kid Gracie Wiseman and my sister Mary Myrna were the operators. My brother Neil had a Grocery store in Howard, when I was home and wanted to call the store I would pick up the phone and Gracie would say "Number Please", I would say Gracie I need the store and she would ring it. The store numbers were 51 and 52. I think Gracie had memorized every number out of Howard. I seem to remember that Molly McGlasson and Effie Strachan were also operators, and maybe Eda Van Buskirk was the chief operator.
Our home number was 357, getting dial phones so you could dial your own number was a big deal.
Thanks Waldo for this thread.
Those operators were using high technology for the time.
Were those operators located on the southeast corner of Wabash and Adams?
Waldo, they were located where the Donut shop is now. On the alley behind Batson's drugstore now.
Evelyn Hammer was also an operator. They were located in the building on the alley, next door to the dentist office which is now the Donut Shop. The location Waldo is talking about was built when dial service arrived in Howard, probably in the early to mid 60s.
I think I remember that.
It seems there might have been a large bell logo on the front of the building signifying Southwest Bell.
I didn't know there were so many operators.
I may have told this story on another thread, but I'm going to repeat it anyhow.
My father moved the family to Artesia, NM, because my mother had severe asthma. That was in the late'30s. My father passed away and my brothers who were older had gone off to college or the army. We had the standard black phone that you picked up and waited for the operator. Once you got the operator, you gave her the number you wanted, or told her you needed the long distance operator. One time, my mother was really sick and it looked like she might have to go to the hospital. I was quite young and there was no one around to take care of me. So, mom said for me to go call Howard and tell them she needed some family to come out. I picked up the phone and the operator came on and I asked for the long distance operator. When she came on, I asked for Howard, KS. She said what number in Howard would you like. I didn't know numbers from nobody. So I told her I just wanted to talk to Howard, Kansas. She finally decided to connect me to the operator which happened to be my Aunt Bernadine Redmond Weyrauch. I gave her mom's message and two days later, my grandmother and one of my Aunts came into town. Back then I thought Aunt Bernadine was the only operator!
In later years, when I was about 12, the phone company dug up our yard along the curb from the alley to the next street to install the dial system. In the process, they built up a big pile of dirt on the corner of the lot and all of my friends would come over to play "king of the hill." I kinda remember the phone company being in the middle of a block and it was a white building, but that's been a long time ago.
Larryj
Larry, I remember when Bernadine was and operator, sorry I left her off of my list. How could I forget her, she and John were really nice people. Bob dated my sister and Bob also worked in the Grocery store for my Brother. I spent a lot of time with Bill when I was a kid, I helped Bill build his Nutria pens when he got in the Nutria business. I remember when I was very little and I was home with my sisters on a Saturday night and someone was trying to window peek at our house. One of my sisters called the store and Bob and Bill came flying up outside and they went around the house in the dark, whoever was there must have taken off because we didn't see anyone again. Bob amd Bill were a formidable sight running around that house in the dark.
That would be the building they were talking about.
Speaking of construction piles of dirt along a roadway.
Remember when construction crews would put oil burning "pots" on top of the mounds of dirt to warn drivers of a hazard at night? I guess the workers doused them in the morning and re-lit them when they left for the day. Those things accomplished the same thing as the battery driven flasher lights today.
I had forgotten those. I remember seeing a few lit, but mostly we were out in daylight and would see them alongside of the road or on top of the pile. I think I wondered at the time who lit them at night.
How about cars with windshield wipers that would stop when you pushed heavy on the "foot feed."
We would be in a heavy rain going up hill and could not see a thing until the car got over the hill and the wipers started working again.
It also seems to me that before electrically operated windows on cars, they had windows that went up and down at the push of a button but they were pneumatic or oil operated. Our only accessories, though, managed to be radio, clock, and whitewalls.
The clocks in the cars were wind up. After we got an auto, we would set our clock if we went on a trip but other than that no one ever remembered to wind it.
Also, tires with tubes. Seems to me that on a 400 mile round trip to Howard we averaged one flat each time.
Ah, tires with tubes. Driving around the back roads going to the hay fields or some girls house out in the country. I kept the tire store in business all by myself. My buddy and I used to have contests to see who could change a tire the fastest.
Nutria pens-----------my cousins and I used to call them big rats. :laugh: We probably ran into each other back then, because the highlight of my day was to go over to Bill's house and sit on the edge of the pens and wait for him to wake up so I could hang out with him. That is, until he found some excuse to send me home to Granny's house.
Does anyone remember hanging water bags on the front of the car to keep the radiator cool while driving in the desert? Or maybe it was to have water available in case the radiator overheated. Or, those metal canisters that were filled with water and ice and hung on the passenger side window, yesterdays version of air conditioning? There was no such thing as FM stations in the 50's, was there?
Larryj
Daddy had one of those evaporator water bags when they moved here. Wouldn't work though because our humidity is too high.
From what I have been able to find, FM was "patented" in 1933 and commercial broadcasting authorized in 1941 in the U.S.
I recall that in 1949 my folks bought a Firestone brand console AM-FM record player combination all enclosed in wood with one huge speaker. It was not even "hi fi." It was a piece of furniture that adorned our living room for many years.
However, it would only play 78 rpm records (the ones made of shellac that would fracture into a hundred pieces if you dropped one). I think 45 rpm records might have come out about that time also but this one would only play 78s and it soon became obsolete as far as record playing. However, I remember laying in front of that radio most every day during the summer listening to the Mutual Broadcasting Company baseball Game of the Day.
I recall asking what the FM was for and no one seemed to know. That console would not pick up a station on the FM band until, probably, in the 60s. By the late 60s, my folks replaced it with a super console that had a large color TV, three speed record player, and AM-FM. I don't believe the FM was stereo capable. They got rid of it in 1989 when they moved back to Howard.
I always thought those bags hanging from the front of automobiles were extra water for the radiator when going through the desert. That would be back when cars did not recycle radiator water like they do nowadays.
I made a trip west in 1966 and there were still a number of cars with them on the front end.
I do remember the bags with the water, just can't remember what they were called. I grew up in the desert and we never went anywhere without one. They didn't hold enough water for the car so we usually had water in old cans for the car. The water in the canvas bag was for drinking and it was cooler than the water in a jar or can when it was really hot. I don't know how it would cool it because it always had so much dust on it that it couldn't breathe. All the men would put them on the front of the tractors for drinking water.
In 1957 and 1958 we lived about 60 miles northwest of Phoenix and most of it was dirt road, when it was hot the 1949 Ford we had would get us about 30 miles from home and then it would vapor lock, we would stop and let it cool off and then finish our trip to town. Going home we would get to about the same place and it would do it again. Someone told my father to put a clothes pin on the fuel line and it would not do it. He laughed at them but tried it and it worked.
We were so glad when my father decided he wanted to leave that ranch we would have gone anywhere. His next job was with a custom wheat harvest crew and we went everywhere.
The one I remember was some kind of burlap that you soaked first.That made the fiber swell. I guess that helped it hold the water without leaking completely out but allowed for evaporation to cool the water. I was pretty little, but I do remember it.
Steve is driving my dad's old 60's pick up which still has nylon tires with tubes in them. And my mom and dad still have one of those phonographs in their house. Still works too. :-)
I don't remember ever seeing the tube things. Must have been before my time. :P
Soaking the outside with water first was like the canteen I had at one time in the Boy Scouts. Immersing it in water was supposed to keep the water cool.
An aunt and uncle of mine were supposed to have driven from Elk County to California and back with a tube showing through the tire. You were lucky in those days if you got 15,000 mile tread wear. As late as '67, I bought a new car and had to replace the tires at 17,000 miles.
Al had one of those canteens too. It had flannel on the outside. I guess that's what you wet down?
Farmer's working in the fields used to carry a burlap wrapped jug of water. I don't know what kind of a jug it was but the burlap was soaked to help keep the contents cool. It also had a cork instead of a cap. Then along came the thermos bottles and jugs.
Oh yeah! Thermos bottles with a glass lining. If you dropped it the glass would break and you had to throw it away. I remember dropping them and then shaking it to see if the glass broke.
In an earlier mention of Woolworth's------------They always put their lunch counter and snack area in the front of the store. The smell of the popcorn and other goodies would draw the customers in to snack or eat lunch and then they might decide to shop while they were there. Some of them even made their own candies and that smell would draw people in off the street.
I better get off of here and go have breakfast, I am hungry now.
Larryj
I broke a good many glass Thermos bottles in my lunch pail when I was in grade school.
I also found out that if soda pop were put in a Thermos bottle, at some point before lunch time, it popped the cork and ruined my lunch. It took more than one try to finally find out why that soda pop would not stay put.
It seems that by a certain grade one would not be caught dead with a lunch pail and brown bags were the accepted norm, so a Thermos bottle was not an accessory.
I guess those Thermos bottles are now made of stainless steel.
The last one my husband carried to work was stainless steel and unbreakable. He carried it a good many years and it looked it, but it still kept the coffee hot. It was a large one and had a handle for carrying, so it was easier to hang on to.
How about all the decals that people would plaster wall-to-wall in their rear passenger windows and maybe even back window showing all the places they had visited.
These seemed to be a badge of honor for a lot of folks.
Here are a couple 1950s vintage Kansas car window decals.
(http://i941.photobucket.com/albums/ad256/waldoegray/ks7a.jpg)
(http://i941.photobucket.com/albums/ad256/waldoegray/ks1a.jpg)
Those with RV's still do this. Some just buy a decal depicting the state they have visited. Others have a map of the United States on the back of the RV and fill in the states they have been to. Maybe we should start another thread and tell how many states we have been to. :D
Larryj
How about in the days when there were no turn signals on automobiles?
Hand signals out the drivers window warned that you were going to slow down, turn right, or turn left. Even in zero degree weather. Seems to me your left hand out and pointing up was "I am turning right." Left hand stuck straight out was "I am slowing down." Left hand out and pointed down was "I am turning left."
Kansas and Missouri had different hand signals until the federal uniform motor vehicle law came into existence sometime in the 50s. The "turning right" signal was the same in both states but the other two were the opposite depending on which state you were driving in.
That same uniform law put the yellow "no passing" line in the center of the highway. Prior to that in the state of Missouri, the yellow "no passing" line was in the middle of the lane you were driving in.
My first used car was a 1953 Ford and it had the rarity called turn signals. The other guys at school thought I was one lucky guy. I believe it was an extra cost option when the car was new.
In Kansas the arm signal for a left turn was straight out. I am not sure about the others, but it would seem that the arm up and the finger pointing to the right would indicate a right turn.
The arm with the hand down was the signal for slowing or stopping. Kids loved to ride behind and driver and pretend to make the signals to confuse the drivers behind them.
I remember my father chuckling a few times when there were kids in a car ahead of us sticking their arm out to give "signals."
When your black and white television went on the blink, you would take the back off of the TV (even though there was a sign warning of high voltage) and check to see if all the tubes were lit up.
If a tube was dark, you could pull it and take it down to your local grocery store or hardware store having a "tube tester" and if the tube tested defective, you could buy a new tube right there and take it home.
If that did not work, you had to call a TV repairman. Today, it is sometimes more cost effective to go buy a new TV.
I don't recall having a "tube tester" in Howard. We would call Jr. Perkins (GE products) or Dennis Crisp (Zenith products) and they made house calls.
After I left the Army in 1968, I decided to take a course in electronics with the help of the G.I. Bill. I learned enough that I could repair TVs, radios, etc. before the company that sent lessons and materials went out of business. I never pursued a career in this field. However, in those days, all types of electronic equipment stores (one being Radio Shack) had "tube testers" and I used them a lot. Not too long after I learned all of this valuable information, the electronics world changed drastically by not using tubes and more transistors. Oh, I could repair those also, but things were moving too fast for my tiny brain. Still, to this day though, I can determine what is wrong with something. As mentioned though, sometimes it is just easier (and sometimes cheaper) to buy a new one. I still have my soldering iron, too! ;D
Larryj
I don't know if I have mentioned this, but my brother was a professional tube tester, self-taught through a correspondence course. Right out of high school he went to work for Beech Aircraft. While working there he took this correspondence course and as soon as he could survive on what he could make repairing radios, he set up business. Through the years he took the courses to enable him to move on to TVs, but he really preferred the old fashioned tubes. He has been retired now for several years but still does work for his old, as in age, customers (like me). His preference in brands was Zenith, which I have two of now, old ones, and he can tell me over the telephone what is most likely wrong with them. Thank goodness neither of them has completely gone out. The oldest one turns itself off at times (the soldering iron would fix that) or I lose the cable channels (I accidentally hit the wrong button on the remote). If either of them quit entirely, I will make do with a cheapie new one that I will most likely outlive.
There were days when a portable radio or a radio in one's room was unheard of, especially for a kid around eight years old.
My first radio was a crystal radio set for which I paid $1.98 plus two or three mills sales tax, which probably pushed the price to $1.99.
The radio consisted of about an eight inch square flat piece of quarter inch wood stock on which stood a tuning coil consisting of copper wire bound around a tube and a small rock about one-half inch, or so, in diameter, the crystal. This rock was critical to the function of the radio.
A thin flat piece of metal had one end attached to the wood plate and the other end rested on the copper wire tuning coil. I moved the metal back and forth across the copper wire to bring in a station. However, I was only able to bring in one, but it was our local country and western station and I was happy with that.
I think I also had a ground wire attached to somewhere.
There was no amplifier, but it did have a single ear phone about two inches in diameter, which I had to hold next to my ear. There was no volume control.
It would not work without an aerial, so my dad strung a length of wire from my bedroom window about 25 or thirty feet to a tree limb.
The radio had no battery and ran entirely off the energy from the sound waves received in the aerial. I think if I could have had a 100 foot wire for an aerial, I probably could have received more stations.
Times were changing fast back then and it was a couple years later that I had a portable Sivertone radio, manufactured by Zenith for Sears. It was big and weighed a ton. A couple years after that I had a very small, lightweight transistor radio with a leather carrying case that cost all of $34.95.
But $34.95 was a BIG amount of money then.........................
I could never afford a portable radio growing up. One day, at a rodeo going on in town, I bought a raffle ticket for 25 cents and won a transistor radio. It was really cool to have the radio. One day, my middle brother came to visit from New Mexico and when he left, so did my radio. I accused him of taking my radio to which he denied any knowledge of any radio. But, I know-----I know he took it.
Larryj
I was around 12 and was working a few odd hours part time for $1 an hour--pretty good as some other guys were getting only 50 cents an hour at their part time job.
My mom and I took a bus to town (five cents each) and we went to Goldman's Jewelry store on the public square. The store had the radio advertised in the local paper for $1 down and $1 a week. She co-signed for me and this was my first taste of credit. I don't have a clue as to how much the interest was, but it was probably steep.
After that, on each Tuesday, I did not take the school bus home but walked from the school to Goldman's, paid my $1, and then went to the City Cafe that had a waiting room and announced arrivals over a loud speaker. I took the 5 cent bus ride home.
The credit lady at Goldman's had alphabetized file cards with a metal frame fixed to the top of each card and it sat on the top of her desk. I think the metal frame on each card kept the cards from wearing out from her frequently flipping through them.
There were not that many names in her file, though. She would leaf through, pull my card, and annotate my $1. If someone had stolen or lost that file, I doubt if there was any other store record available that would reflect my payments. I can recall that at one time she complimented me for being timely as some of her customers were not. I was quite proud to receive such words from an adult.
When I was small, my folks had a white porcelain kerosene powered stove and oven.
It had maybe four burners and was on six tall spindly legs.
A clear glass jug sat inverted at one end filled with kerosene. That jug had a spring loaded feeder at the bottom that had to be either primed or jump started to get it to feed kerosene through a line to the burners and oven. I remember my dad messing with it many times to get the kerosene to feed.
Each burner and the oven had to be lit with a match. The oven portion was at waist level to the right of the burners.
Spare kerosene was kept in a glass jug holding about one gallon. When we ran out of kerosene we went to the local mom & pop grocery store where they had a tank in the ground. The proprietor operated a hand pump to refill the jug.
About 1948, or so, my folks installed a Robert Shaw modern range that was uptown, but we were still using an ice box.
The ice delivery man came around on a regular schedule and put a big block of ice into what would now be the freezer compartment. There was, generally, no such thing as frozen foods at that time. The ice man had a leather apron of some kind that he kept on his back. He would pick up the ice block with tongs and then lift the ice over his shoulder resting it on the leather apron. The leather kept his shirt from getting wet.
My mom had to constantly throw out water from a water collection pan at the bottom of the refrigerator.
Pretty soon we had a General Motors Frigidaire refrigerator. It was a boon but the freezer compartment had to be completely thawed out every two months or so. Grocery stores, by then, had very small frozen food sections.
The kerosene stove was much better than what my grandparents had southwest of Howard. They had a wood burning stove and oven. My grandmother also used what were really "irons" that she placed on the stove to heat up and then did her ironing. How she kept from scorching the clothing is beyond me.
As much as I can remember my grandparents right in Howard always had a modern stove and oven.
How she kept from scorching the clothes? She tested the iron on old newspaper before touching it to cloth. My mother used flat irons off and on for a long time. I say off and on because at times we had electricity where we lived, then we would move to where we didn't have electricity. When we made the move to Elk County, there was no electricity. By this time she also had a gas iron that you filled with white gas, pumped it up like a Coleman lantern and lit it. I never did learn to use this iron. When my husband and I moved away to a community where we had electricity, she sent her electric iron with me.
I don't remember the bottle on the coal oil stove needing to be primed. On ours the lid was spring loaded and when you inverted it into it's holder, the spring was pushed in and the oil came out. It could get messy if it wasn't inverted correctly and quickly. To turn a burner off, the wick was turned down until the flame went out. To relight, the wick was turned up and a match applied to it, much the same as a coal oil lamp. There was no heat regulator on the oven. You had to learn just where to set the burner height for the heat you desired. I remember cooking on this old stove, but I never learned to regulate the oven. Mother always made sure it was set right for baking.
And those old kerosene stoves smelled bad! I vaguely remember my mother using one when I was very small. I remember all the neighborhood men got together and dug the trenches, threaded and laid the pipe for natural gas. The gas company had agreed to providing the service, but wouldn't provide the lines. I guess that they checked the work after the fact before turning on the gas. Mom was thrilled to have a hot water heater and gas stove. It was some years before we had an indoor bathroom though. :(
I don't remember kerosene stoves. Living in SE New Mexico when I was a kid, we had natural gas heating and cooking. But, we did have an ice box and the ice man cameth every few days to put a block of ice in it. Ice picks were a totally necessary utensil to have for chipping off chunks for cold drinks. Once my oldest brother was in the Army and making a decent salary, he was able to bring home a refrigerator. I well remember that day as I was playing in my neighbor's yard and my other brother was calling me to come home to see the new fridge and my brother. I told him no and he came over and punched me in the mouth, chipping my front tooth.
I think around 1956 or so, my mom and I moved to a lumber camp in Wyoming for her to teach school there. The first year we were there, we rented a cabin with wood burning stoves for heat and cooking. Baths were taken by heating buckets of water on the stove and pouring them into a galvanized tub big enough to sit in. The cabin also featured its own "two holer" about twenty feet behind the kitchen door. My job was to keep a path shoveled between the kitchen and the outhouse at all times. We moved back to NM for a year and then back to Wyoming for two years. By this time, the owner of the lumber camp had built a modern duplex for the two teachers and we had propane gas for heating and cooking and indoor plumbing. I still had to keep a path shoveled from the back door of the duplex to the front door of the school (about twenty yards) for the two teachers to get to the school.
Larryj
If you are a little kid, and don't know anything else, an outhouse is not that bad even in winter. In ours we always had regular toilet tissue available, but I recall that at the grandparents on the farm, there was always a sears catalog or similar item available. That is an experience that one will never forget.
Once you have indoor plumbing there is no going back. We moved into a house around 1948 that had indoor plumbing. But, there was no sewer line. The house had a septic system with a holding tank and leeching field buried in the back yard.
About 1958, the city extended the sewer lines to our area and everyone was required to hook on. Boys, being boys, will watch all facets of road construction or sewer construction. The sewage pipe coming from our house looked to be the six sided terra cotta pipe of about 18 inches or so in length laid end to end on gravel without any seals, as far as I could see, between them. It would seem to me that tree roots would have entangled that line something fierce. Someone must have come along after the pipe was down and threw a dab of concrete between the sections.
Just a short time after the sewer line was up and running, the top of the holding tank in the back yard gave way and we had a large hole in the yard. The top was only a few inches below the soil.
I remember that outhouse in Wyoming was better than most. It was bigger and even had toilet seats for each hole. However, I think we carried the toilet tissue with us on each trip as it would get moist and useless. And, too, remember that Sears catalogs as well as others, were printed on softer paper, almost cloth like, as opposed to the paper they use today. A good example might be the phone book which uses a softer paper. But paper then was pretty soft in order to get the most production out of the ink.
Another aspect of that cabin was no running water. All water was drawn from the well outside the back door. That was my job also, carrying in buckets of water. Chopping wood for the stoves was another of my chores. However, when the lumber mill would do the finishing touches on the 2X4's, they would leave little 2X2X4 blocks and we would have one of the companies trucks bring over a load of those thereby saving me from having to chop wood. Speaking of wells, I seem to recall that either my Aunt Bernadine's or my Aunt Emaline's farmhouse outside of Howard was equipped with a small pump handle in the kitchen eliminating the need for going outside. Now that I think about it, I don't know where the water was being pumped from. Might there have been a tank piped from the outside well? I don't know. I do remember thinking that was a nice feature so that one didn't have to go outside to get water.
Larryj
We had a cistern under the porch that the rain water was collected in from the roof of the house, so all we had to do was go out to the porch and pump a bucket of water, but it was used just for cooking and drinking. The well for bath and wash water was about 200 feet from the house and the one that carried and heated the water got to take the first bath everyone else got to take a bath in used water. Now Grand mother's house had the little pump in the kitchen from the cistern so you could fresh water right in the house.
The below may pop up elsewhere. I posted it but it disappeared. I did a search but could not locate it, so it may just have disappeared into cyberspace.
My grandparents had a kitchen sink with a drain but no running water. My grandmother washed dishes there with water heated from the wood stove. And, I am thinking that she washed dishes with the lye soap she made. The sink drained directly into the yard. There was no goose neck in the drain line—did not need one.
She always kept a two gallon white porcelain bucket filled with water on the kitchen counter next to the sink. The bucket was filled from a "well" having a large pump just outside the kitchen door.
I just learned this past summer that the "well" was actually a cistern. I never saw him do it, but my granddad had to fill it with water transported periodically from town.
One summer when we arrived, the kitchen sink had a small red pump sitting right on it. By pumping the handle you could put water directly into the common dipper for a drink. The pump was connected to the cistern.
We always had to take a bath in the kitchen in one of those round galvanized laundry tubs. Grandma would heat the water on the wood stove and prepare a bath. Once we had our bath using the lye soap, we had to go to the parlor and stay there while each grown up had a bath.
They actually had a bathroom adjacent to the parlor. It did not have a commode but did have a claw foot bath tub that was intended to be filled with water carried from the kitchen. The tub also drained directly into the yard. I never saw that anyone used that tub, though. I think it was too much of a chore to fill it by carrying hot and cold water from the kitchen.
One summer when the wife and I were walking around Howard, we stopped and talked with a local farmer parked on a street next to the city park on the west side of town. He was filling a truck mounted water tank from a city well—that may have been where my granddad stocked up.
There are a lot of people still hauling water from the whatever it is called. It is located on the west side of the west park and is about 2 blocks north of me, just a block east of Joanna. So I see tanks full of water going by here quite often. It takes a lot of water to supply a house with all the amenities.
There was a sign there, when I spoke to the local farmer filling up. He was reading a book to kill the time.
I walked over there today and there is no sign but the pump is coin operated, so many gallons per quarter.
I suppose the local folks using it already know the procedures, etc.
There is a small "well house" covering the pump apparatus and there is a flexible hose that will direct the water to whatever is being filled.
Quote from: larryJ on December 01, 2009, 03:24:10 PM
She finally decided to connect me to the operator which happened to be my Aunt Bernadine Redmond Weyrauch. I gave her mom's message and two days later, my grandmother and one of my Aunts came into town. Back then I thought Aunt Bernadine was the only operator!
Wow, Larry. I didn't know we were related. Bernadine was my great aunt married to my great uncle John Weyrauch.
Yep, we are related by marriage. But your mom and I had this conversation some time back. Bernadine was my aunt, my mother's sister. She had married Forrest Redmond who was injured in an accident and died. Bill and Bob, and Edith Redmond were her children. She married John Weyrauch and they had the farm SW of town. So, I might be a step-uncle to you, if there is such a thing. Anyway, it is nice to be related to you.
Larryj
How about when the old automobiles had a metal cylindrical button under the foot pedal that engaged the "passing gear" when you floored it.
And the foot pedal, brake, and clutch all had their connections going straight into holes in the floor. Sometimes, broad daylight came through those holes as the car went through heavy wear. You could see the roadway flying by underneath.
I remember all that. It brought back a memory, though, of the sixties when I returned home from the service to find myself broke, divorced, and on foot. I bought a '52 Buick from a guy for $50 that barely ran. The memory was that there were holes in the floorboard big enough to stick your foot through and you could see the road going by.
Another car memory was push-button starters like on the '49 and '50 Mercury's and on the Chrysler/Dodge car as well. In fact, I think all the cars had them then. Now they are back in some newer cars although it is a different system.
Did anyone have a "light bar" that was attached to the car radio or the tape player? These light bars were rainbow colored and flashed with the beat of the music.
Larryj
The 1956 Chrysler Corporation cars (including the defunct DeSotos, Imperials, and Plymouths) had a push button automatic transmission, which Chrysler called Torqueflite. An area on the dash to the left of the steering wheel held the buttons. One pushed button "r" to backup and then pushed "d" to drive forward. My granddad was a longtime Dodge fan and he drove a push button Dodge around Howard when the 56's came out.
For some reason, he refused to buy a car from Garrison Dodge in Howard so he went to Kansas City and bought one there. When the salesman asked how he was going to pay, my granddad pulled a wad out of the top pocket in his bib overalls and told the man to count out what he needed. He traded in a 1954 Dodge that had a strange semi-automatic stick shift that had a clutch but did not require depression of that clutch when shifting or only required using the clutch part of the time. That might have been called Fluiddrive or Gyromatic. If anyone knows how this worked, let me know.
The same 1956 Chrysler cars introduced 16 rpm record players as an option. I have heard the needle arm had to be extra heavy to keep the needle tracking properly while driving but that caused excessive groove wear on the record giving it a short life span. A record side played for almost an hour but the records could only be played one at a time and could only be bought through a Chrysler dealer. At some point, Chrysler switched to having over sized 45 rpm records. These units would play 15 records one after the other.
Around 1962, Chrysler gave up on the record players but it did not take long for the 8 track tape systems to be offered. I never was involved with 8 track but the 4 track, which replaced the 8 track, could be less than desirable. A song would be in the middle of playing and then fade out because it was nearing the end of the track. You could hear the tape mechanically changing to another track, which took what seemed to be a long time, and the same song would then fade back in on the new track and finish.
I think you might have the 4-track and 8-track portion backwards. When I moved to SoCal and was working in the record store, we sold 4-track tapes and later the new 8-track tapes came out. At least, that's the way I remember it. The difference between the two was the doubling of tracks providing a better quality stereo sound. I also remember that there were those who emphatically said tapes would never replace LP albums! I never experienced the record players in cars, but I can imagine the problems with that. Even the earlier tape players would "skip" if you went over a bump, or hit a pothole as the laser would be thrown off momentarily.
I remember owning a 1962 Dodge Lancer with a push button transmission. It was a terrible system as there was no safeguard against pushing two buttons at once. If you happened to push R and D accidentally at the same time, the linkage would lock up requiring a tow to the shop and ten dollars to have it unlocked. I finally learned how to do that myself.
Larryj
I think you are right about 4 track tapes coming before 8 track. Makes sense. And, it would have been the 8 track cartridge that I started with and was disappointed in.
There are still people who say vinyl 33.3 records are far superior to tape.....
Did you ever sell 7 or 10 inch reel to reel tapes?
I almost purchased a 10 inch unit for home use not realizing that the the 7 inch were coming in as replacements. I was more into music as a relaxation than I was into television. Show tunes and country & western were my favorites. I finally got two 7 inch units with reverse to play and record the manufactured tapes, and make long continuous music reels, which I traded with other folks who had a similar interest.
That was back when no one seemed to care if you recorded a tape. I had those units until I got a CD and cassette tape stack unit sometime in the late 80s.
Nowadays, I listen through headphones on the computer.
Hey!!! What's wrong with good old television? I have two of them going all the time and I can still move around, do everything that needs to be done or read a book. I am not glued to one spot with headphones and the voices are company. Since most of my TV is re-runs of old sitcoms which I have seen a dozen times already, I don't even have to watch the screen. How is that for freedom?
We did have 7 inch reels, both blank (recordable) and pre-recorded. At the time after my Army service, when I was living alone working for peanuts and living on pennies, I still manged to buy blank reel tapes. I had a recorder given to me by my former room mate when he was drafted into the service. I had a good stereo system, also inherited from someone, and there was/is a radio station here in LA that played nothing but oldies from the 50's and 60's. Having no money to spend on anyone or anything else, I devoted my time to recording all the songs that station played. It was difficult to do without getting commercials and commentary included. Then, I had to make sure that I wasn't recording a song twice. I had a file card system as well as a notebook denoting songs and artists (cross-referenced) as well as the year it was recorded. I went to the bookstore and bought books on rock-n-roll to help look up songs and artists that I didn't recognize.
What happened to all this?
A few years later, a friend borrowed my tape player to record some of his own music and ruined it somehow so that it never worked again. He failed to make good monetarily so I lost my tape recorder and a friend. By this time I had probably 40 to 50 reel to reel tapes of music and no tape player. I couldn't afford to buy another, so the tapes went into a box and were stored in the garage. The last time I saw them, the acetate was beginning to get brittle and would probably not play anymore. The big names back then were Sony and Roberts and Akai. When I was working in the Hollywood store, we had soundproof rooms in the radio/TV department that housed the tape players. I could load a pre-recorded tape on one of those machines and blast the music and no one could hear it outside the room. We did this to demonstrate how great the sound was to someone who wanted to buy one. I always liked the Roberts player better, but the one I had was a Sony.
Working in the record store, I bought or was given many record albums. To this day they are still stored in cabinets in the family room and I had a Garrard 2000B turntable to play them on. The Garrard finally gave up and I had albums, but no player. When my kids were small, we used to have music appreciation by playing all kinds of music and they loved the march music so they could stomp around the house. A few ago, I bought one of those small cabinet looking players that plays cassettes and CD's and albums, so I get to listen to my albums again.
Having studied music and worked around music for so many years, I like all kinds. I was always an Oldies fan and then my daughter decided we should like country for a while, but I sometimes like to sit and listen to some classical or Jazz.
Ranting again! You got me started.
Larryj
Wilma,
Nothing wrong with your setup. I was just reminiscing that at one time in my life I was more interested in music than in TV.
Nowadays, I listen to music on headphones when I am at my computer and watch TV with the wife on a "theater system."
Somehow you guys got me interested although I don't have any interest in such things. The simpler the better, I say. But can you top this one? I have a Frank Sinatra 78 rpm Christmas Album. I don't have anything to play it on anymore. The old wind-up Victrola that we used to have, I gave to one of our kids when my husband died. Her kids had more fun with it than ours did and now she can decide which one should have it.
Wilma, a 78 rpm album would seem to be several 78 records in a bound album.
Don't know how you kept it intact after all these years; I never had a 78 rpm record that did not get shattered, usually with a lot tears.
You may have something that is worth a few bucks.
I also have a few 78 rpm records and used to have a player to play them on. Most are classical music. I think they would only be valuable as an antique as players would be hard to find and even if you had one, the quality of the records wasn't real great. On top of all that, most all the music has been transferred to different media, i.e., tapes, CD's. There is a record store, a small mom-and-pop type store that sells LP's and they have 78's, but they are framed and hung on the wall. I would have to look it up, but I doubt there is much value to those records.
The same holds true for large collections. For example, a company put out a series of albums that were the original recordings of some of the early twentieth century composers. These concerts were recorded on Edison style wire recorders and later put on vinyl. While I was working at the record store, we had the whole series. They did not sell and were discontinued. Our stores had listening booths so that you might take a demo record into the booth and listen before buying a new one. When a record was discontinued the demo record was marked "99 cents" and put into a bin for sale. I bought the whole set from my store and still have them. Value? Zilch. I doubt if many know they even exist. They are the Welte series of original composers playing their own works. The sound quality, as you might expect, is poor and hard to listen to. But not everyone can say they have a complete set of Welte editions.
Records that might be of some value are bootleg records. I have a couple in my collection. They are of dubious value. Why? Because "real" bootleg records have no pictures or liner notes on the album covers. The music or content is suspect because the quality is poor. One of mine is supposedly a Bob Dylan album that was recorded during a practice session before making an album. The problem? Because the album cover is blank and there are no notes or print of any kind, there is no way to prove that it is Dylan. It kinda sounds like him, but it is poor quality and you really can't be sure it is him. But, the guy who gave it to me swore it was real. ;)
Larryj
The Frank Sinatra album was with a bunch of other 78's that we bought at auction at very little cost. While the album cover is worn looking, the records are still in pretty good shape. I don't know how they sound as I have never tried playing any of them. And since my girls are post Sinatra, they weren't interested. While it should be worth quite a bit now, I haven't looked into the possibility. Ordinary 78's can't even be given away. I also have a single by the guy that did black face and made "Mammy" famous. Can't think of his name right now but will later. I did have some 78's of famous people for sale at an antigue store, but there wasn't any interest in them.
Wilma, that would have been the great Al Jolson that sang Mammy and painted on the blackface.
Now that you mention it, that's who it was. I think I played that record once but it didn't nearly come up to what I expected. The good old 78's weren't nearly as good as today's CDs.
Anybody remember seeing the first talking movie, 'The Jazz Singer' with Al Jolson? I had heard about it all my life, but got to see it just a couple of years ago on TCM. I was surprised that only part of it was in sound, and had the old silent movie sub-titles. What a shock that must have been for those movie goers to witness that sound track for the first time. BTW, it was a pretty good movie too. ;)
I grew up in a household where music was always playing, either live, on a radio or from a record player. My dad was an early rock-and-roll guitarist, in the Everly Brothers and Buddy Holly vein, but we also had some earlier classics in the record collection. We had a few 78 rpm records that I remember playing. One was "Shine on Harvest Moon" and the other was "Mairzy Doats and Doazy Doats (and Little Lambsie Divey)" .....and I'm sure that isn't spelled correctly, but I'm sure there are forum readers who will know the song anyway and are probably humming it right now! .....
Other records I remember playing were Xavier Cugat, the soundtracks to "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and "Bllue Hawaii," and "The Sound of Music," Frankie Laine (a favorite of mine...it had "Granada" and "Jalousie" on this particular record), and Bo Diddley. Oh yes, and the Everly Brothers, Roy Orbison (another favorite) and Bobby Vinton.
We had a portable record player but it looked like a large suitcase, and it sat on a TV stand next to an old steam radiator. I remember getting a mild electrical shock if I touched the record player while sitting on the radiator. I also remember using the 45 rpm record spindle as a microphone, and lip syncing in front of the living room mirror to all the great songs.
Earlier in this thread there was mention made of portable radios. I had a small black transistor radio when I was about 10 or 11 that I carried with me all the time. I even fell asleep listening to it. There were two stations that came in clearly: KXOK in St. Louis and WLS in Chicago. This was in the day of Larry Lujack, if anyone here recognizes that name.
I may receive some scorn, but the only use I ever had for Frank Sinatra was the enjoyment I received from reading Kitty Litter's book about him. (Her name was actually Kitty Kelley but she received the Kitty Litter nickname because a number of people questioned the authenticity of her sources in her various exposure books, including Sinatra's. However, no one ever successfully sued her.)
Sixdogsmom,
I have seen bits and pieces and have also heard the sound track to the Jazz Singer was a record somehow synchronized with the picture. For some reason it is billed as the first talkie but there were others before it, including "Don Juan" in 1926.
Indygal,
I remember coming across a 78 rpm player, which had a turntable that worked but there was nothing coming out of the speakers. However, by turning on the turntable, putting the needle to the record, and putting my ear close to it, I could faintly hear the music. Also, discovered I could hear the music by putting my thumbnail in the groove instead of the needle and could also faintly hear the music.
At one time, all the radio stations started east of the Mississippi River were required to start with a "W" and all the radio stations west of the Mississippi were required to start with a "K."
From 1967 to 70, I was in Heidelberg, Germany. There was no Armed Forces TV at the time, but there was Armed Forces Radio broadcasting out of Frankfurt. One of the announcers mentioned they had received letters from German listeners who said they could hear the station sometimes playing through the trolley lines on the Frankfurt street cars. They had also received letters from Germans saying they could sometimes hear the station through the fillings in their teeth.
One of my favorite programs was the "1605 to Nashville," a country and western hour long program played on the weekends at 4:05 pm. For you civilian folks, 4:05 pm and 1605 are the same. Since there was no advertising on Armed Forces radio, it was one song after another for 55 minutes. Apparently, their country and western deejays were few and far between.
By 1972, I was in Bangkok, Thailand, where there was no Armed Forces TV or radio but a Thai radio station was 100 percent American country and western with Australian deejays.
Indygal, I remember that song well. I even know all the words to it. It was one of those things that just stuck in my mind, besides I think we had the sheet music to it. If we did, then it was part of the songs that my sister played and we sang. Another one we liked was Uncle Noah's Ark. I could name a number of old songs that wouldn't make it with the young crowd now, but at least we could understand what was being said.
All my kids learned Mairzy Doats! :D
When buying something from a store (not all stores, though), the merchant had a counter with a cash register on one end and a large roll of wide heavy brown paper on a metal frame at the other end. He also had a "cone" of white string.
The string was threaded into an eyelet in the ceiling and the end of the string hung down waiting for the merchant to reach up and grab it.
After ringing up the purchase, the merchant pulled a length of brown paper from the roll and cut it off with a metal "cutter" built into the metal frame holding the roll.
He spread the paper out on the counter, placed your purchase on the paper, wrapped it with the paper, and then reached for the string. He cut off a length and wrapped it around all four sides of the brown paper bundle and neatly tied it for you to carry home.
In Smith & Goodwin, we used to wrap purchases in white paper with white string. Very rarely was a paper sack ever used except when the sale was of sewing notions or small items. My dad taught me to wrap packages that way, and he was left-handed (I am right-handed). I still wrap and tie "upside down" and tie my shoes backwards because that is how I learned. Duh...................
Anyone,
Was the Plaza theater in Howard ever equipped to show 3-D movies?
And, did it ever convert to a "CinemaScope" screen?
No, I don't think the Plaza Theatre was ever equipped to show either 3D nor Cinemascope movies. Cinemascope took a much wider screen than the Plaza had room for. I think 3D took a different type projector.
I remember going to a "flick" at Howard in the 60's that they gave you a funky pair of card board sunglasses with multi colored lenses that made the movie 'look" 3D
Was it 13 Ghosts by any chance? Those funny cardboard glasses had one red lens and one green lens. I probably have an old pair in my desk somewhere.
Thirteen Ghosts came out several years after the 3D craze ended, although you viewed the screen through similar red and blue lens cardboard glasses.
It was filmed in "IllusionO," which was a gimmick created by William Castle to draw people into the theater. And, with the tremendous advertising hype that said some theater goers might have a heart attack if they watched the movie, he did draw numbers into the theater--at least initially.
It probably also drew many people, like myself, who thought it was revived 3D.
If you wanted to see the scary ghost you looked through one colored lens. If you were scared to death and did not want see it, you looked through the other colored lens.
Comically, you could take off the glasses and still see the ghost. It also seems to me that there was some type of visual signal put on the screen to warn people when a ghost was about to appear.
I remember many girls that screamed but after about the second or third ghost, I wanted to get to the thirteenth quick so that I could get out of there. It still sticks in my mind as one of the biggest disappointments to ever come into a theater.
Someone can probably add a little more about these two items. One went further than the other, but neither did not get very far.
In the late 1950s, I attended a Home Show in Kansas City and one of the new items coming out was an in the kitchen incinerator.
No more taking out the trash to burn in a barrel on your back fence line. You burned it in your kitchen.
Trash was placed in a top loading white porcelain appliance that was about the size of an automatic washer. I don't recall if it had to be vented to the outside (surely it did) or how it was emptied of ash.
Don't know that I ever saw another one.
Something that was more successful that I tried in the 1970s was a trash compactor in the kitchen.
It did not work very well, though, and had a tendency to put out a trashy odor when the door was opened.
You had to put a few items in a small bin and then wait for the crusher plate to squeeze what you just put in.
After the ram plate came back up, you could put a few more items in and repeat. You could spent a good deal of time waiting for the process to work, especially when the bin was getting close to full.
But, most of the time stuff like plastic bottles and cereal boxes would pop right back up after it was supposed to have been crushed.
Forget about putting in newspapers. It did nothing to them. It became easier just to toss all the trash in the trash can.
In the eighties, I tried again with a "more powerful" trash compactor intended for the garage.
It did not seem to have any more compacting power than the one in the kitchen during the previous decade.
I think I might have read that for home use a trash compactor cannot have much crushing power for safety reasons. A compactor with automobile crushing power would probably cost much and cost more to operate. But, I think that was what some folks were expecting when they bought one of these machines.
It would not be appropriate to mention old things without mentioning the hula hoop craze of the late 50s and early 60s. The first time I tried one I felt really stupid by gyrating my body like Elvis as the hoop fell to the ground every time. But eventually I learned to keep it going around my waist. Never could make it go on an arm, or a foot, or my neck, or several at a time like some of the girls could do.
I recall the plastic hoops were of varying quality and started, maybe, at 69 cents with an average at 98 cents. We sold cheap hoops, medium hoops, and expensive hoops in the mom and pop grocery store where I worked. Seems like the 98 centers sold the best. But after the fad ended, you could not give them away.
In the mid 50s, the first hoops were made of wood by an Australian outfit. Wham O picked up on them in 1958 and released them in plastic and it was an instant success.
Walmart, today, has a weighted hula hoop available for $23.95, sold as a fitness item.
I wonder if the fitness center on Wabash Street has any of them?
PLEASE BE ADVISED-------------------------THE HULA HOOP IS NOT DEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
At Christmas time, my wife bought a plastic hoop with lights that flashed when the hoop was in motion for our five-year-old granddaughter. When she is here she practices, but has not yet mastered it. She is getting better with each try. So, the fad is not dead, yet.
Larryj
No the hula hoop isn't dead the Wii fitness games has it in the program, where you stand on the Wii board and swing your hips as you would with a regular hoop and it counts how many you swing the hoop.
Our daughter Sherri has this on her Wii fitness -- she was very good when she was a teen and she told me the other day - she is still just as good now!! I could do it, but not for as long as she and Teresa could.
Folks might remember the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics in California (the one the USSR refused to attend because Jimmy Carter had refused to allow US athletes to attend the Olympics in Moscow four years earlier).
In the opening ceremonies a man flew over, into, and around the playing field in the stadium using a hydrogen peroxide powered rocket back pack.
People claimed they had never seen anything like this and wowed and awed at this amazing U. S. technology.
Fact is, the same individual rocket pack had been developed by Army contractors a quarter of a century earlier. The initial idea was to put the troops into battle much faster and with more mobility.
Trouble is the rocket pack weighed 125 pounds, would fly for only 21 seconds, could not go very far, and made a lot of noise in the process. Another problem was that if the rocket motor should suddenly quit, the flyer would be pushing up daisies in the short time it took him to hit the ground.
The Army killed the contract in 1959.
After the Army gave up, James Bond tried one in a 007 movie released in 1965.
Improvements made in the last fifty years by various tinkerers have not been very productive. They still can only be in the air for less than one minute.
In my paper today-----
MAKE A FEW TOSSES TO HONOR MAN WHO INVENTED FRISBEES----
By Ben Baeder---Deputy Metro Editor of the San Gabriel Valley Tribune
Fly long and straight into the great beyond, WALTER FREDERICK MORRISON.
Morrison, formerly of La Verne, CA., is the inventor of the Pluto Platter, which eventually turned out to be the Frisbee.
He died Tuesday in Utah at age 90.
The Wham-O company for years manufactured Frisbees in a plant behind the San Gabriel Nursery. The plant closed in the 1980's or early 90's according to city officials.
To those of us who spend our free time throwing plastic discs around local parks, Morrison is a member of the disc Pantheon.
His invention eventually led to Frisbee golf, which most people now call disc golf.
The idea for the flying disc came when a 17-year-old Morrison and his girlfriend and future wife, Lucile, began tossing a large popcorn can lid back and forth for fun during a Thanksgiving party, according to the Associated Press.
He and a partner eventually developed a plastic disc.
In 1957 he sold his idea to Wham-O, a fad company that started in the garage of one of its South Pasadena founders.
From a 41,000-square-foot plant in San Gabriel, the company produced Frisbees, the Super Ball, the Slip 'N Slide and the Hula Hoop, among other products.
Wham-O has been sold several times since 1982 and is now based in Emeryville, according to its Webb site.
Whon-O employee "STEADY" ED HEDRICK improved a little on Morrison's design and opened the world's first basket Frisbee golf course at Oak Grove in what is now called the Hahamongna Watershed Park near Pasadena, according to disc golf lore. The sport -- in which golfers throw discs into baskets from hundreds of feet away -- is scored like golf. There are excellent courses at La Mirada Regional Park and the Whittier Narrows in South El Monte.
It's usually free to play and the discs are cheap -- less than $20. A beginning golfer really only needs two or three to get started.
I like to say it has all the self-hatred and failure of golf, but none of the expensive green fees.
Some people might tell you that it's mandatory to sneak beer in your disc bag and smoke marijuana, but I can't find any rules about that in the Disc Golf Association guidelines.
The world's leading flying disc maker, Innova, has a big plant in Rancho Cucamonga. The world-record of an 820-foot throw was accomplished with an Innova disc.
The sport of disc golf is growing, and workers are optimistic the company will be around for a long time.
Larryj
How about see through blouses? And, I mean see through--but there were foundation garments aplenty.
Or, pedal pushers with a shirt/blouse that was tied high just under the bra showing plenty of midriff?
Or, Howard Hughes famous invention, the cantilevered bra.
Brylcream for the boys.
Duck tail haircuts.
Black leather jackets.
Chopped Mercury automobiles.
Fruit Boots.
Saturday matinees which included seeing one chapter of a fifteen chapter serial--the hero always escaped the peril no matter how dangerous the situation.
Hmmmmmmm----
See through blouses---bought my busty sister-in-law one 40 years ago; she wasn't amused.
pedal pushers----never really understood that concept
cantilevered bra----musta missed that one.
Brylcream---"a little dab'll do ya"
Duck tail haircuts----had one of those.
Black Leather jackets------wish I could have had one.
Chopped Mercury automobiles--------brother had one
Fruit Boots--------never heard of this, but I think I am glad I didn't have those.
Saturday matinees----------sometimes those were better than the actual movie. It was fun to see the gangster's car go off the cliff at the end of one episode only to appear coming around the curve in the next episode.
Larryj
Pedal pushers? They were short so ya didn't get the bottom of your pants caught in the bike chain. Girls didn't wear bicycle clips.
I searched the web this morning and did not see a reference to the shoes I was thinking of as ever being referred to as fruit boots.
So, it may have been a regional thing back in Missouri to call them fruit boots.
Fruit boots were a most comfortable shoe and I still have a pair.
These were the leather black and white saddle shoes. Both the boys and girls styles were the same, I think, to begin with but later the girls style changed just a bit, and then finally as the fad wore out only the cheerleaders wore them.
The pair I have is oxblood for the front and back and black for the middle. I have also owned tan and black as well as black and white.
At one time in high school it was stylish to wear black "ivy league" trousers, a thin white belt, a white shirt, and the black and white fruit boots. Some of the guys topped that off with an "ivy league" golf cap.