It took three minutes for the TV to warm up.
Nobody owned a purebred dog.
When a quarter was a decent allowance, and made with real Silver!
You’d reach into a muddy gutter for a penny. Made with real copper! Looking to see if it was a 1943 copper penny!***
You got your windshield cleaned, oil checked, and gas pumped, without asking, all for free, every time. And you didn’t pay for air? And, you got trading stamps to boot.
Laundry detergent had free glasses, dishes or towels hidden inside the box. Not to mention Cracker Jacks!
It was considered a great privilege to be taken out to dinner at a real restaurant with your parents.
They threatened to keep kids back a grade if they failed…and they did it!
When a 57 Chevy was everyone’s dream car… to cruise, peel out, lay rubber or watch submarine races, and people went steady.
No one ever asked where the car keys were because they were always in the car, in the ignition, and the doors were never locked.
Playing baseball with no adults to help kids with the rules of the game.
Stuff from the store came without safety caps and hermetic seals because no one had yet tried to poison a perfect stranger.
*** According to the American Numismatic Association, the 1943 copper–alloy cent is one of the most idealized and potentially one of the most sought–after items in American numismatics. Nearly all circulating pennies at that time were struck in zinc–coated steel because copper and nickel were needed for the Allied war effort.
Approximately 40 1943 copper–alloy cents are known to remain in existence. Coin experts speculate that they were struck by accident when copper–alloy 1–cent blanks remained in the press hopper when production began on the new steel pennies.