TBT…

Posted on by March 30, 2022

Reaching WAY back this time… For you youngsters, the answers are below the fold. 🙂

Government cheeze- 5lb blocks… It was actually good!

Blue light specials at K-Mart!

Flour sifter

1950s Dodge transmission shifter

Comments

TBT… — 37 Comments

  1. I remember that Ronald Reagan cheese and how it tasted. Very good when added to macaroni.

    Dad bought a Marlin 336 in 30-30 at K-Mart for $45 plus tax during the mid 1970’s. Helluva buy Dad. Its still kicking around here.

    Haven’t used one of those sifters in years, but I’m definitely not a kitchen geek.

    The last – no experience at all with that one. I was born in ’63.

    Nice pictures sir – thanks for the memories.

    • I never saw a push button shifter. My family was all Ford and Chevy.

      My 94 year old Mom still uses a flour sifter just like that one. She’s had it all my life.

      And yes, the government cheese was good. It made tasty grilled cheese sandwiches. Plus it helped keep dairy farmers in business.

      And I miss the blue light specials, the Woolworth and W. T. Grant lunch counters, and Sears. It fells like the end of an era.

  2. I learned to drive in a 1963 Plymouth Belvedere (when my dad wasn’t torturing me by making me try to drive the 76 VW van stick shift). Was so much fun freaking out new acquaintances when we would pull out of the teen’s group parking lot and one of them would be all like “wait, how did you put it in gear?”. Also, didn’t have rear seat belts cause 1963. Had more than one argument with a cop when he tried to ticket me for my friends not wearing seatbelts. I would point out “1968” and he would say something inane about “rear seat belts were always a thing” but in the end we never did get a ticket so I assume they always knew and just wanted to argue with us.

    Of course my sister, who never really did get the hang of driving, pulled the Park lever down while the car was still moving. Eventually it got rusty and my dad sold it to a student at the college. I was hoping to take the 318ci and, based on an article in Car Craft magazine, rebuild it to 350 HP, but dad had no interest and so, therefore, I wasn’t allowed to have an interest.

    The interesting thing to me about flour sifters is that they actually served a purpose but haven’t been replaced by something else. Now people (me included) just scoop up flour and dump it in, which actually results in worse results in baking. Or maybe people just don’t bake anymore. Or maybe people weigh flour instead of measuring so it doesn’t need to be sifted before scooping.

    • I have such a flour sifter, have used it, and recall what a pain it was trying to even find one to acquire. I’d sift not just the flour, but about everything dry all together. And some folks think I channel some sort of Baking God. It’s just technique, really.

      • My grocery store chain, Publix, has them all the time in the bakery aisle.

        And, yes, I sift everything dry for baking.

  3. Push button transmissions. Got it the front seat of our Valiant sedan and while maneuvering to the back, kicked the buttons. Came out of gear, rolled down the driveway, across the street and through the neighbor’s garage. It was then I found out that I was being sent to Catholic military school. Sisters of Eternal Pain!!!

  4. My folks had a black 1960 Dodge Pioneer with a push button transmission.

    I never heard anybody say anything bad about government cheese. In fact there was/is a fairly successful local band by the same name.

  5. “Attention K-Mart shoppers! Head over to housewares for our latest BLUE LIGHT SPECIAL, a Hamilton-Beach blender that will make the drinks and shakes sure to be the hit of your next party. On sale now for $19.95 under the blue light.”

    Those were SO annoying.

  6. Had a friend with a mid 60’s (IIRC) Dodge Dart with a push button TorqueFlite trans. He had tweaked the motor and it was damn fast for the day. Also worked in a gas station then and saw a fair share of push button gear selectors on mostly Chrysler Corp cars.

  7. I remember all those things, and once drove my uncle’s ’60 Chrysler Imperial (IIRC) with the pushbutton trans. Also used a sifter to measure the flour for my mom’s cakes while still living at home. That sifter is still in the kitchen.

  8. I remember getting government cheese for a couple families at the beginning of the give away. They couldn’t make it and I delivered it to them.

    My brother in law swore up and down he’d never wear “blue light special” work boots.

    I have a couple sizes of those sifters, they have that highly used sheen on them. They see use all the time.

    My grandmother had a Dart with those push buttons. I asked her to sell it to me when she was done with it…. Not sure where it went. Dad was the black sheep and we didn’t rate.

  10. Dad always drove GM or Fords, so no pushbuttons in the family cars, but the Driver’s Ed simulators in the late ’60s had both three-on-the-tree and pushbutton “gear selectors”. The cars used for on-the-road training were all automatics.

    Mom had a flour sifter. and the Hoosier cabinet I have has most of one (it’s missing the glass window for the flour storage/sifter) that hasn’t been used since before I got it in the late ’70s.

  11. Still use a sifter, to get more loft in what measured and then mixed.

    Chrysler push buttons – Dad had a ’62 for about 7-8 years. Drove like a tank. Dents or creases pulled out by those big suction disks, or get in and use a rubber mallet.

  12. Got ’em all. Used that kind of sifter in my mother’s kitchen and learned how to drive on a push-button. Knew the cheese and saw it in a friend’s house; he said it tasted terrible unless cooked into something and even then he didn’t like it. Offered me some, but after his comments I was no fool and refused. Blue light special? Oh, HELL yes!

  14. That is an early 60s Chrysler Corp transmission. In the late 50s there was no park lever. You had to set the parking brake. Probably Dodge or Plymouth as the Chrysler lever did not have the ball on the end.

  15. Drove many Mopar with push button. We called it a typewriter drive.
    I am pretty sure the ford Edsel had push buttons in the center hub of
    the steering wheel. My second car was a 1950 Dodge with fluid drive
    which was both standard and automatic (kinda) My, My, the things us
    old folks have seen.

  16. I have seen or used three of the four. I never drove a push-button shift car, but I know about the system.

  18. All- LOL, thanks for playing! People either loved or hated the .gov cheese. I liked it in grilled cheese sandwiches. And yes, I do have and use a sifter just like the one in the picture, probably almost 100 years old now.

  19. When Jimmy Carter (long may mites infest that family’s taints to the 10th generation)’s admin purged the rolls of disabled veteran pensions, my family got to know gummint cheese and giant peanut butter cans. Provided you mix the peanut oil back into the butter and not pour it off, which we did once and which made for sandwiches that had the consistency and taste of joint compound.
    I still have and use my mom’s sifter.
    We went to K-mart with one of two neighbors- one had 10 kids, the other 12. The blue lights were handy as a meeting place for the one kid who inevitably wandered off and got lost.

  22. My first car was a 64 Plymouth Sport Fury with the push button transmission. Ate the govt cheese and PB when I was a tyke. Remember the blue light specials, but I’ve never used a sifter.

  24. I’ll neither confirm nor deny recognizing any of them items (much less using them) but I will ‘observe’ that using the term ‘push button tranny’ in today’s world will likely get ya banned from most social media platforms 😉
    If y’all don’t hear from me again ya know what happened.

  25. My efforts to use almond or coconut flour for keto cookery haven’t always worked out. I remember my mom had a flour sifter, but none of the recipe sites I’ve looked at have mentioned a sifter.

    Looks like new ones are going for $10-$15 on eBay. It would be one more thing to clean after baking, but maybe it would help mix the leaveners in better.

    • I don’t remember my Mom ever washing hers. She’d dump our the dregs and put it back into the flour bin.

  26. Thankfully the flour these days is pre-sifted. There are times with certain recipes that you do still need a flour sifter when adding certain dry ingredients (and yes, it does make a difference in the final product).

    I used to work part time in the evening at Kmart after my regular job. Yes, I have done the “Blue Light Special” announcements many times since I was not microphone shy having worked in broadcasting for many years.

    If memory serves me correctly, both Chrysler and Rambler used the push button transmissions.

    My grandmother used to get the government food commodity cheese back in the 60s. Yes, it was very tasty.

    • Still have to keep a sharp eye, sifter also separated out the bugs and small stones (I go waay back to early 1950’s expat living).

  28. I got all of them except the Govt cheese. Used to get the peanut butter, though, from a friend of my Grandparents that got what they referred to as “commode-ities”. I guess he must have liked the cheese, but not the peanut butter. I took auto vo-tech in high school, we had an early 60’s Plymouth Valiant with a pushbutton trans, they let us use to run to the auto parts store. Ahh, the good old days! We also had a Ford station wagon about the same vintage, we liked the Valiant better because the transmission in the Ford slipped so much.

  29. Less fuck’n yapping. You go in PULBIC then don’t complain you idiot.
    Step up and do what you came to do…and stop whining. If I wanted whine I would fucking talk to most people how logic and foresight works.
    Grow the fuck up and move on you whiny ass bitch.
    and if you can’t take that then you are someone who is not a fried of even a mental idjit…working too.

  31. ok now i have yet to hit 40 and i instantly knew what three were and the 4th one i knew what it was but not the make and model of car it was from. what does this say about me?