An incomplete list of ubiquitous items from my life that either are now extinct, or close to it. Items in italics were local to where I grew up.
- The Toranado (Pontiac), a car as big as a cruise ship.
- The Duster car (Chevrolet).
- Phelan’s Pharmacy
- Charles Variety store
- Sorkins Dept. store (Livingston Manor, NY)
- Mattel Hand held simple LED video games: Racing, Football, Sub Chase, Merlin
- Radio Shack TRS-80 Microcomputer.
- Carson Pirie Scott dept. Store
- Platters and Pipes store (first job).
- Bressler’s Ice Cream store (2nd job).
- Writing your SS# on your check when cashing it.
- Using checks-for paying bills and getting cash
- Credit Card stamper
- The Smoking Section –EVERYWHERE: planes, busses, trains, restaurants,
- The little toys that Phillips 66 stations gave out. They were cute plastic creatures that would hook to the outsides of cars. One was a butterfly.
- Black and white TVs.
- Clock-radios.
- Schwinn Typhoon.
- MACOS (5th grade) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man:_A_Course_of_Study
- Banana seats on bikes (like the Schwinn Fastback)
- The VW Rabbit& the Chevy Citation (first cars I drove)
- Hand held stop watches.
- THE telephone, instead of MY telephone.
- The Reference Librarian at the library.
- Encyclopedias (that is, the old fashioned “Google.”)
- Hi fidelity stereo systems: Amp, pre amp, tuner, turntable cassette player, reel to reel tape player.
- Albums sold on 8-track.
- Albums sold on cassette tape.
- Long Playing Albums (33RPM).
- Single albums with a b side (45 RPM).
- VHS and Beta cassettes for video tapes. and machines.
- Video tapes and video taped movies.
- Saturday morning cartoons.
- The big fall preview for Saturday morning TV shows.
- The Double Decker Kids, Hong Kong Phooey, the Bugs Bunny Road Runner 1 ½ hour long show, The Pink Panther and the Ant and the Aardvark.Magilla Gorilla, the Banana Splits.
- Aluminum lunchboxes with matching thermoses, with cool cartoon live action characters on them; Fat Albert, Kung Fu, The Double Decker kids, Starsky and Hutch These were NEVER refrigerated.
- Record needles (aka the “stylus”).
- Record cleaning tools: anti-static gun, cleaner, fluid. Cassette head cleaning fluid and swabs.
- It was a normal thing for my 6th grade teacher to let me and some friends walk a block away to the Junior high school each school afternoon so we could play in the 7/8th grade band. We were completely by ourselves until we got to the junior high school.
- Carburetors (replaced by fuel injection systems).
- Big Blue Marble, Zoom, Mulligan Stew, Sesame Street, The Electric Company, and other feel-good PBS shows.
- Tube socks.
- Big, “blaster” radios.
- Sony Walkman (cassette version).
- Citizens-Band (2-way) radios in cars.
- Absurdly lax rules regarding airport security.
- Silly urban myths that spread without the aid of the internet: Spider eggs are inside Bubble Yum, Mikey from the Life cereal ad died of eating Pop Rocks & Coke, etc.
- Full Service gas stations: they pumped your gas, checked your oil, filled your tires, etc and was all part of the price of your gas purchase.
- Paper bags were the norm.
- Old pull-tabs for canned drinks.
. Some people would use them to create gowns and chain mail. Once pulled, they were often just put inside the drink. Every once in a while we’d read about someone who choked on the tab as they were drinking the cola. - Kodak film.
- The Fotomat drive up place where one could get film developed.
- Actual cameras that project an image onto film to create an image, along with the equipment used to develop the film and create hard pictures from photographic negatives. This is a nearly lost art.
- Slides.
- Slide projectors (like Power Point, without all the fancy presentation features)..
- Home movie cameras, and projectors.
Bittersweet Abattoir 