How many of these do you remember?

[exitseven]

This question was inspired by @sage2021 . I grew up in the 70s and remember a lot of this stuff.

Updates

4 mo

My brother and me used to frequent the town dump. We made a wagon out of wheels and hardware we found at the dump. People called us and our friends the Dump Gang. We would collect bottles at the dump and take a wagon load to the local variety store. Every town had a variety store owned by a cranky old guy,
We would get 2 cents for the little ones and 5 cents for the quarts. The cranky old guy used to accuse us of giving him bottles was found at the dump. We always denied it.

[WindAtMyBack]

Chanel locks - I don't remember seeing that on a TV, but I have seen them permanently attached to other things like a car door. I never saw the knob break off either, on my TV or anyone else's.

In general, people didn't throw things away like they do now. They fixed them if at all possible.

Day old bread. We sometimes got day-old bread, but not usually. I STILL get day-old bread. Except that I don't buy the bread. I'll get the pies or pastries. Sometimes other things. When I go grocery shopping, the day-old / clearance rack is the first place I go.

Shoes - there were no Pay-Less then. I'm not sure if we had K-Mart yet either. I remember Kinney brand, but I don't know if I ever had any. However I do remember when ALL shoe stores had those stools and foot measuring things, with a shoe salesman who got the shoes from the back. There was no such thing as grabbing shoes off the shelf like now. We also had cobblers and shoe repairmen. Many pharmacies and grocery stores had a custom shoe and repair booth.

Patched clothes. Yea that was common. It was also somewhat "cool", especially in the late 60s and early 70s. When I was little my mom would patch my clothes. I wasn't very old when I started doing it myself though. Originally I sewed them on, then later used iron-on patches.

Popping the clutch to start a car. I think most people did this sometimes. Sometimes people always started their car this way if their driveway was on a hill. But they are doing it wrong in the video. It's easier to pop the clutch in reverse because it's a lower gear ratio.

I never had government cheese or powdered milk as I grew up. Although I still keep some powdered milk around in case I run out and really want some. But powdered milk isn't any cheaper than real milk. It will just keep a lot longer.

Gift wrapping. I've gotten and given gifts wrapped in comics or regular newspaper. But it wasn't to save money. It was either cool, or just because it's available. Newspapers were for making kites. I made many a kite with them.

Bologna sandwiches. I've eaten hundreds of them. I didn't take my lunch to school though.

Collecting bottles and delivering newspapers were both things I did for money. Also collecting stacks of old newspapers to take to the recycling place. I'd get maybe $2-3 for a half day of collecting papers. That was pretty damn good money for a kid. Collecting bottles I'd usually just get enough to buy a Coke for myself, and maybe a candy bar.

Bread bags on the feet. I never heard of this one.

I only vaguely remember book fairs.

The thermostat. I still have one just like that except it only has heating, not cooling. Nobody around here had A/C back then. We just suffered in the heat. The thermostat is not installed, it's just in a spare parts cabinet.

Writing about summer vacation sounds vaguely familiar.

We weren't poor though. But my parents grew up during the Great Depression and old habits die hard. That generation didn't waste money. Nowadays money grows on trees, yet everyone complains about being "poor". They don't know the meaning of poor.

[Lliam]

Yep. I relate to all that WindAtMyBack.

[exitseven]

My father used to keep a pair of pliers on top of the TV to change the channel. We had a broken latch on the refrigerator and you needed to insert a butter knife in the lock to make if latch properly. It was just a part of life and you would never think of getting a new one just because of that.

[exitseven]

K-Mart was known as Kresge's

[WindAtMyBack]

I do remember Kresge's. I forgot all about them. I didn't know they turned into K-Mart. I always thought Kresge's was a local store.

I still have one of those old refrigerators that latches. That was before they made them child-proof and could be opened from the inside. It's an old Philco and runs great. I have to defrost it once a year or so. I have two refrigerators. The other one is modern. :)

[exitseven]

@WindAtMyBack. I retired an old Philco refrigerator. A guy I worked with gave it to me. It came with his house when he bought it. the house was built in the 50s. I had it in my kitchen for a few years, then I had it in my office and w entually as a spare in my basement. I finally got rid of it last year. there was nothing wrong with it

[WindAtMyBack]

They last forever. Mine is in my basement. I went years without using it. Then I saw a really good deal at the grocery store and stocked up. One fridge wasn't big enough to hold everything so I fired up the other one. Now it stays pretty full, especially the freezer.

[Wiredone]

I remember everything they mentioned. I got my school clothes from the thrift store. If the pants were too long my mom would hem them up or I had to roll them up. Bread was bought from a discount store and served as hamburger and hotdog rolls as well as for sandwiches. We had 1 tv in the living room and I was the channel changer. We only had powder milk. My dad was in the military so we got tons of cheese and bologna by the bricks. We saved the seeds from cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers and other vegetables so we can grow our own veggies in the garden. Having steak was a treat that only happened once a month.

[Wiredone]

Thanks for the mho

[sage2021]

Because I lived with my single mother and we didn't receive the child support we couldn't afford food for lunches. So I had to get my hand stamp and went through the hot lunch line, then showed the cashier my stamped hand and had a hot lunch everyday. No peanut butter sandwiches in my school!!

[sage2021]

Thank you for the MHO

[douride2]

I can remember my father telling us when I was older that we grew up poor you just didn't know it. We thought this was how every one lived.

[Chazmatazz269]

I grew up through the ‘70s and ‘80s. Most of that applied to my family.
I never had “good” shoes though. If we had a banner year, i might have had boots for winter. Otherwise it was one pair of shoes all year, with extra socks for warmth and the aforementioned bread bags to keep my feet dry in the winter.
I remained the remote control for our black and white TV my entire childhood while my friends’ families got fancy color TVs with clickers. Named for the fact that early remotes actually sent the signal through a clicking sound, rather than a transmission of light as newer models did.
As much of my clothing as possible was hand-me-downs. Fortunately, my mother did spare me having to wear my sisters’ old dresses and skirts. But i wore girls’ pants and shirts for most of my childhood. As the video suggested, i didn’t really know any better at the time. I suspect my sisters had to settle for flatter colors and patterns than they would have preferred so that their old clothes wouldn’t later be objectionable on a young boy.
We had a garden that the whole family worked in and my father hunted, trapped and fished for a good lot of our food. It also helped to supplement his income as he sold the furs and skeletons.
We didn’t have a lot of toys, but i had a lot of outdoors and a big imagination.
I don’t resent much of my childhood. If my mother didn’t openly hate me and my father, i probably wouldn’t have had any problems at all. I was this close 🤏to a fairytale childhood! Ell oh ell!

[Lliam]

My dad was a top machinist at a major aerospace corporation, so we weren't poor, but we lived in a modest, post-war suburban development and my parents didn't have money to waste.

We didn't buy day old bread or powdered milk, and we didn't get government cheese.

We always had a working TV.

Shoes had leather soles and we would take them to the shoe repair shop when they wore out.
There was no such thing as fancy sneakers or running shoes. We called those kind of shoes "tennis shoes" back in the day.

My mom sewed patches on the knees of my jeans when I was a kid. Hell, it was popular to sew cool patches on worn out Levis in high school if you were a hippie or a rocker.
My mom made some cool shirts for me in high school, too. (Fall of '69 - summer of '72)

I was fine with bologna sandwiches and often brought them in my paper bag lunch to grammar school.

I collected bottles as a kid and cashed them in at the store to buy candy. You didn't have to go to a recycling center.
And our grammar school would have an annual bottle drive to raise money. It held an annual newspaper drive, too.

[exitseven]

When I was a kid we did not drink powdered milk. We had a milkman. When I got into weight training when I got older I used to get my mother to buy powdered milk and mix it with regular milk for the extra protein.

[AviatorTom]

Plastic knobs on the TV often broke. Since the metal post was usually slotted, we used a screwdriver, not pliers to rotate the knob. I often skinned my knees and put holes in my pants, so my mother had a supply of iron on knee patches. She worked at Penny's and could easily get the correct color and size patch for every job. We often used powdered milk. My cousin was known for wrapping presents with the Sunday comics. I grew up on balogna sandwiches, and still occasionally eat them today.

[exitseven]

Wearing patches on your jeans was not considered cool. My mother would sew the patch on the inside so it would not show as much.

[Likes2drive]

Well, I definitely grew up poor in the 70s, but we really didn’t know any different and my mom used to shop and thrift stores all the time and I don’t think we ate that great but we always had something to eat, I definitely got the free lunch program in school

[exitseven]

I remember the day old bread. we also got day old donuts.

[Likes2drive]

I’m sure the bread that we got we had it as long as it didn’t have mold on it.

[Anonymous]

I grew up in the 80s/90s but I remember some of those things.

[HДLILБΞУ]

I don't remember anything, a potted flower fell on my head, my memory is gone..

[FenixG45]

Yup, I remember!