# Things you forgot about



## AZ Jim (Jul 15, 2015)

Wind-wings, running boards, rumble seats....add some you thought of!


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## Pappy (Jul 15, 2015)

Strap on roller skates, chemistry sets, casts iron banks and toys, penny candy, 5 cent cokes and Popsicles, Saturday movie serials.


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## Falcon (Jul 15, 2015)

"Curb feelers"  to help you park the car.

Whole windshield sun visors.


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## drifter (Jul 15, 2015)

My, my some old people on here.


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## AZ Jim (Jul 15, 2015)

white wall tires, real bumpers.


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## Falcon (Jul 15, 2015)

drifter said:


> My, my some old people on here.



 So,  Old people aren't allowed to be on SF?


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## drifter (Jul 15, 2015)

It's okay, you get a free pass.


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## Pappy (Jul 15, 2015)

Coal delivery, using the coal ashes in the snowy driveway, school,desks with a place for the inkwell, flashlight batteries that lasted maybe three days, steering wheel suicide spinners.


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## Georgia Lady (Jul 15, 2015)

Watching ILove Lucy on our first TV, when I was 8 years old.


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## Lon (Jul 15, 2015)

Sling shot, Willow Whistle, BB Gun, Saturday Evening Post ,Green Salve, Lincoln Logs  Red Flyer Wagon,


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## jujube (Jul 15, 2015)

I don't have enough computer memory for the things I've forgotten about.....it comes with the territory.


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## Laurie (Jul 15, 2015)

Common courtesy.


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## hollydolly (Jul 15, 2015)

Only 2 TV channels in Black and white..


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## RadishRose (Jul 15, 2015)

How to dance.


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## imp (Jul 15, 2015)

The introduction of "oleomargarine".   imp


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## jujube (Jul 15, 2015)

hollydolly said:


> Only 2 TV channels in Black and white..



And, in at least my part of the US, the programming stopped at midnight with the national anthem played.  That was it until maybe six a.m. the next morning.   In between, you got a grey test pattern and a lot of static.


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## Skyking (Jul 15, 2015)

Playing kick the can, telephone booths, TV tubes,  8MM Movie cameras, chrystal radios, metal TV antennas, collect calls,  carburetors, drive-in movie theaters with double features and bench seats in the front of cars (woo woo!!!) 25cent gasoline,  Christmas catalogues both Sears and Wards with wood burning kits, wood baseball bats, microscopes and Gilbert Chemistry kits.   I miss them all.


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## Shirley (Jul 15, 2015)

Window fans


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## jujube (Jul 15, 2015)

"Downtown" for shopping, not the mall.

Getting dressed up to "go downtown" with your girlfriends on Saturday.  25 cents each way on the bus.  Parents glad to have you out from underfoot all day and not worried about perverts and sidewalk bombings. 

Elevator operators in the department stores: "Third floor...better dresses...."   

An evening set aside to go downtown, look at the Christmas windows and visit Santa Claus.  

Tangee Lipstick bought at Woolworths Dime Store; it came in four colors - fluorescent red, fluorescent pink, fluorescent coral and white - and cost 19 cents for the push-up tube and, gasp, 29 cents for one that twisted.  

Lunch at the Woolworth's lunch counter; 50 cents would get you a BLT or a club sandwich and a paper cup full of shaved ice and Coca-Cola that fitted in a metal holder.  You might even get fries.  You could flirt with that cute soda jerk behind the counter and you might get some cherry syrup in your Coke (without paying the 5 cents extra.)

30 cents for a movie (kid rate....."Why, yes, I am only 12 years old....I'm just big for my age....uh-huh...); two feature films, cartoons and a newsreel and you could stay all day and watch them over and over if you wanted to (excellent for those dog days of summer when there was no air conditioning at home).


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## Ken N Tx (Jul 16, 2015)

hollydolly said:


> Only 2 TV channels in Black and white..





jujube said:


> And, in at least my part of the US, the programming stopped at midnight with the national anthem played.  That was it until maybe six a.m. the next morning.   In between, you got a grey test pattern and a lot of static.



Magnifying screens to make the screen larger..

Color wheels for the aluminum Christmas tree..

Tupperware..


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## Butterfly (Jul 16, 2015)

erector sets, tinker toys, viewmasters, Roy Rogers cap guns, hose with seams, garter belts, 45 records


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## ndynt (Jul 16, 2015)

imp said:


> The introduction of "oleomargarine".   imp


  Remember that little gelatin pill of yellow coloring...to color the "lard" to butter yellow?  I felt deprived because we had to use butter and would beg a neighbor to let me squeeze the bag to color her margarine.


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## ndynt (Jul 16, 2015)

Balls of tin foil and bringing metal, to the movie theater, for free admission to the Saturday matinee.  Along with crushing tin cans....all to help the war effort.


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## Warrigal (Jul 16, 2015)

Nylon stockings with seams, rope petticoats, twin sets.


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## Ralphy1 (Jul 16, 2015)

Refrigerators that weren't self-defrosting...


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## Warrigal (Jul 16, 2015)

Gas fuelled refrigerators and bath heaters.


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## Ralphy1 (Jul 16, 2015)

Speaking of baths, baths twice a week as a kid...


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## ndynt (Jul 16, 2015)

Metal ice cube trays. Home made ice cream with all pure ingredients and fresh fruit. With fights about who was to lick the beater.


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## NancyNGA (Jul 16, 2015)

Carrying glass soda bottles back to the store for a refund.


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## Lon (Jul 16, 2015)

Fly Paper     Ice Box  Gene Autry Red Ryder


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## ndynt (Jul 16, 2015)

Milkmen and frozen cream on the top of glass milk bottles, in the winter.  Tongue freezing to metal fences and getting trapped on the jungle gym with your dress rolled up on a bar.  Sleds and toboggans....ice skating for hours... capturing bugs and caterpillars in jars.  Laying in meadow grass, finding pictures in the clouds.  No cell phones, video games or tablets.


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## Butterfly (Jul 16, 2015)

Crinolines, girls not being allowed to wear pants to school, saddle oxfords, bobbie socks, felt poodle skirts, school sock hops . . . .


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## jujube (Jul 16, 2015)

Butterfly said:


> Crinolines, girls not being allowed to wear pants to school, saddle oxfords, bobbie socks, felt poodle skirts, school sock hops . . . .



Ah, the crinolines.  If you could get through a door without having to push the sides of your skirt down, you _weren't_ wearing enough crinolines.


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## Lara (Jul 16, 2015)

I lived in Japan as a kid and watched The Lone Ranger in Japanese, opening with, "Hi-yo Seeva-San!!" They didn't pronounce "L"s and "R"s. "San" addressed others like mama-san and  papa-san. They also showed the Mickey Mouse Club, Romper Room, Popeye, and Captain Kangaroo...all dubbed in Japanese.


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## Laurie (Jul 17, 2015)

_"girls not being allowed to wear pants to school,"

Good God!  We were never that lucky in the UK!

(Pants means a different item of clothing over here!)_


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## Laurie (Jul 17, 2015)

The girls won't understand what a rite of passage this was, but  men of a certain generation will -

The sense of unbelieving wonderment the first time you realised that a girl was gently easing  your zip down!


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## Pappy (Jul 17, 2015)

Laurie said:


> The girls won't understand what a rite of passage this was, but  men of a certain generation will -
> 
> The sense of unbelieving wonderment the first time you realised that a girl was gently easing  your zip down!



yep....


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## ndynt (Jul 17, 2015)

Given a nickel for a ice cream and instead picking the largest dill pickle from a wood barrel....that was then wrapped in waxed paper...so you could eat it on the way home.  Spending an half hour picking out penny candy...trying to get the 2 or 3 for a penny.  So you would have enough for all your "buddies".


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## hollydolly (Jul 17, 2015)

ndynt said:


> *Milkmen and frozen cream on the top of glass milk bottles, in the winter.*



We still have milkmen and milk deliveries here..not many now left I grant you, but out here in the backwoods the local farmer still has a milk float and deliveries are still made door to door..in this area..



Working on the milk float and getting out of bed at 3am ages 12 to deliver milk door to door before school was my very first job when I was a kid


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## hollydolly (Jul 17, 2015)

Another long forgotten memory , and I must have been very small when they stopped using them..was the cash carrying tube system they used in department stores.. anyone remember them..?


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## AZ Jim (Jul 17, 2015)

hollydolly said:


> Another long forgotten memory , and I must have been very small when they stopped using them..was the cash carrying tube system they used in department stores.. anyone remember them..?



In the 40's they were common.  Sears used to fascinate me with those tubes that swept away your money.  BTW We had milk deliveries up until '56 or so.  Our milk man just walked in checked the fridge and delivered what was needed, if you wanted ice cream you told him in a note what to leave, sweet innocent days.


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## hollydolly (Jul 17, 2015)

Yup same here Jim, a little note was left in the empty bottles on the doorstep for anything extra like yoghurt or orange juice . 

Yes I was always fascinated by those pneumatic cash tubes..just see the money disappearing up a tube and wait for change to come back...and I seem to remember that all the department stores interiors had shiny dark polished wood counters too...ooooh and do you remember those lifts ( elevators) with the gates and the bell boy  inside the stores as well?


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## AZ Jim (Jul 17, 2015)

hollydolly said:


> Yup same here Jim, a little note was left in the empty bottles on the doorstep for anything extra like yoghurt or orange juice .
> 
> Yes I was always fascinated by those pneumatic cash tubes..just see the money disappearing up a tube and wait for change to come back...and I seem to remember that all the department stores interiors had shiny dark polished wood counters too...ooooh and do you remember those lifts ( elevators) with the gates and the bell boy  inside the stores as well?



I sure do Holly.  One a year as a boy my folks took us for school clothes.  I hated having to wear new Jeans to school, so blue and stiff, I just knew the girls would laugh at me.  They didn't though.


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## hollydolly (Jul 17, 2015)

Haha...so did we...once a year to get a new School uniform to the big posh (for then) department store in the city centre...

We all had to wear strict school uniform no casual clothing allowed and only one or 2 of the department stores were given the licence to sell them and they stocked the uniforms for every school in the city..just about every school had a different colour combination , so they were sold at premium prices, so a big layout every year for parents as it still is today.. very expensive to buy when parents had more than one child to kit out..and my parents had 4..


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## AZ Jim (Jul 17, 2015)

I only lived with "uniforms" one school year, my 8th grade I spent in catholic school.  There I learned that even in a uniform girls looked good to me.  My catholic education did not take and I did not become a convert, but my education about girls grew.


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## ndynt (Jul 17, 2015)

I too was fascinated by department stores'  tube systems...loved the sounds and the bells.


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## AZ Jim (Jul 17, 2015)

In our next lives Nona, we'll have great sounds and bells again.


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## Kadee (Jul 17, 2015)

Ralphy1 said:


> Speaking of baths, baths twice a week as a kid...


OH ..Ralphy you were lucky we only had a bath once a week on Sunday's after chopping wood to get the copper going for a bath ..


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## Cookie (Jul 17, 2015)

We used to get little toys in cereal boxes, packages of tea had little porcelain knick knacks inside.


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## AZ Jim (Jul 17, 2015)

There was a time (40') when CrackerJacks packed REAL toys in their product.  Tin whistles, crickets, police badges...none of the cardboard stuff of today.


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## hollydolly (Jul 17, 2015)

...and cookie don't forget the collectable cards with loose tea...and also with bubble gum..


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## Susie (Jul 17, 2015)

deleted


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## Cookie (Jul 17, 2015)

Stiff and frozen laundry on the clothes line in winter. 
Coffee made in a percolator. 
Chocolate bars that tasted much better than they do today.


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## ndynt (Jul 17, 2015)

Great sounds and whistles...ya think Jim?   
Cookie, just the other day I was thinking of the frozen bed linens.  How did they ever dry?  Brought them in the house as stiff sheets of ice.  How did they remain starched?  Remember the starched and ironed sheets and pillow cases?


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## Cookie (Jul 17, 2015)

Yes, Nona, I do remember those starched sheets, my mother used blue stuff and starch on almost everything, ironed it all too on a big table, even my father's boxers.  I liked to crawl into my nice crisp clean bed with cold sheets and hunkering down under a big feather duvet.


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## ndynt (Jul 17, 2015)

Feather duvet and feather beds made from goose down?


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## Butterfly (Jul 17, 2015)

IRONING??!!  Eeeeewww!!   

When I was a kid, Monday was washday, and Tuesday was ironing day.  As soon as we were old enough we had to iron our own stuff.  When my husband was in the Army, I starched and ironed about a million fatigues and khakis.  I long ago vowed never to iron again -- if it needs ironing, I don't need it.


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## Butterfly (Jul 17, 2015)

When I was little, we lived in California and drove to visit relatives in Oklahoma and Arkansas every once in a while, crossing the desert to do so.  Does anybody remember a sort of burlap water bag thing that fit around the bumper in front of the car, and you put water in it and used it when crossing the desert in case of vaporlock or a leaky radiator?  My dad was very religious about being sure the bags were filled.  This would have been around 1950.


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## AZ Jim (Jul 17, 2015)

Butterfly said:


> When I was little, we lived in California and drove to visit relatives in Oklahoma and Arkansas every once in a while, crossing the desert to do so.  Does anybody remember a sort of burlap water bag thing that fit around the bumper in front of the car, and you put water in it and used it when crossing the desert in case of vaporlock or a leaky radiator?  My dad was very religious about being sure the bags were filled.  This would have been around 1950.



Yep!  Also that was before Air conditioning so we had those things that hooked to the window and were filled with water so as you drove the water was cooled and the fan blew in cool air.


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## Butterfly (Jul 18, 2015)

Oh, yeah -- I had forgotten about those window things.  Maybe sort of the forerunner of what we in NM call the "swamp cooler" or evaporative coolers we use in lieu of refrigerated air?


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## Butterfly (Jul 18, 2015)

AZ Jim -- I hadn't even thought the word "vaporlock" in years and years until I wrote the above post.  When I was a teenager vaporlock was a problem with the cars we (or our boyfriends) had then -- usually the cars were years and years old.  Just out of curiousity, why don't cars vaporlock any more?


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## imp (Jul 18, 2015)

Butterfly said:


> AZ Jim -- I hadn't even thought the word "vaporlock" in years and years until I wrote the above post.  When I was a teenager vaporlock was a problem with the cars we (or our boyfriends) had then -- usually the cars were years and years old.  Just out of curiousity, *why don't cars vaporlock any more*?



May I answer, (butting in!): Vapor lock happens when the fuel in piping which brings it to the carburetor, gets hot enough to boil, then the fuel turns to gas (as in air, not "gas" gasoline), like steam from boiling water, and there is nowhere near enough vaporous fuel available to keep the engine running. Carburetors operated at a very low fuel pressure fed to them, about 4 or 5 pounds per square inch. For a "feel" of what that means, your tires have a pressure in them of 6 or 7 times that, say, 35 pounds (psi). Almost everyone has heard the huge hiss when a tire is allowed to deflate, lots of pressure there.

Today's engines use fuel injection, which operates at pressures even higher than tire pressure, as high as 60 psi. This required Engineers to become cautious about cutting corners design-wise, as a gasoline leak occurring at 60 psi flows faster than your kitchen sink does water! To finally answer the original question: Gasoline contained within the engine's operating system cannot get hot enough to boil within it, thus, no vapor lock!    imp


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## Butterfly (Jul 18, 2015)

Thanks, Imp!  As I remember it, there wasn't much of anything you could do about it but wait around until it just cooled off?  Bummer.  Glad it doesn't happen any more.


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## Aunt Marg (Oct 28, 2020)

Warrigal said:


> Gas fuelled refrigerators and bath heaters.


And gas operated wringer washing machines.


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## Aunt Marg (Oct 28, 2020)

Pappy said:


> Coal delivery, using the coal ashes in the snowy driveway, school,desks with a place for the inkwell, flashlight batteries that lasted maybe three days, steering wheel suicide spinners.


I remember my grandpa setting a steel bucket full of course sand on top of the wood stove. Once the sand was hot, he'd sift the bucket over the stairs and driveway.

The hot sand would melt it's way slightly into the ice and remain in place providing traction and a safe footing.


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## Aunt Marg (Oct 28, 2020)

Running safety pins through my hair when changing diapers.


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## fmdog44 (Oct 28, 2020)

Ford automobile ads claiming the clearest windshields for viewing when in fact the cars shown did not have windshields installed!


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## Sassycakes (Oct 28, 2020)

*Living in the city and playing outside all day with your friends. In the summer getting wet under the fireplug and a lot of Mom's around watching all the kids!*


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## tbeltrans (Oct 28, 2020)

Games such as "Hands Down - the slap happiest game ever!" or Mousetrap or Video Village.  All those cool games probably were replaced by computer games after video games.  With these old games, everybody had to be there at the table in order to play.  I suppose that kind of interaction sounds weird today, especially now with COVID-19. 

Bop-a-loop:






Phone booths - no wonder we don't hear of Elvis sightings anymore. 

Tony


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## Pappy (Oct 28, 2020)

When windshield wipers used vacuumed to run the wipers, when you stepped on the gas the wipers stopped.


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## Manatee (Oct 28, 2020)

My first convertible had a rumble seat.


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## Manatee (Oct 28, 2020)

Butterfly said:


> When I was little, we lived in California and drove to visit relatives in Oklahoma and Arkansas every once in a while, crossing the desert to do so.  Does anybody remember a sort of burlap water bag thing that fit around the bumper in front of the car, and you put water in it and used it when crossing the desert in case of vaporlock or a leaky radiator?  My dad was very religious about being sure the bags were filled.  This would have been around 1950.


I had one of those when I got out of the Navy in San Diego and drove home to the east coast.  No interstates in 1959.


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## Lewkat (Oct 28, 2020)

3 cent stamps, 3 cent sodas and ration books.


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## Aunt Marg (Oct 28, 2020)

When boxed breakfast cereal came with a little toy, like rubberband powered boats and small figures.


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## fuzzybuddy (Oct 29, 2020)

"Playboy" magazine, which everybody read just for the articles. Along with "Life" , and "Look" mags.
Quadraphonic "sound".
"The Tonight Show" with Steve Allen.
18 cent hamburgers, 15 cent fries, 15 cent cokes.


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## Aunt Marg (Oct 29, 2020)

When things consumers bought were good, the product carried the *GOOD HOUSEKEEPING *seal of approval.


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