Recently, I read an article in my local newspaper about things we use do to and products we used to own that are now long gone or at least for most of us. I thought it would be fun to mention a few of these things here. Enjoy!

I can remember when I was a kid there were pay toilet stalls.

Seriously, to use the bathroom you would have to insert a coin and turn the handle and presto, you could open the door. The funny thing is, there was enough space to crawl under the door and use the toilet for free. I wonder if I ever did that?

Remember the Beta vs. VHS War? Beta lost out and the VHS VCR was here to stay. Right? Wrong! Now you can’t even rent VHS tapes anymore. So, do you remember when you could rent VHS tapes the sign they would have in the video store that read $.25 charger for not rewinding the tape?

Many of us went out bought VHS tape rewinders because they could get the job done faster.

How about the VHS Head Cleaners?

I can remember taking movies with an old 8mm Movie Camera. Of course in order to see the movies you would have to have an 8mm projector and and screen. But, do you remember the 8mm film editors/splicers? You could use these to cut out bad sections of the film and even edit in film.

And there were some very cool cameras. How about the Instamatic Camera with Flash Cubes. This camera from Kodak, the Instamatic Color Outfit promised Clear, Sharp Pictures.

Do you remember owning and riding a single speed bike? You know, they do still make some today.

How about mowing your lawn with a push mower? I know some people that still use these today. I’m serious.

And finally,  there was the Original Napster where you could download all the free music your little heart desired.

There are so many other things that we used to do and at the time we thought that what we did and what we had was the very best.

If we had a record skipping on our record player, we just put a penny or and nickel on the phono cartridge and presto, it stopped skipping.

We used to get up from our chairs to change the channel on our TV sets.

How about refilling a fountain pen or using carbon paper to make copies. And, who can forget writing in cursive and sending a letter through the mail.

I know that some people still do some of these things, but I thought it would be fun just to sit back, take a few moments, and remember.

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