Used a UHF antenna until around 2005.
I still miss rotary phones and resisted going to push button until I had to, circa 2000. Everybody else uses smart phones in my family, but my eyes are too weak and my fingers too fat.
Used payphones all the time back in the seventies and the eighties. It was always fun to wait on someone to get done using one when you needed to make a call. Always checked the coin slot for loose coins and was rewarded several times. People did not shout their conversations at the top of their lungs, as is often the case now, but assumed a hunched position and spoke softly as if they were spies conveying state secrets.
Still miss Polaroid cameras. Took tons of photos of the kids as they grew and have had the pictures digitalized. Precious keepsakes. Taking phone digital pictures still seems ephemeral to me now compared to cameras which produce paper photos that could be gathered together from drawers and photo albums decades after they were taken.
Most useful class I took in high school. Me and one other guy and 18 lovelies who typed like lightning. Banged away on a manual through College and Law School. Use my typing skills each day on computer keyboards.
I used to go to libraries to make photocopies of maps of towns in phone books whenever I had to drive to any place new. Helped me locate the courthouses and places to eat. The local printing plant, which is now one with Nineveh and Tyre, used to print most of the phone books in South America.
Record player was on quite a bit in my house growing up. The way my brother and I learned Newfie songs and a few of the Irish rebel classics.
Still have a few in my kitchen as a backup in case the ice maker has a conniption fit.
Canceled the Chicago Tribune in 2008 after they endorsed Obama. My newspaper habit had been continued from sheer inertia for years before that, the Internet having rendered dead tree news obsolete. My Bride would occasionally buy a paper for the Black Friday ads for several years after that, but with everything now on line, even that once a year event has ceased.
Maps.. had large map books that covered counties and states… trail maps and a compass.
We are very spoiled today, but the young are less fortunate in the development of spatial reasoning.
I was digging around in my father’s basement not too long ago looking for personal items and I came upon my late mother’s 1980 Polaroid. It is still in great condition. I used it a few times myself back in my youth but the film and flashes were always pricey.
Meant to also link the image of said Polaroid…
All of them for me too
“Most useful class I took in high school. Me and one other guy and 18 lovelies who typed like lightning. Banged away on a manual through College and Law School.”
Completely agree! I was the only guy in my typing class after my mother suggested I take it. Only 13 lovelies in my class. And I used to type all my law school exams. I’m convinced that that increased my GPA at least two or three tenths of a point. For one thing the profs were probably happy to see someone’s test where they didn’t have to decipher somebody’s handwriting. For the second thing, they were so few of us that typed that the profs knew who we were. I think that they gave some additional deference to us since they already knew our class rank.
Also made the migration to word processor super easy.
All of them. I miss phone books the most.
All of them.
The telephone “party line” experience was a hoot.
Talk about reaching out to your neighbors…yikes.
It’s funny thinking about it now with chat rooms and mass media via I phones ect.
All of them. I recall the danger of overfilling the aluminum ice trays … Ours had an arm you’d pull back to loosen the cubes, and if you over-filled the tray, it wouldn’t work and could even break off if you weren’t careful
4 I specifically remember using not purely as a toy.
As for the pay phone, they were around and in use, but I don’t remember using one myself. May have though at one point or another.
The typewriter was an antique and definitely a toy so I wouldn’t count that for myself 🙂
I also used all of these at one time. Even had a remote controlled rotating roof antenna for the TV at my grandma’s house in Chambersburg, PA, before the cable revolution. Got in trouble for breaking off a couple of those ice tray levers CAG mentioned, too.
You could also add carbon paper, 8-track tapes, and portable AM radios. And rotary push lawn mowers. And one-speed fat-tire bicycles with coaster brakes. Used ’em all… 😉
All of them. We still have a TV antenna on our big TV in the living room for local stations. Sadly, the belt on my record player became non-functional last fall so I set it out by the street. It was gone within an hour. I kept the records.
Regarding maps, I love them. I make custom maps for games. I have very large Antarctica map hanging on the wall / ceiling in my hobby room. It’s from the 70s and 3/4 of it is blank because it was unexplored territory. Whenever I arrived in a new town, I would pick up a cheap street map and with the help of the phone book, I would find every place I needed to go.
Used all of those contraptions. I found my mother’s electric typewriter in a case recently. It’s heavy compared to a computer. We had one house with a rotating antenna. My boys loved giving the doves rides at roosting time. So much so they broke it.
I love maps. Every time we cross a state line we have to stop for the latest state map. AAA has fewer maps and no longer carries overseas maps.
My father and I liked newspapers. Still do but not the liberal ones like NY Times or Washington Post. The Washington Examiner, the Washington Times are good if I can find them. Have a subscription to the Epoch Times; their investigative reporting is very good as is the three feature sections. My husband dropped the Wall Street Journal 2 years ago.
We still keep a landline telephone for emergency purposes.
Cam, we also maintain a land line. My wife likes to use it to pay bills.
Every one of these is someting I used except for the Polaroid. My parents used that. I just threw away my mom’s Polaroid after she died. Hated to so but you can’t get film anymore. For my 10th birthday I got a Kodak 126 camera. I loved it and still have it. I just can’t throw it away. When I returned to Pittsburgh in 1995 there was a Foto camera shop across Liberty Avenue from my office in Fifth Avenue Place. They stocked and developed 126 film and I used it again. 126 film is no more.
The UHF antenna was very useful in our home in Streetsboro. Why? In the 1970s, during the Steelers Super Bowl years, the Youngstown TV stations, all UHF, carried the Steelers almost every Sunday afternoon. So, we watched the Steelers as if we were in Pittsburgh. We had the antenna rotor, too. Again, back in 1970s, the Pirates played great baseball and were on Channel 2 in Pittsburgh. Dad commandeered the TV and filled around with the rotor until a fuzzy picture came in. Sometimes, Channel 2 from Detroit would interfere.
I had a typewriter. I was a terrible typist. It took me hours to type a research paper on The Brothers Karamazov.
Phone books and catalogs from Sears, Penneys and Jewel were fascinating.
I have not parted with my mom’s stereo/record player/8 track tape player. I think I will keep it. It was a Christmas present from my dad in 1972.
The best Sunday paper in my humble opinion was the old Pittsburgh Press, which folded in 1992. I found more interesting reading in that paper than any other in the four states where I have lived.
My last memory of a pay phone was a filthy and broken phone in Baltimore.
The aluminum ice trays were great for getting the cubes unstuck. The plastic ones constantly break.
How about items like the containers for coffee, tea, sugar, flour, etc? Or a percolator? I found my mom’s…it’s made out of Pyrex. I don’t drink coffee but I kept it Or holy water fonts for your bedroom?
For that matter, atlases, the pre mentioned maps, encyclopedias, banana seat bikes, the milkman and I’m sure I will think of others…toll booth tickets (I don’t miss those).
Ah, good adds, PF. I actually used to be a milkman, working summers (1974 and 1975) for two years for what I believe was the last home delivery dairy in NW Illinois. FWIW, Oberweis Dairy based in Aurora was the last to stop home deliveries, finally giving up in 2024. I made $2.60 an hour plus commissions, covered much of a two county area doing rural and some town deliveries. Hit the road at 4:30 AM and was finished by lunchtime. Great job.
Sorry for the OT reminiscing. 😁
Frank, I think your Dairy still delivers.
https://www.oberweis.com/about-home-delivery
BTW, two stores in Cincinnati carry their milk. Great milk!
I was one of the first patients to receive penicillin; 1949.