I remember Woolworths.
I remember the local Woolworth's had a lunch counter where they served great cheeseburgers . . . and the Heinz ketchup in the bottle on the counter
always tasted better than the Heinz ketchup your parents bought at the grocery store.
I remember you couldn't buy meat in a grocery store in the evening on a weekday, since the union butchers were gone by then and the law required a butcher on duty for a store to sell meat. (This was Chicago.)
I remember a local dime store with a wooden floor and ceiling fans.
I remember when gas stations used to give stuff away (a drinking glass, box of kleenex, etc. ) with every 10 gallon fillup. And every stop was a full service stop, where they cleaned your windows, checked your oil, etc.
I remember my first computer, an Atari 130XE . . . with 128kb of RAM, it outperformed the Commodore 64 . . . and at 2 MHz, ran twice as fast.
I remember using keypunch machines and card readers at my first job after getting my degree, and accessing the massive IBM 370 for technical simuations.
I remember the Fizznik, Squeeter, and Bosco.
Reruns of Flash Gordon serials on Saturday morning . . . with Buster Crabbe fighting Ming, the Clay Men, various monsters . . .
TV Wrestling with Verne Gagne, Bruiser, Crusher, Mad Dog Vachon . . . most of these guys looked more like beer-swilling teamsters than the steroid giants of today . . . but it was all just as fake.
Slide rules . . . still have my old Pickett Vector Log . . . and NO recollection of how to go about using it any more.
Listening for the bells of the Good Humor ice cream truck on a hot summer day . . .
All three networks would stop regular programming when the President had something to say. . . .
I was in grad school when Jimmy Carter interrupted the
premier episode of
Battlestar Galactica for one of his worthless chats. Nobody heard it since they were calling the White House to complain; so many called, the phone system crashed! In the student union there was shocked silence then a lot of cussing . . . and when THAT died down, a clear voice said "Where the h*** is Lee Harvey Oswald when we really need him!?!" Cheers followed.