You know you are getting old when:

[HanauMan]

I know that I'm getting older as I slowly realize that I no longer throw out stuff but instead put them away in boxes in the garage or attic. Old clothing, old shoes, bits of wire, old equipment, books, whatever. They'll come in handy one day I rationalize.

If I'm not careful I may have gotten a one way ticket to hoardsville!

 

[tonyb]

I know that I'm getting older as I slowly realize that I no longer throw out stuff but instead put them away in boxes in the garage or attic. Old clothing, old shoes, bits of wire, old equipment, books, whatever. They'll come in handy one day I rationalize.

If I'm not careful I may have gotten a one way ticket to hoardsville!

I retrieved a length of green twine that was being wind blown across the sidewalk a few days ago. Never can tell when you might need a length of twine.

 

[scottyrocks]

I know that I'm getting older as I slowly realize that I no longer throw out stuff but instead put them away in boxes in the garage or attic. Old clothing, old shoes, bits of wire, old equipment, books, whatever. They'll come in handy one day I rationalize.

If I'm not careful I may have gotten a one way ticket to hoardsville!

I guess I've been getting old my whole life.

 

[GHT]

I guess I've been getting old my whole life.

That makes two of us. The UK used to have little passport like drivers licences, they changed to a credit card version about forty years ago. The original passport type is still in my wallet. Similarly, we still have, and use, the first telephone that we were issued with. And again, despite being force fed a metric diet, we stick to imperial because it was in that measure that our bathroom scales wedding present reads. As does our kitchen scales, another wedding present. Our home is full old junk/nostalgia, define it as you will.

 

[2jakes]

“We can expect “half-dollar” size hail tonight!”

​

“What’s a half-dollar?”

 

[Zombie_61]

 

[GHT]

“We can expect “half-dollar” size hail tonight!”
View attachment 112966

View attachment 112967 ​

“What’s a half-dollar?”


View attachment 112968

Half a dollar is two shillings and sixpence, sometimes known as half a crown.
In the pre-decimal days of our currency we used the shilling as well as the pound and the penny. Like other countries we had knicknames for our coinage. Some might have heard of the sixpenny piece being called a tanner and the shilling coin was known as a bob. The half crown coin was referred to as half a dollar, but the crown by then was out of favour, so we never had a five shilling piece, although we did have once and it was never known as the dollar.
This is only a speculative guess but during the war, when we had thousands of GI's here, the half dollar and the half crown were almost identical in value owing to the Bretton Woods agreement. My father always called the half crown, half a dollar, so I wonder if it came about because of the four to one exchange rate?
During WW2, governments viewed fixed exchange rates as desirable, and so in 1940 the pound was pegged to the dollar at a fixed rate of $4.03. This deal became part of the Bretton Woods agreement that was signed in 1944, which governed financial relations between 44 countries for much of the mid 20th century.

 

[HanauMan]

While it is true that the term Dollar / half dollar was revived during WWII for the Crown / Half Crown the term Dollar for a Crown actually came from the early 19th Century because the Crown at that time was similar looking to the Spanish Dollar (Peso or piece of eight).

 

[HanauMan]

A selection of silver Half Dollars and Dollars.

 

[LizzieMaine]

There was a close parallel in both size and value between US and British coinage during the Era -- a British farthing was only slightly larger than a US cent, a sixpence was about the size of a dime, a shilling a bit smaller than a quarter, and as seen above, a half-crown was only slightly larger than a half-dollar. Their respective values were similarly close -- a sixpence had approximately the same purchasing power as a dime, and so forth.

The outlier was the thrupenny bit, which was about equivalent in purchasing power to a nickel, but looked nothing like one, being thick, brass, and twelve sided. However, there was also, until 1945, a silver threepence that approximated the size of the old US half-dime.

 

[GHT]

There was a close parallel in both size and value between US and British coinage during the Era -- a British farthing was only slightly larger than a US cent, a sixpence was about the size of a dime, a shilling a bit smaller than a quarter, and as seen above, a half-crown was only slightly larger than a half-dollar. Their respective values were similarly close -- a sixpence had approximately the same purchasing power as a dime, and so forth.

The outlier was the thrupenny bit, which was about equivalent in purchasing power to a nickel, but looked nothing like one, being thick, brass, and twelve sided. However, there was also, until 1945, a silver threepence that approximated the size of the old US half-dime.

You are a mind of information, I had forgotten about the silver three penny piece, it was the original coin that was traditionally put in the Christmas pudding, later it would be the six penny piece that was used.

A Christmas tradition is believed to have been brought over to Britain by Prince Albert, the husband of Queen Victoria. On the Sunday before Advent, families gathered in the kitchen to help make the Christmas pudding. A silver sixpence was placed into the pudding mix and every member of the household gave the mix a stir. Whoever found the sixpence in their own piece of the pudding on Christmas Day would see it as a sign that they would enjoy wealth and good luck in the year to come.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I enjoyed a traditional British Christmas dinner with some friends once -- a night after observing Chanukah with them, it was quite a visit -- and I was the one who got the sixpence. Fortunately I didn't bite down on it, because it wouldn't have covered the cost of fixing a broken molar.

 

[GHT]

There are some wonderful cars in the Old Gas Stations thread, have you noticed how cars today have a very similar appearance, and nothing stirs the blood like the chrome covered bling of yesteryear. Is it a sign of ageing when cars fail to excite. Have we reached the wind-tunnel-designed, homogenised, non polluting, self driving car that no one cares about anymore?

 

[tonyb]

There are some wonderful cars in the Old Gas Stations thread, have you noticed how cars today have a very similar appearance, and nothing stirs the blood like the chrome covered bling of yesteryear. Is it a sign of ageing when cars fail to excite. Have we reached the wind-tunnel-designed, homogenised, non polluting, self driving car that no one cares about anymore?

Rare is the automobile of recent manufacture that stirs my soul, either. Neither a late-model Alfa Romeo nor a Jaguar does much more for me than a Hyundai or a Toyota.

And, like you, I attribute this partially to not being a kid anymore. The world is more wondrous to young people, generally, when it is still new.

Much as I -- like billions of others, I'd wager -- love cars, and readily acknowledge how they have made feasible much of modern life as we know it, the personal petroleum-burning automobile has also come at a huge cost to our common good.

Me, I'm looking forward to the non-polluting, self-driving car that comes to me when I call it. I doubt I will find it as romantic as the head-turning cars of our younger days, but then, "our" cars never had the soul of a horse. Just ask great-Grandpa.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Cars have always had a certain commonality of appearance within their era:

A car of the Era may seem unique and distinctive when you look at it today, but line it up with a hundred others of the same period, and that distinctiveness blurs. Even the chrome-encrusted dinosaurs of The Fifties weren't immune to this -- one of the more trenchant criticisms hurled in their direction by the social critics of the day was that the gaudy trimmings poorly concealed the fact that they were all, essentially, the same thing repeated ad infinitum, as any mass produced item has to be.

 

[Fading Fast]

Cars have always had a certain commonality of appearance within their era:

A car of the Era may seem unique and distinctive when you look at it today, but line it up with a hundred others of the same period, and that distinctiveness blurs. Even the chrome-encrusted dinosaurs of The Fifties weren't immune to this -- one of the more trenchant criticisms hurled in their direction by the social critics of the day was that the gaudy trimmings poorly concealed the fact that they were all, essentially, the same thing repeated ad infinitum, as any mass produced item has to be.

For a truly unique look, this was the way to go:

From the WSJ:

‘L’epoque des Carrossiers: The Art and Times of the French Coachbuilders’ Review: Works of Art on Wheels

• By Mark Yost
• April 14, 2018 7:00 am ET

An exhibition at the Mullin Automotive Museum looks at the bespoke Art Deco vehicles of the 1920s and ’30s.

While Henry Ford’s production line had already been running for nearly two decades by the mid-1920s, nearly all the cars shown here were custom-made for the upper crust of Europe and America.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/lepoqu...els-1523703600?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=1

(The site is a subscription one, but sometimes it lets you in anyway if you Google the article and click that way - good luck).

 

[Zombie_61]

There are some wonderful cars in the Old Gas Stations thread, have you noticed how cars today have a very similar appearance, and nothing stirs the blood like the chrome covered bling of yesteryear. Is it a sign of ageing when cars fail to excite. Have we reached the wind-tunnel-designed, homogenised, non polluting, self driving car that no one cares about anymore?

Cars have always had a certain commonality of appearance within their era...

Once again, Miss Lizzie is correct. Auto manufacturers (at least here in the U.S.) have always "stolen" ideas from each other, especially if a particular trend had become popular among car buyers. There are always a few exceptions, but in recent decades "style" has taken a back seat to "performance" as emissions requirements have become more stringent and the search for "cleaner" alternate fuel sources and engines continues. The end result is fleets of cars that are nearly identical in appearance, size, and shape, regardless of who's building them. I've said it before and I'll say it again--I'd hate to be a patrol officer trying to take a report these days. "What kind of car was the suspect driving, Sir?" "Uhh...silver?"

 

[scottyrocks]

Well, that narrows it down.^

 

[tonyb]

Once again, Miss Lizzie is correct. Auto manufacturers (at least here in the U.S.) have always "stolen" ideas from each other, especially if a particular trend had become popular among car buyers. There are always a few exceptions, but in recent decades "style" has taken a back seat to "performance" as emissions requirements have become more stringent and the search for "cleaner" alternate fuel sources and engines continues. The end result is fleets of cars that are nearly identical in appearance, size, and shape, regardless of who's building them. I've said it before and I'll say it again--I'd hate to be a patrol officer trying to take a report these days. "What kind of car was the suspect driving, Sir?" "Uhh...silver?"

Fifty years ago few would have mistaken a Jaguar sedan for a Ford, or vice-versa. Not anymore.

 

[vitanola]

Once again, Miss Lizzie is correct. Auto manufacturers (at least here in the U.S.) have always "stolen" ideas from each other, especially if a particular trend had become popular among car buyers. There are always a few exceptions, but in recent decades "style" has taken a back seat to "performance" as emissions requirements have become more stringent and the search for "cleaner" alternate fuel sources and engines continues. The end result is fleets of cars that are nearly identical in appearance, size, and shape, regardless of who's building them. I've said it before and I'll say it again--I'd hate to be a patrol officer trying to take a report these days. "What kind of car was the suspect driving, Sir?" "Uhh...silver?"

Cars have always had a certain commonality of appearance within their era:

A car of the Era may seem unique and distinctive when you look at it today, but line it up with a hundred others of the same period, and that distinctiveness blurs. Even the chrome-encrusted dinosaurs of The Fifties weren't immune to this -- one of the more trenchant criticisms hurled in their direction by the social critics of the day was that the gaudy trimmings poorly concealed the fact that they were all, essentially, the same thing repeated ad infinitum, as any mass produced item has to be.

I don't know.

To this day I can tell a 1932 Hupmobile from a Hudson, and a Ford from a Plymouth or Chevrolet. My ability to identify cars seems to wane with the coming of the jellybean styling, introduced on the 1983 or 1984 Thunderbird.