Things young people have never seen
Friday, February 23, 2024 11:32 PM
At age 57, I remember some things that don't exist anymore. A few of you guys are older than me and probably would come up with more interesting memories of commonplace items that are no longer around.
Some that come to mind:
Chap-Stick in a metal tube. Looked and worked pretty much the same as today, but metal instead of plastic. Sometimes the cap would get bent out of shape and you had to squeeze it back into round to get it on the base. Similar would be the metal toothpaste tubes that would almost always develop a small hole with toothpaste coming out from where you didn't want it to.
Phone booths. Nowadays any kind of pay phones are almost non-existent. But I'm talking about real phone booths with a door that closes. The older ones had rotary dials.
Adjustable windshield washer nozzles. They didn't spray out in a nice fan-shaped pattern like today. Each one shot a single stream of washer fluid. For whatever reason, they would sometimes lose their aim and start squirting up over the roof or off to the side, not hitting the window at all. But you could adjust them with a pin or a paper clip to get them back on track.
Add to that cars without seatbelts, and cars with analog radio adjustment knobs. "Automatic" push-buttons that would physically move the indicator across the dial. To set them you had to turn the knob, get a station tuned in, then pull the button out and push it all the way back in.
Refrigerators with latch handles. The doors opened and closed like a car door. And the freezer was inside the fridge with a spring loaded cover. Those damn things lasted FOREVER though. When my mother died 6 years ago she had one that was still working perfectly. I would guess it was at least 70 years old because I remember as a small child it was already old as shit and had been moved to the basement as a secondary fridge.
What are some things that, for better or worse, aren't around anymore?
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