What Things do you Miss?

[Esks4ever]

What things from your childhood or years ago do you miss today ?


For me:

- Blockbuster Videos.... sure on Demand/Netflix is great, but there was something about going there to see what movies are coming and being able to hold movie boxes to read. Not to mention the numerous games rented from there. And course the cheap sales

- Bourbon Street West Edmonton Mall: It was unique and odd. The Statues the lighting, and for some reason the smell.

- Affordable tickets for concerts / camping out / lining up to get first crack at tickets

- Remember Consumer Distributors and their massive catalog that came out just before christmas? Oh the circling of stuff I wanted. LoL. Also having to drive to their store/warehouse just off baseline road by capilano. Remember my trip there with my mom to pick up the game "Mortal Kombat"

- Muchmusic playing music.. oh the hours I watched as a kid. Sidenote Electric Circus on Friday was a blast to watch lol

- Arcades.

- Photo Albums

- Simplicity of life... Not meaning because I was a kid with zero responsibility.. but how it wasn't the woke/cancel culture its morphed into now.

- All my Masters of the Universe and GI Joes - knowing what they can go for now - still upset they where given to my mother's friends child after I grew out of them.

- Going to clubs - The Joint, Barry T's where the main ones.

- and of course, since this is an Edmonton Eskimo/Elks forum. I miss the Grass

[bone]

Bourbon Street is gone? Has it been that long since I've been to West Ed?

I agree with all of the items you mentioned (though I never got into GI Joes).

Along with your music memories. Record release day. Trying to find a way to get to the music store as early as possible on the Tuesday to pick up that great new record/cassette/CD as soon as it was possible as you usually only knew 1 or 2 songs at that point unless there was a radio show premiering it the week before (which is also something I miss).

Or listening to the radio for hours on end to record that newly released song by one of your favorite artists or that new song you like by a new artist so that you can listen to it over and over again until you could get the record.

[Esks4ever]

Bourbon Street is gone? Has it been that long since I've been to West Ed?

I agree with all of the items you mentioned (though I never got into GI Joes).

Along with your music memories. Record release day. Trying to find a way to get to the music store as early as possible on the Tuesday to pick up that great new record/cassette/CD as soon as it was possible as you usually only knew 1 or 2 songs at that point unless there was a radio show premiering it the week before (which is also something I miss).

Or listening to the radio for hours on end to record that newly released song by one of your favorite artists or that new song you like by a new artist so that you can listen to it over and over again until you could get the record.

Bourbon Street has been gone a looooong time. Now it's just a normal part of the mall with shops upstairs.

Yas on the Music.

Recording on the Radio... waiting for hours for the song to play ( or request to come through ) then realizing you dont have a blank tape so you use the tape on a cassette tape trick to re-record on it.

[Looner]

I miss how slow the pace felt as opposed to today. You would call your friends house and if you didn't get a busy signal, you had to hope they were home or that whoever you left the message with, would actually tell them. Now, it seems, everyone is expecting you to respond within minutes.

I also miss the blockbuster experience, you would hope that the movie you wanted was in and if it wasn't you had to find something else to watch and then reserve it for next time

[tigerdar]

The fact that wanna be tough guys didn't have a keyboard to hide behind if they wanted to say ****.

[couchspud]

A few ridiculously silly but entertaining t.v. shows ; like Gilligans Island….

Even on Gilligan’s Island they were smart enough to listen to the professor, not the millionaire ! ! !

[Esks4ever]

A few ridiculously silly but entertaining t.v. shows ; like Gilligans Island….

Even on Gilligan’s Island they were smart enough to listen to the professor, not the millionaire ! ! !

MASH is my guilty pleasure

[bone]

A few ridiculously silly but entertaining t.v. shows ; like Gilligans Island….

Even on Gilligan’s Island they were smart enough to listen to the professor, not the millionaire ! ! !

But they often trusted the buffoon too much with important tasks.

[couchspud]

But they often trusted the buffoon too much with important tasks.

Ahhh… the delightful cross over of comedy t.v. and real life .

[couchspud]

Recognizing that I’m dating myself horribly, I miss Rocky and Bullwinkle. In their own comical naivety they did understand who the villains were ; Boris and Natasha. Has the real world really changed that much ?

[nafnikufesin]

I miss Blockbuster so much, I put one in my yard: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C5y3j...RlODBiNWFlZA==

[Looner]

I miss Blockbuster so much, I put one in my yard: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C5y3j...RlODBiNWFlZA==

thats soooooo cool!!!!

[Foxhound]

I/we did so many things when I was a kid in elementary school from 1957-65 that I never see kids doing today:

* Walking close to a kilometre to school unaccompanied by any parent/adult as soon as kindergarten in the fall of 1957.

* Just leaving the house in the morning to go out and play with friends, whether it was baseball, football or whatever activity in the park, or hide-and-go-seek or any other game right out on the street. Sometimes we'd ride our bikes as much as a mile away to a particular park or street. The key though was that there was no need to report to parents, so long as we were home by the time it got dark.

* Trick or treating on Halloween with my buddies without any balls and chains(a.k.a. adults) in tow. Using a pillowcase to maximize my haul.

* Being given bus fare and taking the bus downtown by myself for French, Lithuanian or accordion classes. The latter of course required lugging a full size accordion on the bus.

* Hitting up my parents for a dime to go to the skating rink or swimming pool with friends. No parents to supervise of course. Pools had lifeguards. What more did you need?

* Hitting up parents for the twenty cents to go to the Saturday afternoon kids' matinees with two movies and cartoons or Three Stooges shorts at the neighbourhood theatre.

* Going out for little league football without the parents knowing anything about it. I mean why would they care?

* Reaching into ice water coolers in variety stores to select soda pop in dripping wet proper ten ounce refillable glass bottles.

* Roaming streets looking for empty pop bottles for the two cent deposit. I needed the money for cards, comics and potato chips because I was always collecting something.

* Going to the local library several times a week to check out books and read the newspaper and magazines such as Boy's Life, Model Airplane News, Life and Look. I didn't watch much TV at all since our B&W TV only picked up one channel and I wasn't allowed to watch TV on school nights anyway.

* Looking through the spinner rack at corner variety and drug stores to select ten and then twelve cent (eeeeek!) comic books. Specialty comic shops weren't even imaginable, let alone comic books fetching even $1.00.

* Sneaking peaks at the titty magazines in corner variety stores.

* Flinging baseball, hockey, etc. cards up against brick walls in winner take all games with nary a thought as to future "values".

* Selling newspapers and chocolate bars door-to-door.

* Having an early morning or after school paper route.

* Being sent to the store to buy cigarettes for my dad, or six bottles of pop for the family.

* Hitting up my parents for dimes and quarters to buy firecrackers before Firecracker(Victoria) Day. I mean what's wrong with young boys letting off firecrackers? Playing with caps all year round.

* Playing with marbles, Yo-Yos and Duncan Spin Tops. Sidewalks would often be taken up by young girls skipping rope. When was the last time any of us saw any little girls engaged in this splendid aerobic activity?

* My skateboard was a first generation wooden one with steel wheels very much like this Nash Shark model here:





We didn't do any tricks with it. We just did our best to navigate down hilly pothole infested roads without wiping out.

* Doing wheelies on my bike. That's something rarely seen these days. Whether wheelies are no longer fashionable or whether kids don't get the chance to pop any wheelies under the ever present gaze of helicopter parents is a question I can't answer.

* Playing nickel pinball machines at local variety stores or diners. There were no pinball arcades in London, Ontario at the time. Then the killjoys banned pinball machines as potential gambling devices for about a decade.

* Building model kits and slot cars. Racing these slot cars at the hobby shop track downtown. Kids don't build models anymore. Kids these days aren't interested in anything that doesn't provide instant gratification, i.e. anything not TV screen related. Just check out the clientele of the few remaining hobby shops. They're all aging boomers.

* Firing up the .049 Thimbledrone engine of my Cox Spitfire gas powered plane in the house. What a racket! It was line control but I never mastered the trick of flying it without crashing immediately. I had to order a new body from Cox to replace the one I'd shattered beyond repair.

* Playing with pea shooters. My parents giving me a BB gun and a bow and arrow with a steel point.

* Carrying a jack knife around for games such as knife baseball.

* Going for a dip in the creek behind the house which my father had dammed up to form a swimming hole.

* Camping out in a tent overnight with friends in the backyard.

* Climbing trees.

Oh, I'm sure modern parents would all be aghast. They want the kids safe in front of the TV with video game consoles at all times. And that's why so many kids are obese and end up with deadly peanut and bee sting allergies. Keep kids squeaky clean and of course they don't develop their natural immunities.

Deny kids deadly pea shooters and (heaven forbid!) metal lunch boxes and they end up arming themselves with real knives and even guns to go to school. It's the principle of the dam. Keep denying kids whatever is "unsafe" and the pressure just keeps building up and building up till it explodes.

The ultimate irony of course is the parents who demonize sugar (of course their inactive kids don't need the extra calories). These kids then take to experimenting with alcohol, pot, crystal meth and cocaine at first opportunity. It's the boy who cried wolf syndrome. "Hey, remember, you were the ones who told us sugar was so bad! You think we're going to listen to you now when you tell us to avoid booze and drugs? And what about all that Scotch and gin you drink and those sleeping pills and pain killers you pop all the time? Sure, sure, we kids are going to listen to you old farts. Yeah, right."