Without stating your age: How old are you?

59Tebo said:

They're still around, here and there. Not as popular as they once were, but the hard-core racers are big ticket items. Check out this guy:
https://gerdingfasttracks.com/
If somebody had the wherewithall (not me! I don't have enough money to pay attention!), this is the guy that could hook you up for a 1st class model raceway. I even had dreams of a scale model Watkins Glenn road course (complete with scale elevation changes!). All it takes is money!....

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Speaking of Watkins Glenn the kid who's house the track was in the basement of talked his dad to drive four or five of us kids down to the Glenn two different times. One time was for practice day and a year latter for actual race day. Yea about a half dozen 14-15 year olds just dropped off at the gate to wander about the grounds with no adult supervision, what could go wrong? More that once while walking around the track we were offered free bear by different guys there but we were more interested in the cars!

Just had to Google something, it must have been 1964 as the year was the first one for Honda to enter a car in Formula One racing. One thing about the Honda cars I recall was right near the start of the race one of them lost the front end body work but they just kept running it. don't think aerodynamics were as critical then as cars now days.

One other thing from the time we were there for practice day was I recall watching guys working on cars just out side the garage area. Really got a kick out of the guys working on one of the Ferrari's. It just would not start. Watched them even giving it a shot of ether starting fluid to no avail. Then as a last resort they tied a rope to one of the from A-arms and the other end to a Ford four door and took off down the gravel road to tow start it so they could do their practice laps. That's one of those times I wish I or someone had a camera to save that image "Ford verses Ferrari!". Enzo would not have been happy to see that one!

Davy Crockett! Every kid at Tecumseh Grade School had a Coonskin Cap. Davy Crockett raced big Mike Fink down the Mississippi river in keelboats and the saloon shooting contest was unforgettable.

The only thing I have left is the Fort Apache puzzle

I was doing this in elementary school. We were going to get nuked.


I was all about these when they came out in '67. I still remember they cost $.77 ea. That was a lot of money for me at that time.

Don`t worry about getting Nuked. Bert the Turtle will save you.

Yup. "Duck & cover!" Don't look at the flash! Like if there was an actual nuke that would do any good. All you can do is bend over, put your head between your legs, and kiss your ass goodbye!
I still have a bunch of the original "Red Line" Hot Wheels. Our kids used to play with them, until Mrs. was surfing the interweb, and found out how much they were worth (of course, that's for NOS still in the box). Mine have a lot of miles on them. Still, next day, she came home from the store with a pile of Chinese knock-offs, and told me to "put those (the Hot Wheels) someplace safe". That's the "Light My Firebird".
I knew I still had it floatin' around somewhere...

For you guys that worked as gas station attendants, a friend of mine in high school was working at this gas station that was running a promotion, a free set of steak knives with a fill up. He was there alone one night ( a high school kid no less) and this guy comes in and fills up his car. Back in those days you went into the little office to pay. He hands the guy his free steak knives and the guy pulls out one of the knives and robbed him! That was the end of the steak knife promotion!

Well that sucks. Scary. I was robbed by the gas station owner. He'd convinced us we needed to pay back any shortages in the "take" (it being a strictly cash business). He was the one skimming off the take, and we were too young and scared to do anything but pay up, or lose our jobs. It took long enough, but we (and our dads) got together and confronted him about it. He denied everything, and we all left unemployed. Prick.

In 1958 the Eastboro Derby station had a Coca Cola promotion. Free case of Coke with a fill up. No deposit. Been wrestling the empty`s around the junk shed for 62 years. They had a promotion in 1959 for a free 5 gal gas can when you bought 5 gal of gas. I spent some of my lawn mowing money to get one and used it for my Cushman Highlander scooter. Still using it. It`s in the junk shed with the Coca Cola empty`s. The junk shed is a untapped source of childhood memories. And probably my only legacy.

One of the houses I grew up in had an outhouse, and no phone. For a 5 yr old,scary walking through the trees in the dark for a piss before bed. When I started as an apprentice mechanic at a gas station in my mid teens, I started at 28 cents per hour. Then I had to work every Saturday morning pumping gas. After 2 years that became optional, but kept at it for the extra cash. Yeah I remember checking oil and coolant, cleaning windshields. Every now and then I would have to do a oil change and full service up on the rack for a customer. Some people were impatient and couldn't wait for me to check oil level so would do it themselves, with drastic results, oil in radiator, and water in oil. Seen that a couple of times, needless to say that car went up on the rack and had an oil change at the owners expense. One day it was quiet, had time to kill, entered a contest put on by one of the oil companies, had to write a slogan on a card and drop it in a box. Couple of months later I had won a surfboard. That started a whole new adventure. Slot cars were a big thing for me too in the mid 60's, starting with 1/32 scale then up to 1/24 scale. I still have one of my cars from those days. Would borrow Mums car and hit one of the big tracks in the area, had a large loop de loop, and if the car wasn't going fast enough it wall fall back down onto the track below. Matchbox and Corgi cars were also something I had, and kept, gave them to my son a couple of years back.

halfmile said:

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That picture of the wooden crate with the soda bottles reminded me of the little store/gas station about a mile down the road from our house. The store keeper had a habit of stacking the returned bottles on the back porch of the store. Heard that some of the bad kids, not us good kids, had a habit of walking past the back of the store and grabbing a few bottles from the back porch and then walk in the front door and return them to get enough money to buy a candy bar.

You can be sure my brother or myself would never do that because if mom found out we would be better off being caught by the FBI or State Police!

I remember when the US flag had 48 stars.


My Davy Crockett coonskin cap gave me ringworm.

I think the playground is up yonder, on the left...

Ah, drive-ins.

As a kid, my parents took us to see The Ten Commandments which I sorta remember, and Mary Poppins which I for sure remember and thought was stupid and boring.

Went most weekends when I was old enough to drive. Pretty sure they showed movies then too, but couldn't tell you anything about them...

Team Junk said:

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Nice and primitive there, Texas. They recently removed the microwave "horns" from the top of the telephone building in Syracuse, NY. It was a major undertaking in the downtown, taking months, The reason? They'd been there, unused, for so long, they'd become structurally unsound, and the company didn't want them tumbling almost 300 ft. to the street below...

On my second car I remember installing an under dash 45 RPM record player. The needle jumped around

like crazy so I taped a nickle to the arm but it did not help all that much.....

tim

Ah, earliest TV memories ....


Wallow in lovely, warm nostalgia! Gotta love it.

https://nostalgiacentral.com/television/tv-by-decade/tv-shows-1950s/watch-mother/

One of the few Canadian programs we got was the "Forrest Rangers" Who still remembers them, Max Pete perhaps?

59Tebo said:

Nice and primitive there, Texas. They recently removed the microwave "horns" from the top of the telephone building in Syracuse, NY. It was a major undertaking in the downtown, taking months, The reason? They'd been there, unused, for so long, they'd become structurally unsound, and the company didn't want them tumbling almost 300 ft. to the street below...

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I was just thinking about how different that building looks while going past on 690 Wednesday morning.