Who remembers…
Playing pinball machines? They used to be in quite a few places…
Or these… And which was which???
And speaking of cars, remember these??? A ‘bit’ tinny sounding, but did you really care? Or even watch the movie, or were you ‘otherwise’ occupied??? 😉
And last, and for damn sure the least fun… sigh…
Talk about messy… I asked my mother one time why I couldn’t just take it outside and lay it on its side… She was…rather pointed in her response… LOL
Oh, my God. I AM as old as I feel!
Would love a poll of how many drove away without taking the speaker off the window. 🙂
I never drove away with a speaker from a drive in theater, but I have knocked the speaker off of the A&W Root Beer menu board.
They had speakers?!?
Square ignition, round door.
That is what my memory tells me. My memory tells me most key rings were the two on a small chain, along with a plastic advertising fob, kept on a finishing nail fastened in a handy place.
I didn’t play much pinball, and I clearly recollect a pair of young ladies beating the hell out of me and my brother at foosball. They sure were cute !
+1
Yep. Still have a set of keys from my ’73 Trans Am, and the square one got a lot more use!
I recall square ignition and door, round trunk/hatch. But the old memory is fading. 🙂
I could start my Corvair, leave the key in the ignition, get out and lock the door and open it with the round key. Many memories of doing this. Of course, maybe something was worn …
Got ’em all. And my daily driver still has a square ignition and round everything else… that wasn’t that long ago — only 26 years old!
Yep, tinny sounding, and if it rained you had an interruption for a minute or so that cooled every thing down. Ahem. Or so it’s said. 🙂
Before long, any sort of ignition key will be a thing of the past, what with electronic key fobs being so common.
Yeah, defrosting was a real PITA
Drive ins now send the sound to your car radio – no speaker units to drag off.
How long before kids don’t understand what The Who are singing about – what kind of wizard?
Never was any good at that pinball.
Ever since I was a young boy
I played the silver ball…
There was a big scandal in a few small towns outside Toledo, OH, when some do-gooder discovered that pinball would pay off in extra games, which could be turned in for money. Dimes, as I recall. Anyway, it was gambling, and the right people weren’t getting their cut.
The square one fit the ignition, and the round one was for the trunk. Teeth up on a Chrysler.
Ah, the old drive in theater, otherwise known as the passion pit. I’ll never forget the night when my girlfriend whispered, “Let’s get into the back seat.” Never drove off with a speaker.
And then we had all the fun of defrosting the refrigerator. I didn’t really mind, as I thought it was fun.
What a life!
No pinball wizard but they ate a lot of my spare change.
Yup, only just recently got our first car with no keys. It has taken me awhile to get used to that fob thing.
Gets fun when the batteries die in the fob. Do NOT ignore the warning when the fob won’t unlock the door. Sure, you can use the key to open the door, and the fob will work the ignition. ~ONCE. Drive straight to a store that stocks those button cell batteries.
Damn car was a rental…Arrgghh!!!
Hey Old NFO;
Ford were the same way, except they said “Family of fine cars” stamped on them. My 77 Granada had those. You should have never let the icebox get soo bad, LOL
Bob/Ray- Oh yeah… The ‘problems’ of being teenage drivers on HORMONES!!! LOL
Ed- Yes they did, OLD school…
Dave/jrg/Free- Y’all are all correct! The plastic dongle was advertising on one side, and a place for your address on the other.
Ian- Oh!!! Pics please!
PK- Fogged the windows didn’t ya? 🙂
Tom- Good points, hell they don’t know NOW!!! Sigh
Jim- I only had ONE that I could beat once in a while… sigh
MJ- Yep, we’re dinosaurs!
WSF- LOL, mine too!
Randy- That is strange, isn’t it.
Bob- Yep! 😉
I miss real keys. Current drive has one of those switch-blade key fob thingies so at least it actually has a key.
Pinball… never really had the dough to lose it in those, more like the early video games…
And, yes, I remember drive-ins. In Florida. Which meant mosquito coils and bug spray. Let me tell you, OFF! isn’t a very sexy body wash when you and your girl are, um, yeah… (Used so much of that carp during me youth I now can’t stand just the littlest scent of it. Bleh!)
And defrosting the freezer? Yep. But only a complete idiot, or one of my brothers, would let the freezer get that bad. Frost-less Freezers are one of the great inventions of modern times.
You dare not use a knife or screwdriver to chip the ice out of the freezer, because you would damage the refrigerant coil, all the freon escaped, and yer mama would kill you.
I did it anyway, once, and got away with it. Didn’t dare try again.
Pinball machines fascinated me, but I never had the dough and access as a kid. But, the Pi Kappa Phi house had one. Figured out how to spoof it.
My ’19 Ridgeline has a keyfob for most everything, with a real key(TM) integrated in case of a) a malfunction or b) one needs to lock the glove box.
Still haven’t gotten used to the automagic seat and mirror adjust after my wife uses the truck.
It doesn’t carry as much as the ’03 Chevy did, but the headache factor is a lot lower. The trunk is quite handy. Never got a canopy shell for it, but I really don’t need it.
And yeah, I need to defrost the shop fridge.
Pinball – Yep. I have one in my basement rec room, along with a 40 year old Pac Man game.
Keys – Yeah, I’ve had quite a few of those. Some car brands were teeth up and some were teeth down. Ford in, I think it was 1972, first invented a key which would go either way. For a while they all had 2 keys, one of which would open every lock on the car, and the other – which also had a round head – would only operate the ignition. (It was called a “valet” key.) Now, it’s all fobs. …and very expensive fobs at that.
Drive in speakers – I haven’t seen those in a long time. In fact, come to think of it, I haven’t seen an actual drive-in theater in a while either.
Freezers – It’s been a very long time since I have had a freezer like the one pictured. However, the upright storage freezer that I keep in my garage has to be defrosted every couple of years or it would get like that. Indeed, this past August, we cleaned it out and then moved it out onto the driveway in the 95 degree heat. It took about an hour.
I made the mistake of opening the freezer in the crew quarters of [redacted air ambulance service]. No wonder they could barely fit the ice packs in! I declared “clean out the fridge day” and did so, then unplugged the beast and defrosted the freezer. That was . . . not fun. But we now had room for all the freezer packs we needed to keep the meds cool. Paramedics and ER and ICU nurses are wonderful people, but some things just don’t make their priority lists.
Many good hours on our favorite pinball while in grad-school: Pop-a-Card, by Gottleib. Found that the older, simpler games required planning and a different level of shot control. The new games, especial ones from Williams tended towards flashing lights, circular “holding” ramps, and way too many bells and whistles for our tastes. Lots of fun once you got to the level of being able to turn a machine. Each of us got one ball to play and then on to the next man. We could play for a long time on a couple of bucks.
All- Thanks for the comments! I’m glad I’m not the only old fart around here… LOL
Posted from my iPhone.
I’m so old fart I know to use the garage floor to polish the surface of a water pump housing. Nice flat floor, a little water, just a couple swirls to make sure the housing is nice and smooth…
Beans- LOL, that’s an OLD trick… My grandpa taught me that one in… 60 or 61. He was a long time mechanic.
Round key – door and trunk, square key ignition. The last cars I drove with that system were a pair of 1990 Chevy Caprice Police Interceptors, that allowed me to make a profit on the newspaper’s mileage reimbursement – important when you’re a photographer paying for your own tools. Those cars were fun, since the previous owners/agencies only removed the switch gear for the alternating highbeam headlines, but left the electronics in place under the hood. When activating the highbeams in the rain, I’d almost always get an initial burst of 6-8 wig wags, before the highbeams would settle in – this was handy when making long highway runs back in to the paper close to deadline. After I drove those from 1997-2002, I wound up in an ’02 Tahoe, which had a single key, as does the ’14 Tundra that replaced it. Beloved spouse’s car is the first vehicle with a fob, and push button ignition. I’m getting old, but its ice not having to find keys in your pocket, when you want to take a drive…
i would like to get a pinball machine or two like those pictured. Hey that’s where the Spare keys to my GMC truck went. Luckily I sold it in 1978. LOL
The trick with the dorm basement pinball machines was in figuring out just how hard you could slam it against the wall to make the replay counter spin up without triggering the tilt and locking it all out.
Have a pair of those keys in my pocket now. A ’91 S10 Blazer is my beater backup rig. As noted above, round for doors, square is ignition.
Many fond memories of drive-in movies. Nobody could remember what the second feature was because the windows were too fogged up to see out of.
I was one of the lab’s experts in defrosting the freezers. We couldn’t use frost free because of the thermal cycling, and being opened a thousand times a day, they built up ice rapidly. The trick was to find enough styro coolers to hold all the stock for the couple hours it took to melt out. I’d set up big floor fans in front of it, and hook a drain hose in the bottom drain plug over to a floor drain. PITA job, but it worked.
Used to love pinball. Deep Purple was often on the Jukebox at the time, curiously (’80s).
Pinball’s still around, somewhat; sadly, the rise of the home console pretty much killed arcades dead. You can still find classic pinball machines here and there.
My first car had the dual-key system. I had a key ‘wallet’ that had a disturbing tendency to drop the entry key, which effectively stranded me wherever I was. Fortunately the entry key was always found on the floorboard of the driver’s seat. After that happened a couple times, I switched to a key ring and dumped the wallet.
Pinball? I used to repair them. And the similar bingo-style gambling machines. Of course, some of that hardware was older than I was.
Ah, the coin machine business. “For amusement only, no gambling” the signs said. But the bartender would pay off the player.