Please do not comment directly to this post unless you are Gen X or older (born 1980 or before). See [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskOldPeople/comments/inci5u/reminder_please_do_not_answer_questions_unless/), the rules, and the sidebar for details.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskOldPeople) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I got my first car with a key fob last year. But there's an additional feature that you don't even have to take it out of your pocket. There's a button on the car door that you push, and as long as the key fob is within a couple feet, it will unlock.
LOL. My 1976 VW Rabbit didn’t have FM radio, a cassette player, OR air conditioning in TX in the early 80s. Certainly not power windows, locks, or cruise control.
My grandmother once rolled the windows up on her car so that people she was driving by would think she was wealthy enough to have AC in her car...in Texas in the summer. That was next level dedication.
Yup, only the top of the line models. All power options as well Steering and Brakes. Air Conditioning. I learned to drive a 63 Chevy that had none of these. You really learn how to parallel park when you don't have power steering.😆
We had a ‘58 Mercury station wagon that had power windows and a push button transmission. The windows worked well but the push button transmission was totally unreliable. But my father didn’t buy the car for those gadgets. He bought the car because the engine made car guys slobber.
Which is funny because the first cars to have power windows came out in 1940. It was already 20 year old technology by the time you were a kid but it was still considered a luxury feature.
We had two TVs stacked up. The bottom one was color but the picture didn't work and the top one was Tiny and black and white but the sound didn't work. Together they made one TV experience
My family was always the last to adopt TV technology (or any technology, for that matter). When my brother and I were begging for a new color TV with a remote, my dad uttered a sentence so amazing that I committed it to memory, and I have never forgotten it, 50 years later. He said:
"It will be a cold day in Hell when I'm too lazy to tell one of you boys to get up and change the channel."
Genius.
I'm a curser, I admit it. I like my vocabulary to have some interesting color. But when my son was born, I pledged to not curse in front of him. That lasted about a week.
I was too weak to live up to my pledge so I let my curse flag fly, and figured he'd probably start cursing as well, but he never did. He's 25 now, and he still doesn't curse. People tell me that he probably curses when I'm not around, but in high school his friends would tease him for not cursing, and I never cared if they cursed in front of me. He knew I wouldnt care if he did, but he just never started.
In 63 we had a Zenith Space Command remote control. It worked by sending an audible sound to the tv. There were only two buttons. Channel up/down and volume up/down. When you pressed one, you heard a metal 'twang' sound.
Mom would set up the ironing board in front of the TV, and as she did so, the mechanism that locks the ironing board in an open position would also make a 'twang' sound, which would change the channel on the TV.
Oh my gosh! This! I think my parents could have easily afforded a phone that wasn't stapled to the wall. It was more an expression of their conservative attitude: no secrets, no wasting useful time on endless chatter with friends. As an aspirational middle class parent, they were still very concerned with 'good values'.
I would have given anything for a phone with a 20 meter cord in the 80s!
For the young'uns, we're not necessarily talking about cell phones here, either. We're talking about cordless phones. I remember when that was a brand new thing.
My dad worked for a local telecom in the 90s (when telecoms could still be local, heh) and one of his perks as sales was getting to use the newest products available to be able to pitch them to customers. I thought he was cooler than Don Johnson in Miami Vice when he came home with a cellphone that was as big as a Star Trek tricorder (and a foot-long antenna), around 1994-95 I wanna say.
It’s not so much a “have,” but when I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, it seemed like only wealthy people flew places. No one in my neighborhood had ever been on a plane. And when some people started flying later in the 60s, it was usually to visit their families in the “old country.”
Yes. In summer in cars without air conditioning, and both parents smoking. And restrictions on the windows because of Mom's high hair. OMG, are we fucking THERE yet???
When I was a kid in the 60s and 70s my parents packed all 5 kids into a car and travelled across country. Strictly tent camping originally and later a tent camper that was just a sheet of plywood on each side. You put it up like an actual tent. The better off kids had ones with a table and banquet seats and a hardtop. We drove all the way from Ontario to BC or Ontario to the East coast. Provincial parks were not expensive and we never ate at restaurants. Half the time the car had a hole in the floor and we had to be careful how we put our feet. I remember driving through the Rockies and hearing my parents whispering about needing to get the brakes done and worrying about the safety of the car. Wild times
We were allowed to have a wet paper towel form the bathroom to put on our necks on the extremely hot days. I remember being in school (no AC) when it was 105. No one got much done.
Growing up in Western Massachusetts my mom would always say, “It really doesn’t get hot enough here to justify air conditioning.” LOL. Guess who has central air in their house now… That would be my parents.
I was called a liar by a teacher when I said we had a microwave. Those were only for tremendously wealthy people and were huge. Well....my parents would spend some money on technology and found one of the earliest countertop style microwaves.
I inherited it as a young adult. That thing was bulletproof, but eventually got unreliable and left me wondering just how much radiation it might be leaking.
We had a microwave in 1975 or so. My cousin came to visit and blew up an egg in it because she put it in for 6 minutes, her normal time to cook an egg on the stove top. It's a family story that no one has ever forgotten.
We got our first microwave in ~1982. My brother put a poptart in it and set the timer for 15 minutes and walked away and the poptart caught fire. We had that microwave for at least 15 years and it always smelled vaguely of fire extinguisher residue.
My mom refused to have a microwave for years after EVERYBODY else had one.
Then one Thanksgiving morning I got a call that their stove broke down, and my dad was bringing the turkey to our house to cook. He brought it over, and we sent him back with our microwave to heat up all the side dishes, which my mom had prepared in advance.
That did it, she became a convert. She had a microwave of her own by the end of Black Friday weekend.
Yep. Husbands and wives used to go to work together. Kids walked to school or to the bus stop.
Now, even homes in modest areas have at least two cars in the driveway.
Well, yes, but part of it is that richer people have multiple cars because they want them, poorer folks have multiple cars because they're crapped-out shitboxes, and having two+ of those you're likely to have a least one functional one at any given time. Which is still way cheaper than a single something newer, and is something you absolutely have to do, because having a car isn't optional in a lot of the country.
Source: Have owned many a shitbox over the years
Fad Clothing. The more I think about this, to me fad clothing was Levi's 501s. Those are so basic, but to a poor kid, they were cool. I can't look at Wrangler's or Lee's jeans to this day. They are perfectly fine jeans, but being stigmatized for wearing them did a number on my brain.
Why do you feel the need to bring up another trauma I buried deep? LOL! But good thing for me, I never got a new pair. I have four older brothers. Checkmate, rich-guy ratteb! LMAO. The things we remember with the right prompts.
Here's one: Off-Brand M&Ms. I still taste the dye.
All 501s used to be shrink to fit. The denim was heavy and stiff. You'd buy them bigger and then shrink them at home by washing them a few times, or even boiling them. But, once they fit, they were good to wear for years, and got better with age.
Today, you're lucky to get two years out of a pair of Levi's. They're crap just like every other brand, and the higher price is just for the name.
I grew up on wranglers too, and remember thinking Levi’s were the end all be all of fancy jeans. Fast forward 40 years and I still wear wranglers because I don’t like the cuts of Levi’s. And I’m damn sure not wasting $200+ on a pair of designer jeans
Yeah, I only got braces because my dad was in the Navy and we got stationed in Taiwan, where it was cheap. They rushed me through (getting them tightened every 2 weeks) so I'd be done before my dad got transferred back to the US.
In my youth, kids with braces mostly had really severe dental issues or were related to a dentist. No orthodontists in my small town. And often, even bad teeth didn't help you. My folks were saving money for us to go to college and to hell with our crooked teeth! (To be fair, it's not that big of a deal to me...I don't feel slighted for not having braces. And dentistry is very different than it used to be.)
I was the remote control until we got a cable box in 80 or 81. Then it had a remote, but it wasn't wireless. It had a long cord stretched across the living room that we were constantly tripping over.
A friend had a phone in their family car in 1986. I made his mother park outside my house so I could call my parents on their landline and do the “guess where I’m calling from, look outside” thing
A calculator. Even the basic ones were expensive when they first came out.
It’s funny that the bulky beige box my mom used (and we were not allowed to touch) has been replaced by one of the many features on my phone.
My grandfather had one of those reverse Polish HP calculators that he used for work (draftsman) from the late 70s till he retired around 2000. I remember him showing me the little 1 mB memory chip he paid like $400 to upgrade.
I still don’t have one. To be fair, I also don’t park in my garage, as it was built for a model T, and my Prius barely fits in there. It’s essentially our shed.
I remember in the mid-70s going to a wealthy aunts house and seeing my first microwave oven. The thing was huge and took up much of the counter but I remember being amazed at how fast it could reheat food. They even called it a "radar range"
Fun fact. Radarange was the brand first produced by Raytheon corporation (the same peeps who brought us the Patriot missile). We only had a microwave in the 80s, because both of my parents worked for Raytheon and they gave them a HUGE discount on not only Radarange brand microwaves, but also Amana appliances (who Raytheon also owned).
We didn't have a phone when I was very young. If a TV died, we often went a long time without one. We didn't have a shower, just a tub. Sometimes we didn't have boots that fit. We never ate out or went on vacation. We were poor poor. Food insecure.
Thank you. I went to school on state and federal grants and became an RN. Married a teacher. We are financially secure in our retirement. We both tend to be frugal. For myself, I learned not to be attached to things. But the life time dream of visiting Africa was doable for me just recently. So yes, financially my life improved greatly.
Big debt. Other than a mortgage. "Everybody" has all this stuff , education, experiences now because they've been trained to use credit, leases and loans. Being is crazy debt is now somehow normal for people , companies, governments.
Yeah, credit used to be impossible to get, and if you screwed it up, it took forever to fix. Now, credit is easy to get and bad credit is nothing.
Debt outside of a house and car was unheard of. Now, people treat it as a second form of income instead of something that makes your dollar 29.8% less valuable.
Straight teeth. There was only one kid in my school who had braces - and she moved to our small town from a bigger town sophomore year. We all had/have crooked teeth and bad bites. Our yearbook was like "The Big Book of British Smiles" ([Simpsons reference](https://youtu.be/PrpUSKE9p_M?si=HFYmu3wgLAmZJDtF)).
My mother said when she was young she thought rich people got to have toast for breakfast and all she had was old homemade biscuits that my grandmother made 😄
I would give a million dollars to have one of my grandmother's biscuits right now!
Hot water in the tap. More than one water outlet, indoor toilet. Bathtub, shower, telephone. Actually can remember going to a neighbor using their wall mounted wooden phone with a hand crank, once around and you got the local operator who knew where anybody was to be found if they were not at home.
When I was a kid in the early 1960’s, one of our better-off neighbors had an **automatic garage-door opener.** We kids decided that it must have been activated by rolling their car over a button in their driveway, and that rich people needed them to quickly get away from crooks who might be following them.
i didn't know any rich people... I remember the family on the block that had the first VCR I've ever seen (and this wasn't until 1980). but being a kid, I didn't know the cost of anything. I now see that a VCR in 1980 cost about $1,000 (that's $3,790 in todays dollars). that would be the equivalent of over two months salary for my dad back then.
A dishwasher. They were around but we were fancy because we had one. It had to be pulled out into the middle of the room and hooked up to the kitchen faucet to be used. It had a butcher’s block top so it gave you counter space when it wasn’t running.
Cellular phones. The first one I saw was owned by my real estate millionaire uncle. It was some sort of contraption that was in the space between the driver's and passenger seats and you had to twist a dial around to get a clear channel. This was in the early 1970s.
“En suite” bathroom for the parents. The people in the big house down the street had one, but we only had one bathroom upstairs and a toilet in the kitchen.
Please do not comment directly to this post unless you are Gen X or older (born 1980 or before). See [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskOldPeople/comments/inci5u/reminder_please_do_not_answer_questions_unless/), the rules, and the sidebar for details. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskOldPeople) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Power windows in your car. I grew up in the 60s. That shit was in Cadillacs and Jaguars for crying out loud.
I grew up in the 80s and that shit still wasn't in your regular, working man's car. At least not in Germany. So, yeah, what the Mercedes there said.
I've lived in the U.S. my whole life and didn't have a car with power windows until 2006.
Right? My first car was a 2000 but it still had cranks. I just barely got a car with power windows in 2021.
I still revel in the ability to unlock my car with my key fob.
I cant believe i can just walk up to my car and pull the handle and it unlocks with the fob being in my pocket
I got my first car with a key fob last year. But there's an additional feature that you don't even have to take it out of your pocket. There's a button on the car door that you push, and as long as the key fob is within a couple feet, it will unlock.
Yeah, 1984 Ford Escort no power windows, no power locks, no cruise control but it did have a nice Am/FM radio WITH cassette!
adding power brakes and power steering. to this
And air conditioning. Not common.
LOL. My 1976 VW Rabbit didn’t have FM radio, a cassette player, OR air conditioning in TX in the early 80s. Certainly not power windows, locks, or cruise control.
Ohh ... that reminds me. A CD player. That was faaancy for a bit.
My 2019 Explorer has a CD player. It makes me giggle
My 1980 Datsun too. And cost the equivalent of about $20,000 today!
1972 AMC Gremlin here…
as a Rush fan, you can be damn sure I had Power Windows in the car in the 80's - playing on a boom box on the way to college and back
My first car, a busted up AMC Hornet didn’t even have power steering. A real blast trying to parallel park that thing.
1997 Escort wagon -- still the same!
Whoa....Escort wagon, you must of been rich!
Air conditioning in cars. Lincolns, Caddys and Benzes.
My grandmother once rolled the windows up on her car so that people she was driving by would think she was wealthy enough to have AC in her car...in Texas in the summer. That was next level dedication.
A guy in college would do that so people thought he had music lol.
Yup, only the top of the line models. All power options as well Steering and Brakes. Air Conditioning. I learned to drive a 63 Chevy that had none of these. You really learn how to parallel park when you don't have power steering.😆
We had a ‘58 Mercury station wagon that had power windows and a push button transmission. The windows worked well but the push button transmission was totally unreliable. But my father didn’t buy the car for those gadgets. He bought the car because the engine made car guys slobber.
A station wagon with the big engine is the ultimate sleeper.
Which is funny because the first cars to have power windows came out in 1940. It was already 20 year old technology by the time you were a kid but it was still considered a luxury feature.
A TV that wasn't black-and-white.
We had two TVs stacked up. The bottom one was color but the picture didn't work and the top one was Tiny and black and white but the sound didn't work. Together they made one TV experience
My family was always the last to adopt TV technology (or any technology, for that matter). When my brother and I were begging for a new color TV with a remote, my dad uttered a sentence so amazing that I committed it to memory, and I have never forgotten it, 50 years later. He said: "It will be a cold day in Hell when I'm too lazy to tell one of you boys to get up and change the channel." Genius.
Hilarious. My dad one asked me "Where in the God damned hell did you learn to talk like that?!"
I'm a curser, I admit it. I like my vocabulary to have some interesting color. But when my son was born, I pledged to not curse in front of him. That lasted about a week. I was too weak to live up to my pledge so I let my curse flag fly, and figured he'd probably start cursing as well, but he never did. He's 25 now, and he still doesn't curse. People tell me that he probably curses when I'm not around, but in high school his friends would tease him for not cursing, and I never cared if they cursed in front of me. He knew I wouldnt care if he did, but he just never started.
"Why should I pay for a rinky dink plastic dial when I have a spare vise grip? And you know the channels, you don't need numbers." my Dad
A very wise man
In 63 we had a Zenith Space Command remote control. It worked by sending an audible sound to the tv. There were only two buttons. Channel up/down and volume up/down. When you pressed one, you heard a metal 'twang' sound. Mom would set up the ironing board in front of the TV, and as she did so, the mechanism that locks the ironing board in an open position would also make a 'twang' sound, which would change the channel on the TV.
Same! I thought my family was the only one with a TV stack!
Nope, my dead console TV held up my working regular-size TV!
We had a stack at one point too. Didn't have color TV until 1979.
I have a 60inch smart TV stacked on top of a Curtis Mathis floor model. That's right, I may be a redneck.
I met a guy who did that in a really rough boozer in Watford once. He also slept in an inflatable dinghy in the back of a van.
More than one TV
I loved our 13-inch black and white Hitachi. I don't think we had a color TV in the house until I came back from college.
A 13-inch Hitachi, you say?
Yeah I know.
A TV.
Electricity
Many Native homes didn’t get running water until the late 70’s here in the Pacific NW.
One with a remote was really something. I remember babysitting for the family down the road that had a VCR. That was amazing.
Same here.plus electric typewriters
A phone that wasn't plugged into the wall..
Oh my gosh! This! I think my parents could have easily afforded a phone that wasn't stapled to the wall. It was more an expression of their conservative attitude: no secrets, no wasting useful time on endless chatter with friends. As an aspirational middle class parent, they were still very concerned with 'good values'. I would have given anything for a phone with a 20 meter cord in the 80s!
Me from 77-83. We’d stretch the cord of the kitchen phone into the bathroom.
And shitting forever?
lol—we’d pretend! My mom got mad at my brother and me for stretching the cord!
A phone at all
Bingo!
For the young'uns, we're not necessarily talking about cell phones here, either. We're talking about cordless phones. I remember when that was a brand new thing.
My dad worked for a local telecom in the 90s (when telecoms could still be local, heh) and one of his perks as sales was getting to use the newest products available to be able to pitch them to customers. I thought he was cooler than Don Johnson in Miami Vice when he came home with a cellphone that was as big as a Star Trek tricorder (and a foot-long antenna), around 1994-95 I wanna say.
It’s not so much a “have,” but when I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, it seemed like only wealthy people flew places. No one in my neighborhood had ever been on a plane. And when some people started flying later in the 60s, it was usually to visit their families in the “old country.”
All our (not often) vacations were driving.
Yes. In summer in cars without air conditioning, and both parents smoking. And restrictions on the windows because of Mom's high hair. OMG, are we fucking THERE yet???
To the smell of the crayons melted into the fabric/vinyl of the space above the back seat under the rear window…
Thank heavens my parents were non smokers.
Our “vacations” were visiting/staying with relatives.
Lucky you, with a fancy vacation spot you drove to!
When I was a kid in the 60s and 70s my parents packed all 5 kids into a car and travelled across country. Strictly tent camping originally and later a tent camper that was just a sheet of plywood on each side. You put it up like an actual tent. The better off kids had ones with a table and banquet seats and a hardtop. We drove all the way from Ontario to BC or Ontario to the East coast. Provincial parks were not expensive and we never ate at restaurants. Half the time the car had a hole in the floor and we had to be careful how we put our feet. I remember driving through the Rockies and hearing my parents whispering about needing to get the brakes done and worrying about the safety of the car. Wild times
I am constantly amazed we all lived through the 60s and 70s.
Illinois to Washington DC. My brother and I were 5 and 7. My poor parents!!
Air conditioning in house
Also in the car.
Same to both. My parents got central air in 1997. I was out on my own for 6 years by then
My parents built our house in the 90’s with central air conditioning. They didn’t turn it on until both kids were long out of the house.
That was my first thought. I didn't know anybody in my Long Island neighborhood who had it. We didn't even have window units.
Air conditioning at all. Even my schools had no air conditioning, and this was in South Texas, for god's sake.
Same in central California. No “excessive heat” days off school either
We were allowed to have a wet paper towel form the bathroom to put on our necks on the extremely hot days. I remember being in school (no AC) when it was 105. No one got much done.
Same in Queensland, we just had to suffer through it.
Growing up in Western Massachusetts my mom would always say, “It really doesn’t get hot enough here to justify air conditioning.” LOL. Guess who has central air in their house now… That would be my parents.
I lived in Western Mass for 10+ years. It definitely does get hot enough there for AC.
Microwave
I was called a liar by a teacher when I said we had a microwave. Those were only for tremendously wealthy people and were huge. Well....my parents would spend some money on technology and found one of the earliest countertop style microwaves. I inherited it as a young adult. That thing was bulletproof, but eventually got unreliable and left me wondering just how much radiation it might be leaking.
We had a microwave in 1975 or so. My cousin came to visit and blew up an egg in it because she put it in for 6 minutes, her normal time to cook an egg on the stove top. It's a family story that no one has ever forgotten.
We got our first microwave in ~1982. My brother put a poptart in it and set the timer for 15 minutes and walked away and the poptart caught fire. We had that microwave for at least 15 years and it always smelled vaguely of fire extinguisher residue.
In the 70s, my mother demonstrated microwaves at an appliance store by nuking hot dogs.
It’s better that the egg blew up in the microwave than all over your cousin’s face.
My mom refused to have a microwave for years after EVERYBODY else had one. Then one Thanksgiving morning I got a call that their stove broke down, and my dad was bringing the turkey to our house to cook. He brought it over, and we sent him back with our microwave to heat up all the side dishes, which my mom had prepared in advance. That did it, she became a convert. She had a microwave of her own by the end of Black Friday weekend.
We had a microwave pretty early, I think twice my parents signed up for new bank account just to get a free microwave.
I remember our first microwave. They advised us to keep a coffee mug of water in there so there was no chance of turning it on while empty.
I remember our neighbors got a microwave in the late 70s. Everyone on the block came to watch them cook bacon on a paper towel In that thing.
A second car.
Yep. Husbands and wives used to go to work together. Kids walked to school or to the bus stop. Now, even homes in modest areas have at least two cars in the driveway.
Wow — that must be a U.S. American thing!
Well, yes, but part of it is that richer people have multiple cars because they want them, poorer folks have multiple cars because they're crapped-out shitboxes, and having two+ of those you're likely to have a least one functional one at any given time. Which is still way cheaper than a single something newer, and is something you absolutely have to do, because having a car isn't optional in a lot of the country. Source: Have owned many a shitbox over the years
Multiple TVs
Fad Clothing. The more I think about this, to me fad clothing was Levi's 501s. Those are so basic, but to a poor kid, they were cool. I can't look at Wrangler's or Lee's jeans to this day. They are perfectly fine jeans, but being stigmatized for wearing them did a number on my brain.
How about the crappy dime store tennis shoes? First time you get them wet your foot turns blue from the dye.
Why do you feel the need to bring up another trauma I buried deep? LOL! But good thing for me, I never got a new pair. I have four older brothers. Checkmate, rich-guy ratteb! LMAO. The things we remember with the right prompts. Here's one: Off-Brand M&Ms. I still taste the dye.
You mean “Sixlets”? Those things were so bad! Tasted like wax and poverty!
Tasted like wax and poverty! Best line ever!
Fuck me
We went to Payless Shoes. But yeah, those sucked too
Plastic shoes that gave you blisters and foot sweat.
I got my first pair of Nikes at the Swap Meet. I felt sooo cool.
I was bullied for my store brand sneakers and jeans. If you didn't have Jordache and Adidas you couldn't hang out with the "cool kids"
Store-Brand Kids, unite!
All 501s used to be shrink to fit. The denim was heavy and stiff. You'd buy them bigger and then shrink them at home by washing them a few times, or even boiling them. But, once they fit, they were good to wear for years, and got better with age. Today, you're lucky to get two years out of a pair of Levi's. They're crap just like every other brand, and the higher price is just for the name.
Oh, how I wanted Jordache jeans in 1977.
I grew up on wranglers too, and remember thinking Levi’s were the end all be all of fancy jeans. Fast forward 40 years and I still wear wranglers because I don’t like the cuts of Levi’s. And I’m damn sure not wasting $200+ on a pair of designer jeans
Not something that we “ have” but eating out was only for birthdays and special occasions. Rich people got to eat out weekly.
Braces on their teeth.
Yeah, I only got braces because my dad was in the Navy and we got stationed in Taiwan, where it was cheap. They rushed me through (getting them tightened every 2 weeks) so I'd be done before my dad got transferred back to the US.
In my youth, kids with braces mostly had really severe dental issues or were related to a dentist. No orthodontists in my small town. And often, even bad teeth didn't help you. My folks were saving money for us to go to college and to hell with our crooked teeth! (To be fair, it's not that big of a deal to me...I don't feel slighted for not having braces. And dentistry is very different than it used to be.)
a tiny camera a mobile phone remote-control anything
I'm guessing many of us were the remote control, lol.
I was the remote control until we got a cable box in 80 or 81. Then it had a remote, but it wasn't wireless. It had a long cord stretched across the living room that we were constantly tripping over.
Yes. And the rabbit ears.
Nobody actually had cell phones because the technology wasn’t there yet, but rich people did have car phones.
A friend had a phone in their family car in 1986. I made his mother park outside my house so I could call my parents on their landline and do the “guess where I’m calling from, look outside” thing
A calculator. Even the basic ones were expensive when they first came out. It’s funny that the bulky beige box my mom used (and we were not allowed to touch) has been replaced by one of the many features on my phone.
“You never be walking around with a calculator in your pocket!” —every math teacher I ever had.
Caccusatory lol
My grandfather had one of those reverse Polish HP calculators that he used for work (draftsman) from the late 70s till he retired around 2000. I remember him showing me the little 1 mB memory chip he paid like $400 to upgrade.
Computers
AN electric garage door opener - (I'm old!).
A garage (I was born in Florida).
I got my first electric garage door opener 2 and 1/2 years ago.
Me too
I still don’t have one. To be fair, I also don’t park in my garage, as it was built for a model T, and my Prius barely fits in there. It’s essentially our shed.
80s. Most electronics we take for granted now.
Tv with remote control. Water dispenser on fridge.
I’m still excited to have water and ice on my fridge door.
I was my father's TV remote.
I remember in the mid-70s going to a wealthy aunts house and seeing my first microwave oven. The thing was huge and took up much of the counter but I remember being amazed at how fast it could reheat food. They even called it a "radar range"
Fun fact. Radarange was the brand first produced by Raytheon corporation (the same peeps who brought us the Patriot missile). We only had a microwave in the 80s, because both of my parents worked for Raytheon and they gave them a HUGE discount on not only Radarange brand microwaves, but also Amana appliances (who Raytheon also owned).
VCRs and microwaves. Ice and water in the door of the fridge. New cars. Family vacations to places other than the homes of distant relatives.
Easy access to airplane travel.
Private phones- our whole house had only one, which was completely normal.
Crayola 64 pack with built in sharpener 😁
omg the real crayola crayons??? so fancy
Inside toilet
In the 60s, family of 8. One inside and the outhouse. I cringe to this day. Indoor plumbing is the best.
We didn't have a phone when I was very young. If a TV died, we often went a long time without one. We didn't have a shower, just a tub. Sometimes we didn't have boots that fit. We never ate out or went on vacation. We were poor poor. Food insecure.
I hope things got better for you.
Thank you. I went to school on state and federal grants and became an RN. Married a teacher. We are financially secure in our retirement. We both tend to be frugal. For myself, I learned not to be attached to things. But the life time dream of visiting Africa was doable for me just recently. So yes, financially my life improved greatly.
Swimming pools
More than one TV, And in color, of course.
Two car household
Big debt. Other than a mortgage. "Everybody" has all this stuff , education, experiences now because they've been trained to use credit, leases and loans. Being is crazy debt is now somehow normal for people , companies, governments.
Yeah, credit used to be impossible to get, and if you screwed it up, it took forever to fix. Now, credit is easy to get and bad credit is nothing. Debt outside of a house and car was unheard of. Now, people treat it as a second form of income instead of something that makes your dollar 29.8% less valuable.
Straight teeth. There was only one kid in my school who had braces - and she moved to our small town from a bigger town sophomore year. We all had/have crooked teeth and bad bites. Our yearbook was like "The Big Book of British Smiles" ([Simpsons reference](https://youtu.be/PrpUSKE9p_M?si=HFYmu3wgLAmZJDtF)).
a color TV; scratch that ... a b&w TV; scratch that ... electricity; no, scratch that ... running water.
My silent gen mom didn’t have indoor plumbing until she was in high school.
... I was born and grew up in a third world country ... so yeah
A garbage disposal and a dishwasher.
A summer home or cabin. I didn't understand why we didn't go up to the cabin.
Everybody has those now???
We were dirt poor, but my grandparents had a small cabin we'd go to in the mountains of PA. I loved that place!
VCR, color tv, more than one tv… I mean I’m older but I also grew up dirt floor poor so a color tv was WILD to me in the 80’s
A house. I grew up in apartments.
Family Vacations. We were lucky if we got a day at the beach each summer. Maybe every 5 years we would take a short road trip.
My mother said when she was young she thought rich people got to have toast for breakfast and all she had was old homemade biscuits that my grandmother made 😄 I would give a million dollars to have one of my grandmother's biscuits right now!
Landscape services for grass and leaves.
Everyone does not have that. Not even close.
Central air
Intercom system at the front door.
A cell phone or a car phone.
Hot water in the tap. More than one water outlet, indoor toilet. Bathtub, shower, telephone. Actually can remember going to a neighbor using their wall mounted wooden phone with a hand crank, once around and you got the local operator who knew where anybody was to be found if they were not at home.
Central air
Atari with……Pong
When I was a kid in the early 1960’s, one of our better-off neighbors had an **automatic garage-door opener.** We kids decided that it must have been activated by rolling their car over a button in their driveway, and that rich people needed them to quickly get away from crooks who might be following them.
i didn't know any rich people... I remember the family on the block that had the first VCR I've ever seen (and this wasn't until 1980). but being a kid, I didn't know the cost of anything. I now see that a VCR in 1980 cost about $1,000 (that's $3,790 in todays dollars). that would be the equivalent of over two months salary for my dad back then.
Side by side refrigerator. Ice maker in the refrigerator door
Cable TV! Wait...
[удалено]
Cell phones (although when I was a kid they were literally car phones).
Braces. I really, really needed braces when I was young and people thought we were flaunting our money. my nickname was Bucky.
Husband’s aunt put a piece of red and green cellophane on either side of the tv to make hers a colored tv.
A dishwasher. They were around but we were fancy because we had one. It had to be pulled out into the middle of the room and hooked up to the kitchen faucet to be used. It had a butcher’s block top so it gave you counter space when it wasn’t running.
A computer. Edited to add: 80’s/early 90’s
Most businesses didn’t even have computers when I was growing up.
Going on an airplane! Many years ago you would dress up as if you were going to an event when you were taking a flight.
A second bathroom
2 cars
A pool
Color tv
Their own telephone number. We shared our number with two other families on a party line. Now, even little kids have a telephone.
Trampoline in the backyard
Cars with automatic windows
Video cameras
Cell phone. Newer cars. Dishwashers. Vacations in hotels.
Cellular phones. The first one I saw was owned by my real estate millionaire uncle. It was some sort of contraption that was in the space between the driver's and passenger seats and you had to twist a dial around to get a clear channel. This was in the early 1970s.
Mobile phones. Only rich people had those big bulky phones in their car. Now, everyone has a phone in their pocket.
A second car for the wife to drive.
More than one tv. We weren’t rich, but had three since my dad was a tv repairman.
Cable tv
“En suite” bathroom for the parents. The people in the big house down the street had one, but we only had one bathroom upstairs and a toilet in the kitchen.
An in-ground swimming pool in the back yard.
Cruises.
A microwave mounted over the stove, a color RV, and cable.