I remember when barcodes were new

[rcjordan]

.

[Brad]

Oh yeah?  I remember when cans and food items had the price stamped directly on them with that purple ink price cathunker. 

[rcjordan]

When I was a kid, my grandparents had a party-line landline.

[ergophobe]

When I was a kid, *we* had a party line.

Even better, in the town where we lived part of the time, there were two lines for the whole town. The old ladies would sit on the phone and listen to conversations. When Jimmy finally worked up the courage to call a girl and ask her out, his gramma was listening in.

[buckworks]

>> When I was a kid, *we* had a party line.

Me too. And also since then, in the eighties, when we lived on a rural property.

[rcjordan]

When forum seeding, you can't always tell which way a thread will go, hhh.   OK Alex, I'll take Oldster Stuff, for $50....

First car I am sure I remember riding in was a 1950 Oldsmobile Super Futuramic 88 2-door coupe. Two-tone; yellow & black.

[DrCool]

I don't think my parents ever even owned car seats for us kids. And the first car I remember riding in was our nice, red AMC Pacer.

[Rumbas]

Ha, car seats.. nah, we didn't use them.

However as a kid when visiting my grandparents with my mum and dad, my grandma would stuff a huge cigar in my dads mouth when we drove off and he puffed that sucker in the car all the way home.. in a Volkswagen Beetle..

[rcjordan]

> car seats.. nah

Crap no. Hell, seat belts weren't even required.  That big Oldsmobile (bench seats, remember those?) had a metal dashboard with a big, round, metal clock in the center. My mom used to tease that I had a permanent imprint of that clock in my forehead because I hit it so many times as a toddler --every time dad hit the brakes.

>car seat

Mom did find some sort of baby chair that clipped over the back of the seat. No padding. No belts. Just a hard seat with a metal bar across the front --sorta like a booster seat, except it hung on the back of a bench seat.

[Brad]

>> No padding. No belts

Ditto.  Had one just like it.  In a panic stop, my mom's arm would swing out to try and hold me in place.  Dash board was solid steel.

No radial tires either.  You bought tires all the time because they didn't last long.

[rcjordan]

>No radial tires either

Tires -and cars in general- sucked.  When I was 16, I burned off a set of tires every few months. I worked out a deal with a commercial truck recapper who did great work. They rode like rocks but would last as long as new --cost me $5/tire, I think.

Also radiators.  You couldn't go to the beach on a hot day without the car boiling over.

[littleman]

>red AMC Pacer

My earliest car memory was a bit cooler, my mom drove a 68 Camaro SS.  Unfortunately, we got rear ended and the car was too damaged to be fixed.  Even more unfortunate, the replacement car was a Pinto station wagon.

[rcjordan]

My older brother had a Gremlin for a while. The other older brother had a Maverick.  Again, by today's standards both were incredibly crappy cars.  OTOH, the wholesale company used Rambler station wagons for the sales fleet.  They held up well and usually ended up in the family after they were retired with 100k miles on them.

[buckworks]

It's not my earliest car memory but certainly the most dramatic ... being in the back seat of a 64 Corvair, driven by my mom, when the engine caught fire.

[ergophobe]

In 20 minutes, I am about to meet with students who have assembled in Michigan to take the 20th anniversary version of a course I have taught every two years since 1998.

I plan to start by telling them that when I first flew out to teach this course, I sat on the plane with no computer, a massive file of paper and a knife. Nobody was concerned. Nobody asked me to take off my shoes or my belt. The director of the center met me inside security at the gate as I deplaned (did we even call it that yet?).

One of the lectures that first time was designed to convince the students that this new thing called the internet was not *entirely* a cesspool, but actually had a couple of things that scholars could use.