You know you're getting old when...


 
We had a Richfield gas station (or maybe it was a Texaco...certainly not the Hancock gas station where we used to buy our cigarettes and reclaimed motor oil) nearby that had a large refrigerated soda machine inside the service bay, similar to this one. The one I remember was larger than this one, or maybe it's because I was a lot smaller back then

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Wow, that's fancy and now I remember seeing them. What I mentioned were basically special storage bins with ice water and you pulled you cold bottles out by hand and paid at the counter.
 
Same.

I thought 5551212 was help finding a phone number and you could call an area code 212 5551212 to get a long distance assistance
You may be right...memory fades. Or it appears that the number for calling the time varies depending on location or phone carrier.
 
No landline for us. VOIP or otherwise. What's the point? Anyone who calls calls either for me or my wife. Back in my old Realtor days we had 2 home lines. One for dialing into the MLS and other business calls, the other for our regular home line. A VERY long time ago, I decided perhaps VOIP was worth a try and at that time it was just when number portability came out. So I got some weird from Vonage (at the time exchange beginning with 986 when everything here in Cherry Valley was 332), and I had my then mobile phone provider, use my 2 home phone numbers and move them to our mobile lines. Gave up on VOIP stupid billing practices, everyone sounded like they were calling from Mars and so on. Just gave up about 15 (maybe more) years ago and went mobile only. I even disconnected all the phone jacks in the house. and the wiring. Works just fine, 911 works just fine (as we found out this past Christmas Eve) at my house when we had to call EMT's for my dad. (Oh what a night THAT was!).
My wife is ... how shall I put this ... technologically challenged? I have a cell, she has a cell, but she struggles with it and won't use it voluntarily.

Funny story...she was going to surprise me and put gas in the car. She put her debit card in the wrong slot at the self-serve pump (did you know that the slot where the receipt comes out is the exact same size as a credit card?) The card got stuck and she couldn't get it out, so she went inside to tell the lady at the register, who said she was too busy to help her. She had her phone with her but got flustered and couldn't figure out how to use it so she asked someone at the pump to call me at home. I gathered up some tools and went down to the station, angry that the person behind the counter wouldn't help her...the lady inside must have seen me about to use brute force to get our debit card because she came running out to unlock the pump and retrieve the card. Sheesh.
 
#1 at a corner store in Bordentown, NJ.

#2 yes, in the era of penny candy. Today they call the analog Dollar Stores though almost nothing still costs that little.

Also it was called Ben Franklin Five and Dime.

The Coke machines opened from the top like a chest and you put in your coin and then slid the bottle out of the tracks to a open gate and took the Coke out the top. Small 6 or 8 oz bottles .
It was sort of a Maze track to get the bottle out .
 
We had a "drug" store on the corner of Wellington and Cicero. It had a soda fountain. The kind that required a soda "jerk" to operated. It had big jars of syrup and they would mix it just right to give you a Green River, or a Coca Cola and such. Have no clue what is there now.
 
Prolly had a few of these on the counter or tables.
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In my hometown, time was 767-xxxx with any four numbers at the end...but we all remembered it as POP-CORN (767-2676).
When I lived in Virginia Beach it was 666-1212. One acquaintance refused to use it because he "didn't like dialing the mark of the beast".
 
Ben Franklin, Kresge’s, Woolworth’s, all were pretty cool when I was a kid.
Woolworth’s had an old style lunch counter, Walgreens had a grill here too!
You and @LMichaels need to come down south. In Chapel Hill, Sutton's Drugs still has a lunch counter/soda bar. And here in Pittsboro (19 miles more south) there's an amazing, wonderful place called the S&T Soda Shoppe that would blow you away! The Soda Shoppe also has fabulous recreations of two of the specialty dishes from the original Rathskeller of Chapel Hill -- the Gamblers and their lasagna (bowl of cheese). My sister and I were just talking about renewing (post COVID) our yearly Christmas Eve outing with a dinner at S&T. Promises to be a special event for both of us.
 

 

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