What's something your parents or grandparents used that doesn't exist anymore?

If your city was big enough you'd have 2 books. White pages and yellow pages

When I first moved out and into a house with roommates I called to set up our phone line. The person I talked to told me I should not use my first name in the phone book listing since I was a woman, just my first initial. He was concerned someone with bad intents would look for targets in the phone book. It had addresses listed too, and I appreciated his advice.

Free booster seats are gone.

I actually delivered phone books for extra money back in 1988. I was assigned a series of three floor apartment buildings and was about 4 or 5 months pregnant.

Every year I’d yell “the new phone book’s here, the new phone book’s here!” and then watch the movie The Jerk.

You brought back a childhood memory for me. Big family dinner at grandma and grandpa’s house and I was too small to reach the table. Problem was solved by stacking NYC phone books on a chair - homemade booster seat courtesy of the phone company

That's such a specific memory! My grandpa never had waxed floors, but he talks about how his mom used to polish the wood floors until they shone. He says you had to walk carefully or you'd slip. It's funny how those little household rituals just disappeared.

That scent of freshly waxed floors truly unlocks a time capsule of memories!

That's so cool! I didn't even know Laserdisc was a thing until I moved here. In Argentina, my grandma still has a box of VHS tapes somewhere. I think she keeps them just for the memories, not because she still watches them haha. Do your parents still have a player for it?

Mine still have the big box dual VHS tapes

At 10 yo I could walk to the neighborhood store and buy cigarettes for my dad.

My grandpa used to talk about those too. He said in Argentina they had them in bars and you just pulled a knob. Sounds so weird now. I've never seen one in real life.

There was one in my dorm in the mid 70’s. 50 cents a pack.

I have one in my house! It’s just like the one at the bar I used to work at, with the big clear pull knobs and everything. Does not do anything and holds no cigarettes but looks boss as hell in my living room. Weighs about 400 pounds.

They still exist in Germany, but they require age verification now with ID, driver’s license, or bank card iirc

The bar near where I work still has one. Owner claims they have the only remaining cigarette vending machine license in the state.

There are a lot of them being used now to sell small pieces of art.

I saw one recently at a c***** - surprised me but I guess a logical place to have one since you have to be over 21 just to walk in.

I have a film camera and Walgreens (p******* in the US) still developes the film.

I'm 47 and a couple of years ago, my teenage niece took an interest in my old cameras, so I bought some fresh film (both color and B&W), and walked her through how to use them (viewfinder, light meter, detachable flash, timers, etc). We made a daytrip out of it. It was crazy to her that she wouldn't know what her pics looked like until after development, and using the viewfinder really made her stop to think about framing. I showed her how to use my wired remote to take self portraits, too. "Bespoke Selfies" as it were, hehe. We still have film developing at our Walgreens, but I called in a favor from a friend who's a professional photographer. We went to his studio for the afternoon and he showed us all sorts of darkroom techniques with all the different solvents/tints. She *loved* the whole process, I bought her some frames for her favorite shots and her folks have them hanging up in the house. She's very proud of them. I know it can be a prohibitively expensive hobby, but it's not a totally dead medium just yet. I love seeing what young people do with the older cameras, that mix of old and new. Some really lovely art out there!

Those damn belts worked.

What’s a sanitary belt?

I came up when those belts were phasing out & tampons were greatly improved. Thank the gods. Trying to play sports with ANY kind of pad sounds like illegal torture to me & my over-enthusiastic ladyparts (mad respect to the ladies that manage that feat), but *belted to my waist* sounds like the rotten cherry on top LMAO.

The tactile fun and click of pressing the buttons on an 8 track player will never be felt again. 😞

Mine too! And I still have it and use the tub for storage. So nostalgic!

Crank phone. And then you’d have to ask the operator to place the call.

It took so long to dial a long distance number. But then in a couple of places I lived, if you were dialing a number in the same exchange you could just dial the last four digits (mid 80s).

There is still a payphone on the corner of our street. I don't think it works, but I've never gone inside the booth to check. It looks pretty gross in there.

As a tall, thin woman, whom store bought fashion thinks doesn’t exist, I am interested.

I use a sifter. The only way to consistently measure flour!

My Grandmother always had them!

My uncle loved sen sen. so did my mother. I can still smell them.

You can still buy it. I bought some last year when I saw it in the store because I’d heard of it from my oldest sister. It was Ok, it’s like malted milk balls, not a chocolaty as Hersheys.

Oh yeah. That used to be called "regular" vs. unleaded.

I saw remakes of those at a local boutique recently. They were a staple on our long car trips cross country

They survived until surprisingly recently.

Same. I also don’t miss waiting longer for a table in the non-smoking section, only to be given a table right across the aisle from the smoking section.

To add to that - Dippity Doo. Lol i think between that and the aqua net the hair was not moving!!

Theyre still around. Maybe not used as often but if you're into making your own sausages or figure that grinding your own meat is cheaper per pound if you have the time and experience to butcher your own cuts. I'd imagine there are enough home cooks to keep the demand for small scale meat grinders afloat.

One of my grandmothers was a not very good cook. She had a four-dish rotation for Sunday dinner and one option was ham salad; I remember that grinder so vividly

I bought one for my son to grind meat for his reptiles.

My fam has one and we use it for cookie dough for certain types of cookies!

Lots of rural sportsmen have them for grinding venison into burger or making sausage. Not many use the old ones, as they typically have newer models with a motor or that hook up to a KitchenAid.

We had one as well as the cookie one that pushed out with plates for patterns for top. You either cut them as they come out or cut them when long. We called them sugar biscuits -direct translation.

Your note on this made me look up some images, and I realized that the stole that came to me from my grandmother wasn't fox but was in fact a mink stole! Blown away, lol. She was divorced once and widowed once, and then had a well to do boyfriend later in life. Always a party girl.

My grandfather was born in 1917 and he also called it the icebox. I never thought anything of it, but now I bet I know why! Going to visit Google now because I want to learn some more!

Zippos definitely still exist and they're still making new designs 

We have one of these, brand new. Still available to buy today

Lol.

Your thinking of rights- women didn’t have rights so they couldn’t leave. That is the opposite of the question