Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

My biological father died when I was 4 months old. He’s planted behind a Catholic church in rural Wisconsin, as are his and my ancestors going back to the first of them to land in America, in the mid- to late-19th century.

I know a few of these relatives of my generation and one generation ahead of me, but I never really lived among them beyond those first few months. So, my kin if not quite my kith.

I visit that graveyard every time I get back that way. I’ve cleaned out the lichens growing in the engravings on the headstone, questioning if it was the right thing to do as I was doing it. Nothing lasts forever, not even names and dates etched in stone.

 

Pay toilets. I can't recall when I last saw one. I believe they are banned in most jurisdictions.

 

I can't remember the last time I saw one either. I do remember the ones in the Greyhound Bus stations between Springfield, Missouri and Cincinnati, Ohio that my Grandma told me to crawl under to save the fare. Didn't think anything of it as an 8-year-old (in 1968). I also remember that she would not let me ride in the back half of the very cool Greyhound Scenicruisers. I didn't understand her reasoning at the time ... now I do (but don't agree with it).

 

Tin Soldiers.

 

Intercity bus travel appears to be gradually going away. There is still some demand for it, especially the routes that stop in the towns without commercial airline service, but for covering greater distances, between major cities, it’s mostly a thing of the past.

 

The bus stations in a couple-three smaller, relatively remote burgs of my familiarity sit locked up and unoccupied most of the time. The buses stop there, and passengers embark and disembark, but it appears that those passengers purchase their fare online.

Greyhound owns BoltBus, which had been operating in the Northeast (service suspended at present) and in California and Nevada (ditto) and is still operating in the Maritime Northwest, between Vancouver, BC and Eugene, Oregon, and spots in between.

The impression I’ve gotten, perhaps inaccurately, is that it appeals primarily to younger people. The firsthand accounts I’ve heard have it that the buses are well appointed, the fares are low, and that there’s free WiFi aboard, so people like us can continue uninterrupted our waxing about how the world was 80 years ago while the youngsters do whatever it is they’re doing on their laptops and tablets and smartphones.

The several million people residing along that route have other transportation options, so low fares and amenities would seem necessary to putting rumps on those bus seats. The model would prove less feasible in the more remote locales, I’d think. There’s a whole lotta open country and not many people over great swaths of the Western U.S. and Canada.

 

My wife and I have travelled the western US for months each year for the 6 years. We now have covered the entire area on the left hand side of our spiral bound Rand McNally map book. One of the great and wonderful surprises is just how much open uninhabited territory there is out there. We have driven in Nevada for 6-7 hours and viewed just two or three other vehicles the entire time. Similar experience in Wyoming, Montana, and parts of Utah....and we have yet to drive the plains of Kansas or Nebraska with some of the lowest populated counties in the US. The sad part is seeing the many many dead or dying towns across the west.

 

Pay phones.

Public restrooms.

Phonebooks.

Dictionaries.

Encyclopedias.

Bookstores.

Athletic stores.

Hobby stores.

Camera stores.

Real popping-corn.

College alumni directories.

Personal letters.

Grocery bags (paper and plastic).

Paper airplane tickets.

Dictaphones.

 

In my drum and bugle corps days, in my teens, we covered thousands of miles via bus. I discovered that I could sleep just about anywhere I could get more or less horizontal. Bus aisles and overhead luggage racks sufficed.

A bus full of drum corps kids is quite a different thing from the Silver Dog, though. I’ve covered some distance via Greyhound, too. I much preferred the former. The camaraderie among us kids was born of such things — that making the best of less than ideal conditions.

Those conditions, and many of the things we kids got away with, just wouldn’t fly these days. (Giving kids a very loose rein appears to be another vintage thing that has largely disappeared.) Friendships made back then endure to this day. A few of them do, anyway. I’m thankful for that.

 

Agreed. The music department, (marching band and choir), of my public high school in California was quite good due to two exceptional teachers, extremely supportive and organized parents, and enthusiastic students with a modicum of talent for music and fundraising. Every year there would be a multi-bus caravan tour. Sophomore year it was four buses up to the World's Fair in Spokane, Washington, the town festival in Port Townsend, WA, and the Victoria Day parade in Victoria BC. Senior year for the Bicentennial we were three weeks in five buses starting in Washington DC, then Philadelphia for the 4th of July, NYC, and ending up in Boston, MA. Sometimes we would be staying in hotels, (the Shoreham in Washington was memorable). Sometimes we would be sacked out on a gymnasium floor. It would depend in part on the networking done by the teachers and parents. Also agreed on what we got up to. We would be running on adrenaline for the entire time. I always took a photo down the bus aisle a couple of hours after the tour started. Happy days!

 

^^^^^
With us the accommodations were mostly school gymnasium floors and American Legion and VFW halls.

Looking back on it, we kids did a good enough job of policing ourselves. No fatalities, no serious injuries. Adults along for the ride — staff and a few parents — kept mostly to themselves when we weren’t rehearsing or performing.

Peer pressure cuts both ways. We kept one another in check, mostly.

I’m amused by people who claim their program (DARE, for instance) is designed to keep kids from succumbing to peer pressure, when what they’re actually attempting is to change the nature of that pressure. It’s all socialization.

If we wish to reach the kids who would most benefit from participation in such activities, the worst way to go about that is to trumpet how good it is for them, how it might divert them from less healthful activities. Rather, tell them it’ll be kicks, that kids like them participate, that they’ll see things they’ve never seen before.

 

Something that youngsters consider vintage, that never crossed my mind, are early phones. My Godson was fascinated by our finger dial rotary 1960's landline phone. However, when I showed him my first cell phone, it's the model that followed The Brick, he just about freaked. Does it work? He asked. "It's analogue," I answered. "Oh wow!" is all he kept on saying. He's so easily pleased.

 

^^^^
It was nearly 30 years ago when I first saw a youngster befuddled by a rotary dial telephone.

 

Fletcher Class Destroyers

 

Oleomargarine with the pellet of orange coloring to squeeze through so it resembled the yellow of butter.
Blue dots on car tail-lights.
Coal scuttles.
Men wearing their WWII leather jackets, shirts and ties, and fedoras—as everyday wear!
Car windshield visors.
Colored plastic film for black and white TV screens—color TV!
Putting pennies on railroad tracks.
Steam engines and cabooses.

 

Analog tape machines are alive and well all over the US and Europe.

 

"It's ten O'clock. Do you know where your children are?"

National anthem at the end of the program day.

And finally all night: