Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

[LizzieMaine]

Another thing:

If I were born, let's just say 1950 or so, I would surely have been a fan of the "Life Magazine" and it's photo-reportages and the old days of Margaret-Bourke White, Andreas Feininger and so on.
It's just the way of the world is turning, that such magazines were probably outdated by the upcoming of entertainment-electronics around the 70's.

Life was still making money when Time Inc. killed it in 1972, but it had also lost a lot of its prestige by then -- its publisher and editor made public fools of themselves in the Clifford Irving "Howard Hughes Diary" fiasco earlier that year and that may well have been the last straw for Time. But even without that incident, it was far from being the magazine it had been at its peak -- it was giving more and more space to text articles, and it was also being printed on flimsier paper stock that didn't show off what photography it did feature to the best advantage. These were problems which also plagued the magazine in its revival run in the 80s and 90s.

Look had gone under a year or so before life, but unlike Life it had been bleeding money for years. It didn't have the big corporate parent that Life did, so it couldn't sustain losses for very long. The sad thing is that for a period in the early forties at least , Look was, from my point of view, the more interesting magazine -- while its photography wasn't the equal of Life's, its articles and its editorial point of view were much more provocative and willing to rock boats that needed rocking.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

They were still showing these films in Driver's Ed when I was in high school in the late '70s, early '80s.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Life was still making money when Time Inc. killed it in 1972, but it had also lost a lot of its prestige by then -- its publisher and editor made public fools of themselves in the Clifford Irving "Howard Hughes Diary" fiasco earlier that year and that may well have been the last straw for Time. But even without that incident, it was far from being the magazine it had been at its peak -- it was giving more and more space to text articles, and it was also being printed on flimsier paper stock that didn't show off what photography it did feature to the best advantage. These were problems which also plagued the magazine in its revival run in the 80s and 90s.

Look had gone under a year or so before life, but unlike Life it had been bleeding money for years. It didn't have the big corporate parent that Life did, so it couldn't sustain losses for very long. The sad thing is that for a period in the early forties at least , Look was, from my point of view, the more interesting magazine -- while its photography wasn't the equal of Life's, its articles and its editorial point of view were much more provocative and willing to rock boats that needed rocking.

Thanks for that great information, Lizzie!

 

[Zombie_61]

They were still showing these films in Driver's Ed when I was in high school in the late '70s, early '80s.

Same here. And one of the films they showed us in Driver's Ed had a scene in which the instructor, allegedly an "expert" driver, made an illegal lane change in the middle of an intersection.

But then, one of my history books featured a grainy black-and-white photograph of a steam-powered locomotive pulling several passenger cars, and the caption read, "Railroad will soon span the continent." This was in the mid- to late-1970s so it was obviously something that had been overlooked whenever the textbooks had been updated, but I still found it amusing.

 

[LizzieMaine]

As I mentioned in another thread, I took tenth-grade World History as taught from a textbook published in 1937. Not only in that course, but in no course that I ever took, did we ever actually cover the Second World War. There wasn't even any real mention of the Spanish Civil War. We once got as far as Mussolini invading Ethiopia and then it was time for summer vacation.

I have a copy of that 1937 texbook right here. Its final paragraph begins "We will have to leave the story of these marvelous years of recent progress to another volume." Unless the school board refuses to buy it.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

That leads to another of those disturbing thoughts. Nearly 1/3 of United States history has occurred since I was born.

 

[GHT]

My old MG and I were at a wedding fair today. Usually I spend the time in or near the car, reading a newspaper when it's quiet, answering questions and chatting to couples when it's busy. But today the weather was so inclement that I spent most of my day in the foyer of the hotel, that hosted the event.

What really struck me was just how many couples came along with their small children in tow. It's good to see that the stigma of pregnancy, out of wedlock, no longer exists, but are old fashion values just that: old fashion? Couples in my day, met, courted, (who remembers that word?) got engaged, married and had children, in that order, quaint or what? Back then our tax laws favoured married couples, but in the name of equality, that was repealed.

That couples have kids from the off, has probably been around a good while, and, it's probably because I'm childless, that I hadn't noticed. If I had adult grandchildren, chances are, they too wouldn't put the amount of store into marriage as I do. Values, I think, are important, but how do you define values?

 

[LizzieMaine]

Both my grandmother, in 1933, and my great-grandmother, in 1911, got married Because They Had To, if you get my drift. There was a lot of that sort of thing going around then, it seems. My great-gran was only seventeen at the time, and she was a divorcee by the time she was twenty-one. There was a lot of that sort of thing, too.

My mother waited until she was married, however, because her own mother threatened to beat the snot out of her if she didn't. I guess you could call that "values."

Seems to me if there's one lesson we've learned in the last fifty years it's that you don't have to be illegitimate to be a ba***rd.

 

[Trenchfriend]

I don't give children to "this" world. They will have the evil ".... on their feet", definitively.

Star Trek 8: "First Contact". WW III in 2053.

 

[p51]

I tried to explain this to my wife, but she'd never heard of Grit and still doesn't get what I was trying to explain. If it's changed so much, I doubt I'll ever get it across...

 

[Trenchfriend]

By the way:
The 1955's-classic "Pino Silvestre"-perfume is still alive. I'm thinking about buying a 75ml-flakon, because it's again on sale, at Karstadt. I like every kind of spicy conifer wood-smells.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

A short time ago I found English Leather cologne in a dollar store. I had no idea the stuff was even still made. It was all the rage when I was in high school in the early '60s. I bought a bottle just to sniff that scent again. It's one of those smells that takes you right back to an earlier time.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I tried to explain this to my wife, but she'd never heard of Grit and still doesn't get what I was trying to explain. If it's changed so much, I doubt I'll ever get it across...

I think the best way to explain how Grit used to be is to say that if Paul Harvey had ever edited a newspaper it would have been very much like Grit.

 

[Trenchfriend]

@Inkstainedwretch

The old days of "Cuir de russie".

 

[p51]

I think the best way to explain how Grit used to be is to say that if Paul Harvey had ever edited a newspaper it would have been very much like Grit.

She didn't know who he was, either. She's from Oregon (and hasn't turned 41 yet of that makes any difference) and I suspect that the homespun stuff of the South and Midwest never really got out there within her lifetime...

 

[Trenchfriend]

Is the longdrink "Screwdriver" (Vodka/Orange-juice) still popular in the US?

 

[2jakes]

Is the longdrink "Screwdriver" (Vodka/Orange-juice) still popular in the US?

Always has been.
Outside the US, it’s often referred to as “vodka & orange”.
There are variations but it’s basically the same ingredients.

Do you know the origin for the name, “screwdriver” ?


hint: It helps to to do this to fully enjoy the drink !

 

[Trenchfriend]

@2jakes

Yes, I think, the construction-workers-style.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

I remember when Nikita Kruschev visited the U.S. and Mrs. Kruschev was offered a screwdriver at a White House gala. She was shocked that anyone would do such a thing to good vodka.

 

[Stanley Doble]

Both my grandmother, in 1933, and my great-grandmother, in 1911, got married Because They Had To, if you get my drift. There was a lot of that sort of thing going around then, it seems. My great-gran was only seventeen at the time, and she was a divorcee by the time she was twenty-one. There was a lot of that sort of thing, too.

My mother waited until she was married, however, because her own mother threatened to beat the snot out of her if she didn't. I guess you could call that "values."

Seems to me if there's one lesson we've learned in the last fifty years it's that you don't have to be illegitimate to be a ba***rd.

If the parents were married the children are legitimate. As one old doctor said, the first baby can arrive any time but the second takes 9 months.

Especially in farming families in the olden days it was considered prudent to get married only after the bride was pregnant. The family farm really required a family to run it, and a childless marriage was a tragedy. It was not considered proper to talk about such things. So if you ever wondered what 'engaged' meant, now you know what they were engaged in.