Get out a pen, pencil or crayon to keep score. For each item you’ve had direct experience with, put a check mark:
• Car windows had to be cranked up and down.
• Garbage was put at the curb in a can, not in a garbage bag.
• The sound of bottles clanking told you the milk has arrived.
• Going to a cinema was a regular Saturday afternoon treat.
• The church was full at every service.
• You’ve changed a flat tire all by yourself.
• Your mother baked bread every week.
• A line of cars with headlights on meant a funeral cortege was passing.
• Car windshields were straight, not curved.
• You had a newspaper delivery route.
• Your weather forecaster threw a piece of chalk up in the air when he was finished.
• You watched the airliners being serviced from the terminal’s rooftop gallery.
• The strap was used in school.
• There were four foot-controlled items on the floor of a car.
• Travelers’ cheques were used on trips.
• Your bank passbook was hand-written.
• There was no such thing as sliced bread.
• Long distance calls were made only for dire emergencies.
• Morris, Austin and VW ‘Bug’ were the only foreign cars on the road.
• Locomotives huffed, puffed and spewed steam.
• You had to plug in a block heater if you wanted your car to start in the winter.
• You could get free maps and coffee mugs at the gas station.
• You had to get straight home as soon as the street lights came on.
• There was no such thing as Disneyland or Disneyworld.
•. People crossed oceans in liners, not cruise ships.
• The holes in your jeans only appeared years after you bought them.
• The only phone in the house hung on the wall.
• If you crossed the ocean in a plane, it had four propellor engines.
• To get aboard an airliner, you climbed up a flight of stairs.
• You know what an opaque projector is.
• The airliner you flew in had a floor that tilted down to the rear.
• The car you drove had four-on-the-floor.
• Any light plane that flew over was yellow and was called a Piper Cub.
• Your music came from black plastic discs with a small or large hole.
• There was great night-time radio reception from stations in New York and Chicago.
• If you had a wrist watch, it had three hands.
Well, what’s your score? I got 100%. If you can add more items to my list, please send it to me at nuthilltoo@gmail.com.
