Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles

Coffee shops with tableside jukeboxes

Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers

The kitchen table looked something like this...

P.F. Fliers


Telephone numbers with a word prefix...(Raymond 4-601).
Party lines


Peashooters
45 RPM records
Green Stamps
Hi-Fi's

Metal ice cubes trays with levers
Mimeograph paper
Beanie and Cecil
Roller-skate keys
Cork pop guns
Drive ins
Studebakers

 
The Fuller Brush Man
Reel-To-Reel tape recorders
Tinkertoys
Erector Sets
The Fort Apache Play Set
Lincoln Logs
15 cent McDonald hamburgers


5 cent packs of baseball cards -
with that awful pink slab of bubble gum

Penny candy

35 cent a gallon gasoline
Jiffy Pop popcorn

Do you remember great TV Shows like...

When Saturday morning cartoons weren't 30-minute commercials for action figures?

Terrytoons

Farmer Alfalfa, Heckle and Jeckle, Mighty Mouse

King Features & Max Fleischer

Betty Boop and Koko ~ Out of the Inkwell

Betty Boop, Grampy & Gang

(If you're a Betty Boop fan, check out this wonderful Boop site!!)

Felix the Cat                    Popeye the Sailorman

Howdy Doody

Captain Kangaroo   Tom Terrific

Jon Gnagy - "Learn to Draw"

A fifteen minute television show, which taught viewers how to draw. It first aired in May of 1946

(I'd been hoping to get a photo of Mr. Jon Gnagy and now I can say thank you to Cindy from Wichita, KS for sending me to a site with Mr. Gnagy's photo. The photos are links to the sites where I found them. Further links enabled me to find even more pictures, among them was another website, created by his Jon Gnagy's daughter, Polly Gnagy, who shares her memories with all at and even  provides videos of Mr. Gnagy's TV show.) (More recently, I want to than Michael Briant for sending me an even larger, clearer photo of Mr. Gnagy.)

My introduction to Jon Gnagy

It was the summer of 1959 in Lake Ronkonkoma, NY. I was thirteen years old and it was the last day of school for the year. I was getting off my school bus and I was struck down by a drunk driver who couldn't be bothered to stop behind the school bus and wait for children to cross the road.

The accident resulted in my breaking both legs and having a severe skull concussion, which put me in a coma for a week. And because I had to lie on my back with my legs elevated, to replace the tissue missing from my skull, they had to take skin tissue from the left side my abdomen instead of from my rear, which is where I was told it would have normally  been transferred from back then.

After weeks in the hospital, I was finally allowed home but I spent that summer laid up in bed in a spica cast that covered my lower stomach and both legs, with a board separating my legs from each other.

It was a long, hot and tedious summer with very little I could do but lie in bed and watch TV. I liked to color and doodle, so one of my uncle's bought me a "How to Draw" kit by Jon Nagy and I was able to use it while watching his show on TV. He brief lessons and the books taught me a great deal, and his TV show certainly turned my convalescent summer into not only a more bearable period of time, but he truly influenced my enthusiasm for art and my future within that media.

Winky Dink and You

You would place the clear piece of plastic that came in the kit over the television screen and connect the dots to create a bridge for Winky Dink to cross to safety, then trace letters at the bottom of the screen to read the secret messages broadcast at the end of the show. Which, I guess, makes Winky-Dink the world's first interactive video game.

Ding Dong School

Water balloons were the ultimate weapon?

 

When kids could safely walk down to the local drug store, soda fountain and order a

for a dime!

 

Grandma's washing machines with wringers that you just HAD to put your thumb in! (Yeah, it really works!)

 

And Grandpa's restored old coupe with the rumble seat!

If you can remember most or all of these, then you have lived !

Pass this on to anyone who may need a break from
their "grown-up" life . . .I double-dog-dare-ya!