I can list a hundred ways that life was different when I was a kid than it is now. However, let me just write about the cool things that were different.

SCHOOL. Computers did not exist when I was in school. All work was done on paper with pencils… and Ticonderoga #2 pencils were the best. They smelled so good when you sharpened them. All knowledge of the world was found in books called “encyclopedias.” Copy machines did not exist, but mimeograph machines did that reproduced papers using purple ink that smelled great but was highly toxic and probably killed brain cells. Formal papers had to be written on typewriters that used paper inserted into a roller, and the ink used to write was on a ribbon.

NO SOCIAL MEDIA. Just as there were no computers, there were no smartphones, nor was there any Instagram, Facebook, X, etc. If you wanted to say something about something, you had to say it out loud to the face of a real person. Likewise, there was no Google, so you did not have information at your fingertips. There was no email, so if you wanted to write to someone, you had to actually write out a letter, place it in an envelope, put a stamp on the envelope , and put the letter into a mailbox. It took one day to send something across town, five days to send something across the country, and more than a week to send a letter overseas. Letters overseas were called “airmail.”

TELEPHONES. All telephones were connected by wires… no iPhones or Androids. Phones were not portable. You used a rotary dial to call numbers once you heard the dial tone. No answering machines or voicemail existed, so if someone called and the person they were trying to talk to wasn’t there, you had a to “take a message” on paper and give it to them. Since no cell phones existed, at every gas station in the country and at every public place there was a pay phone you could use. You had to drop a nickel, dime, or quarter into a slot in the phone, and you could talk for three minutes. Books containing all the telephone numbers were called “phonebooks.” White pages listed people; yellow pages listed businesses.

SEATBELTS. They did not exist. During a crash, you just flew out the window and took your chances.

METAL PLAYGROUND EQUIPMENT. Going to the park used to be really, really dangerous… and we loved it! Slides, monkey bars, and swings were all made out of metal. Some of them had sharp edges. During the summer, you could get burned badly by sitting on a hot slide. The Merry-go-round was totally metal, and if you got it going really fast, the centrifugal force would cause you to fly off and skid across the hot pavement. If you used waxed paper on the slide, you could turn it into something as slippery as ice and go really, really fast… fast enough to bust open your head. It was fun.

CURFEW. As a kid, I got on my bike and rode all over town until either supper time or until it was dark… and then sometimes we could play into the night. Playing army was a great game. We would sneak around the neighborhood, climb into other people’s yards, use authentic-looking guns (without orange tips), and blast away at each other until we were all dead. Sometimes, we would play baseball out in the street until a car would come. (There was no sandlot!) Games would last hours and scores were seldom kept. We played for the fun of playing ball. In the winter, we would play outside till sunset.

BOTTLE DEPOSITS. Each Saturday morning, my brother and I would ride our bikes over to the high school and pick up soda pop bottles that were thrown out by the side of the road after the Friday night games. Then, we’d take them to one of the liquor stores and collect the deposit money for them (between a penny and a nickel per bottle.) My brother and I would buy packs of baseball cards with gum in them for a nickel or red and black licorice for a penny a piece.

WALK TO SCHOOL. I walked to school from kindergarten through high school. My house was a half-block from my elementary school. After I moved to Sacramento, my house was farther to my sixth grade class, but there was a cool shortcut through a drainage ditch to the back of the school. Tadpoles and frogs could be found all year long in the water. When we moved to the Potter Lane house, I was a block away from the junior high and a mile from the high school. When I was a senior in high school, I got to drive to school once in a while, but it was not a regular occurrence.

(Pictured: My mom submitted this picture to the local paper, the same paper I am reading. They published it.)