Things that aren't done anymore

Getting fried chicken from a take out shop that only sold fried chicken that wasn't KFC. I think our local was called Crown Chicken.

Getting beer from a Brewers Retail. You walked up to the counter and asked the clerk for the beer you wanted, he announced it into a micophone connected to the store room. A few minutes later, your case of beer was pushed out by unseen hands via metal rollers.

Writing letters on matching pretty paper that was from a boxed writing set. Yes, good old snail mail.

Hanging a sheet and watching slides from a projector.

I loved those stationary sets

Getting magazine subscriptions in the mail. Or ordering 5 hardcover books for 99 cents - you just needed to buy 12 more books in 12 months, I think was the deal. Anyway, I did that several times, and it was usually good value.

Renting a movie at Block Buster store or a movie rental place. I miss the Tues .99C movie deal

I still have a black rotary phone. Can't dial out with it, but I can answer incoming calls.

Oh, that's interesting that you can't dial out. Nice that you can still receive incoming call. I really miss those heavy, old rotary phones.

That's another thing that you can no longer do -hold onto old technology if you wish. I'd love to just cancel my tv service for example, but there are no longer analogue signals where I live. I also wanted to hold onto my basic cell phone, but my discount mobile provider would no longer service it.

Rotary phone cannot produce tones.

No, indeed they can't. It just seemed like only a few short years ago, you could still dial out with them, but be unable to select from a voice menu -" if you are calling from a rotary phone, please stay on the line"
My point being, things change quickly now, and it's getting very expensive to keep up. Poor folk are doing without things we took for granted as always being affordable just 15 years ago. It's disheartening.

A time where comedy was light hearted and actually funny verses how no matter what, be it late night TV or any kind of comedy, the main topic revolves around Trump and political hate mongering. Also, there is way too much glorification of sex and violence where there used to be movies that had more substance to them like The Sixth Sense, and ET and movies that where creative and enlightening instead of all the violence we have now.

Attenas for TV
Limited cable channels
AOL cds that comes to ur mailbox every week
Floppy disks to save those essays 😀

Hanging laundry out to dry. My parents had to do this when I was little because the second hand dryer they had was cheap and shoddy.

Kickball and typewriters made me smile.

I remember when we got cable with the 14 slider channel thingy...

More things we don't do:
Staring out the window.
Kids wearing quilted bathrobes.
Viewmasters - I loved that thing.
Sitting too close to the TV.
People fixing things like toasters and lamps & fix-it-shops.
Passing paper notes in class - I'm guessing that doesn't happen.

Perfumed pens for letter writing.

Shag rugs like the foot-shaped ones for decorating your room.

TV dinners made with foil containers.

Telephones shaped like Disney characters.

Dr. Sholl’s wooden shoes with a single strap

Ours had the most interesting candy. I would go there to buy stocking stuffers

people using old english

yep.... no apprentice shakespeare's around lol

Big cars in general--I grin when I see a "war wagon" (station wagon) rumbling down the road. Now cars (even SUVs) are smaller and still just as expensive.

Candy bars for a quarter--now they're a dollar

Writing to overseas "pen pals"--figuring out postage and waiting was a pain, but always fun to learn about someone else's culture and lifestyle

Being able to buy a house and land--now it's $$$$ for a apartment-sized condo

(I guess I'm just a cheapskate LOL)

Oh, and a dime for the jukebox that played 45's

Ah, candy bars!

They were 10 cents when I was a kid. My friend and I learned about tax when we bought two together and it was 21 cents. So we were careful after that to buy them separately.

When I was a child (lived in the city, moved to a rural area during middle school):

> Leaving the house in the morning and only returning to raid the refrigerator or play in your backyard until dinnertime.

> Parents trusting the teachers including trusting their punishments including paddling, making them write thousands of sentences, placing children on the dunce chair, sending kids back to kindergarten for the day, keeping them off by themselves away from other children in the corner, assigning extra work as punishment--I endured all of these except paddling--many of the boys I was friends with got paddled occassionally.

> An ice cream parlor with a cool old fashioned candy store (pez dispensers, huge lollipops, dots on paper, etc.) where two waiters ran though the restaurant with a birthday sundae resting on a stretcher, while lights and sirens whirred in the background. This was where you wanted to go for your B-day. (Did Chucky Cheese exist yet? 70s)

> 4 wheeled rollerskates not in line ones; bicycles with "banana seats" and long handlebars; playing in the road and no one cared.

>Watching variety shows with your parents like the Carol Burnett Show, Sonny and Cher, Donny and Marie

>Saturday morning cartoons

In middleschool and high school (lived in a town of less than 1,000):

> More boys being paddled. Separate classes for boys and girls to discuss girl and boy stuff including manners and how to dress, put on makeup, pluck your eyebrows, sit, etc.--my mom would have approved.

> Shop classes, home ec classes, 4 H classes, etc where boys did boy stuff and vice versa--in 4 H the girls barrel raced and the boys chased and lassoed calves.

> Sears and Montgomery Ward catalogues were the main source of clothing (though stores near the hs carried Wrangler Jeans and very basic clothes)--there were no chains just the place you put in your order from the catalogues and then they called you after it was shipped to them so you could pick it up.

> Campouts with the Mormon church (I was not Mormon but many of the students in my school were) -- they hoped to convert the nonMormon kids while some of the Mormon kids were the "bad influences." --this happens in most religions (that the bishop and preacher's kids are sometimes the most rebellious -- tell someone they shouldn't and they really want to )

> No cable TV till the end of hs so there was no TV (only static so awful it wasn't worth it)

> Hanging out with grownup neighbors because the youth lived so far apart.

> One hour lunches where you could leave high school at lunch--towards the end of the school year (junior/senior years) many student didn't come back when they started having too much fun....

College/1st jobs:

> Slaps on hand for DUIs (not me but I was acquainted with people who got caught but were not severely punished).

> Drinking on the job (supervisor approved!) toward end of shifts as a reward for working so hard!

> Cars you could fix yourself.

> The drinking age was 19--lots of school approved parties where there was a lot of binge drinking.

> Personal ads in campus paper versus computer dating

> No one worried about driving to Mexico--the news about crime down there (beheadings, drugs) was not in the news

-Free range parenting. When I was growing up, we'd play all around the neighborhood and get into all kinds of unsupervised mischief. There was even a drainage tunnel we could crawl into that went under the street and came out in the back yard of the house on the other side. We'd often dare each other to crawl all the way through it. I never could get up the nerve to do it because I was deathly afraid of the dark. Still am to some degree.

Now parents watch their kids like a hawk for fear of the big bad world around them. Apparently, child predators lurk around every dark shadowy corner these days. Letting a child walk around a neighborhood unsupervised in today's world often gets the attention of the police and CPS who come a knocking at your door under the pretense of neglectful parenting.

-Children using whatever they had on hand and their imaginations to play games like "Cops and Robbers" and that sort of thing. Now nearly every child I see has a screen firmly held in front of their face most of the time.

-Cap guns. Remember those old metal toy guns with realistic platic grips and metal bodies and barrels that had a pin you pulled back like a real pistol, and when you pulled the trigger that pin would snap forward and activate a tiny cap with a small amount of real gun powder and a realistic "POP" would happen with smoke and a flash and everything? My grandmother had some leftover from when my dad and his siblings were kids and I'd play with it, even got to use caps with it every once in a while. I don't think they make them much anymore, if at all.

-Growing up and living in the same area all your life. My grandfather was born on a farm, met his wife, my grandmother on that same farm, got married in the nearby town, and they lived as Share Croppers on another person's land for a while. Then, when their family got bigger (they were expecting triplets by then), they moved back onto the same farm Grandpa grew up on, to share with his parents, and eventually bought when his dad died and his mom moved into the nearby town. He and Grandma then raised their kids on it, and one of them, my uncle, stayed on the farm and eventually bought the land great grandpa owned, and now owns most of the land the farm sits on. Grandpa and Grandma still own some land, but most of it was sold to my Uncle and Aunt. Now my grandparents live in the same town my great grandma moved to. In fact, they live in the same apartment building great grandma lived in up until her death at 94 years of age.

Now you rarely see anyone staying where they grew up to live out the remainder of their lives.

-Big families. Back when my dad was growing up, it was customary to have a big family and the kids were all expected to chip in with the farm work. When my grandparents were growing up, it was still a gamble to know if a baby would live to see it's first birthday and beyond. I think Grandma had a brother who died in infancy from some illness or another that in today's world, would have likely been survivable either with vaccines or medical treatment.

-Doctors making house calls. In the past, doctors were called up when someone was sick, and they went to that person's home and treated them there in their bedroom. A lot of illness and things were often taken care of right in your house. Even having a baby was done at home, usually attended to by a midwife or some sort.

-When my dad was growing up, his family didn't exactly have much money to spare, but on the occasion that he and his siblings went to town, Grandma would hand them each 25 cents and tell them to not spend it all in one place. It was more so a suggestion than a demand, not spending it all in one place, but Dad usually would abide by it, spending a little on some candy or something, and saving the rest in his piggy bank. Well, one day, he spent the whole 25 cents on a toy balsa wood airplane that he just had to have, broke the airplane soon after, and felt so guilty for having spent all that money on something on that wound up broken and useless, especially after his mother said to not spend it all in one place.

Now kids constantly demand that their parents give them whatever fancy high tech toy they want, or assume that because they have a driver's licence, that they can drive their parents' car whenever they please, complete with money provided for gas.

-Scrounging around the car for change to buy a tankful of gas at the gas station. My dad has told me he remembers a time when gas was around 10 cents a gallon and you could fill up a tank with the change you found laying in your car. I remember my parents being able to fill up the GMC van we had for around $20-$30 dollars as a kid. Now a days, the price of gas is absurdly expensive. Alternative fuels and electric cars are the way to go now, I suppose.

Yes. We played so many of those games including cops and robbers: House, school, my friend and I would fight bc she'd want to play "Bank," and I never wanted to. We played "toll booth" with our bikes. The basketball hoop was the toll. We rode through the garage down the stairs and into the backyard. And of course, hide and seek and sardines. Those were the best of times.

Playing House? How could I forget? Once, a huge branch fell out of a maple tree in the front yard of our house. I think it got knocked down by savage winds in a pretty bad storm. Anyways, my friends and I would use the branch as a house with each and every alcove made by the branch well, er, branching out, so to speak, as a separate room. We'd even pluck the leaves off of it on occasion, rolled them up, and pretended they were cigarettes.

Which brings me to another thing not done anymore.

-Candy cigarettes for kids. I remember those bubblegum cigarettes you could get that had powder sugar in them and when you blew into them, the powder sugar would blow out in a puff of "smoke" like a real cigarette. That only happened for the first and sometimes the second blow, and then all that was left to do was tear off the wrapper and chew the bubblegum. I also remember there were these candy cigarettes that were thin white sticks of hard candy. You could put them in your mouth and pretend like you were smoking real cigarettes, but they wouldn't do anything like the bubblegum ones did.

Now such novelties aren't around for obvious reasons.

Gas station attendants.

VHS, Blockbuster, reasonably price movie concessions

When calling a business, no one answers the phone. You have to leave a message and hope someone will call you back.