So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[Trenchfriend]

It's like that here, too, and always has been. Most of the "vintage clothes" were turned into hand-me-downs and wore out long before they could become "collectibles." When I started actively looking for such things in the mid-seventies, 1930s furniture, books, and household stuff was everywhere -- but you never, ever saw "vintage clothes." Most people who lived around here in the thirties had very limited wardrobes, and being "in style" wasn't important to them.

70's:
Is it true, that four weeks after "Saturday Night Fever" nearly all young US-Americans were walking around as fashion-victims, with such disco-clothes??

 

[LizzieMaine]

Not in my town -- there weren't any discos. For entertainment everybody sat on the steps in front of the drug store throwing bottles at passing cars.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Not in my town -- there weren't any discos. For entertainment everybody sat on the steps in front of the drug store throwing bottles at passing cars.

Friendly welcome...

 

[LizzieMaine]

My brother got arrested once for throwing a pumpkin out the back of a truck into the windshield of the car behind. Those were the days when kids played outside in the fresh air, having lots of good clean wholesome fun in the real world. Not this video game nonsense like today.

 

[sheeplady]

I pity that poor driver.

Had a friend of the family whose son got in trouble for throwing snow at cars. Mainly the trouble was because when the police showed up the kids ran and hid. All they were going to get was a stern talking to, but the running meant the cop figured out where the kids all lived and gave the talk on their parents' doorstep...

 

[Trenchfriend]

Those were the days when kids played outside in the fresh air, having lots of good clean wholesome fun in the real world. Not this video game nonsense like today.

Luckily, after "deindustrialising" East-Germany, the air was getting better and better in the early 90's. So, we played the classic way outside, too, until age 12/13, in 1996/1997.
We got the entertainment-electronics, sure, but luckily, that was the time before Playstation 1.

 

[tonyb]

It's like that here, too, and always has been. Most of the "vintage clothes" were turned into hand-me-downs and wore out long before they could become "collectibles." When I started actively looking for such things in the mid-seventies, 1930s furniture, books, and household stuff was everywhere -- but you never, ever saw "vintage clothes." Most people who lived around here in the thirties had very limited wardrobes, and being "in style" wasn't important to them.[/QUOTE

I kick myself for not snapping up all that "old junk" back when I first stepped into the old main Goodwill store in Seattle, shortly after moving there in 1968.

But I strongly resist becoming the sort of magical thinker we sometimes encounter in contexts such as this one.

Sure, lots of stuff really was better-made back then. That's generally true of hats, for instance (although I have come across examples of recent manufacture to challenge ones made 80 years ago). But any 80-year-old hat in like-new condition remains in that condition because it had seen very little use. It essentially is a "new" hat. A low-mileage unit, at the very least.

We are now 48 years removed from 1968. Forty-eight years prior to 1968 was 1920. Sure wish I had all those old radios and telephones and clothing and wooden skis and cameras and all that other stuff you might have had trouble giving away back then. Still, had I actually used that stuff as it was intended to be used, it would have been worn out long ago. Most of it would have, anyway.

 

[MisterCairo]

Not sure if this has been mentioned, but people referring to their pets as their "children" has always bugged me, even before I had children.

Love 'em, sure. Companions, why not, they are there and you can interact with them. "Friends", okay, I'll buy that.

But they are NOT children!

 

[Trenchfriend]

That's, what ticks me off:
That cats just reach an age of 20y +/-2. I wished, they could live longer.

 

[LizzieMaine]

We are now 48 years removed from 1968. Forty-eight prior to 1968 was 1920. Sure wish I had all those old radios and telephones and clothing and wooden skis and cameras and all that other stuff you might have had trouble giving away back then. Still, had I actually used that stuff as it was intended to be used, it would have been worn out long ago. Most of it would have, anyway.

It depends on whether or not you use it the way the original owners would have -- maintaining it where necessary and not abusing it or treating it like some kind of disposable thing from Wal-Mart. What people don't understand is that things from the Era were meant to be serviced and maintained. "Maintenance Free" goods trade durability for "convenience."

In May of 1984 I bought a radio at a junk barn for five dollars. It wasn't a top of the line model, but it wasn't a curtain-burner, either. It was a good mid-range Philco from 1937, and it had seen a lot of use before it ended up in the junk barn. But I figured out what was wrong with it, fixed it, replaced the parts that needed to be replaced, cleaned it up, and put it to use -- I didn't run it 24 hours a day, but I didn't treat it like it was made of eggshells, either. It might run half-an-hour one day, or six hours straight the next. I kept it clean and dry, serviced it when it needed servicing, and enjoyed it as it was meant to be enjoyed. Thirty-two years later that radio is still sitting in my living room, and I'm listening to a ball game on it at this very moment.

I bought a forty-three year old refrigerator in the fall of 1988, not as a collectible or as an artifact, but because I needed something to keep the milk cold and I was tired of using an icebox (which I had done for about three years prior.) I replaced the thermostat, and it's been running in four different kitchens over the past twenty-eight years. I defrost it twice a year and clean under the condenser coil, but that's all I've ever had to do. Short of somebody driving an ice pick thru the coil, I'm pretty sure it'll outlive me. I've even made provision for it in my will.

The telephone in my living room was made in 1933. I acquired it thirty-one years ago. It still works, and other than the cord between the handset mount and the subset that I replaced about fifteen years ago, it's still 100 percent original. It's such a simple device, with only a few moving parts, that there really isn't anything other than worn-out cords to go wrong with it.

Durable goods of the Era if they're used properly will last as long as you're willing for them to last. On the other hand, goods that were never meant to be durable goods will wear out as fast as you can wear them out. Every fall I find a half-a-dozen pairs of old-stock cotton stockings to get thru the winter, and every spring they're worn out. I don't particularly care -- I don't consider clothes priceless artificats, I consider them something to wear, and if you're not wearing them, what's the point?

 

[LizzieMaine]

That's, what ticks me off:
That cats just reach an age of 20y +/-2. I wished, they could live longer.

My current cat is about seven, or possible eight, years old. I'm fifty-three. Hopefully we've got at least another seven years or so together, but by then I'll be sixty.

That being so, It's conceivable, based on lifespans in my family, that the next cat I adopt will outlive me. File that under "Disturbing Realizations."

 

[tonyb]

I got an old Western Electric 302 myself. All original except for the cord. I got a cloth-wrapped replica with a modular plug. (It's among the few items I am NOT kicking myself over for failing to buy back when they were still practically giving away such things. It still has the $1.79 Goodwill price tag stuck to its base.)

It actually got used some in recent years, but not since I gave up on landlines. Even then, though, it was mostly a novelty (to the extent anything 70-plus years old can be "novel"). Now I sometimes find it cumbersome to hand-hold my iPhone. Got a Bluetooth headset, a good one, which leaves my paws free to clean up the kitchen or stitch on a hatband ribbon while I'm chatting, which is what I might well be doing if the person with whom I am conversing were in my physical presence.

The iPhone will be obsolete in about 10 minutes. Same with the Bluetooth headset. But it's been a good 10 minutes.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I have a WE 151-AL "desk stand" -- what the phone collectors call a "candlestick" -- as my desk phone, and I find that the clumsiness involved in handling it actually is an advantage. It keeps phone conversations short -- and if I really have to go do something else while my mother is going on and on about what the Sox are going to do now that they're one-and-one on the season, I can gently set the receiver down on the desk without a sound, and go do it without her realizing...

 

[Fading Fast]

I hate talking on the telephone. I gave up my land line years ago and have the smallest number of minutes on my cell plan possible. I tell people, I'm almost out of minutes as it discourages calling / talking. Hey, if talking on the phone is your thing (it certainly is my mother's, I have no criticism of that), then you should, I just find it painful.

I did recently agree to take my cable company's "land line" as, get this, it was cheaper to get cable, internet and the cable company's phone, than just the internet and cable TV without the phone. My guess, they want to get people hooked and, then, they'll jack it up which is when I'll stop the service. Until then, I get to use it for less than free (does that expression make sense?) and save on my cell phone minutes when I'm waiting on hold for some obnoxious service line.

I have been looking at buying a Western Electric 202 as it is period appropriate to my pre-war apartment and just looks cool, but again, that would be more about the fun aesthetic and feel, than talking on the phone (which is nails on a chalkboard to me).

 

[GHT]

I have a small collection of older patterns which I love. I use modern patterns mainly for the kids, unless I already own a modern pattern. I've done quite a few of the vintage reprints for my daughter. We don't have many vintage events in this area... I've never heard of one outside of the NYC area in my state.

Let me give you the details of a very popular event in the UK. Held at the end of August, every year, to coincide with one of our public holidays, it's called Twinwood. Originally known as The Glenn Miller Festival, Twinwood was the RAF base that Miller took off from.......never to be seen again. The link that I posted gives you a list of traders at the event. Click on a few, you will find them truly amazing.
Some of the traders don't have a direct link, just cut and paste them into Google, you won't be disappointed.

 

[sheeplady]

Let me give you the details of a very popular event in the UK. Held at the end of August, every year, to coincide with one of our public holidays, it's called Twinwood. Originally known as The Glenn Miller Festival, Twinwood was the RAF base that Miller took off from.......never to be seen again. The link that I posted gives you a list of traders at the event. Click on a few, you will find them truly amazing.
Some of the traders don't have a direct link, just cut and paste them into Google, you won't be disappointed.

Sigh... I guess I need to console myself with the fact that we have cheap housing here...


Trivial: I get really annoyed when people comment how "small" my 7-month son is for his age. He's 45th percentile for weight and 75th for height and wearing 9 month size. The fact that I *know* these facts off-hand suggests how annoyed I am by this. I'm also highly amused, because my daughter had similar stats and I never got comments on her size. Can't you just say, "he's cute" or nothing at all?

I bite my tongue because I'm tempted to say, "Yeah, he was 9 pounds when he was born" just to see the shock.

 

[AmateisGal]

Trivial and still ticks me off: Potholes. The city I live in has an extraordinary problem with potholes. There was even a Facebook page dedicated to our city's potholes a few years ago. I can understand not worrying too much about the side streets, but major roads? Fix them, please!

 

[Lean'n'mean]

That being so, It's conceivable, based on lifespans in my family, that the next cat I adopt will outlive me. File that under "Disturbing Realizations."

Not if you adopt an elderly kitty. As for one's genetic bagage, a healthy lifestyle can change the game plan of destiny.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Trivial and still ticks me off: Potholes. The city I live in has an extraordinary problem with potholes. There was even a Facebook page dedicated to our city's potholes a few years ago. I can understand not worrying too much about the side streets, but major roads? Fix them, please!

Good old heavy concrete-slabs. But I think, construction industry usually don't like this longlasting surface.

 

[Zombie_61]

70's:
Is it true, that four weeks after "Saturday Night Fever" nearly all young US-Americans were walking around as fashion-victims, with such disco-clothes??

If that happened in this part of southern California I didn't notice it, but I really don't care for Disco music and wasn't part of that "scene" so it may have happened to some degree. But when Urban Cowboy became a hit three years later there was a noticeable increase in the wearing of "cowboy" hats, boots, and other apparel, and quite a few trendy bars installed mechanical bulls for their customers to ride.