The "Older Than Dirt" Quiz....

5 cent ice cream from Mayfair / Save On market.
Wow, now there`s a flashback ! We had a small neighborhood Mayfair super market, with a very small (I think 8 or 10 lanes) bowling alley above it. Both went out of business sometime in the `60s. A&P was the big dog in food markets back then, until Pathmark and ShopRite came along, undercutting everybody else`s prices, until they had the lion`s share of the business, then they just raised all the prices....
 
Monster sized Ring Dings or Ding Dongs (depending on what area of the country you were living in). They must have been close to 5" across.

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Yeah, Nedick`s was great ! As a kid living in NYC, I loved the Horn & Hardart Automat....that was a truly unique dining experience !

Loved automats, a trip into the city wasn't complete unless you stopped at one. Milk delivery, every house on the block had a little metal box, the milkman would take the empty's and leave the new ones. There was also the sodaman, you would bring him the empty bottles in that little wooden crate and get new ones, my mom and me liked the cream soda, so we would get a few of them. The knife sharpening guy would come by every now and then, loved watching the sparks as he sharpened. Chemistry sets, with actual chemicals, I had some interesting experiances with them.
 
Chemistry sets, with actual chemicals, I had some interesting experiances with them.

One BIG difference between kids then and now is that back then, when toys were simpler, you had to use your hands and your mind to create fun. One of my favorite things was an Erector set, a big green metal box which contained hundreds of steel components....beams, pulleys, axles, electric motors, and hundreds of nuts & bolts. Now, THAT took some imagination and craftiness, but I built all sorts of cool stuff with it.
Kids nowadays really don`t know much (or even want to know) about using tools, or anything mechanical....if it doesn`t involve a keyboard and a mouse, they don`t want to know about it....
 
One BIG difference between kids then and now is that back then, when toys were simpler, you had to use your hands and your mind to create fun. One of my favorite things was an Erector set, a big green metal box which contained hundreds of steel components....beams, pulleys, axles, electric motors, and hundreds of nuts & bolts. Now, THAT took some imagination and craftiness, but I built all sorts of cool stuff with it.
Kids nowadays really don`t know much (or even want to know) about using tools, or anything mechanical....if it doesn`t involve a keyboard and a mouse, they don`t want to know about it....
I think a lot of it is because kids are not exposed to it. We had a women running the office a couple years ago who had a couple of young kids, a boy & girl. I was outside building a service, I'm an electrician, nothing major, some unistrut meter base etc. They were really interested. How come you're doing that? What's that for? I let them "help", they loved it, thought spring nuts were really cool. When we went back inside, they told their mother how they had helped me, quite proud of themselves. If kids are not exposed to things they don't get to know about them.
 
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Not only do I remember all 16 of your posts / questions, my older brother and sister were on Howdy Duty! I never considered myself older than dirt, until today. I need to learn to growl!

I was on romper room for two weeks (NYC version)! Anyone remember that show?
I remember the host lady with her Magic Mirror (big Magnifying Glass) looking through it saying "I see Billy, Mary and Steve ect" watching on tv. One time she said my name and creeped me out. How can she see me through the telivision?, my poor 4 year old mind was disturbed by it. Any East Coasters remember Major Mud?
 
I miss Lawn Darts those things were awesome with just a hint of danger. But that just made them cooler. Decided to add some stuff here. Great stuff here and I do remember metal wheel skate boards, Old Ears. During the summer I would fly those Bate Kites and stick and tissue airplane kits and was a avid model builder using Pactra Paints and promising my parents I wont sniff the glue. Remember the sniff proof citrus crap that never worked?. It seems as things move forward in a technological sense could it be that as a specie's the human mind has become less imaginative and hands on problem solving skill's are on decline. If it's not spelled out for them on a screen it's not worthy of attention. I see this at work from the young mechanics where I work if it's not spelled out for them by the test equipment some of them can't think outside the box. This is at a dealership mind you. Just a thought.
 
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No wonder I feel so at home here on AK, you're all a bunch of old farts just like me!
Who remembers making their first skate board using skates with metal wheels?
We had home milk delivery for a while when we first moved to California, and the Helms delivery truck would bring our bread and donuts too.
I answered the 'Ding' as a gas station attendant too, and flunked my first driver's test in Mom's '64 Studebaker. I'd just rebuilt the carb and it went like stink, the Inspector said I cornered too fast, so he flunked me. It had the 289 cu in engine that was one step down from the supercharged model. Solid lifter cam with a Carter four bbl carb, 3-spd auto, front disc brakes. Pretty advanced for 1964.
My Erector sets had red metal boxes, not green, and my brother and I would play for hours on end. We built model cars too, and Mom would always make us open the windows so we had fresh air as my brother would get a little crazy after a while breathing the fumes of the glue.
Yeah, I'm older 'n dirt and proud of it.
 
One BIG difference between kids then and now is that back then, when toys were simpler, you had to use your hands and your mind to create fun. One of my favorite things was an Erector set, a big green metal box which contained hundreds of steel components....beams, pulleys, axles, electric motors, and hundreds of nuts & bolts. Now, THAT took some imagination and craftiness, but I built all sorts of cool stuff with it.
Kids nowadays really don`t know much (or even want to know) about using tools, or anything mechanical....if it doesn`t involve a keyboard and a mouse, they don`t want to know about it....
its even worse than this- computer skills are on the decline- they do everything from a pocket device
 
lost to time / you're old if you played...
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if you or family had a set like this... with swizzle sticks
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if any of these color schemes were prevalent in your house
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if you sported any of these styles
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... or you actually chased these
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The REAL way to know if you're older than dirt is when dirt admires and respects you and cleans itself out of your house. :D
 
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