They had coupons but the casher would enter them just like purchased items. Grocery shopping wasn't that much slower if you had a well trained casher as their hand would fly over the keyboard. What was bad is if you were unfortunately to get the new casher. As for Sears (and JC Penny's) catalogs, most of the catalog was news print however the center contained the glossy images much like in magazines. My mother said it was pretty bad when all the news print was used up and all that was left was the glossy section. However as my mother lived on a farm, when the catalog was gone, all that was left was corn cobs.

Quote from: Cali on January 14, 2018, 05:03:59 PM

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I obviously know what a catalog is , I look through them all the time but catalogs are online. I didn't think about it being an actual book made of paper.  I thought you were talking about like the sale inserts that come in the paper. So I guess you had to shop from a paper catalog by phone? But did they have debit cards then? How did you pay for the stuff you bought?

Quote from: Dena on January 14, 2018, 05:09:55 PM
They had coupons but the casher would enter them just like purchased items. Grocery shopping wasn't that much slower if you had a well trained casher as their hand would fly over the keyboard. What was bad is if you were unfortunately to get the new casher. As for Sears (and JC Penny's) catalogs, most of the catalog was news print however the center contained the glossy images much like in magazines. My mother said it was pretty bad when all the news print was used up and all that was left was the glossy section. However as my mother lived on a farm, when the catalog was gone, all that was left was corn cobs.

Corn cobs? Seriously?? Why couldn't you just use toilet paper. I know toilet paper has been around at least since the 1900s.

Quote from: Julia1996 on January 14, 2018, 05:12:21 PM
I obviously know what a catalog is , I look through them all the time but catalogs are online. I didn't think about it being an actual book made of paper.  I thought you were talking about like the sale inserts that come in the paper. So I guess you had to shop from a paper catalog by phone? But did they have debit cards then? How did you pay for the stuff you bought?

Credit cards came out in the 60's as far as I know with Diner's CLub being first, followed by American Express, MasterCard and Visa.

Debit cards are relatively a new thing having come out in 1984.  AND, we didn't have ATMs until that time.  If you wanted cash you went to your bank or wrote a check at your local grocery store.  We were sooooo primitive

Quote from: Cali on January 14, 2018, 05:15:47 PM
Credit cards came out in the 60's as far as I know with Diner's CLub being first, followed by American Express, MasterCard and Visa.

Debit cards are relatively a new thing having come out in 1984.  AND, we didn't have ATMs until that time.  If you wanted cash you went to your bank or wrote a check at your local grocery store.  We were sooooo primitive

Well if there were no debit cards and credit cards only came out in 1960, then how could you buy anything from a catalog??

Quote from: Julia1996 on January 14, 2018, 05:17:42 PM
Well if there were no debit cards and credit cards only came out in 1960, then how could you buy anything from a catalog??

Usually C.O.D.  Cash On Delivery.

Quote from: Cali on January 14, 2018, 05:18:25 PM
Usually C.O.D.  Cash On Delivery.

Oh ok. That's still weird though.

Quote from: Julia1996 on January 14, 2018, 05:19:25 PM
Oh ok. That's still weird though.

Being weird from your prospective I can understand.  But from our time in space it was nice that you could do it.

Quote from: Julia1996 on January 14, 2018, 04:55:36 PM
The entered all the prices manually? ? How did they deduct coupons without a scanner? Oh, did they have coupons then? How did they know if something was on sale?  Someone had to remember everything that was on sale? That's awful! Grocery shopping must have taken forever!  And washing in a tub of cold water every day. That's so sad! Outhouses are like ports potties, right? Having to go outside to potty is just...nuts! What's a sears catalog? Like newspaper inserts or something? It must have felt great wiping with that. Ewww!

I worked at a Walgreens in college before scanners.  New sale ad every week and most of the sale prices items were not stickers as such.  We had to learn a new flyer every week.  Customers would bitch sometimes when we got it wrong but most understood.  Fixing it was a pain because you couldn't subtract it and re ring it.  Had to make an "overring" slip and start the whole transaction over.  Supposed to get manager every time but with the number of them that there were,  that didn't happen. 

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Toilet paper cost money and her family was poor when she was young. They grew almost all their own food and canned it for the rest of the year. Things like potatoes, onions and carrots were stored in sand and would last a long time. As they were a dairy farm, there was alway fresh milk and butter which they got from the creamery. Most of what they purchased was sugar, flour and salt.

As for ordering from a catalog, you filled out an order form and enclosed a check for the amount. Checks were accepted almost everywhere and it was rare that people would write bad checks however if it was large, you would wait for it to clear the bank.

A few more pages on this thread and Julia will be ready to go on Jeopardy. Vacuum tubes for 100, Alex!

Oh, Sears was 'Sears Roebuck' not Sears. There was also a store we called Monkey Wards (for Montgomery Wards.)

When I was a kid, my Dad had to shuffle coal into our furnace for heat. We had a coal bin in  the basement. The only heat came from holes (with grates) in the floor. My sisters' room had no hole, so they had no heat.

When I was a teenager, I worried about being drafted and sent  to Vietnam. I was lucky, the war ended before my time came. Others were not so lucky. This situation is impossible for young folks to understand now. It made so many people socially active because their butts might be on the line. Today there are such a select few that make that sacrifice to be in the military. This has contributed to so many people being self absorbed while the volunteers pay the price. Not a funny anecdote but it is a reality that you might not be aware of.

Quote from: HappyMoni on January 14, 2018, 06:00:32 PM
A few more pages on this thread and Julia will be ready to go on Jeopardy. Vacuum tubes for 100, Alex!

Oh, Sears was 'Sears Roebuck' not Sears. There was also a store we called Monkey Wards (for Montgomery Wards.)

When I was a kid, my Dad had to shuffle coal into our furnace for heat. We had a coal bin in  the basement. The only heat came from holes (with grates) in the floor. My sisters' room had no hole, so they had no heat.

When I was a teenager, I worried about being drafted and sent  to Vietnam. I was lucky, the war ended before my time came. Others were not so lucky. This situation is impossible for young folks to understand now. It made so many people socially active because their butts might be on the line. Today there are such a select few that make that sacrifice to be in the military. This has contributed to so many people being self absorbed while the volunteers pay the price. Not a funny anecdote but it is a reality that you might not be aware of.

I know about the draft. We studied about the Vietnam war in school. Males still have to register for selective service. I think Tyler did but I never did. My dad and Tyler actually had a good laugh over that. I told my dad if a war broke out it would suck if the military dragged me away in the night. My dad said " pumpkin, if the military was so desperate they dragged you away to fight in a war then that war would already be lost". My brother thought that was hilarious. Then he asked my dad could he imagine me in the military? He started saying I wouldn't want to wear camouflage because its ugly and I wouldn't want to get dirty or wet and that I would be saying Ewwwww constantly and calling everything icky and and saying weapons training was a sleeping pill and telling the drill instructor to stop yelling at me and not to be so loud. Then he asked my dad could he picture me trying to fire a gun. Then they were both almost on the floor they were laughing so hard. You know, I certainly would never ever want to be in the military and I'm not the most outdoor minded person but I'm not totally useless. That was kind of mean of them.See if I save them if a war breaks out!

Quote from: Lady Sarah on January 14, 2018, 12:31:31 PM
When I went to high school, we were able to have parents sign a note, allowing us to go to the "smoker's lounge" which was a small area outside the school building. We were also able to buy cigarettes at age 15.
We were also permitted to work at county parks at the age of 12, mostly mowing lawns.

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I went to a newly built school in San Antonio my senior year in 1967.  There was an area between the cafeteria building and one of the classroom buildings about 6-8 feet wide.  The school put a gate to get into the area, put in benches and that was the smoking area.  With parents permission, students had access to the area at lunch

What about the rotary dial telephone, with a long handset cord, so you could carry on doing chores whilst chatting. Oh and chat, the slang for a nit, so going to have your nits picked, was a social affair, and collectively became known as chatting...

Appliance rentals - you rented the appliance for a certain period, and then had the option to buy at a large discount (but both added up to waaay more than the retail price). Heavy metals in paints... absbestos everywhere.

My first computer was the ubiquitous Commodore 64, the first computer I saw was a liquid cooled ICL, built into the Center of a custom building. We received a telegram once, you were always petrified of the phone bill, the local police rode bicycles. Twin tub washing machines, wringers (mangles). Smoking on airplanes.

Odd things like 100 miles seemed a very long way, you were surprised by the post getting to you next day (which was a really big deal, and you paid extra for it), but I'll finish with pressure cookers, which are having a resurgence of late, but they used to be leathal...

Let us dance across the history of our lives and enjoy the tapestry we've created...

Rowan

I still have 2 valve radios, and a selection of valves, and a friend of the family built his own computer from discrete parts, IIrC it had 1kb of working memory - the same as the onboard computer for the Apollo missions.

Quote from: Julia1996 on January 14, 2018, 06:36:55 PM
I know about the draft. We studied about the Vietnam war in school. Males still have to register for selective service. I think Tyler did but I never did. My dad and Tyler actually had a good laugh over that. I told my dad if a war broke out it would suck if the military dragged me away in the night. My dad said " pumpkin, if the military was so desperate they dragged you away to fight in a war then that war would already be lost". My brother thought that was hilarious. Then he asked my dad could he imagine me in the military? He started saying I wouldn't want to wear camouflage because its ugly and I wouldn't want to get dirty or wet and that I would be saying Ewwwww constantly and calling everything icky and and saying weapons training was a sleeping pill and telling the drill instructor to stop yelling at me and not to be so loud. Then he asked my dad could he picture me trying to fire a gun. Then they were both almost on the floor they were laughing so hard. You know, I certainly would never ever want to be in the military and I'm not the most outdoor minded person but I'm not totally useless. That was kind of mean of them.See if I save them if a war breaks out!

I was a draft evader in that I never registered for the draft - they wouldn't let me, boo hoo.  But somehow I have 12 years in the Marines and 1 ArmyGuard.

The draft ended before I was old enough and by the time I would have been required to register I had already taken the oath of office.


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Quote from: Deborah on January 14, 2018, 07:05:25 PM
The draft ended before I was old enough and by the time I would have been required to register I had already taken the oath of office.


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President Deborah! Nice ring to it!

If you will, imagine speed limits of 55, even on interstate highways. Imagine having only 3 television channels. If the president was on, you either went outside to play, or grabbed a board game.
When we had nothing but black and white TV sets, it didn't matter if the show was made in color, because only the ultra rich could afford a color set. Back then, my favorite shows were Gilligan's Island, MASH, and The Twilight Zone.

Quote from: Lady Sarah on January 14, 2018, 07:26:34 PM
If you will, imagine speed limits of 55, even on interstate highways. Imagine having only 3 television channels. If the president was on, you either went outside to play, or grabbed a board game.
When we had nothing but black and white TV sets, it didn't matter if the show was made in color, because only the ultra rich could afford a color set. Back then, my favorite shows were Gilligan's Island, MASH, and The Twilight Zone.

Your comment reminded me of my grandmother and I peeping tom'ing the neighbor's window to watch tv.  We didn't have one.  And when we finally got one it was from someone at the church and it only had a 9" screen.

Between 1949 and 1969, the number of households in the U.S. with at least one TV set rose from less than a million to 44 million. The number of homes with TVs increased from 0.4 percent in 1948 to 55.7 percent in 1954 and to 83.2 percent four years later.Between 1959 and 1970, the percentage of households in the U.S. with at least one TV went from 88 percent to 96 percent.

Quote from: Cali on January 14, 2018, 07:35:46 PM
Your comment reminded me of my grandmother and I peeping tom'ing the neighbor's window to watch tv.  We didn't have one.  And when we finally got one it was from someone at the church and it only had a 9" screen.

Between 1949 and 1969, the number of households in the U.S. with at least one TV set rose from less than a million to 44 million. The number of homes with TVs increased from 0.4 percent in 1948 to 55.7 percent in 1954 and to 83.2 percent four years later.Between 1959 and 1970, the percentage of households in the U.S. with at least one TV went from 88 percent to 96 percent.

My neighbor said she was a teenager when they finally got electric put in their house.  Someone in her mothers family gave them a TV set. She said it barely worked and the picture was awful but neighbors all came to watch it and that it was a really big deal for country people , who for the most part didn't even have electricity. Then her mom won a vacuum cleaner in a raffle and their neighbors even came to look at that. Life was truly dull back then. Those poor people!