Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

[Stanley Doble]

The Toronto Transit Commission experimented with cheap street cars from eastern Europe. They cost half what a Canadian made car cost but lasted less than half as long. After 10 years they were shot to blazes! The chassis completely rusted through in some cases. They were used to cars that lasted longer, and could be overhauled, repainted, equipped with new seats and used for another 10 or 20 years.

Their PCC 'Red Rockets' made in Canada lasted from the forties to the eighties and some into the nineties. A few of them are still in service, in other cities.

http://transit.toronto.on.ca/streetcar/4509.shtml

 

[Nobert]

Just read yesterday that the City of Buffalo is no longer requiring a minimum number of off-street parking spaces in certain new developments--commercial, residential, etc. This is in recognition that the city is and will be less dependent on the personal vehicle. As you noted, self-driving vehicles have the potential for drastically changing our cityscapes. If you don't need your own car, you don't need your own parking space.

This just brought up a memory of when I was in Buffalo, in the theater district; saw the street car take off the side-view mirror of a car that was parked not quite close enough to the curb. I remember thinking, "Well, what were they supposed to do, swerve out of the way?"

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

In most of the towns I grew up in, the trolleys were long gone but you could still see the tracks here and there. In one town, Mt.Vernon, OH, they just left the tracks there because the streets were red brick and tearing up the tracks would have necessitated painstaking patching the streets with brick. In others the tracks were just paved over but as the asphalt wore away the tracks showed through.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Remnants of our old interurban trolley system, defunct since 1930, were unearthed this fall underneath US1 over in the next town. They're selling souvenir pieces of track mounted to a tasteful wooden plaque, in your choice of "natural steel" or stoveblack finish, for $25.

 

[tonyb]

Old streetcar track is frequently exposed in the older districts of many cities when the asphalt road surface is taken up (for whatever reason) to reveal the original paving brick surface beneath. I've seen it many times.

 

[BlueTrain]

Some of the streets in town where I grew up were at one time paved with brick, with a few places here and there still with exposed bricks. At some point the bricks were torn up, possibly when the streetcars quit running. An enterprising local businessman, who I don't know, bought the bricks and used them in building. But an uncle of mine who knew something about building things, said the bricks were all polished smooth and wouldn't take mortar. I don't know if his complaint was reasonable or not but that's what he said. Paving bricks were not the same as the ordinary bricks used in constructions. There were a number of structures in town made from hollow tile blocks, too. They don't lend themselves to being reused, though.

Although public transportation may be the best way to go downtown, Washington, DC, now has fewer parking places near the museums, mainly down at the end of the mall closest to the capitol building. So mainly for that reason, we don't go quite as often as we used to. In a way, if that was done to encourage ridership on the metro, it simply didn't work for us, although that wasn't the reason for parking restrictions.

 

[Fading Fast]

New York City streets are like what Gertrude Stein said of Oakland - there is no there, there. There is an insane amount of infrastructure beneath the roads - water, sewer, electric, gas, streetlights, telephone lines from both extinct and new systems, as well as, a crazy number of subway and train lines - so much so that there is very little "dirt" or "earth" under the roads; instead, the roadways rest on a support structure of beams and metal sheets.

This is very cool to see (if a bit disconcerting when driving over) when, during repairs, a manhole cover or (as is often the case) sections of the sidewalk are lifted up (as many are really just camouflaged doors to the underworld of NYC streets) and you get a peak in. All that was just preamble to the fact that the first one to two feet of NYC street is all there is to the actual "street," but those two feet do tell a lot of history.

As these streets are constantly being torn up and repaved - either to repair something in one of the many aforementioned infrastructure systems or owing to the insane amount of daily wear and tear the streets get - an observer can regularly see NYC street history in the form of cobblestone and / or prior streetcar tracks. Also, I've become familiar with some streets where, even after fresh paving, within six months time, the old streetcar rails with push through to the surface for whatever reason - all a cool peak into NYC history.

And, of course, the huge number of movies that have been made here, give one a regular opportunity to see those cobblestone streets and old streetcar lines in action in those old movies.

 

[LizzieMaine]

We get the Return Of The Cobblestones every spring when the frost heaves do their dirty work. A couple years back we had a spectacular reemergence at a downtown intersection which was so vast people assumed it was a new style of crosswalk.

 

[Stanley Doble]

Have paper matches gone to join the dodo birds and dinosaurs? It seems not so long ago you saw a box of paper matches or penny matches beside the cash register in every store and restaurant. They vanished when smoking in public places was banned. Now I can't even find them on the shelf at the supermarket.

 

[Bushman]

Have paper matches gone to join the dodo birds and dinosaurs? It seems not so long ago you saw a box of paper matches or penny matches beside the cash register in every store and restaurant. They vanished when smoking in public places was banned. Now I can't even find them on the shelf at the supermarket.

I say good riddance. They were always such a bother to light compared to wooden matches.

 

[Nobert]

Paper matches: depends on where you are. Around here, you can get them at any gas station or convenience store for the asking, if you're making a purchase. In Pennsylvania, they didn't even have them for sale. The quality is usually pretty crappy, but there's a local company called Yankee Candle that sometimes gives out promotional match packets to the companies that carry their products. They're the best matchbooks I've ever experienced.

 

[tonyb]

Have paper matches gone to join the dodo birds and dinosaurs? It seems not so long ago you saw a box of paper matches or penny matches beside the cash register in every store and restaurant. They vanished when smoking in public places was banned. Now I can't even find them on the shelf at the supermarket.

You pegged the reason for their demise. Matchbooks were an effective means of advertising for many businesses. But the association with smoking has flipped in recent decades. What was once suave and sophisticated is now anything but.

Recreational pot is legal here, and some of the retailers dispense matchbooks bearing their stores' advertising. And I suspect they all sell disposable lighters carrying the stores' logos.

I can't recall when I last bought a box of paper book matches at a supermarket. Decades ago, probably.

 

[tonyb]

Apropos of nothing, I suppose, but I do occasionally seek out old matchbooks from businesses to which I have a sentimental attachment.

My stepdad's mother, with whom I had a close relationship, managed the cafe in the then-new Hillcrest Lanes in Lawrence, Kansas, where we all lived at the time -- the time being the early to mid 1960s.

A couple three or four years ago I went online and found a mostly intact book of matches carrying the bowling alley's advertising. The matches themselves resemble (kinda) bowling pins. Can't remember what I paid, but it wasn't much. And I can't say when the matches were made, but they are the kind with the striking strip on the front, so that makes 'em pretty darned old.

I haven't been to Lawrence in at least 30 years, maybe more like 40. The stepdad's mother has been gone since 1973, I think it was. The stepdad joined her summer before last. His now quite elderly sister still lives in Lawrence, but I doubt we would recognize each other anymore.

Last I looked into it, the bowling alley was still there, but operating under another name.

 

[BlueTrain]

All of which reminds me of another expression (never spoken) from the not so distant past: "Close cover before striking!"

It also reminds me of an exchange from an obscure spy movie from about 45 years ago:
Man no. 1: Pardon me, do you have a match?
Man no. 2: I use a lighter.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Novelty matchbooks were also very popular. I used to have one in which all the matches were little printed figures of Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito, and the slogan on the cover was "Strike The Axis! Burn Them Up With War Bonds!" There were others where the cover bore a caricature of Hitler bent over with his pants down, and his bare backside was the striking surface for the matches.

 

[BlueTrain]

War bonds are another thing that have disappeared, even if war hasn't.

 

[Fading Fast]

War bonds are another thing that have disappeared, even if war hasn't.

Just a guess, but since the US Gov't can raise - seemingly for now - all the money it wants at very, very low historical rates via its generic "Treasury" offerings, the need for war bonds doesn't exist and might even engender unpopular political attention on the recent military activities that have been far from popular.

 

[LizzieMaine]

My grandparents' cache of war bonds disappeared -- into the pocket of my father, I am told.

The old "Series E" bonds were the same bonds used during WWII, and endured until 1980. They were an interesting excercise in nomenclature -- they were introduced in 1941 as "Defense Bonds," which became "War Bonds" in 1942 and then "Savings Bonds" in 1946. But they were the same actual bond thruout this period. Interestingly, no effort was made during Korea or Vietnam to give them any kind of military association. "Cold War Bonds" just doesn't cut it.

Whatever you want to call them, bond sales to finance a war are an approach I support -- people feel differently about war when they feel like it's coming directly out of their own pockets. We need 10 percent of your gross income, buddy, skimmed right off the top. Yeah, you, get yer hand out of your pocket and shell out. "Bonds and Taxes, Bonds and Taxes, That's The Way To Beat The Axis!"

 

[BlueTrain]

My wife's family is still holding some Confederate war bonds, you know, just in case. The funny thing is, Confederate paper money is pretty much worth face value now, at least some places.

 

[tonyb]

My wife's family is still holding some Confederate war bonds, you know, just in case. The funny thing is, Confederate paper money is pretty much worth face value now, at least some places.

I'm guessing that a genuine Confederate one-dollar bill would fetch considerably more than a buck today.

I'm reminded of that John Huston line in "Chinatown." You know, the one about certain things becoming respectable if they last long enough.