I got one for ya - remember reading a book as a kid...because you wanted to read...for fun?

Remember when most junk food was more expensive to eat than healthy food...now its cheaper to buy a kingsized Snickers bar than it is to buy an apple or an orange.

I'm 44 yes old and I remember all but about three, but I grew up in a world where some of these things lingered on until the early '90s. In 1990, I knew of two places in west Tennessee that still had glass bottle soda in machines - one was a machine that displayed the bottles so that all you could see were the caps, all vertically, through a skinny glass door; a door which you could open, but not retrieve a soda until you put your money in (remember small cokes for a dime?) and you needed to be strong enough to pull the soda botle through the tight retainer - it was a right of passage to be able to pull a coke outta one of these monsters (in the south, they call every kinda soda 'coke'). The other kind was the older chest style dispensers, where you'd lift a lid, put yer coin in, and slide the bottle over to get your bottle out. I do believe that one is still in use. Did you know there are places you can buy a Chocolate Soldier? Do you have any idea what I'm Talking about?

There is a truck stop somewhere in Indiana that has table-top jukeboxes. Just incase anyone is still trying to picture what the hell that'd look like, it was the cover of two greatest hits albums:


I remember that McDonalds was this place we'd get to eat at when we traveled to Michigan to see the grandparents, but I think my personal fave place to go there was the Tasty Freeze (you may have heard about their chillidogs). The south didn't start getting a lot of the national fastfood chains until the '80s, but we did have (in the larger towns and cities) KFC, which was everywhere and so was Dairy Queen, which was in our town. Then in the '80s we got Hardy's (they had the best burgers). But yeah yer right, eating out was something that happened every great once in a while.

Early credit cards were tin, and they had to make an imprint of it with a slide machine thingy and call your bank to verify funds right there. I still remember commercials for BankAmericard (now Visa). I had a credit card before my folks did ('86 - it was a Sears card). I think my first purchase was to buy a rearwindow louvre for my pos '81 Mustang.

Pizza was something you got at the drive-in movies for some reason, but we eventually got a real pizzaria around '78 (it was also the first video arcade). Pizza is better when yer younger (I still love it though). Speaking of video arcades, remember when that was the only place you could play video games. Sure, there was Atari and Commodore, but the games weren't as good as the ones you could find at an arcade. (my faves were Tank Commander and Tempest).