#1:  Cars Were Colorful!  Most cars these days look fairly bland, but in the 50’s, our cars were big, bright, and fun!

#2.  We Got Dressed Up for Birthday Parties.  And sometimes there was even a pony there!

#3:  We Played in the Streets:  We didn’t have to text our friends back in the day – we’d all just come outside and get to playing!  Who was a two-sewer slugger?

#4:  Gas Was Very Cheap:  On some days, it was only $0.20 a gallon, and beyond that, the people at the station could fix just about anything!

#5:  The Ben Franklin 5-10 Was Everything:  We loved going to these stores.  They had just about anything and everything you could think of. So did Woolworth, Kresge and J.C. Penny!

#6:  If it Wasn’t the Ben Franklin, it was the A&P!

#7: Our Skates Got “Locked” with a Key.  They were also made almost entirely of metal and very hard to skate on!

#8:  The Drive-In Was The Place to Be:  This 1950’s photo from South Bend, Indiana, shows how popular they were!

#9:  Car Seats Were More Like Couches:  That’s right – they were big, long, and you could slide all the way across!  How about that Jane Russell bra!

#10:  The Freezer Actually Had to be DEFROSTED!:  That’s right, every now and then you’d have to manually defrost the freezer – sometimes it took all day – with a lot of scraping!

#11:  Grandma Let Us Do Everything.  Well, maybe that hasn’t changed so much, but we LOVED eating off the beaters!

#12:  Sometimes Your Food Came On Roller Skates!  Certain restaurants had “roller girls” who would zoom your food out to you!

#13:  We got DOWN at the Sock Hop!  And sweet 16 parties!

#14:  Sunday Drives Were A Thing:  On Sunday, many of us would load up the family car and just go cruising over to the neighbors or just around town!

#15:  There Was One TV.  And, surprise, we didn’t argue all night about who should get to watch their favorite show.  Most of the time, we all liked the same shows!

#16:  The Playgrounds were VERY Different:  At recess, we’d swing from the monkey bars with wild abandon and often even stand on the swings and go as high as possible.  And still, we survived!

#17:  TV Had “Sign Off” Messages.  Remember these?  TV would go off at midnight and sometimes even go as far as playing the National Anthem all night.

#18: Just One Hula Hoop Wasn’t Enough:  Some of us could do multiple at a time!

#19:  We didn’t Text, But We Did Pass Notes!  And we were experts at not getting caught!  Check out the shoes!

#20:  We Had Xylophones That We Kept on a Pull String.  There was nothing like the Pull a Tune!

#21:  We Got Bottled Cokes and Loved Them: No cans or plastic bottles back then.  We were 100% excited when we’d find a cooler like this to get that ice-cold bottle!

Those Were The Days, My Friends!