Air Raid sirens, going off once a month I think ? Helms bakery trucks with all the cool wood draws they pulled out to show you the goods... I think they had a whistle they sounded ?? Walking to school a few miles. A Sting Ray bike was a big deal.... When the folks were out...the second car was fair game with no drivers license. Loading a mini bike in the back of a 55 Buick...the back seat that is, if you pulled out the bottom cusion. Ringing Doorbells... Ring & Run Girls your own age were young and firm.... and real
One good thing about getting to these threads late is just saying "refer to everything that's been posted.................I remember all of them if they happened after September 23, 1944. Thanks everyone for the cool trip down memory lane. Oh, and I was buying gas for 19.9/gal in 1962 in Flint, Michigan while attending college at General Motors Institute in Mechanical Engineering....................seven years before 3w Larry lusted over that '69 Z-28. Frank
I can still remember the jingle that played over the loud speaker...Helms in the morning and Good Humor in the afternoon
WOLF MAN JACK AND MY '57 Cruzin around town in my '57 Chevy with a couple beers. Late at night . Small town not much to do. About 11:00 PM we could fine tune that buzzing AM tubed radio and there it was! WOLF MAN JACK! Howlin like crazy. "Have mercy baby!". And the dangerous music he played was like nothin this white boy had ever heard! It was forbidden fruit! Our steady diet was plastic pablum pop music puked up by the famous WKY and KOMA outa Okie City. But Dr. Wolf Man was playing all the black blues, jump blues, R&B - like Howlin Wolf, Elmore James, BB King, Little Richard, Muddy Waters and others! The radio would crakle and the signal fade in and out as we rolled along. "Lookin for the heart of Saturday night" as Tom Waits would later say. This was dark, dangerous, and unknown - but man it shook my world! Those cats could lay out the feelin! Broadcasting from a tower across the border into Mexico - they would crank up the wattage and blast all the way to Canada! Hot vaccume tubes bathing the prairie in black R & B. The pissed off cats at the FCC couldnt touch em! Remember Wolf Man would advertise his official "Wolf Man Jack Roach Clip" for a few bucks. Man, I didn't know what he was talkin about! Not untill a few years later when I was in college and duckin the draft. Uncle Sam was giving out those free vacations to south east asia at the time! The story was kinda played out years later in American Grafitti. Wish I had one of his roach clips now!
Sitting close to a cast radiator in English class, with your Rocket radio attached to the rad for an antennae and the earphone cord going up your long sleeve shirt, listening to the World Series ball games. And having the teacher ask you, "What's the score?" Brush cuts, boogey cuts, ducktails slicked down with Wildroot Cream Oil or Brylcreme. Being the only guy in Grade nine that shaved, because you failed three times. Parking your Triumph TR6 in the bicycle rack at school, just for laughs. Filling inkwells, wacking chalk-board erasers out on the fire escape because it would mask the smoke you and your buddy were having. Walking home after the 'show' and picking up a bag of homemade Chips (French fries) in a two pound paper bag that you loaded with salt and vinegar for the walk home with your friends. Your friends taking a handfull as they turned off at their corner and disappeared into the night as the street light faded away.
The April, 1961 Hot Rod Magazine the first magazine that came in the mail with my own subscription!!!!!!!!!!! No more having to get them at the market!!! I was 10...........within the next year I also had Car Craft, Rod & Custom, and Drag News coming to the house. When I came home from school and my Mom had tossed one of them on my bed, I was in Heaven. Drag News was a "must". Living close to Lions, San Gabriel, Fontana and Pomona, you had to know what was on schedules at the strips that weekend, so you could pick which track to have the folks drop you off at!!! FUN!
How about the big electrical blackout in 1965...the entire east half of the country was out...a long time.. ...all the neighbors were walking the street talking with everyone about rumors.. UFO's were big news back then, and many folks thought the aliens landed
Meter maids riding three wheeled Harleys... Rock music in it's infancy...... Led Zeplin Buying a McDonalds hamburger for 15 cents...and the only place to sit was outside.
Yeah,all the good stuff from the 50's and some of the not so good stuff...Polio scares during the summer,doing those air raid drills in school,laying down in the hallway covering your head while the teachers sneaked outside for a smoke.Wondering if the a nuke bomb was really coming.Seeing the ScFi movie "This Island Earth" and lay in my bed at night scared shitless of space aliens.I was scared shitless of getting eaten by giant dinosaurs too,but the space aliens were worse cause they had no rules,nothing killed them.Running a high fever and ya feel like your floating in air and the Doc pulls up in his black Buick.The doc gives me a shot(needle) because that's what they did then.Then my dad and the doc have a smoke while talking sports.Watch my dad work the clutch and shift lever.Listening to the gears grind when my mom was driving and had a bit too much to drink.Bullies..Seeing the older girl next door naked in her bedroom window.Getting your first real hot kiss,seeing a real live tit and touching it.Getting laid in cars with itchy seat covers.Getting my head wacked by the girls father..Getting caught the next day after outrunning the town cops the night before.................
Don't forget those sophisticated days of the era of the VAN craze in the late 60's, early 70's..... and..............
How about Bazooka Joe bubble gum?? I'm chewin' on some as I'm typing this post. 3 Musketeers candy bars were twice the size and only for a dime. Listening to "Clap for the Wolfman" or any other tune on a AM transistor radio under your pillow. How many Detroiters remember the Faygo Red Pop jingle??... Them were the dayz..
I rmember my dad giving me a dollar bill to fill up the 2-1/2 ga. "metal" gas can for the mower which was completely empty and telling me I could get a bottle of pop but he wanted the change back which at the time would have been about 25 cents. I had to take an empty bottle with me to put in the case next to the machine so i didn't have to pay the 2 cent deposit. We used to collect empty pop bottles to trade in for a bottle of pop and a candy bar at the corner drug store. It took 10 empty bottles which fit nicely in the basket on my bike. You got lots of home made goodies when you went Trick or Treating and they were safe to eat.
The phone didn't play music, it just rang... like a phone....and you had to go where it was...cause it was connected by a cord...and they were free and didn't need batterys.
I remember riding My bike 7 miles to a dragstrip and sneaking in. Hanging out a the corner gas station, waiting for the older guys to pull in with their hot cars, and even hotter girlfriends! riding in a '62 409 with an older friend. ( You couldn't tell Me shit) What I would give!!! Buzz
Holy Crap! What a great thread! I'm just a 40 year old that acts like I'm still 16, but this thread will make a guy feel old real quick! Lots of stuff in here that I had forgotten about.
LOL, I never remember phones being free. I remember we payed MaBell every month for the phone, not just the bill, but rent on the phone. I remember when you could finally buy your own phone if you wanted.
Steam locomotives, the sound of a tire blowout, or a head gasket blowing...the Helms man whistle, the dinging sound in the old-style gas pumps, filling batteries up with what we told the customers was "distilled water," steel-wheeled roller skates, summertime before air conditioning when windows were open and you could hear the crickets outside, or the sound of a Model A accelerating (slowly), or a straight-8 Pontiac going through the gears (slowly).
Homeade ice cream...cranking that fucker for hours (seemed like it) Beemans, Clove and Teaberry gum Ipana toothpaste Grilled cheese sandwiches and REAL cherry cokes from the drugstore fountain. Looking old enuff to buy 7-11 premium beer when i was 14 Recap tires ( i was always broke)
bought my first car at age 12 1931 model A that the guy told my dad I would never get running but I did. dad wouldnt let me off the farm with it so I would walk to the local store and get a gallon of gas from the pump that you filled the glass cylinder with a pump. 1 gal was 12 cents. Hamburgers 10 cents coke 5 cents I remember dad coming home from work and I had the model A running and he took it for a ride to the local tavern to get a beer but returned about 2 minutes later, mom ask whky he didnt stop for a beer and he said I couldnt no brakes so I was grounded those were the good old days. I can remember those days but cant remember what I had for breakfast
My '66 Mustang, 289 - silver with a blank vinyl top, loved that car. Milk being delivered to our house and left in the galvanized box on the side porch. My father's Fairchild airplane, I was convinced they were going to push me out while flying because they always liked my brother best. Taking an empty mayonnaise jar and filling it with Yuengling beer out of my father's pony keg in the basement frig. when I was 16 and on the way to the drive-in. Buying hard pretzels out of a tin at the neighborhod store, having them weighed out in a brown paper bag. Chemistry sets and how my brother and I almost burnt our house down doing our experiments in the basement.
Opening up the lake pipe plugs on the '50 Ford and driving through the underpass on Main St. with the exhaust ricocheting off the concrete walls. Checking out the skirts in the '56 Olds next to you while they covered their ears and yelled back to you, next light!
when a "big" tire was a M50 series and not 22 inches when tricks were 4" wide wheels and not the Biatch on the corner when the electronics in your car was something you could fix without a computer a bag of chips and a pop was 25 cents and there was three times the chips as there is today In canada you could by "mojo's" 2 for a penny the playing of the anthem at night when TV actually went off the air for the day a 27" console TV was the biggest you could buy the first time i watched color TV