Time for some fun

Susquatch

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Another thread mentioned the internet and it got me wondering what we did before computers and the internet. I know lot of us on here predate the internet.

We remember:

- Phones with stretchy knotted up wires to the handset
- Phone dials you spun like a mad man with your middle finger. Might have started something.
- Party Lines
- two long and two short rings for the girls at the farm down the road.
- Shoe polish on the ear side of the handset.
- Box phones on the wall with a horn mic and a listening cone you held to your ear, and a crank to dial with.
- Rolling mercury in your palm.
- Oiling everything with PCB Oil - best oil ever.
- Heating with a coal fired water boiler.
- Snail mail to everywhere.
- Cheque books.
- Cigarette butts everywhere and ashtrays at meetings - I don't miss that.
- the day they put electricity down the section roads
- Handles to roll down car windows
- Holding choke plates open when the engine flooded
- Drying out distributor caps after it rained.
- Chrystal Radios
- B&W TV's & free TV channels
- Gasoline at 15 cents per Imperial GALLON. That's 3 cents a Litre........
- Walking to school or taking the city bus to high school
- Pay phones in booths on every corner
- Tube testers at the drug store
- Suspenders
- Soup Bowl haircuts
- Straight razors - why I let my beard grow
- Razor Stropps
- Tractors with big drive drums to run the shop.
- 5 and 10 cent chocolate bars
- Two dollar bills
- BIG Silver Dollars and EVEN BIGGER 5 dollar coins
- No seatbelts and no helmuts
- One speed bicycles and 3spd racers.
- Home made push carts with a 2x4 swing front steer axle.
- Tin can walkie talkies
- The milk man, bread man, coal man, fuller brush man, snake oil man, sheeny man.
- And best for last - snipe hunting with girls in tall grass.

I know I've forgotten a mitt ful. Anyone over 65 should be able to double the list. Only rule is that it has to be something you personally experienced about daily life that predated computers and the internet.
 

Susquatch

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How about writing prices on canned goods using a black wax pencil?

I don't remember that.......

But you remind me of Christmas cake in old tin cans lined and covered with oiled paper and string, aged for 1 year in black rum for next year.

Hand milking cows, separating cream, and churning butter.

Sharing the bathwater with everyone in the damn house.

Cooking on a woodstove burning cow pies.

Swimming in the basement cistern.

Three hole outhouse.
 

Susquatch

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- Canadian dollar was worth more than a US Dollar.
- Elvis died.
- A man walked on the moon
- There were no trees and no grass in Sudbury.
 

Susquatch

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Still have all of mine! Some parts given to me when I was about 8 and I still use it!

Sadly, all of mine are gone. Even the little wrenches are gone. I don't even know where they went. Prolly got trashed in a giant celebration the day I left home.
 

whydontu

I Tried, It Broke
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My desk had a dial telephone, a coffee cup, an ashtray, and a price book. No calculator. Could do most discounts in my head, extend and total an invoice, add tax. 40% trade discount was easy, 37% cash discount took a bit of time.

Ex-SWMBO worked for a log scaling company. Guys would run a winder (boom boat) out on the river, climb on to log booms, and estimate yield. Ex could calculate board foot from logs in her head. Top diameter, butt diameter, length, fudge factor to compensate for knots and twist. No calculator. In 1984 they got a spiffy computer program to do the calcs. Her mental math was faster than the PC. The sawmill would take an entire section of logs, mark them, cut to finished lumber, and compare finished lumber to scalers numbers. Always 97% or better accuracy between scalers & ex’s calcs and cut lumber.

Going down to Jericho Beach in Vancouver and watching the beachcombers grab errant logs. If I was lucky, one special beachcomber was there. Young woman, very conscious of WCB rules so she always wore gloves and caulk boots. On nice summer days, often that was all she wore, pretty nice overall tan.
 

Arbutus

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Esso - "Put a Tiger in your Tank" campaign - everyone had a tiger tail hanging out of their gas cap. When was that? 70s ?
 
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