We were the first ones in the neighborhood to get a Pong set for our TV. Anyone remember those??

Also, our TV was also the radio, record player, and album storage cabinet. It wasn't a TV, it was the console. My little sister was the remote control. She had to change between the two channels we had.

We lived in a very small town. Christmas shopping consisted of dog-earing the pages of the Sears and Roebuck and Montgomery Ward catalogs. I remember the grocery checkers keying in the prices by hand, no scanners. When I was 10 I got a new 5-speed bike with a cheater slick rear tire, a bannana seat, and the gears were shifted by a stick shift on the nut buster bar. I remember when car companies only had one style of car. Remember push button trannies?? My aunt's house had a corner booth in the kitchen to sit in like at the soda shop. Remember soda shops? We called them Soda Fountains. The cool guys had spinner hub caps on their cars. Curb feelers? Our sidewalks were still made of wood, there is STILL a law on the books that makes it illegal to kick the heads off of snakes that stick their head up through the sidewalk planks so that the bodies don't fall back down and stink the place up. I remember movies had cartoons first, Woody Woodpecker was the man then. I remember when we got an electric motor with a dial to move the TV antennae. Uptown for sure. We didn't watch the ball game, we listened to it. We had a self propelled mower-you had to propel it yourself. Remember when the McDonalds sign said "Over 1 million sold", or even when they kept track?? Paper drinking straws. Cars with no seatbelts and steel dashboards. All of our dressy clothes were made by mom. Man, that red velvet vest was my favorite, you know, the one with the belt! When I was in high school, the first chordless phones had a metal antennae you had to pull out first. The Straight 8? or Slant 6? A letter across the county took several weeks. To dial long distance you had to talk to an operator, and you usually knew her by her first name. Switchboards-real ones with chords that had to be plugged in by hand. Coolest store in town was Western Auto. Malts. Spaceburgers. Bowling alleys that employed guys called "pin setters". Soda Jerks.

Man, the good old days. I miss them. My kids laugh when we talk about the Titanic being found and such a big deal. They never new it was lost.