Last week I published Do You Remember – A Tuesday List of Ten which was a list of things that have been become nearly obsolete because of changes in technology or social policy over the recent past. The responses from readers listed other things that fit the same category. This week I present a follow-up which includes some responses from readers as well as other items that were omitted from the first list.
Do You Remember – Version 2.0
- Telephone calling cards for domestic calls. They were commonly used in the 90’s and early 2000’s for a period of time. I remember when my daughter left for school trips or girl scout outings she always had a calling card for emergencies. Calling cards were the status quo somewhere between collect calls and cell phones.
- Being able to show up for a flight either domestic or international about 30 minutes ahead of time and still make the flight.
Smoking allowed in pubs, cinemas, restaurants and clubs.- A caboose when it was actually the last car on a train and not just displayed as a museum item.
- Shorthand – a core part of secretarial training.
- Drive-in movies. Hirundine of Needle at Sea Bottom gave this description: “The place where we would drive in backwards and use the back of the wagon or van, to lay out and watch the movie. After, a trip to the drive-in restaurant was de-rigour?”
- Gas at $0.19 a gallon
- Kids leaving in the morning, being gone all day and coming back for dinner with the parents not necessarily knowing where they were but not worrying about it either. Mary of Walking My Path added, “Do you know that is actually illegal now? Sad.” It was a different time.
- Encyclopedias. There used to be people who sold them door to door. Many families with
school aged children were made to feel guilty if they didn’t buy them to provide that valuable resource to their children. - IBM punch cards from a time when a computer filled a large room before the days of personal computers. The cards contained the commands or data for computer programs of the time. Until the mid-1970’s most computers were accessed by the use of those cards.
I really these items except for 19 cents gas and not having to arrive early for flights may not have disappeared completely. However, they certainly are not as commonplace as they once were.
Thanks to Hirundine at Needle at Sea Bottom and Mary at Walking My Path whose comments on my first Do You Remember? post provided the impetus and many of the items for this follow-up list. Regarding collect calls from my first list, both of them mentioned a practice of letting their families know they were ok when they were trips by calling home collect, and then hanging up rather than having the call being accepted. It was a way they had to check in at home without the call having to be paid for.
Are there still more items to add to the list?
Good Woman 
LOL. WOW! I am too young for this entire list…
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I guess you get to read about those things were part of life for us old folks. It should be interesting for you to see the things that are common place today that will disappear during your life time.
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Yess! Calling cards and Encyclopedias! I remember growing up with those. And cassette tapes, and VCRs and LCDS the size of pizza! (OK, I’m not THAT old..but I did start out in the late 70s!) LOL
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I haven’t included VCR’s and cassette tapes on my list–but I clearly remember when they first came out and never thought they would go away. I still have a ton of my husband’s cassette tape recordings with nothing to play them on.
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I hope you’ll keep them! Not many of them around I think and may one day fetch a an antique price! (if ever!) :p
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Indeed, a goodly collection of things left behind in a lifetime. For about a month, I was the front-man for an Encyclopedia salesman. I would do the cold calls and he would follow up; to apply the sale. Cabooses? Well I was a conductor for CPRail and rode the caboose as a job. Later on I became a Locomotive Engineer, then the caboose became extinct. As railways sought to cut costs. Telephone cards, I used briefly especially on trips to see family in U.K.
As an apprentice machinist one of my jobs was to make those cards for one of the first computer controlled machines. Prior to the cards, was a roll of celluloid that the drilling machine would use to find hole locations.
Growing up we certainly did disappear for a morning or afternoon. Yet we always warned about speaking to strangers and dirty old men … whatever they were? I know now but back then? Gasoline in England, was always expensive compared to North America. I can remember the first North Sea drilling rigs, going in. The politicians spouting the lies and rhetoric, about how the petrol or gasoline would be flowing like manna from the skies? Then the prices went through the roof as OPEC flexed its muscles. Cheers Jamie.
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What an interesting history of your own experiences related to the “Do Your Remember” posts. You have also prompted me to think further about his and to come up with even more items. I had no recollection of celluloid…except wasn’t that also used in making movies? Thanks for reading and responding.
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ahhh punch cards – had to do my programmer certificate using punch cards in the 80s and in the early 70s helped my dad with a programming course for his MBA. Those were the days!
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One of my best friends in college was a math major who took computer science classes. I remember her using those punch cards and having to walk over to the computer science building in the wee hours with her punch cards in hopes that the program would run correctly. With our great reliance on our personal computers these days that seems like a lifetime ago.
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Yep! I remember most of those (but not gas that cheap–I think it was 37 cents a gallon when I was in high school). As a librarian, I have to throw in that old “card catalog”–those are long gone!
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Oh yes, the card catalog! I recently saw an article in my college alumni magazine a year or so ago that they finally had their whole collection on digital media and were removing the last of their card catalogs – the end of an era.
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Yep, had those encyclopedias. Funny to think of VCRs and cassettes as old. We used reel to reel tape recorders and even 8 tracks came out when I was in my 20s Haha. So glad smoking in public places is over. Also remember IBM cards. We used them in college for our statistics class.
Is Bosco still around? How about Ipana toothpaste with Bucky Beaver – or better yet – tooth powder? Hahaha this is fun.Makes me giggle a little bit.
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Yep, had those encyclopedias. Funny to think of VCRs and cassettes as old. We used reel to reel tape recorders, and even 8 tracks came out when I was in my 20s Haha. So glad smoking in public places is over. Also remember IBM cards. We used them in college for our statistics class.
Is Bosco still around? How about Ipana toothpaste with Bucky Beaver – or better yet – tooth powder? Hahaha this is fun.Makes me giggle a little bit.
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I must confess I have never heard of Bosco so I had to look it up. I found that it is still produced in its original chocolate flavor and also in strawberry, caramel, a sugar free version and a few others. It said it is now distributed in plastic squeeze bottles and no longer in glass. I wonder if it was more of a regional product since I hadn’t heard of it. I also found that Ipana was discontinued completely in the U.S. in the 1970’s. Wow…what a trip down memory lane.
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