Remember When

[W. Gray]

Does anyone remember:

When postal trucks, street collection boxes, and pickup boxes that use to sit on street corners, etc., were painted olive drab with yellow lettering? At times, it was difficult from a distance to distinguish between an army truck and a postal truck.

When the post man delivered mail to the front door? If he had a truck, the mailman parked it in the neighborhood and using a side pouch delivered mail on foot.

When eight sided stop signs were painted yellow with black lettering? The changeover was 1954. Sometimes the stop signs had glass beads embedded in the lettering.

When most high school boys on a date did not want to be caught dead driving a four door sedan? The only thing worse was a station wagon. A two door sedan, hardtop, or convertible was the preferred car.

When the Army wore olive drab uniforms? In 1954 the Army switched to green over a period of several years. Now the Army is in the process of switching from green to blue uniforms with a target year completion in 2015. The troops will now look like, more or less, the cavalry depicted in the movies. When I first went in to the army, one could wear a khaki summer uniform with shorts and a tan pith helmet as an option. Khakis were tossed in the 70s and greens were worn year around. The pith helmet and the shorts did not go over very well.

When the military used flame throwers, as shown in a lot of old movies? These were tossed by the Army in 1978, or so.

When cars had 6 volt batteries? My 53 and 54 fords had 6 volt batteries. In 1956, Ford switched to a 12 volt battery. The reason given was that there were so many accessories on "modern" cars that more electrical power was needed. I have often wondered why cars have not gone to 18 or 24 volts since then, although my uncle had an eighties Pontiac diesel sedan that had two batteries under the hood.

Little League, high school, and college teams used wood bats? Now I have heard there may be a trend back to wood.

When a night at the movies included a bloc of filmed commercials, a newsreel from the movie studio's news department, a cartoon, and perhaps an educational short subject?

[Diane Amberg]

I do remember a lot of that. I don't ever remember seeing a mail truck around us though. While growing up out in the country we had rural carriers that drove their own vehicles. PA still does.  For a time there were cluster rural boxes on our country corner, but later they delivered individually from the Landenberg post mistress. (Our Mailman also grew Christmas trees. He put his kids through school from them.)
   Where we are in town now, in this neighborhood, we have wall boxes on the houses and a walking carrier who still uses his pouch. When we first moved here in 1989 the mail carrier still had a leather pouch.The house we left, on the other side of town, delivered to our rural style boxes but from his truck. We had a newspaper tube attached to the same post. No more news paper kids now either. It gets flung toward our driveway from a car and we just hope for the best.
   Al's old blue 1958 VW bug had a six volt battery in the back seat. He loved that old thing because it was so simple he could fix anything on it. I remember the old stop signs too, usually full of bullet holes.
Flame throwers also, I remember them from the Viet Nam news footage. This is fun.Thanks!

[larryJ]

I, too, remember most of that.  Our mailman still parks his truck, actually in front of our house, and carries the mail in a pouch.  Most of the street corner boxes are gone.  There are mailboxes to which you can drive up to and deposit your mail without having to get out of the car at our post offices.  I used to mail most of my letters and bills that way until a few years ago when someone stole the mail out of the mailboxes.  I had mailed four bills that day and had to repay them and stop payment on the other checks.  Now I just walk inside the post office and mail them.  Our paper delivery guy (my son used to have this route, but the paper did away with kids delivering and only used adults now) always "porches" our paper probably because I give him a nice tip at Christmas time.  I think I remember wearing olive drab fatigues in the late sixties, however.  It was about this time the Army was issuing cami's to overseas troops, green for Vietnam and tan for the deserts.  And, at the intersection by my oldest granddaughter's school, there is a four-way stop and has red octagonal signs with flashing red lights around the edges powered by solar energy.  However, this is the only place I have seem them.

Thanks for the post.

Larryj

[W. Gray]

Larry,

You are right about the Class C fatigue uniforms.

The Class A dress uniforms, however, changed from olive drab to green in the fifties and the Class A summer khakis were eliminated in the 70s.

The switchover to blue from green for Class A dress uniforms has already begun and will be completed in 2015.

For many years, the Army has had and still has an all white Class A dress uniform that can be worn as an option. I only saw one person ever wear it and he stood out like a sore thumb. At first, everyone mistook the guy for being Navy.

[jarhead]

When I was in, we had OD utilities too. Wore the OD or cammo jungle utilities in Nam but after Nam, right back to the OD utilities. Has khakis too but never wore them and also had what they called Tropical uniform. Don't recall ever wearing the trop trousers but the trop blouse is what we wore with our dress greens. The trops were the same color as the khakis but was one was soft and the other like card board. I think now all Marines have dress blues but not in my day--unless you were the Honor-man graduating from your platoon of boot camp---which I wasn't !!

[W. Gray]

Jarhead, if you saw the movie Flags of Our Fathers one of the Iwo Jima flag raisers was known rather comically as "Tyrone Power" because he was so concerned with his good looks. According to the movie he chose to join the Marine Corps simply because they had the best looking uniforms.

I had khakis but never wore them because the command I was in had mandated dress greens year around even though the khakis were not yet obsolete. Khakis took a lot of maintenance and wrinkled very quickly.

On a tour in Thailand, I wore the complete Tropical Worsted uniform in lieu of khakis. That was more enjoyable wearing and was the most comfortable uniform I ever wore.

[Wilma]

I had a chance to see a Marine dress coat up close, like within touching distance.  All red, blue and gold.  It was gorgeous.

[jarhead]

Waldo,
One of the most stupid things in the service happened to me over a uniform. Right before going to Nam I was at Camp Pendleton in what they called Staging Bn. It was getting the final shots, sign wills, power of attorney and in my case sign a waiver because my oldest  brother was already" in country" so I had to waive my rights---all that kind of mumbo jumbo. Had an inspection and I did not ever receive my over-coat when I graduated boot camp. I had my OD rain coat  (which I never wore) but no"Sgt Hans Shultz" (from Hogans Heros) coat . So it cost me $50-$60 for a coat that unless you were in Siberia I can't imagine ever wearing it-----but it had to be in that duffel bag so when I got to Nam and stepped off that plane in Da Nang---where it felt like you just stepped into a blast furnace---but I had that overcoat just in case of radical global cooling.
You wanna really piss a Marine off? When he is in his dress blues tell him he looks like a "sea going bell hop "---or ask him to scream "holler for Phillip Morris" The fight will be on !!
Wilma ,was the Marine inside that gorgeous coat just as handsome ? If so must of been one of my look-a-likes because as I said before---I never owned a set of dress blues

[Wilma]

There wasn't a Marine inside the coat, but the little boy that was holding his father's coat is much more handsome than you have ever been.  He is also my great grandson.  He was also very proud of his father's coat.

[W. Gray]

I think everyone knows that the tour of duty in Vietnam was one year or the rest of your life, whichever came first.