Some old Photos for your enjoyment

[Missionary]

I had the same job each Friday evening after our trip to the A&P Grocery along the canal in Benton Harbor, Michigan. I was half-way good mom would let me dump the coffee in the electric grinder at the store and flip the toggle switch. That was some high tech for this river running kid.

 

[JWFilips]

8 O'Clock or Yuban coffee? I used to get to flip the switch once in awhile too!

 

[Rick]

Guess I was deprived, maybe even abused . . . I never got to flip the switch.

 

[Bret4207]

Oh! The A&P! We had that and the IGA. The A&P's store brand was...Ann Paige? That big coffee grinder sat at the end of the check out. Loved that smell then! I never got to flip the switch either. Used to go to the "variety store" in town and buy comics and candy. There was invariably an older guy in there buying pipe tobacco. Seemed like there was an unending supply of old guys in town sucking pipes. There's another smell I miss, pipe smoke. Used to be a real nice old gent came in the gun shop, Ben Schaible I think his name was. A head of pure white hair and a pipe full of Captain Black I think. Always mixed with the smell of Hoppes #9 and made the most delicious, manly, gunny smell I ever came across. I'm sure Ben is long gone by now, but I'd give a lot to go back there for a few seconds.

 

[Rick]

Mom shopped at the Piggly Wiggly and yep, ground the coffee beans every week in there. At the time the Piggly Wiggly was in the countries largest shopping mall, even had an indoor ice skating rink. By today's standards it wouldn't even be a decent size strip mall but back then it was really something.

 

[CZ93X62]

S&H Green Stamps obtained the Win Model 290 semi-auto 22 LR that now resides in my safe, c. 1965 IIRC. Kind of a balky Steak & Lobster Debutante, but it will deign to run on most CCI ammunition. It and the SIG Mosquito share fussiness in diet selections.

There were also Blue Chip Stamps, and both types were circling the drain by the time I finished high school in 1973.

 

[popper]

Coffee grinder - forget which isle, Mom used Folgers, would let us flip the switch. Fine, med or course grind. Air degrades the beans so they ground only when purchased. Green stamps got daughter's car set, swing, other stuff. Wife had a part time job in KC at a 'clearing' mail order house. Processing real stamps, pennies, green stamps in envelopes to pay for stuff. Seldom ever got real paper money. Jeans were school wear until Jr. hi, then khakis. Wealthy kids had the ones with the little belt buckle on them. Sears at end of summer for next year's clothes and shoes. Kept sticking feet in those fluoroscopes, neat. Then told it was bad! Dr. Shoell's was the maker. Dr. Pepper really did have prune juice then, with some other 'stuff' they can't use now.
Penny hard candy unwrapped in a jar! Adults wore hats and vest or suit. Veil and gloves for the ladies. POLISHED shoes. Button-on collars and real ties - no clip-ons.

 

[JWFilips]

We Had an Old Jewish Clothing seller that came around once a month in his Station wagon filled to the brim with clothes! For the longest time I thought that is how every kid got a pair of jeans! Never saw any money exchanged just numbers written in an account book. I guess my Mom paid what she could every month! I guess folks trusted others back in the 50's & 60's
My Folks died in the early 70's but I still used the services of Mr Rickoff the clothing seller! I got Married in 1977 and I remember my new bride saying some old guy in a station wagon stopped by with a pair of blue jeans for you! At that point I guess the long tradition ended....she started buying them for me in the Mall. It was one of the hardest things for me to do.... to tell him after all those years I did not need his services

 

[Hawk]

We had an M.E.Moses, 5 & dime store, that had a huge candy island in the middle of the store.
You could buy chocolate by the pound!
I used to buy two or three lbs. of white chocolate. You'd get in one big brick and have to use a hammer to break off chunks to eat.

 

[462]

Mom made all my shirts till I was in 9th grade, when I had my neighborhood lawn mowing and paper route money. She made all my sisters clothes through high school, and knitted sweaters and socks for Dad and me. I remember going to the yardage store, with Mom and my sister, and Mom looking through the Simplicity patterns, picking out and buying the cloth. My jeans were J. C. Penney's. The legs were long enough to last the entire school year -- cuffs turned up once or twice -- and Mom would apply iron-on patches when I wore the knees out, playing marbles.

Yep, my sister and I licked S&H Green Stamps, though don't recall what the filled booklets were redeemed for. I do know that it wasn't a baseball glove, because I never had one. I had to borrow one, and being the only lefty I wore it on my right hand.

 

[358156 hp]

My Mom bought Butternut... it was pre-ground. I never got to run a coffee grinder in a store .

Looking around at life today, I don't think I can call this progess.

 

[david s]

My mom drank pots of coffee but it always came in a can. When we lived in New Jersey there was a local A&P market and right next door a family market the P&A market. When I lived in Wisconsin out by the interstate there was a fast food burger joint named Mr. Quick and right next door a sad old bar named Mr. Slow.

 

[Brad]

I feel bad for all you old guys who grew up in black and white.

 

[RicinYakima]

I never saw television until my Dad bought one in 1957, used for $20, with a round screen. We had just moved down to the flat land. I never could understand how people wanted to look at it when everything was black and white?

 

[462]

I was in 4th grade ('58) when we got our first television -- a black-and-white, of course.
Listened to many good radio programs, before that, and they were better than anything modern day television has to offer.

 

[358156 hp]

Channels 3, 6, 7, & 10. All in living black & white. You always had to tune in the channel a bit with the tuner dial every time you changed channels. And of course the horizontal hold would go bad and that reguired fine-tuning as well. This would have been mid-sixties for me. Saturday mornings meant getting up early for cartoons, sitting on the floor in my pajamas eating corn flakes (with sugar) while watching Kukla, Fran & Ollie. Our first color TV was hideously expensive and Mom had to buy it on a payment plan. I still remember the first time I saw Lucys red hair!

 

[Rally]

There was also a yellow stamp that competed with the green stamps, but I can't remember exactly what they were called. Remember when you had to have a spout or can opener to open a can of motor oil? A new pair of Lee jeans were so stiff and blue you about had to wash them once before you wore them. Only took about a month before the outline of my pocket knife showed through on my right front pocket. The leather tag on the back always lasted longer than the jeans. You could tie a fish stringer to any belt loop without tearing it off while wading. Sweat shirts weighed about five pounds and the wind didn't blow through them. JC Penneys had the best whitey tighties and T shirts by far. Coast to Coast hardware stores ran .22 shells on sale regularly for .49 a box. Zebco 33 reels were the Cadilac of reels on the river and "Golden Stren" was all the rave in fishing lines. A half pound of pure carmel, rolled lightly in powder sugar was .25 cents at a local candy store. Lots of people complaining when cigarettes went to .45 cents a pack! Took either 4 muskrats, two coon, or one fox hide to buy a tank of gas.

 

[StrawHat]

I remember my class being called to the gym. There was a TV on the floor and we were told to sight on the floor. It was one of the first space launches! Big doings back then.

Kevin

 

[Bret4207]

The TV repair man. Ours was Roger Glode. Seemed like Roger came to the house once a week or so to fix something on the TV. Every time he came I would try to watch over his shoulder and I'd get a warning aobut never, ever, EVER touching anything inside the TV or I'd die a firery, horrible death! We got channel 3 out of Burlington Vt, , usually channel 5 out of Plattsburgh, sometimes channel 6 or 12 from Ottawa, Ontario in the winter and channel 2 would always come in if you didn't mind lots of "snow" on the screen. Channel 2 was out of Montreal and was in French. In the end, we were pretty much a 1 1/2 station area. Even that required double stack antennas, boosters, rotors ( a happy day for my dad when he didn't have to climb up the roof after a wind) and even then it was hit or miss. The TV in the bar was black and white into the mind 70's. We got a color fairly early on, late 60s maybe. I never saw an ABC show until I started driving. CBS and some NBC. Never saw PBS until I got in the Corps. Radio was AM unless you wanted to listen to WEZF FM "Beautiful Music" out of Burlington. I never caught an entire Paul Harvey broadcast until I got in the Corps either. I guess you could say I never got "The rest of the story...".

 

[Rick H]

Fiddling with the fine tuning and horizontal hold....LOL. Then just before you gave up you gave the set a good whack on the top and it settled down until the next change of channels.....precision tuning via forceful application of right or left palm in the proper spot. Why not, worked on the kids?