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A Little Reflection

Taledrger

SPONSOR
SW Michigan
A friend sent me this today thought y'all might like it.

A blast from the past! FENDER SKIRTS: I came across this phrase yesterday "FENDER SKIRTS". A term I haven't heard in a long time and thinking about "fender skirts" started me thinking about other words that quietly disappear from our language with hardly a notice like "curb feelers" And "steering knobs." (AKA) suicide knob Since I'd been thinking of cars, my mind naturally went that direction first. Any kids will probably have to find some elderly person over 50 to explain some of these terms to you. Remember "Continental kits?" They were rear bumper extenders and spare tire covers that were supposed to make any car as cool as a Lincoln Continental. When did we quit calling them "emergency brakes?" At some point "parking brake" became the proper term. But I miss the hint of drama that went with "emergency brake." I'm sad, too, that almost all the old folks are gone who would call the accelerator the "foot feed." Didn't you ever wait at the street for your daddy to come home, so you could ride the "running board" up to the house? Here's a phrase I heard all the time in my youth but never anymore - "store-bought." Of course, just about everything is store-bought these days. But once it was bragging material to have a store-bought dress or a store-bought bag of candy. "Coast to coast" is a phrase that once held all sorts of excitement and now means almost nothing. Now we take the term "world wide" for granted This floors me. On a smaller scale, "wall-to-wall" was once a magical term in our homes. In the '50s, everyone covered his or her hardwood floors with, wow, wall-to-wall carpeting! Today, everyone replaces their wall-to-wall carpeting with hardwood floors. Go figure. When's the last time you heard the quaint phrase "in a family way?" It's hard to imagine that the word "pregnant" was once considered a little too graphic, a little too clinical for use in polite company So we had all that talk about stork visits and "being in a family way" or simply"expecting." Apparently "brassiere" is a word no longer in usage. I said it the other day and my daughter cracked up. I guess it's just "bra" now "Unmentionables" probably wouldn't be understood at all. I always loved going to the "picture show," but I considered "movie" an affectation. Most of these words go back to the '50s, but here's a pure-'60s word I came across the other day - "rat fink." Ooh, what a nasty put-down! Here's a word I miss - "percolator." That was just a fun word to say. And what was it replaced with? "Coffee maker." How dull. Mr. Coffee, I blame you for this. I miss those made-up marketing words that were meant to sound so modern and now sound so retro. Words like "DynaFlow" and "Electrolux." Introducing the 1963 Admiral TV, now with "SpectraVision!" Food for thought - Was there a telethon that wiped out lumbago? Nobody complains of that anymore. Maybe that's what castor oil cured, because I never hear mothers threatening kids with castor oil anymore. Some words aren't gone, but are definitely on the endangered list. The one that grieves me most "supper." Now everybody says "dinner." Save a great word. Invite someone to supper. Discuss fender skirts. Someone forwarded this to me. I thought some of us of a "certain age" would remember most of these. Just for fun, Pass it along to others of "a certain age"!
 
Bob,
That post was awesome :) I gotta tell ya though... as I read it, the little voice in my head that was reading sounded like Andy Rooney :eek:
 
Good stuff!

Turntables are only used for making sounds in rap music now, I have met a lot of people in the 20's and early 30's who have never had a checkbook - all debit cards. When there are no more checks, will it still be called a "checking account", or will it be a "debiting account"?

I also remember terms like "four banger" to describe a four cylinder engine with little or no power (all of them at the time), now some 4cyls are considered highly potent.

In computer world, we have lost a lot. Nobody talks about EBCDIC anymore, Fortran, Cobol, 9 track tape, disk paks, 8" floppies, or 80 column punched cards. Heck, you hardly hear the word DOS anymore, and certainly not Cp/m (my personal favorite).

I've said "groovy" since I was about 12 years old. I keep saying it and it comes in and out of vogue.

sj
 
Man Steve, we used to have an IBM System 34 and dreamed about upgrading to a hot rod System 36 or even maybe someday the untouchable AS400. 8) (and I remember the day we loaded it on the back of a recycle truck and pushed it over - WHAM! ) Now C++ is starting to sound old...
 
Brad that is all NEW stuff, I am old enough to have worked on and IBM 370 and a Sperry Univac 90/30, not to mention the first email I ever received was on a teletype machine at 300 baud!

tty33.gif


sj
 
Driving with my 13 year old son the other day, he said "Dad PUT the window up" I thought why didnt he say ROLL the window up, and then realized he never had to. We used to laugh when my grandmom would say "isn't he a gay fellow, always happy.
 
You never hear "three on the tree" or "double clutching" any more either..

And nobody seems to pump "ethel" any more... I know, I set myself up with that one...

sj
 
Try to explain "you sound like a broken record" to those who've only known CDs.

With USB drives anymore folks forget the old MFM drives that stood 3ft tall but only had 1MB capacity.

A tube is something you snowboard or skateboard through/in not something that goes in your computer or stereo. Just ask any teenager.

Folks at the local lumber store still use a tractor feed dot matrix printer on carbon paper which is a quaint idea today with copy machines, ink jet printers and dual-sided page feed. My kids told me I should offer to help fix their printer since it was making so much noise. An adult standing close by asked why they were using a broken printer.

I did get asked a year or so ago if I could connect to the internet over a telegraph line. Even knowing what it was and how to send a little Morse Code didn't help me get them connected in a meaningful way.

I know I haven't used a rotary dial phone in years. Watched some kids giggling at the sound it made not so long ago.

LORAN-C is a largely forgotten navigational tool in this age of GPS. LORAN-A is an historical curiosity.
 
But look at all the great NEW words we get to use....


SYNERGIES :bang

DOWNSIZING :(

MISSPOKE :agrue:

PRE-OWNED :roll:

TRANSSEXUAL :eek:

ALTERNATIVE LIFESTYLE :bunny

:censor: :bad-words: :onfire:

CloudDancer :anon
 
Taildrger,

I alway thought a Fender Skirt was a girl guitar player.

I have thought about curb feelers for the cub on some of those foggy mornings, and a set of whitewall bush wheels would be groovy.

GR
 
When I was a kid, a lot of the aerial applicators used diesel fuel as a carrier instead of water. It weighed 6lb/gal instead of 8lbs, and since the industrial-strength 2-4-D used then was mostly diesel with a little acid added, the diesel was more compatible with the chemical than water. Diesel only cost $.10/gal, so, at a gallon per acre it didn't break the bank. Made the airplanes a bitch to clean up, though. My first job in aviation-washing diesel fuel and 2-4-D off a Cub.

Mark
 
How many of y'all remember flying the old Adcock ranges. In the '50s I flew from Biloxi, Mississippi to North Carolina in PA-12s, Aronica Chiefs, and BC-12 Taylorcrafts with only a low frequency dry battery receiver (A-battery and B-battery needed) at night many weekends listening to the dit dah ,steady on course tone, and dah dit. Listening for the build or fade to know if you were going to or from the station. Those were the days! ...Clyde Davis
 
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