Having grown uo in the heart of Little Italy in the Bronx, we were fortunate in that we weren't slaves to the vendors that came door-to-door, because they were literally right downstairs.

I still go every Saturday morning to pick up some odds and ends and bullshit with the few remaining old timers.

Oh, Olivant, the concept of dried fish in a basket is alive and well at both Cosenza's and Randazzo's fish markets on Arthur Avenue.

Does anyone remember the barrel full of snails? I want to say that this was at the fish store, but the picture in my head is from the vegetable store.

I remember the black and white movies that would come on to "Tara's Theme". And King Kong would be on Channel 9 every Thanksgiving. It was as much of a tradition in our house as the Macy's parade.

I do remember the snails, Babe. Which just brought back another memory for me. I know the Brooklyn guys will remember, as well.

Remember those old roadside "crab shacks" out in the Rockaways, Sheepshead Bay and Long Beach?

They're illegal now, but the crabbers used to set up makeshift "shacks" right near the inlets and bridges in the Rockaways, then sell their catch right there. They were great. My mother would but a dozen or so for a couple of bucks and make the most delicious spaghetti fra diavlo with them.

Summers in Rockaway and Long Beach, a great personal memory for me.

Same here SC. We just had 1 window unit in my parents bedroom. The Col's Grandma had one of those 50lbs fans in KY. I'll you tell you what that thing really cooled the house down good when she turned it on.



If the President was on your night was shot. We never got cable till I was a senior in high school. And the remote wasn't wireless it had a phone wire hooked to it.

Did anybody else use a tv tray as a tv stand?

Remote? In my house, *I* was the remote. Change the channel for Daddy! He wants to check the score.

Tell me about it. We never had a remote till we got cable. And we only had one tv in the house.

Same here. We had channels 2, 4, 11, & 13 I think. Remember when a movie that had just come out in the past year or so wouldn't come to TV for years afterward?

Snails? Yes I remember the dried ones, but my sister told me the other day that Labriola's had live ones and that sometimes they'd buy one for a pet.

Pgh has the Strip District and you can still go down there and find all of that fresh stuff in baskets, etc. like when we were kids. Do kids today even know what fresh is?

These were live snails and in Sicilian we call them babbaluci. The wooden barrel would be brimming over, and they would be crawling around on the outside. I thought they were the greatest thing.

SB my mom made bubbaluci a oouple times. As great a cook as my mom is, I could never bring myself to eat snails. I think my sister felt the same way.

As far as AC, I don't think homes back then (in Michigan) were built with AC...at least not until later years. Back in 1964 or so, my dad bought a brand new house and it didn't have AC or a dishwasher for that matter. So, I don't know. Now they have had a couple condos and they are built with AC.

Anyway, I miss front porches. We always had a swing (or glider as my mom would call it). On a hot night we'd sit outside to stay out of the furnace of a house. Many times few friends and neighbors would also stop over and you end up talking for what seemed like hours. Then if the Mr. Softie icecream man drove by, that really hit the spot on a hot day. Those really were the days. Nothing terribly exciting happened, but looking back it truly was a special time.

TIS

We never had AC either. We had one unit in the living room and when it was really hot we'd sleep in there. When my husband and I bought our first house in 1989, that's the first time I ever had central air. Now I can't imagine living without it.

What about telephones?

Nobody had a cell phone and some people didn't even have a standard phone in their home. If you were outside and needed to make a call you'd have to stop at a payphone (many of them were enclosed phone booths) on the street. You had to "dial" the phone (a circular dial - no push buttons) and the area codes were so simple then. One area code (212) covered the entire City of New York - now I think it has six different area codes.

Ah, the old rotary phone. Those things were so heavy you could easily kill someone with one.

My parents had one for years. I don't think my dad ever upgraded to "tone" service because it was an "extra" at one time.

And remember the cool names that phone numbers had? Like FAirbanks 4? And who had a party line? We didn't in the city, but my parents bought a bungalow in Putnam County when I was about 9 and there we had one.

My brother-in-law picked up an old rotary phone that he installed in his garage. His kids had no idea how to use it, having never seen a phone that requires dialing.

We had one of those old rotary phones just like this one.

Yes indeed,proper phones

In addition to the milkman, the huckster and the bread man, we also had a rag man, which the older people called, "The sheeny." I think the use of this term fell out of use because it eventually became an ethnic slur.

Anyhow, the ragman referred to himself as the sheeny and he would drive his flatbed through the neighborhodd. It was essentially a community garage sale on wheels. If our mothers bought from him, he would give the kids candy.

He would also occasionally buy someone's old, weathered lamp for a dime or some pieces of clothing for change.

Did anybody have these kind of roller skates?

Wow, Mig, yes, I had those! One size fits all, right over your sneakers!

I haven't been following this thread much, but as a kid I remember:

1) We had an antenna on the roof, and had to adjust the rotor (that turned it) toward either the NY or Philly station we wanted. Was there more than the 3 networks and PBS at the time on VHF? UHF was kinda useless, but sometimes you could find something.

2) Toys were built to last, out of metal or a much sturdier plastic than you get today. Anyone here buy any "classic" games or toys just to be disgusted with how cheaply they're made these days?

3) Our old B&W TV was relegated to the cutting-edge video game called Pong. We later upgraded to Atari -- snail-slow movable blocks in full primary colors! There were handheld video games, but they were limited to either LED lights or very primitive monochromatic LCD graphics.

4) We had a milkman as well. They delivered in typical quarter containers, but I remember we had some glass milk bottles in the garage they used previously I assume.

5) Before today's typical 2-liter plastic soda bottles, we used heavy-ass glass bottles that held I think 64 oz?

6) iPods with 1000s of songs? Forget it. Around '79 or '80 Sony came out with the Walkman that held one cassette tape. Portable radios? Just AM at first.

7) My dad and older brother had 8-track players in their cars. In about 6th or 7th grade I got an all-in-one record (vinyl) player with cassette, 8-track, and AM/FM radio.

8) I remember hearing air raid sirens often, but I believe at that point they were just used to alert about fires.

9) When cable TV came out, it was a wired box with 3 rows of buttons. That was the remote. There used to be a trick with aluminum foil to descramble the Playboy channel, but I never got it to work very well. Our first "HBO Guide" (they used to mail them to you each month) had King Kong (1976) on the cover.

10) We had a drive-in theater nearby, but I can't with total confidence remember being there. But I think so.

11) Lunch tickets in grade school were 15c I think, maybe 30c. Can't quite recall at the moment. They were green, and you'd tear them out of the book you bought each Monday.

12) Do they still have book mobiles? I always looked forward to getting new Encyclopedia Brown books! Also, even before that, we could order books thru Scholastic Book Club -- I think that was in kindergarten. Through that we'd subscribe to Dynamite and later Bananas magazines -- that was mid-to-late 70s, and I think I still have them somewhere. Then there was the good ol' Highlights for Children you'd see at every doctor's office, even now! In the classroom, we had Weekly Reader.

13) Some of the earliest kids TV shows I recall and watched: Wonderama, New Zoo Revue, The Patchwork Family, Sesame Street, The Electric Company, Zoom, Mr Rogers Neighborhood, The Magic Garden, Captain Kangaroo, H.R. Pufnstuf, Land of the Lost, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters (gotta love Sid and Marty Krofft!), Fat Albert, Gumby, Davey and Goliath, Mickey Mouse Club (1950s series reruns), The Wonderful World of Disney, Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, Punch and Judy (was that part of another show?), Howdy Doody, ...there are a lot more, I'm sure.

More to come...

This is an outstanding thread.

TELEPHONES Before and even after the introduction of rotary phones you had to call the operator to place a long distance call, and you had the option of "person to person" which cost more, but was free if the person you were calling wasn't home, or "station to station" which always cost. I think there was a set pric for three minutes, and it skyrocketed after that. When you got or placed a long distance call it was a really big deal. If you called long distance to relatives for Christmas the conversations would last no more than those three minutes. As for overseas calls, you would have to wait hours or even days to get through.

Changing the subject a bit, I remember having a conversation with my kids when they were about 15 and 13 respectively, and telling them that when I was growing up there was no remote, no clor television, no dvd's vcr's video games etc., that if you wanted to heat something up you had to put it in a pot on th stove cause there were no microwaves. I explained to them about carbon paper, and how if you typed something perfectly and screwed up the last line you had to re-type the whole thing over. The looked at me like I was crazy.

I remember when Wite-Out (correction fluid) came out. It covered a mis-typed mistake and you could type over it, saving the process of re-typing the whole page again.

Personal computers sure have made typing a whole lot easier!

Manual typewriters were a pain in the ass, especially with the carbon paper. I got an electric one when I went off to college, which was better because it had that correction tape cartridge. It wasn't until Grad School that I dusted off the old Apple //e and dot matrix printer and used that to write papers. And egads -- remember when we had to spend hours and hours at the library to research something?? I wish the Internet was around then, my grades may've been better (if I could ignore the distractions )

Fun fact: Liquid Paper (Wite out) was invented by Bette Nesmith, wife of Mike Nesmith of The Monkees. She patented it, and they're stinkin' rich off of it!

It was his mother, actually

Oops, you're right, Geoffy!


But I got the rich part right, didn't I?

I was born in New York, but moved to Florida when I was 11. At the time Florida was segregated, and I have a distinct memory of "white" and "colored" drinking fountains, bathrooms, movie theatres, EVERYTHING. It seemed absolutely insane, and I know it had a huge impact on me then and to this day. Not one of the better memories of "a more innocent time."

You're right about the rich part, but I think he did alright himself. According to Wiki, "Michael inherited half of his mother's $50+ million estate. The remainder financed the Council on Ideas, a think tank devoted to exploring world problems."

Holy crap - look how old he looks now!

Geoff, you watched Land of the Lost to? I remember watching Davey and Goliath on Sunday mornings before going to church. I use to love that show.

Have you seen that show on Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network Moral orel? One of the characters looks like Davey. I haven't watched it yet.

No, Mig, never heard of it... I don't really watch Cartoon Network much unless something grabs me while flipping around.

I can NOT believe you just posted that!

I was just going make a post about my grandfather explaining the Jim Crow curfew to me in Miami in the mid '60s. This was pre-Disney, so we were at the Diplomat in Hallandale, where my family loved to stay back then. I was 6 or 7 years old and it had a profound impact on me. It's the single biggest reason I became so obsessed with civil rights.

I've only seen the commercials for it when I watch Family Guy on the Cartoon Network.