I have just filled my car with petrol and it was £35.60 and I don't have a large car/tank. My response was "I remember when you could fill up for a pound!" I then went on to say that when I first moved to this island thirty-five years ago beer was 7p a pint.

So let nostalgia rip, it doesn't have to be the price of items, just anything "I remember when..."

Saturday morning sessions for children at the local cinemas
Penny chews
Palm toffee
Spangles (they always stuck together in the packet)
The little blue salt bag (twist, not the modern sealed packet) in Smith's crisps - would you get one, or two, three or none? The excitement
Two ounces of sweets for 3d
Mars bars at 5d
Broken biscuits from the biscuit tins in the shops

I remember going to my grandmother's to visit and walking downtown to the Murphy's (or as we called it, the "dime store") with my friend. We would take a quarter and pick out an entire bag of candy that it would take us several days to eat. The mere fact of walking around town by ourselves is something that I really miss. Unfortunately, in our world today kids can't have the "adventures" that we had of exploring places without parents! In the summertime when school was out, I'd leave after breakfast and be back for dinner, without my mother even knowing exactly where I'd be - just "around." And this was when I was only 8-10 years old! Childhood was so much safer then...

To quote an avatar I found...

'remember when Pluto was a planet? Yeah, those were the days...'

Also I remember when 99c/L of petrol was expensive.

I remember like it was yesterday...

- my new transistor radio with a real leather cover. When I switched it on, the first thing I heard - Are You Going To San Francisco? What an amazing day that was.


-Watching
Hulabaloo in fuzzy black and white.

-building little bowers of sticks and leafy branches, in the woods. It was so peaceful out there.

-Our first colour tv, which, when the man delivered it and set it up, he turned the knob and presto - Star Trek.
My brother and I were so excited.

- Reading up in the hammock. Reading in the swing. Reading in bed at night and listening to the late whippoorwills, the summer wind high up in the trees.

My Cornish Gran's pasties, and the huge bowl of clotted cream on the table at every meal.
Swimming in the sea below Tintagel.
Pottering in rock pools.
My mum making cammiknicks from parachute silk in the wartime, and a lovely classy housecoat from blackout material. Lovely food parcels from America with pineapple rings and corned beef.
My mum plaiting my hair and putting bows in it so I looked like Margaret O'Brian.
Oh gosh... I could fill a book.

I never did stuff like that...

I remember making homemade honey chicken with dad.
sitting on the back step and eating locuts with him.
That was before him and mum seperated, and I found out just how much of a (censored) he is.
I remember when I used to play netball every saturday.

Oooh, a favourite outdoor pastime was making miniature gardens on an old tray or biscuit tin lid. We used to use mosses, twigs and a small piece of mirror for a pond.

You could smile at people and they did not take it to mean you were looking "at them hard".

You could buy root beer for 10 cents.

You could travel the city or countryside and have "adventures".

Children could play in their yards and not be bothered to have to worry about who is around them.

So many memories.

I also remember ocean waves splashing around my ankles, standing in the hot sun.

I seem to remember more 'easy banter' among people in stores and restaurants -the faces of people seemed more open and approachable.

I remember my father holding up a grocery tape in front of my mother and saying of a $27.00 total "this wild spending at the market can't go on!"

I remember going to the local store for a loaf of bread - and getting to keep the change from a quarter.

I remember when a farthing was legal tender and items were even priced with a farthing, I am thinking specifically about a loaf of bread, I think it was 'seven penny farthing' for a large white.

....filling up my car at the gas station for $5.00 and thinking "I'm going to go broke".

....buying a pack of cigarettes at 50 cents and saying "If cigarettes go up any higher, I'm quitting". I finally quit at $4.00 a pack.

....getting up at sunrise to go horseback riding with friends on an all day trip, coming back home after dark and the parents not worrying about where we were. Age 10

....going to my grandparents house in another state and Grandma fixing all our favorites foods the whole time we were there.

....Sock hops at school.

....Playing hide and seek with friends and having so much more fun when the parents joined in and played.

10 penny mixes. They were mostly junk, and full of sugar but I loved the white chocolate "Fish and Chips", the chocolate tools and the jelly dummies
Playground games like hopscotch and "What Time is it Mr Wolf?"
Being able to read books in my local library all day long, only coming home at lunch and "throwing-out" time
Come to think of it, some of these things could still be done, but life was a lot easier when I was younger

I'll put this one in for my mum from a conversation we had a few weeks ago.

I remember when there were fuel strikes, in the 70s and you had to buy at least four dollars and four dollars wouldn't fill the Torana we had at the time.

I remember going to the store, too, and getting to keep the change from the quarter for the loaf of bread. My mom would often send me for a pound of bacon - I liked watching it getting sliced on the big hand slicer.

Playing at dusk with huge crowds of neighbourhood kids - kick the can, tag...
I had to be home when the streetlights came on. They made a funny buzzing sound at first, and took a while to warm up. If I ran fast I could wait until I heard that, and then head for home at a gallop, and make it in time.

My fellow children and I could run around from dawn to dusk on a summer's day, ranging quite far afield in our neighborhood, through creeks, meadows, and woods, without our parents' worrying that that we might be abducted by a stranger.

Perhaps they should have worried, but they didn't. Instead, they simply expected that we would return home by dinnertime, within hearing range of the various bells, whistles, bicycle horns, and duck calls (my mother's solution) meant to gather us into our houses for the evening meal.

I remember going to the store for my mom, to pick up milk and bread, and quite often a pack of cigarettes... with a note she wrote giving me permission to do so for her. I was probably about 12. (She wasn't a terrible mom!!! It just wasn't that big of a deal back then.)

I went to the store for mom, too, to buy cigarettes. Most of the time riding my horse there.

More things I remember, (and miss):

...milk delivered to the house, with the cream settled on top. We'd separate the cream and make our own butter.

...wearing a two-piece bathing suit (and looking halfway decent in it )

...riding on my dads shoulders.

I was born in Anchorage, so as kids in summer, we could play outside until very late, as it only got "dusky." In the winter, however, we had to stay in front of the house because it seemed always to be dark!
I remember standing on my dad's feet while we danced...I miss it all.

As for the safely of running free as children - my feeling is that a big part of it is perception, rather than reality. That is, it would be as safe to do today as it was then, if everybody did it so the streets were full of kids. After all, it wasn't REALLY safe then either - things happened, they just didn't get national media attention.

Anyway, didn't mean to hijack the thread...

When I was very little, milk, bread and eggs were all delivered. None of the moms had cars, and most of them couldn't even drive.

We had a giant raspberry patch - about 25 feet by 8 feet. My mom would pick the easy to get at berries to use for cooking, but I was the only one who would venture into the depths of it, making prickly paths to get the ripest and juiciest berries. I remember picking wild berries, too, out in the country. I'd always get tired of it before long, but mom and big sisters would pick just gallons. Saskatoons and choke cherries. Tiny tiny wild strawberries that were always such a surprise under foot, and such a treat.

I remember being pretty free though. We lived in the mushrooming suburbs and we'd just take off into the fields and build forts for hours. No cell phone required as you basically went home when the light started to fail and you were hungry. We didn't have watches.

I remember buying little rubber eraser animals for about a dime each. We had entire collections of them.

I remember climbing over fences, under fences, chicken wire, barbed wire or 'bob wire' as we called them to get balls that had gone over or under them, or play in the tennis courts at the college.

I know that our neighborhood was all in the streets on a summer night before the era of air conditioning.
We'd play till as late as we possibly could, which was when our mother figured it was time to call us inside.

I remember we did have milkmen in our neighborhood. NO horses though. With four kids we went through a few gallons a week.

I remember inkwells on the desks still but no ink in them.

I remember Thrifty Drug store had nickel cones and they've gone up to fifty cents now. The name's changed but it looks like the same flavors.
Tim10001 remembers this well!

In France I lived through the era where there were knife sharpeners carts on the streets, ladies selling small snails, and other sundry merchants. I saw horses plowing the fields sometimes too.

In country Queensland we had fresh milk delivered from a pail to our milk jug by a local dairy farmer. There was even an old rag and bone man with a horse and cart. The horse was called Dolly.

We had no fear of roaming far and wide and no-one ever got lost or stolen.

It cost me 1 shilling (10c) to go to the movies and I had sixpence for an icecream and some sweets.

TV didn't make its appearance in Australia until 1956, and we all gathered around the window of the local electrical retail store to watch the jumpy black and white pictures. It was magic.

We also celebrated Guy Fawkes night in November, which was virtually Summer and oh such a fire risk. Tom Thumb crackers were a favourite but penny and double bungers were much louder and close to lethal. I preferred Catherine Wheels and rockets. Now it's been legislated out of existence.

I could get four mint leaves for a penny and a little later, after decimal currency was introduced, 100g of chocolate cost 10c.

Ooooh I had forgotten inkwells! I had long plaits , and the boy in the desk behind me dipped the end of one of them in the ink and drew pictures. My mum went mad!!!

I remember .....

Making perfume from rose petals.

My mum's old mangle.

Playing for hours in a wild orchard and stuffing myself on wild blackberries and raspberries. Nobody minded it was private property - nowadays it would be fenced off and built on.

Being locked out of the house every day of school holidays and being told to come back at 12. There was more freedom (and probably the same amount of danger).

Having to eat a slice of bread with my pudding (never did understand that one!)

My first jacket, not part of school uniform. Special clothes, for going out, were not the norm. It was a maroon windcheater. I can remember, before this eventful moment, having to wear my school blazer and sandals for trips to the seaside on Sundays with grandparents. Afterwards we would go to Grandma's for tea and Grandpa would stop the car en route and buy a block of vanilla icecream, wrapped in newspaper to keep it cold and then drive very very fast.

My very first pair of roller skates and my hula hoop. Oh, how I loved them!

I remember:

• When an icecream cone cost sixpence.
• When the dentist used to give me a shilling after my check-up so I could buy an icecream and the extra money meant you could get a Peter's Drumstick instead of a plain old cone – a rare treat.
• Farthings were already out of circulation by the time I was old enough to have money, but I remember half-pennies (pronounced "hape-neys").
• I had a transistor radio with a leather cover too (like ktstew).
• I was the only kid in school whose mother worked instead of staying home.
• When we were the first family in the street to get a telephone - it was used for emergencies only. Our phone number was only one digit different to that of the airport enquiry desk and we used to get wrong numbers constantly until they changed the airport phone number.
• When we were the first family in the street to get a television set - broadcasting didn't begin until after dinner and finished before midnight. The rest of the time you just got a test pattern. Black and white of course. There were only two channels - Channel 2 (the ABC, the government-sponsored channel) and Channel 7 (the commercial channel).
• I too remember roaming the neighbourhood from sun-up to sundown.
• Everything was delivered to the house by men in vans – the "milko" brought milk and the baker (my uncle) brought bread every day, and the fruit and vegie man came once a week.
• There was a chain of clothing stores called S. W. Clark's. Once a week, the Clarks' man came around in a van and you paid him something on your account every week. Sometimes our neighbour would see the Clarks' man coming and if she didn't have the payment, she'd come and hide over at our house so that she would not be home when he arrived and she could claim to have missed him.
• Roaming the grassy banks of the river foreshore and picking up money under the trees because we knew where the drunks lay and the money would fall out of their pockets.
• I also remember that our school desks had inkwells but no ink in them – it was passé by then.
• I had pet rabbits when I was three but my parents had to get rid of them because the government passed a law declaring them to be vermin and we were no longer allowed to have them as pets. You are allowed to have them as pets now, though.
• I also remember Guy Fawkes' night before the government outlawed that too. I remember we were only allowed to have sparklers but no crackers because my parents were so protective. I was envious of the kids whose parents let them have real crackers.