Pneumatic Cashier

[larryJ]

Oh yeah!  Thermos bottles with a glass lining.  If you dropped it the glass would break and you had to throw it away.  I remember dropping them and then shaking it to see if the glass broke.

In an earlier mention of Woolworth's------------They always put their lunch counter and snack area in the front of the store.  The smell of the popcorn and other goodies would draw the customers in to snack or eat lunch and then they might decide to shop while they were there.  Some of them even made their own candies and that smell would draw people in off the street.

I better get off of here and go have breakfast, I am hungry now.

Larryj

[W. Gray]

I broke a good many glass Thermos bottles in my lunch pail when I was in grade school.

I also found out that if soda pop were put in a Thermos bottle, at some point before lunch time, it popped the cork and ruined my lunch. It took more than one try to finally find out why that soda pop would not stay put.

It seems that by a certain grade one would not be caught dead with a lunch pail and brown bags were the accepted norm, so a Thermos bottle was not an accessory.

I guess those Thermos bottles are now made of stainless steel.

[Wilma]

The last one my husband carried to work was stainless steel and unbreakable.  He carried it a good many years and it looked it, but it still kept the coffee hot.  It was a large one and had a handle for carrying, so it was easier to hang on to.

[W. Gray]

How about all the decals that people would plaster wall-to-wall in their rear passenger windows and maybe even back window showing all the places they had visited.

These seemed to be a badge of honor for a lot of folks.

[W. Gray]

Here are a couple 1950s vintage Kansas car window decals.

[larryJ]

Those with RV's still do this.  Some just buy a decal depicting the state they have visited.  Others have a map of the United States on the back of the RV and fill in the states they have been to.  Maybe we should start another thread and tell how many states we have been to.   

Larryj

[W. Gray]

How about in the days when there were no turn signals on automobiles?

Hand signals out the drivers window warned that you were going to slow down, turn right, or turn left. Even in zero degree weather. Seems to me your left hand out and pointing up was "I am turning right." Left hand stuck straight out was "I am slowing down." Left hand out and pointed down was "I am turning left."

Kansas and Missouri had different hand signals until the federal uniform motor vehicle law came into existence sometime in the 50s. The "turning right" signal was the same in both states but the other two were the opposite depending on which state you were driving in.

That same uniform law put the yellow "no passing" line in the center of the highway. Prior to that in the state of Missouri, the yellow "no passing" line was in the middle of the lane you were driving in.

My first used car was a 1953 Ford and it had the rarity called turn signals. The other guys at school thought I was one lucky guy. I believe it was an extra cost option when the car was new.

[Wilma]

In Kansas the arm signal for a left turn was straight out.  I am not sure about the others, but it would seem that the arm up and the finger pointing to the right would indicate a right turn.

[Ms Bear]

The arm with the hand down was the signal for slowing or stopping.  Kids loved to ride behind and driver and pretend to make the signals to confuse the drivers behind them.

[W. Gray]

I remember my father chuckling a few times when there were kids in a car ahead of us sticking their arm out to give "signals."


When your black and white television went on the blink, you would take the back off of the TV (even though there was a sign warning of high voltage) and check to see if all the tubes were lit up.

If a tube was dark, you could pull it and take it down to your local grocery store or hardware store having a "tube tester" and if the tube tested defective, you could buy a new tube right there and take it home.

If that did not work, you had to call a TV repairman. Today, it is sometimes more cost effective to go buy a new TV.