What did you have in your childhood area that you dont have now in your current area?

I mi$$ alot of the good things I had in the 80s and before....


Good food,etc.............

 

mom and pop retailing of everything. hobby shops especially. but also places to eat that were before fast food franchises. in my childhood i think fosters was it. everything else was completely independent. there were catalogue department stores, but the were mostly relatively small compared to big box stores today. and all of them carried other things more interesting then clothing. oh and there were independent hardware and appliance stores too. computer stores did not of course exist yet until i was in my 30s. but there were other electronics parts stores, like allied. and now even radio snack has gone out of that bussiness appearantly. the little hippie grocery and resteraunt and just little boutique oddity stores, that started appearing in the late60s and early 70s. also real fiction about science that started getting real in the late 60s, and then i think probably got too popular for its own good in the 80s which lead to its being diluted back to mundania in the 90s, in media, though the literature continued into the 2000s. there were places were you could camp that were not part of a city too.

also semi-wilderness. where i grew up was a town of less then a thousand people, and in less then a half hour you could walk to were there wasn't anybody. the only thing that kept it from being completely wilderness was being on a major rail and highway corridor. when i was little though, that highway was two lane. it wasn't until i was a teen that it became a four lane devided highway. and pubilc transportation, the level that when i was growing up in the 50s and 60s, you only needed a car to go really off the beaten path. there were three trains each way every day and at leas 8 schedules of intercity (mostly greyhound, but there was also trailways) busses. where i am now, there's very little interrioginal service. there's one long distance train a day, and the only service to other nearby towns is morning and evening commuter service. nothing convenient in the middle of the day to go exploring.

there were just a lot more things that didn't begin and end with money, or at least not requiring large amounts of it. and i mean adjusted for inflation, in the context of their own times.
college and university libraries were more accessable to non-registered students. and for that matter, there were a lot more book stores too.

 

NEIGHBORLY neighbors who were like family, always there for help when it was needed.

Clotheslines

TV antennas

Incandescent street lighting

Public phone booths

Churches with open doors, 24/7

Candy stores

Hobby shops

Toy stores

Hardware stores

Shoe stores

Menswear shops

Haberdasheries

Ladies millinery shops

Army-Navy surplus stores

Frequent, reliable (and economical!) bus service

Mom and Pop stores where a snoozing cat always graced the front window

Man, I could just go on and on about we took for granted, and no longer have......

 

Big arching American Elm trees….all killed by Dutch Elm disease

a plethora of small local cheese factories….eaten by Kraft

Friday nite lake perch frys at taverns

one room country schools

 

Catholic churches having Bingo every Friday night.

Butcher shops/delis with sawdust on the floor.

Mailmen in FULL uniform (and getting AM and PM deliveries!)

Neighborhood moms sitting on folding chairs on their apartment house stoops, chattering happily away while they watched us kids playing.

NO fear of going out after dark, or riding a bus later in the evening.

Church rummage sales (ALWAYS great cakes, baked by sweet little old church ladies!)

Today, in my town, there is one lone record store still in business (there since the 1930's) but seems to be poised to close soon.

Chrome and neon diners serving REAL "diner food".

 

I miss:
The best Bagels in the world.
Carvel ice cream.
Fresh Rye bread and pumpernickel.
The corner candy store/soda fountain for egg creams.
Library around the corner.
People who speak English.
Great NYC pizza and Chinese food.

I don't miss all that much, really. That's why I left for the left coast ASAP.

 

Dairy Queen

Good Humor and Mr. Softee trucks

"Fudgie The Whale" Carvel fudge cakes

REAL cash registers

Gas pumps at service stations where you'd hear a "ding" as the little numbers spun around, like those you's hear on a vintage slot machine

The bell that would ring in the office of a service station, alerting the attendent, when a car would roll over a rubber hose out front

When I was growing up, the only "foreign" languages we'd hear were from our grandparents, and older folks in the neighborhood (German, Italian, Polish, etc.)

Ice cream parlors

Wurlitzer jukeboxes

Mini "jukes" in each booth at a diner.

 

GOOD:
Astroworld
Scones and Game Zones Arcade
KISS didn't SUCK
D&D conventions and public games
Collage Radio
R-rated movies that you could sneak into
"Marvin Zindler, Eyewitness news..."

BAD:
Polistes Carolina
Humidity
3 different uses of the N-word that I never heard before
KiKKers and KIKK
Asps

more of a place thing than a time thing

 

In my area growing up:

Local amusement parks

Numerous neighborhood bakeries

Delis/butcher shops

Bus stops on virtually every corner

Neighborhood movie houses

"Cops on the beat"

 

Kraft ran out of cheese, so now they have started eating chocolate. A huge mistake, because every country has it's own tastes.

 

You should visit central London.
But don't get lost. No one will be able to understand you.

 

Faith in fellow man. I remember being able to take word for something. Now I trust no one.
I remember phone booths, and drive-in movies. others things already mentioned.

 

You can still trust people today, as long as the internet is not involved.
The one thing that I could never see the point in was drive in movies, mainly because the quality of films is largely in the sound. It was the introduction of stereo soundtracks that largely resulted in their demise. Perhaps they will make a comeback, while we are charging our electric cars. They will certainly make the war films more realistic when the cars start blowing up.

 

Positive ground always puzzled me. Did keeping the bodywork at a higher potential reduce the risk of cathodic corrosion.?

 

Hickory nuts
Wild grapes
Fresh water Drum..Sheep’s head
Wild asparagus
Northern pike
Smell of pea Vineries
Pine smell from sash and door factories
Coots
Lake Michigan smelt by the 5 gallon pail
Barn fires

 

I have just answered my own question, which explains the reason that the change was made.
When electrolysis occurs, metal is transferred from positive to negative, so where for example a lamp or bumper is fitted, metal will transfer from the thin metal of the bodywork onto the screw. The result will be rust and holes in the bodywork around the fitting. Although it will not completely resolve the problem since the currents are self generated, keeping the bodywork at a negative potential should help.

This example is extreme, showing how the positive transfers metal to the negative when a voltage exists between them. As you can see, a conductive electrolyte is needed, which is why the conductive salt atmosphere from living in a costal area causes cars to rot away.

 

Blockbusters is a big one I miss! We often rented videocasette tapes from it, and if my brother and I were good my mom would let us get a candy of our choice sometimes. I usually chose Peanut M&M's.

Thankfully, I think most of the new additions to my city have been for the better. We have a beautiful local bar now that plays TCM and Frank Sinatra, and our relatively new sports teams haven't been faring too bad, either.

 

record stores