61 thoughts on “ONLY 9?!”

  2. All 20 E-Z. How about winding the tape back into the cassette with a pencil. While driving down the road in my 71 Chevy PU.

  3. All 20…
    Made a collect call to my parents, once.
    Used pay phones when they were a dime.
    Still use a paper map and have a Trucker’s Road Atlas in the car. Never used a GPS.
    My electronic tether, err, cell phone lives on the edge of my desk when it’s not in the bottom of my purse.
    Black-n-white TV even after color TV came out. Went to a friends house and watch TV when some of the first color ones came out. Black-n-white was better. Who wants to watch purple people?

    • Ha, we would call Mom collect when arriving anywhere safe. She would then decline to accept.

  4. Building a crystal radio by winding a coil on a round Quaker oatmeal
    container.

    Driving a Chevy with a Turbo-Glide (weird, it didn’t shift).

    Waking up at 5 QM to the sound of Dad ‘shaking down the ashes’ in the old coal furnace.

  5. Not even a challenge. Add: Adjust Rabbit ears, Listen to ‘The Shadow’ radio show, Use the 2-holer Outhouse in the shed, delivering newspapers on my bicycle, riding my bicycle with my best friend at 8yo collecting bottles to get the deposit on them. just a few more that I can remember….

  6. 17. Didn’t own a computer until I was past 30 and no stereo until I was 25, so didn’t tape from the radio. Filled a car with leaded gas. Ran a full manual cash register, where you whacked the big button with the edge of your hand to add things up and open the drawer. Tested tubes on the machine at the front of the drugstore. Belonged to the Radio Shack Battery of the Month Club, which kept the 5-cell flashlight they gave away every year at Christmas fed…

  7. All 20, and our farmhouse was heated by a woodstove fed wood that my brothers and I had to split with an axe and stack. I’ve also eaten eggs a half hour after I gathered them from the chicken coop and milked a cow by hand.

  8. All 20 .. yet no mention of 8-Track? Wow.
    Had the pleasure of listening to vinyl QUAD stereo with all four speakers. The setup belonged to a college classmate. He’s still got the system, and still have a nice vinyl collection for it.
    No mention of blankets, sweaters, coat, etc., smelling like moth balls?

    • Also not mentioned was 4-track tape… I had that plus of course an 8-track, cassette which is still in my truck(2000 Chevy C-3500) and a CD.
      I made 19 out of the 20, never recorded a song off the air, but like most of ya’ll I did a hell of a lot stuff unique to the last generation(US) that young ‘uns have never had the joy of preforming today. They are missing out!

  10. Yep, all 20 of them too. Different world we were brought into for sure ! Yes, leaded gasoline for by ’66 VW was 0.35 CENTS a gallon in 1979, the new unleaded about 8 cents less. I was told my engine would die and I payed more just to prevent it – nope ! Zero effect I could tell.

    This morning put $50.00 dollars in for 13.25 gallons. Trying to time for buying at low point before it spikes again.

  11. Used to have a phone number you could call, on your rotary dial phone, and all it did was give you the time and temperature. That’s it. Time and temperature.

  13. I like how the list includes paid for something with a paper check like it’s ancient history.

    Yeah, checkbooks last longer than they used to, but I still write checks.

  15. Pikers. I own and have functional every item on the list. Don’t use some because no remaining power outlets for setup, outdated print and disconnected POTS service, but yeah and 74 AIN’T old ya bastiges!

  16. Does it still count if you’re not old just grew up poor & in a very rural area that’s 10+ years behind everyone else.

    • I still have my tape Walkman and a radio only version and they both still work. Somehow or another I’ve lost all but one tape for the Walkman.

  18. Depending on how expansive you want to be with “boom box”, I’d miss that one, but I always thought that carrying around a ghetto blaster to annoy everyone for 6 blocks was being a complete asshole.

    How about screw-in fuses in the house panel? A turn signal stalk that does only one thing? When I bought my 1st house, Ma Bell offered me a party line. Little girl is a bit out of touch.

  19. The only thing I noticed is she claims “My ambition is to elevate each small account i touch”. Based on this my small account might be in luck.

  22. I’m 61 and have done all 20. My kids are in their mid 30s and they’ve also done all 20

  23. Done 19 out of 20. Never had a walkman. Hell, I still do 4 of them! I am 70.

    Truth be told, most of these are not that long ago. 20-30 years really is not that long in the greater scheme of things.

  25. Yup, all 20, plus many mentioned above. I will add —
    –Watching a steam engine still in main line service hauling freight.
    –Riding an electric trolley car in San Francisco.

    BTW, I turn 23 and a half today. 23 plus a half century.

    • Used to be a Blockbuster right next to Tower Records in town. The most popular place to hang out !

  28. All of them. Also used dial-up before there was an Internet. Even used it with a phone coupler modem.

    • Same here. The closest Blockbuster was 30 miles away. We had a local independent video store in town.

      Leigh
      Whitehall, NY

  30. All 20, np. Plus, I used to record music off the radio onto reel-to-reel first (1960s), a few years later onto 8-track (1970s) using a patch cord so I would not get background noise.

  32. EZ all 20…Go back to dirt floors and an outhouse, hand pump on the kitchen sink. Bottom half of the screen door was a Coca-Cola sign. Waz free as a bird…

  33. I hit all of them except for #13. We were too far up in the hills to have a Blockbuster Video.

  34. I score a perfect 20. Still do several of the things on the list even now. Listen to music regularly on CDs, LPs and open reel tape (in quad even, and on tube amps, gasp!).

    Have a small collection of vintage phones (mostly rotary, but some early touch tone models as well) I’ve restored, and have a small Panasonic digital hybrid PBX at home I can connect them to, in order to use them. No longer have a landline, but do have a cell phone to wired phone “bridge” box that provides a functional outside line to the PBX to dial out on.

    Still write checks periodically. Still have (and sometimes reference) a dictionary. Same with paper maps, even though I do use GPS mapping with regularity. Still use floppy discs once in a while (mostly to load patch data onto old synthesizers I own, but really need to convert these to a USB floppy emulator for longer term reliability). My Kurzweil K2000S has a CD ROM interface and external drive I still use. Still own (and periodically use) a Sansui CP-7 boombox from circa 1984. Even put new belts in the tape deck about 2 years ago, but seldom use cassettes anymore. I really enjoy old tech, even with it’s limitations.

  35. “How freaking old is she, 12?”

    Careful with the phrasing there, Phil.
    If there’s any Epstein-class people lurking around you’ll give them a boner. (But 12 is already too old for the [people we can’t talk about]. “Pay no attention to the weirdly stained mattresses and children’s clothes in our secret tunnels, you bigot!”)

  38. All 20? Uh, yeah, and I still do 8 of them. I’d count more, but they aren’t possible (dial-up, etc.).

    I still carry a pocket watch, fountain pen, and coin purse. The old ways are the best ways.

  41. All of them. Hell, each year I used to get a book giving me the addresses and phone numbers of everybody in town (not true, actually–you could pay for an unlisted number).

  42. Unbelievable, all 20 of them for me. I still own my hard copy dictionary, thesaurus, and encyclopedia. Had to use rotary phones at times in the line of duty so scanners couldn’t pickup transmissions. Went from typing reports, to saving reports on floppy disc’s, to placing them on CD’s, to thumb drives to internal hard drives. Went from film cameras including Polaroid, to the first digital cameras with floppy storage disc’s that would only hold seven to ten images, to digital cameras that holds over 400 or more images depending on your storage media. Went from a carburetor, to throttle body, to fuel injection on our units. At 64 I didn’t think I was that old. But then again I did follow a mules ass around logging with my Dad back in the 70’s for Weyerhaueser.

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