Important Jobs that have become OBSOLETE
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- Опубликовано: 1 мар 2023
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Thanks!
I am fairly certain the phrase "milk men formed relationships with their customers" explains why my high school friend Russell looks nothing like his "dad".
lol
I am 65 years old and I am nothing like the people in my family. I have always said. I was the milk mans kid. I know I was not adopted, I was born by my mother. That's about as far as it is.
We had the milk delivered in glass bottles even when I was 16.
@@robindiberardino3989 ok?
How is that relevant to my comment?
My dad owned a milk route in the 60’s. Trust me when I tell you I lost my “Cherry” at 15, one New Year’s Eve while delivering milk!
We had milk delivery all throughout the 60s and up till 1973 when our dairy, Schneider's, ceased all delivery operations. I actually cried. 🥺😢😭😭
At least now you don’t come home and realize the kids look suspiciously like the milk man.
The local dairy in Salt Lake valley finally stopped delivery on July 5 2019. Yes 2019.
@@Arbbal I LOOKED VERY MUCH LIKE THE MILK MAN AND DIFFERNT.
I remember butter coming in these white, round, porcelain crocks with paper lids in the 1950s. The chilled booty was put into a square metal box that opened on top.
I was born in 67 and, milk tasted so, much better in the glass bottles! And, I haven’t drink white milk since, then, through the yrs because, that’s how much different and, funny it tastes! White milk in the bottles was the best!
My wife was a typesetter for a small, southern town, newspaper back in the 70's. She said the best part of the job was when local news was slow, and the editor would tell the employees to go out and make some news. She said that one of their favorite things to do, was to go out to the town square late at night, and put dishwashing liquid in the fountain. They would then write about the miscreants who sabotaged the town fountain. The saboteurs are still on the loose to this day!
What a ridiculous, wasteful practice.
We had a printing press in my school in the 60's and I learned typesetting there. I got pretty good at it. Another useless skill now though.
What a memory. I worked at my dad's Sinclair gas station as a kid. I would pump the gas... but mainly wash the front and rear windows, check air pressure, oil level, transmission fluid, battery fluid, and look at tire wear, wiper blades, belt condition, etc. The goal, of course, was to identify items that needed replacement and , perhaps, we could sell, The customers appreciated that they didn't have to worry about these potential issues.
*chuckles, that's still a thing today in new zealand; where there's typically someone who looks after a small store of miscellaneous items for holidayers, but is familiar enough with cars to spot potential problems.
I used to work as a Pin Setter in a Bowling Alley when I was in High School. This was before the automatic bowling machines. I was paid 13 cents for each game. (1970's)
The town I grew up in has 2 bowling alleys and they are only about 2 miles away from each other, unusual. They always had the coolest pin setter guys ✌️
Several of my friends were pin setters. They were a year or 2 older and I probably would've been one too except the place burned down.
@@davidkastin4240 Wow, that sounds like my hometown of Harrison, OH, we had the old and, the new one! My mom was on a bowling team on the 70s and, the teams bowled at the new building! The older lady who had overseen the teams was always in those National Bowling Competition Show that was on every Saturday!
My late father was a pin setter as a boy at “The Pines” in Rochester, New York. On “The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet”, you can see men manually setting pins in the bowling alley scenes.
That was my Dad's first job as a kid in the late 1950s. He said it was dangerous as heck because the some of the guys would rocket the bowling balls down the lanes and aim for them. He didn't care, he loved it. He never saw anyone get hurt, but he said you had to be fast.
My Mom always called our refrigerator an Ice box. "put that in the ice box"
Back when they used to deliver real blocks of ice...
My mom remembers the Ice Man. The Rag Man & Pot Man too.
Mine too. And my grandmother. We kids even referred to it as " the icebox" through our 60's childhoods and pre-teens, until our early teens in the early 70's.
@@samanthab1923 In our little town, we had the milkman and the breadman. And in Philly, they even had the pretzelman, who would come through the little streets very early in the mornings with his little cart filled with fresh, hot soft pretzels. The sound of his lilting voice coming through the open windows, announcing " Fresh Pretzelllsss!" on those Summer mornings when I stayed at my grandparents' house, still resonates in my mind almost 60 years later.
@@samanthab1923 lol, I never knew about the rag and the Pot man, but i did hear the song Rag and Bone by the White Stripes, lol check it out on the RUclips!
I work in an airplane factory and I can assure you there are still human beings installing rivets in airplanes and I still get milk delivered to my front porch every Tuesday and he leaves my dog a biscuit..
Bist du in Deutschland? Schweiz oder Österreich?
@@austindarrenor keine Vereinigten Staaten
@@757boing where about in the U.S. (I know you can't be exact)
Smith’s dairy in Kent Washington still delivers milk
I think Oberweiss may too.
My first job in high school was at a 1 hour photo lab. People would bring in film and we would have to break into the different films (110 or 35mm were most common) and load them into another film case with your hands in a dark box, so you could not see what you were doing. Then that case would fit into machine that would develop the film. Once the film would develop you had to print it and that was another whole ordeal. It was pretty high-tech for the time, now you just down load them from your phone to the nearest place and print them. That is a lost job.
The last ones from Kodak were able to open 35mm cartridges themselves and also roll film (medium format). Some analog photography lover shops still have those machines (looking in my darkroom...)
We all could not wait to go to the drugstore and get our pictures. It was a thrill. Too many pictures taken on smart phones today will be lost and never printed out for future generations.
@@np100 Many many more pictures are distributed on the internet, where they are seen by many more people than was possible in the "good old days".
Ah, Fotomat. Another relic of another age.
@@robertromero8692 As if that was always a good thing.......
My mom was a teletypist at La Guardia airport in the late 50s and she always talked about that job with great fondness. She met my dad there, who worked as a skycap. Two people could never meet that way today.
That’s so cool
Mine was a comptometer operator in a bank in the 1950s. Paper checks were fed in and the operator keyed all of the information from a check into the machine. The machine automatically cancelled the check and punched holes into it. It required a high degree of skill and speed.
My parents met at a factory that made Christmas decorations in Astoria, New York City (Ray-lite).
Ray-lite, also known as Paramount, went out of business in 1970.
P.S. I still have some of the bubble lights!
How much did it cost to send telegrams? Before email and cheaper phone calls and texting it was the fastest method of sending a message it seems, but it didn't replace traditional slow mail.
Life happens.
Back in the mid 1970s, a department store in my city still had an elevator operator for their elevator. For a treat, my mom used to let me tell the old man what floor we wanted and then he would reply with the floor and what was on that floor(kids wear/coats/etc). I remember wanting to be an operator when I grew up.
That was a part time job my mom had in HS. At Best & Co. back in the 50’s
New Bedford Ma. city hall still using 1906 elevator in 2023.
I remember those days. We had one building that still had an elevator operator in the mid 90s
Coraopolis Pa had a Union National Bank that had an elevator that you had to open 2 gates and a door to go to the second floor where there was a Dentist Office.
I remember as a kid getting yelled at by the elevator operator for calling for the elevator when my mother wasn't there yet. This was in mid 70s.
My Mother worked at the Green River Munitions plant in Dixon, Illinois during WWII, making bazooka rockets.
Her name was Rose
… a true “Rosie the Riveter”
Rosie the Rocketeer.
Greatest generation... Thank you for your part in world war 2.
Some states like Oregon and New Jersey actually have laws on the books requiring gas station attendants at all service stations to this day. It was done as a way of saving jobs and still stands.
Oregon has done away with that law several years ago
@@carolynridlon3988 It didn't. Check again. Google pointed to a March 2023 article that they passed a bill allowing stations to designate half of the pumps to be self serve - but urban gas stations still have to have at least one full time employee to pump gas.
idiotic law. Government has no business dictating business practices.
Now NJ is the only one.
One of the reasons I didn't like to leave Oregon. It was wonderful having somebody else fill up your gas tank when it was 30° outside.
In the rural Carolinas, soda fountains still do exist in some gentrified drug stores.
👍
If you're ever in Texas, the Dr. Pepper Museum in Waco (where it all started) has a drugstore-style soda fountain at the end of the tour.
In some parts of Central America, they still use soda vending machines that your grandparents might have seen. What's incredible is these have been restored or HEAVILY maintained so they still work perfectly. I remember a few years ago, buying a Coke from a vending machine and learned IMMEDIATELY why they went away: The machine had 6 bottles stacked up in cubbyholes on one side. There was a metal claw holding them all in. When you dump 4 quarters into it, you simply grab the brand you want by the neck and pull it straight out. The claw/door is one piece, not 6 separate ones. So the other 5 bottles were exposed! My father admitted that his cousin would cheat by pulling two bottles at the same time to get a freebie with the purchase of one. I guess in those days 15 cents was a lot of money...
I'm always going to be glad I chose to take typing classes in junior high and high school to unknowingly be better prepared for the computer generation!
I'm a '82 baby and I remember playing with my parent's typewriter as a little kid in the house 😄
My typing teacher looked like a Nazi. She would walk around the room with a ruler whacking it into her hand to the sounds of the metronome at the front of the room. I was sure she was gonna whack me with it at any moment. She would also carry a stopwatch to time our typing tests. I did learn how to type over 100 WAM there though.
@@incog99skd11 We all need a good wacking upside the head sometimes 🤪😆
IKR. In high school I saw typing class available and instead of thinking it was something only for girls that were going to be secretaries I had a sort of premonition that it was a skill that I would need and took the class.
@@incog99skd11 a funny story from my junior high typing class was that the teacher - Art M. had this indignant way of scolding us if you happened to just yank the page out of the machine! Whatever he was doing he would stop and snap : You HAVE a paper release!!"😡🤣
Milk deliveries and full service gas stations were special memories for me. My mother sat the return bottles on the porch with a note before sun up letting the milkman know what we needed which were mostly regular milk, chocolate milk, orange juice,eggs and bread. I liked the gas station bell letting the attendant know a customer just pulled in and that pleasant smell of gasoline, childhood memories are great. 🍶⛽
Ah yes. The gas ⛽ bell...lots memories there, for sure.😊
Wait a second I need my rose colored nostalgia glasses to be in line with that one. Yep, now that they are on I can see what you mean.
@@starmnsixty1209forgot all about that gas station bell. Memories of better, happier times.
With all our news now on our computers or smartphones, the paper news is almost a thing of the past, going with the newspaper youngster with a route. When my parents were young, the newspaper “extras” were delivered to announce the best and the worst of events. They also grew up with mail being delivered twice a day by a mailman who walked his route with a mail pouch.
I remember Saturday morning post when I was very small!
My Dad was a soda jerk all through high school. He said it was a great way to meet girls.
I was a soda jerk my first two years of college at our local pharmacy. That soda fountain is still in operation to this day. Was a fun job. We would make coke for example with syrup and the carbonated water would pour out then you’d push back on the lever and it would squirt out to mix. 1989 and 1990.
@Kurt M. That's where the insult comes from. Not actually from a guy that spanks it which probably a lot of people think 😆
Where did he meet your mom? Was it a coveted job or competitive
My Dad met my Mom at the Buffalo in Chicago, an ice cream parlor on Irving Park (long gone now). They called their wait staff “Fountain Engineers” 😂
@@MPerski I'm from Chicago. I think I might have been there. When did it close down?
There are still elevator operators today, they just usually run the freight elevators. Also there are gas station attendants around in New Jersey and Oregon. I remember having milk delivered in the mid 70's and setting type in high school print shop in the mid 80's.
Fancy NYC hotels still have operators. The Carlyle for one
Yeah but good luck getting them to check your oil, tire pressure or clean your windshield. In Oregon we had to amend that law to keep these highly unskilled children away from our motorcycles.
Here in New Jersey, it's actually illegal to pump your own gas. So the smallest of gas stations have attendants... But that's all they do, pump gas. Full service is still a rare beast.
Yes, I was in middle school in the early 80s and, I remember Metal and Wood Shop was Required when, we had moved to Indiana and, I remember being fascinated by the old fashioned printing press and, anxious to do it! Course, I am one who loves to write and, at our middle school our 5th Period, was activity class! You signed up for so many activities and, you had one day a wk where you had to go to your home room for study hall! Activity Class was how you could sign up for the school newspaper! I waited over 2 yrs and, made it to the 8th Grade to finally being on the school newspaper, my home e.c. teacher over seen it!
I lived in Oregon and got used to someone pumping my gas for me. Now that I'm back in Nevada I miss it.
I remember meter readers. We had our water meter in the basement of the house. My mom would say back wall in the basement, and down the guy would go !! Can you imagine letting a total stranger wander around unaccompanied in this day ?
We also had a meter reader from the gas company. He would come once a month (usually on Tuesdays), and go down the basement to read the meter, record it and that's how the gas/electric company would calculate our bill. It was never the same guy for more than a few visits, and yes, today, it would be almost unheard of, especially for a woman (mother/wife) to let a perfect stranger into the house for ANY reason. But, it was a different world, especially in our little town back then, and in my late mother's case, up until 2003, when it was required to have an outside meter installed.
We had them for electric back in the 1990s. My mother had to explain that the strange man who came up to the back porch, then walked away again, was just a meter reader. Nowadays where I live, everything is digitally sent to the electric company.
We still have them for heating in germany.
I learned how to set type and do bindery in Junior High School and was once a teletype operator.
We still rivet on aircraft. Some area's of the aircraft are too difficult for an automated machine to get into and also repairs are carried out by sheet metal mechanics (structures technicians) and riveting is also required.
I remember the TV repair shops which replaced the radio ones and the shoe shine stands. I still recall the elevator operators in department stores and offices that you covered. May as well add video rental stores and travel agents to the list.
We lived above a TV repair shop in Chicago in the late 50’s ☺️
The portable TV repairmen is what I remember best. watching the guy work on it was so fascinating as a kid. What about vacuum repair shops see any of those anymore?
Seems like we don't fix stuff anymore we just toss it and buy a new one. shame really.
How about the OG precursor to Radio Shack, the local vacuum tube shop, where they would have a tester so you could see which of your radio tubes needed replacing.
This whole thing is making me feel old. I've DONE several of these jobs.
@@stanburk7392 And just as he showed up your TV miraculously started working again.
@@TheRealDrJoey
That's because you hit the side of the TV in just the right spot. makes me smile remembering those things.
Great old pictures! It's interesting how there were once professional gas lighters! And who ever heard of a "Knocker-upper" as a profession?
One of my great aunts did her part during WW2. She would commute on the LA street cars from Pasadena to San Pedro to work in the ship yards doing riveting or whatever was needed. She was very proud of her time helping out and would often talk about the experiences.
When everyone had a positive interaction with each other. Good to know that plumbers, electricians and auto mechanics are still needed!!
That's a bit romanticized. Not like jerks and rude people didn't work at these jobs same as every other job, and don't think like any job dealing with the public that the people doing these jobs didn't come home every night with stories of what nightmares the people they had to deal with who took them for granted were.
@@dantheman8103 *took them for granted
lol yeah, you must be a white male if you seriously think that "everyone had a positive interaction with each other" back then 😂😂
My mother took college courses 50 years ago to become a keypunch operator. She did this for several years for a savings and loan company.
This is the term for those who input computer code (COBOL, Fortran, Basic) onto those punch cards we all used to see in the 1970s into the early 1980s.
The cards were manila card stock, 12 row 80 column.
I took computer classes in 1982-83 and they still were teaching the use of punch cards although floppy disk and magnetic tape storage were becoming dominant.
My youngest aunt became a switchboard operator for Pacific Bell back about 1973 or so; she retired from that job about the time that it became obsolete. She used to supply us girls (me and my cousin) with that color coded wire that the outside crews were working on all the time (this was before fiber optics). The color coded wires were great for making bracelets and such. Wish I still had some.
Thanks for the post Kimberly.
I enjoy reading detailed comments like yours; adds to the memories for many.
I remember back in the late 60s and early 70s seeing ads for keypunch courses. When I went to community college back in the early 70s, exams were being graded by using those cards. This one clown I had used to give 2 different exams in alternating rows of students to discourage cheating, so he said. Once, he put one of the batches of cards into the wrong place, and several of us failed (I had never had lower than a B in his class). He also had a bad habit of announcing grades on tests to the entire class. I got up and marched right out the door. The only reason I even came back was because a friend of mine confronted the teacher and made him realize his mistake and apologize to the entire class about it the next day.
I just retired from IT last year and we still call lines of code, "cards". At least us old timers called the 80 byte field a "card". 72 characters for code, column 73 for continuation character and the last columns for "line number". Those were in case you dropped the deck of cards so the machine could put them back in order in seconds. We still use line numbers today for insertion and deletion of new cards in a deck electronically. Ah, but I digress.
Many of my computer classes 79-83 also used punch cards. I hated waiting the hours for a completed job sometimes only to discover typo's here and there. I was SO thankful when they switched to online terminals despite their slow speed at the time.
I wonder what several years of training to become a keypunch operator entails. I've seen such machines demonstrated, and I think it would just take hours/days of practice to become proficient.
Do they learn the languages that they'll be punching? It would make sense for them to understand things in context rather than making silly mistakes like we see from OCR software today. I remember a substitute teacher copying some simple algebra from the teacher's notes onto the projector, and from the crazy way she copied it, it was clear she didn't understand what it said.
Radio disc jockeys seem to be obsolete since many stations are simply repeaters
You can travel across the USA & hear 101.6 fm from state to state as it plays the same 20 songs repeatedly a week @ a time.
Our town still uses live disc jockeys on almost every station.
@@joannamcpeak7531 Stations that used to play music have become just news or talk radio
@@raallen1468 in the early part of the 21st century, our town was hit by a major storm that knocked out power and communications infrastructure, but most of the radio stations had no clue as to what was going on except for one AM station that was on with local announcers telling about the storm and the damage that occurred. The rest of the stations were just playing shows that originated from somewhere else in the country.
Another profession that has greatly declined (though it's not entirely gone) was the compounding pharmacist. Before World War II, doctors would write a prescription including several ingredients, and the pharmacist would mix it himself by pouring the ingredients into a container and mixing them. Today, most medications are already pre-manufactured and all the pharmacist does it dispense them. But I had occasion to get at least one prescription that required a pharmacist to mix the concoction himself.
There are still medications that have to be compounded and, only certain pharmacies can only do them, and now, the pharmacy charges a ton for them and, the insurance companies aren’t covering them no more, they did in the early 2000s still though!
Here in Australia we still have quite a few compounding pharmacies. Just as the pandemic began my city experienced a shortage of pre-packaged antibiotics (and it’s happening again! In 2023!) which required the compounding pharmacies to make them. They were obviously prioritising hospital orders, and my local CP had run out, so I had to drive an hour across the city to a place that had stock of the stuff to make my script. It felt very much like the beginning of the Handmaid’s Tale, lol.
I was delighted to find one in my town. He's also an herbalist.
@@sonyafox3271 For a long time, the logo of CVS drugstores was a stylized mortar and pestle, the traditional tool of pharmacists to compound medications by grinding up dry ingredients.
Just "a bit old fashion" like a middle age alchemist.
There was a Gas station, I lived by in the 90's, that still had attendants that still filled your car. We were not allowed to use it alone. They would also clean our windows and headlights.
There was an old man who had been working as an attendant since he was 16. We always tipped him well. We were sad to see it modernized and he retired when they did. It was a cool experience and I'm glad to have had the pleasure of experiencing it.
We still have gas station attendaants at several stations. They also help with putting air in the tires.
Where I grew up, we had an Awreys bakery truck, a milkman, a fruit & vegetable truck coming down the street weekly. My mom even had someone to pickup my dads work shirts to dry clean. It was great living in the 50's & 60's. We only had 1 car, mom stayed home so those were wonderful conveniences.
We had all that, Mac, from Happy Valley Dairy, plus Tom, a Gloucester fisherman, Wally, the dry cleaner, for office workers, cops and firefighters, with wool suits and uniforms, a garbage man, who would collect garbage for pig food, all welcome people in our lives .One car, one phone,, one bathroom, and we made do.
Wyandotte, MI by any chance?
@@TheRealDrJoey I'm in Roseville MI......not too too far
Did you grow up in the Detroit area ? I grew up in Roseville and I remember what you described. We also had a egg man who delivered to us on Friday evening. Don't forget ice cream man , Mr. Softee and for one summer you could call a pizza delivery truck that would pull in front of your house and make your pizza
Wow. With food and grocery deliveries we are going back in time. My grandmother had a milk man.
"When a machine takes the place of a man, it's takes something away from the man."
I agree!!!
But it takes more people to produce the machines and people to repair said machines, one job lost, other jobs gained.
@@janetpendlebury6808 But most of the machinery is produced over in China/India - cheap labor countries.
And only a few repair men are needed to repair multiple machines in each state.
Far more jobs have been lost by machines then any created, one man can repair many machines.
@@janetpendlebury6808 you missed the entire point
Yeah, a paycheck.
My dear grandmother still used to refer to our refrigerator as the "ice box".
Thought of one you missed. A pin setter in a bowling alley. My older brother had this job in either the 50s or 60s.
We still use Morse Code in the military so the spirit of the telegraph operators continues...
International shortwave ameteurs (hams) still use some form of Morse Code on all lower parts of the international ham bands. Diminished but not out of date. Still to this day.
Morse code isn’t taught in the military unless you are in a couple of specific rates/MOS & even then its barley used. It’s nowhere near as wide spread as it once was.
And HAM radio, not as common now, but I had to take it and learn it for a radio licence. :-) and if the phone network falls on its head.. I can fire up the HAM radio.
Teletype (RTTY) is still used.
Could you do a video on how jobs have evolved. I’m a retired RN and the history of what a trained nurse did in say 1900 is certainly different from today. And MDs making house calls. Teachers too have evolved.
I sure do enjoy your videos.
I would also like to see more videos about this.
I would enjoy this also as I too am a retired RN having trained 1973-77.
That would be very interesting! From blood letting to monitoring LVADS in the ICU. I was a deaconess in hospitals and nursing homes back when everyone was switching to electronic charting. Those were the days.
As someone who has worked as a classroom teacher, I can say that teaching has become automated in the sense that most of us are compelled to teach to some sort of standardized test that students are required to take. They have taken the individuality out of it completely. I left the classroom when it felt as if I was reading a script. After all, actors are typically paid better and there is so little respect for teachers today. Sad, really, because we need good effective teachers to inspire our next generation and many of the best are leaving the field at the first opportunity.
My aunt was a nurse. I remember the white uniform and nurses' hat she used to wear. These days, they just wear scrubs.
In about 1960. Our family took a trip to Miami, and we stayed in the Beau Rivage Hotel. That hotel had the first self-service elevator that I had ever seen. While my sisters played out in the pool, I spent all of my time riding up and down the elevators. That was pretty much the best vacation ever.
About that same time, our family was staying in a hotel in Indianapolis, and I befriended a kid staying in the next room. We rode the elevators for fun, until one of the maids sternly told us to knock it off; we were slowing down the maids' work. We apologized. The freedom and power of our first "vehicle" overcame us.
Love your story, Ed!
Definitely rode those elevators too. Such a great memory! Thanks for the reminder 😊
You can do a video on just maintaining cars back then. My father use to change the oil in his "oilbath aircleaner" on his 55' Ford on top of the carborator (remember those). He would file or change the points and condenser under the distributor cap, get new sparkplug wires and coil, adjust the voltage regulator, change the carbon brushes in the generator, add distilled water to the 6 volt battery, patch the inner tubes removed from the bais ply tires, manually adjust the brake shoes inside the brakedrums on all 4 sides. On hot days, he use to fill up a burlap bag with ice at gas stations to help cool the inside of the car before air-conditioning. Many cars had small wing vent windows in the front doors that could blast outside air at you. Those were the days!
My mom was an elevator operator at May Company in Cleveland in the late 50’s, and I can certainly tell you that they didn’t have to be “highly skilled”.
It required a license, but there wasn't any test, you just had to pay for it. I was one in Boston, running a freight elevator. Today, living in Manila, they are still very common, but they are security guards, I guess to keep down crime.
I recall one operator who wasn't so skilled when I was a kid. He'd often mis-align the elevator with the floor, so you'd have to step up or down an inch or two when entering or leaving it.
A large building in my city still has one of these, it's the only elevator in the building, it was put in back in 1932. Trying to operate that thing can drive ya batty!!
I was an 18 y/o temp worker and I ran the elevator @ Higbee's in downtown Cleveland. That was in the 80's.
lol
We may have come far with automation and technology but we seem to have left humanity behind in doing so. A person used to be proud of having the skills to get a job done right. Just for example, blacksmiths used to be the backbone of any village or town. If a place had a good blacksmith, it could flourish. People got to know one another and depended on each other because everyone had a skill to share. Have we lost more than we have gained? I suspect so.
Absolutely we have.
Very well put!!!! Great question to ask.
We are devolveing not evolving with modern technology. Glad that I'm 63 and lived through the better times in America.
I totally agree. And it's only going to get worse
I agree. There was a time when everything was repairable, so there was very little trash, but today almost everything is thrown away. The kids who complain about the pollution of today would never want to give up their plastic bottled water, plastic cars, cell phones, computers, and packaging that make more trash than ever before would they? Almost everything was steel, glass, paper, or cardboard when I was a kid, and the glass we took back to the store was reused. Our milk came in a waxed cardboard box that work just fine and the paper was renewable and biodegradable.
I had one of the Word Processor Machines that was halfway between a computer and a typewriter.
You would be able to type out 3 lines of text before it actually printed, so you could fix a mistake much easier.
I wrote a lot of papers in school on it.
OMG I did too, I bought it in my first year of work, wish they had been around when I was finishing school assignments. Had to rely on Tippex sheets with my old manual typewriter then …
I used one by Brothers in the early 90's as a college student. Did the job allowing me to get my B.B.A.
I remember my rural barbershop had one chair and a shoe shine stand with two chairs. Don't know if there are still people who do shoe shine anymore.. I also remember as a young child in the 60's that there were still gas station attendants checked oil washer fluid and tire pressure while gas was pumping. Fond memories for sure. I'm glad I experienced them. Told my children if them. And also a time long long time ago when phones had cords...lol
I remember my mom saying she would not be able to pump her own gas. Luckily she had 7 children, so she never pumped it, until the day everyone was out of the house. My dad would take her to the gas station and train her😂. She begrudgingly pumped her gas around 1982 😂
I remember Marv, our milkman from over 60 years ago!👍
He’s probably your father 😀
@@johnp139 good one
My Uncle was an elevator operator in Atlanta until the early 80s and we had milk delivered by Atlanta Dairies until the early 80s
My family used Mathis Dairies, but we had Atlanta Dairies milk in school. I preferred it over Mathis.
We were an Atlanta Dairies family as well, throughout the ‘60s. I think by 1970, with fewer kids still at home, our mom started buying it at the grocery store.
As a kid, I remember always seeing "Key Punch Operator" in the classifieds! And do you remember The Telephone Lady!!!💖👍!
In the Dominican Republic we still use gas station attendants, they are found at each gasoline pump.
Elevator operators got the shaft. 😅
I remember learning how to type in school in the 70s, lol. I bought my first computer, Commodore 64, in 1982. I don't use the number pad because I know how to use the numbered key at the top of the keyboard from memory, one kids see me do this they are amazed, LOL! Just as amazed as when I write in cursive.
Those HS typing classes were a nightmare in the early 70's, when it would take all ones' finger strength to press down the keys on the old manual typewriters. We were thrilled in our Senior year, when Selectric (electric) typewriters took their place. Remember dictaphones? Also obsolete today, but, along with stenography (also obsolete) were required skills/subjects to be perfected for those of us who took a business-oriented curriculum in HS.
@@birdsfan57 I remember it all, LOL. And yes, the dinosaur typewriters in the typing classes were devices of torture, LOL!
No Matter How Many of these videos I watch, I love the Narrator's voice. His voice blends right in. Thanks for a great experience! Terry
as a little nipper in the late 50's early 60,s .....
I remember the 'fuller brush man' coming to the front door with a suitcase full of all sort of handy house hold items for sale, also remember see a knife sharpener walking along residential roads ringing a bell to let people know he was there to sharpen &/or sell assorted knives pulling a triangular shaped 2 wheeled hand truck with all the tools ..as a 7 year old getting a new Timex wrist watch for Christmas ..I was so proud !
WE had a milk man into the late 70's in suburban NYC. We stopped using them not because of the supermarkets but because in the summer months, leaving the milk in insulated bins didn't keep it fresh and they would go off very quickly.
Soda jerk”s new occupation-Starbucks Barista. Not much difference.
I have one for you, I remember going to a department store with my mom so she would see a milliner [someone who sizes and sells ladies' hats]. Now that's a dinosaur.
@@aaronlopez492 These days you have people specialising in selling mobile phones and accessories.
I was pretty young, but I remember when a small truck would come to our street and people would bring out their scissors, knives etc to be sharpened. Did anyone have this experience, too? lol
In our hometown in the early 50's the sharpener had a horse-drawn wagon. Housewives would line up with knives and scissors when he set up in a nearby lot. As a kid this ritual seemed downright spooky to me. We also had a ragman who had a sing-song jingle. My younger brother yearned to be a ragman, but the profession had long disappeared by the time he was of working age. We also had a beerman who would deliver botttles to the back porch refrigerator and for very thirsty neighbors, he delivered kegs.
I had a job for 15 years that got phased out. I used to work in PNC Bank's check processing dept. Remember your monthly statements you'd get back with all the checks you wrote out for the previous month? That was my job as sorter/operator. Once that idea disappeared, I was gone. It was a fun easy job and even though I was there 15 years, I was still 2nd lowest on the totem pole. I was gonzo.
I did the switch board at The Whittier daily news when I was in college!Then one summer at an airport bus service.
I remember as a kid a big truck would come by and fill the oil tank in our basement for the furnace.
Oh yeah! We had heating oil trucks too., when I was a little kid. In Australia the tanks were on the outside of the house, on steel legs and screwed to the chimney. Those heaters went out of fashion when oil prices skyrocketed in the early 70s. In the 80s you could buy “conversion kits” to turn the heaters to wood burners (clever).
Still very common in the northeast US
I remember as a kid in the late 60's to early 70's there were knife sharpeners who would go through the neighborhoods on a scheduled day pushing a cart and ringing a bell. Women would bring out their kitchen knives to get sharpened. This was in Chicago. Not sure if it was a widespread thing or not. I last remember seeing the sharpening guy in the early 70's.
Also, my dad was a computer operator until the mid 80's back when mainframe computers were still in use at large corporations. He had to run jobs submitted by programmers on old punch cards, change huge reel to reel data tapes and switch out huge hard disk packs. He also managed line printers and compiled the reports for the management.
My mom abd two of her sisters were rivotters during WWII. My mom worked in the P-47 Thunderbolt wing spur.
It's funny that I'm reflecting on the Three Stooges reruns as I've seen all these on them...💕 Some from the Harold Lloyd era
The Three Stooges delivering ice was one of the best ones.
Some very high-end residential still have staffed elevators.
They help with your packages. Many service elevators have attendants but they do more than just operate the car. They take out the trash, for example.
4:16 "Building relationships with the milkman" - Yeah we know how that ended.
Man that alot deliveries he got give
Although not as in demand, there are still a number of Blacksmiths and the daughter of a friend in Australia got her certification in Black Smithing. She does ornamental gates, metal signs and other wrought iron work. She also creates wagon parts and special parts for many trailers and other metal items.
It’s more of a hipster thing
@@Patrick3183 true, but almost every large town has a fence company that creates iron gates, and security gates for front doors with iron work as well as whole fences, so there is still a lot of work for the artistic type.
You nailed just about every thing I could think of . The only thing I could think of now is someone like yourself having the knowledge of the past to know and explain it . who's going to fill your shoes!!!
I remembered another one actually: "didey" delivery! Back before disposables began unutterably fouling the planet, people signed up with a diaper service which would rent diapers, pick up the soiled ones, and drop off fresh.
I remember ushers in movie theaters. As a teen in the 40s, my father was an usher and ticket taker. He also sold tix, changed the marquee, movie posters, and stills and even sold popcorn, etc. sometimes.
@@zzydny Maybe that's what Jackie Gleason meant in the Movie Smokie and the Bandit when he arrested that captain in the portable "hoe-house" and told him to pin his badge to his "didey." I never did understand what he meant until maybe now. Thanks for this info! : )
@@davids6533 Yup, that's exactly what it means, so now you know how insulting and how funny that line really is!
Growing up local grocery stores would deliver groceries to your home. For a long time this pretty much went away. But in the past few years the service has come back, except now you use an app and a separate delivery service.
It depends, like Krogers and Walmart they now deliver but, the thing is they charge a huge yearly fee! Too many people we’re getting their groceries delivered to the wrong residence or people simply not getting them!
I grew up in New Zealand. Milk was delivered to homes until the late 80s early 90s. The boys who delivered the milk had large carts with pneumatic tyres and they were fit and ripped from running to keep up with the milk vendor’s truck and lifting crates of glass bottles. You paid with plastic tokens bought in stores or from the milk boys. For a long time you could only get unhomogenized full creme milk in pint bottles. Cartons and plastic containers and different milk variants (low fat and homogenized) weren’t introduced until the 80s. For many years you couldn’t buy milk in supermarkets to protect the milk delivery businesses only in convenience stores (called dairies). Bread was also delivered door to door until the late 80s.
Here in San Antonio, Lone Star Ice Houses (who supplied ice to all who needed it in the city) began to carry items that needed to be refrigerated (milk, cheese, etc.) Eventually ice became the side business while the food and drink items became most important. Hence, in San Antonio, convenience stores (7-11, Stop-n-Go, and Lone Star) are known as "ice houses". The ice house was the center of neighborhood activties especially when they added tables and chairs, then a juke box.
Great video! I was a projectionist when digital projectors started going in all over in the mid 00's. It was sad to lose that grip on the past. I loved working with the film and maintaining the projectors. Such a great job, sad that it's not around much anymore. Rarely are there 35mm film theaters anymore, most converted years ago.
You too? IA Local 1 60s
OOPS! Local 306! My mind is going.
Unfortunately we weren't Union. Didn't have enough interested in doing it. Used to work for GKC Theaters, then it became Carmike. That's when it went to digital. Its now and AMC thats "temporarily closed". I miss that job, I love knowing I was one of the last of that breed.
We still have gas station attendants in New Jersey. People gripe about it but, it gives someone a job and let's them earn some money!!
Maybe we should revive these other jobs just to employ people. That’s called communism.
I’m more selfish than that. Grew up in NJ & have never pumped my own gas. Live in PA & still jump over the bridge for booze & gas.
@@samanthab1923 That's great!! People don't understand that station attendants are earning money to help feed their family's and gripe about that we can't pump our own gas. It's giving someone extra money to help their families.
@@rf159a Mine never complain
@@samanthab1923 I just hear people complain about it. I love someone pumping my gas. That was one of my first jobs when I was a young man!!
I would say that up until the mid 90's, there were plenty of office support jobs such as secretaries, file clerks, receptionists, typists, and stenographers. They also taught these skills in high school, and there were plenty of office training schools as well.
However, I would say around 2004, office support jobs just simply disappeared. Most of the jobs today are now in health care and high tech.
My mother used to be a switchboard operator. 👍
The last milk delivery we had was in 1970, I was almost 4 years old.
Mine was 65
We had milk deliveries in Australia to the mid 80's.
As progress marches forward we fail to recognize all the things that have faded into history
I haven't... I see a ....Great America .... fading into history.
What a wonderful channel. I appreciate all the amazing photos you provide and the memories that make me cry.....job well done❤
Back in the day,and I remember when milk and other dairy products were delivered by Twin Pines Dairy out of the Twin Pines Warehouse on Detroit's Westside. There was Hudson's Downtown Detroit Department Store with 29 floors. There were elevator operators to take customers to and from different floors. There were Gas Station Attendants that would pump gas and check oil and clean windows for the cars. I also remember the Soda Fountains at Cunningham Drugstores. And when supermarkets were giving out trading stamps while checking out.
First time I heard Cunningham in a long time. I worked at one at Ford Road and Schaefer.
Nice video. Very interesting but the last I heard is that gas station attendants are still in full use in New Jersey (unless the laws have changed:). Another interesting thing is the idea of milk/ice delivery. Strangely enough there's a burgeoning big business of food delivery in our country. This has been especially true since COVID. So I guess in some ways history is repeating itself!😄
Nope, still good in NJ. Got gas in Lambertville today! $61
Oregon also gas attendants as well. They're still around.
Yes, indeed. We have a fake virus fabricated by the European union, back than many jobs disappeared because of the virus polio, fabricated by the European common market.
Some counties in rural Oregon still have someone pump your gas
It's the law in New Jersey that you cannot pump your own gas. there are gas station attendants there.
The old soda fountains were the best,the soda had more syrup,and chocolate sodas were amazing
I have always been on trailing-edge technology. When I started high school in 1965, our print shop had just been given two linotype machines by the Los Angeles Times, cause the Times had converted to offset printing- no more lead type. We students would hand-set the headlines for the individual articles by hand. Our printing press was this immense thing that weighed several tons- probably donated to us, as well. We also had three smaller presses that were motorized, but I recently found out by watching a movie, that they were so old, the were hand- propelled! The assistant would spin a giant flywheel. But that's not all- in 1975-1976, I had a job fixing
typewriters just before they went out of style. A college friend of mine got a job as a telephone operator at this same time, but they kept moving him from office to office, as technology improved. Just before retirement, he was helping handicapped people place calls.
This is the first time Ive heard of the 'waker-uppers' who tapped on windows!! Also, you could add knife-sharpeners, coal deliverers, and the people who used to arrive at your door with a Western Union telegram. Another fun video. Thanks.
Knife sharpeners very much still exist. Just google knife sharpening in your area. They just dont go around on bicycles or trucks anymore. Also, its not actually a service that people need. Anyone can sharpen a knife themselves, they just dont bother to do it. Unless you have really expensive, high quality knives, its easier and more cost effective to just buy a new knife set.
The railroad had a guy that his only job was to walk the train bridge crossing our part of The Ohio River, before and during bad weather and light small cups of (Sterno?) that were placed in groups every X.amount feet to keep the tracks dry/ice and snow free. It was kinda odd feeling to see small flickering flames at the tracks.
Lomg gone are brake men
@Kurt M. Actually know what your talking about, remember those also! The railroad, here, had small cup looking things that set recessed in the road and next to the track itself, Mr.Kessinger had to walk the bridge and light them. It heated the tracks. I am really telling my age here! LOL! Those bomb looking pots, think they were called smudge pots.
The only job you missed that i can recall from history is : cobbler, and a knife/scissor sharpener. great video sir.
Still have them here, they also cut keys and sell and fit tiny batteries in small devices. There’s usually one in every large shopping centre.
During covid lockdown I wished we still had milk delivered. I mean, I could go a couple weeks between grocery store visits but I needed milk before then
I would trade 99% of my life now to go back to those days! I often joke that my 1st job was a a remote control/signal finder as a 4 year old! Thanks for the great times & a video!
This is awesome. I’m missing a time I never existed in.
Do you believe in reincarnation? There’s your answer..
I live near University Place, WA & there is a SHELL gas station that still has full & mini service attendants. I haven't been to it yet because it is out of my usual route. I just happened to go a different way a few months back & saw the "full service" sign as I drove by. Next time I need to fill my tank, I will go check it out after watching this video.
Oh and if you live in Oregon, gas stations are still staffed with attendants per state law. I made the mistake once of pulling over at a Chevron outside of Portland, just to top off my tank (going down to CA). As I got out, some dude came up to my car, said hello, pointed out where the restroom was, & then asked me how much gas I wanted. At first i thought this might be a random dude trying to make some money (via tips) by pumping gas for people. I said no thanks, I can handle it on my own. but I was wrong because as soon as I started reaching for the pump, he got annoyed & told me that I was prohibited from pumping my own gas. He then explained why this state law in place (since the 1950's apparently).
I was surprised but also amused because it took me back to my childhood when my parents went to the gas station. I would sit in the backseat watching the attendant pump gas, check the tires, clean the windows & side mirrors, and check the oil level. By the time I started driving (in the mid 80's), most stations were converted to self serve only so I've always pumped my own gas.
Teletype was received in the language of the region. I got a temporary job as a teletype translator for a South American world band radio station that sent out programs in several languages. I translated the copy from the machine (in Spanish) to English so it could be read by the station's English speaking newsreaders. (And I often listened to broadcasts from the United States to check how close my translations were.)
Riveters are still in use today. Although not so many. All aircraft produced today require skilled riveters. I liked the Carnation picture. When I was younger we had a Carnation truck just like that drive through the neighborhood twice a week and people would come out and get dairy products just like kids and the ice cream truck. Also we had an icebox and my grandpa would walk a block and bring back a 50 pound block of ice every other day. Also, I was a gas station attendant when I was younger, working my way though school.
Airliners like the Boeing 787 and the Airbus A350 are almost entirely carbon fiber composite structures; very few rivers anymore.
@@jacksons1010 true they are mostly composite. But there are still large areas that are metal they require rivets. Lots and lots of rivets.
@@acftmxman Do tell: where on a Boeing 787 are there "large areas that are metal"? There simply aren't any riveted panels anymore, and the structural joints use various types of locking fasteners - not rivets. I'm not saying there are no rivets at all, but there aren't many. Technology has moved on from that.
I work for a major airline as a line mechanic….last night i did a check on a 787……it is true that it is mostly carbon fiber……before i worked on the line, i worked in overhaul at one of our bases…..i have done some riveting….on our Boeing aircraft….it was mostly for repair……so, i would think that there is still some riveting being done…. Its not done as much anymore like the old days….
@@Cocoatreat thanks. I recently retired from Airlines Anonymous. Worked line stations my whole career. So that means you with work for us or for Unknown Airlines. That was the point I was trying to make. The wings may not look big, but unless you work in the Industry, you don’t understand just how many rivets go into a piece of sheet metal.
I worked as a shoe sales woman in the early 90's. I actually measured peoples feet and fitted their shoes.
Shoe shops still do that.
I miss that!
I used to love that service!
@@janetpendlebury6808 Not too many of them!
We still have a Milkman with daily delivery of bottled milk, eggs, butter etc.
Furthermore, we still have our petrol pump attendant at our local village garage, except they only sell diesel these days.
Likewise, we had 2 blacksmiths locally until the mid 1980.
When I was 6 years old (1965/66) my family lived in Champagne-Urbana, Illinois. I can still remember (and hear in my mind) the clip-clopping of the horses hooves as the milk man came down our street just before I had to get up to get ready for school. Not only did he use a horse drawn delivery vehicle but, of course, the milk came in glass bottles. In 1963 nearly 30% of homes in the US still got milk delivered. By 1975 this had fallen to 6%. I'm glad I was born in 1959 and have the glass bottle milk deliveries (and the horse drawn milk cart!) as part of my memories. (I also remember walking to and from school at that age, alone in the morning and with a little girl who lived nearby in the afternoon. We often stopped by a tiny store on the way that sold string licorice to buy a few strings. Can still see the string licorice hanging from a couple nails in the wall of that store.)
I had a milk route back in the sixties one of my first jobs
I love your videos! Everyone should know this type of history too.
Mail runners! In the early days, larger corporations would often need to both send and receive huge volumes of mail, and there was often a large area solely dedicated to processing mail in and out of the company, staffed by several people. These runners would wheel carts of mail around the company distributing them to the addressees, and would also collect outgoing mail from individuals and dedicated drop-off areas, sometimes even distributing paper paychecks. Internal memo distribution was also an important function, carrying messages between offices. Now, with email and automatic deposit so common, mail rooms have largely disappeared from companies, there are no more runners, and what little mail comes in or out is only handled by the addressee personally or placed in a small box that individuals are responsible for getting themselves.
4:10 'and building relationships with their customers...' haha! I remember that being quite a meme about milkmen, but I reckon it was vanishingly rare in reality.
And look what the internet & cell phones have done! The Unabomber was right.!!!
A travesty in my opinion. I’m only 38 and I’d rather be alive back then! Not saying things were “easier”, easy never made life better. Maybe I’m just an old soul though haha.
Younger generations can't put down their cellphones long enough to work a job.
My mom never pumped her own gas there was one gas station that had full service so she always went there
I worked at a gas station that had full service. We checked all fluids under the hood. Washed the windows and checked the air pressure in the tires. I loved that job.
The first time I tried to pump gas, I was lost! Got rude comments-"Gee lady, are you that stupid?" Times do change, and people do too, not always for the better!
My Dad was a typesetter by trade. Starting in the early 50s, he eventually learned computers and became a typographer. Eventually he left the profession, and his last job before he died in 1989 was working in a camera shop.
I remember coal delivery to my grandparents house in Baltimore, I worked in a 1920's office building which had a private elevator to the top floors it had to be manually operated my boss and I loved it because we could use it to sneak out of the building.My great uncle's first job was tending gas street lamps his second job was delivering milk with a horse and wagon.
I still have milk delivery in my town! :)
Service Station Attendants are still required in the states of Oregon and New Jersey. Pumping your own fuel is illegal in those states
Wow, Today, only Oregon and New Jersey persist in broadly requiring that a gas station attendant fill drivers’ tanks. There has been progress over the years, however slow it may be. In 2017, Oregon lawmakers passed a law allowing those in rural counties to pump their own gas with certain time restrictions for stations that also operate a retail store. Wow, what do you know! lol. I looked it up and there it was.
@@tonycollazorappo yep, I'm from New Jersey. You would be surprised at the number of New Jersey residents that do not know how to pump their own gas when they leave the state! 🤣🤣
I wish that pumping your own fuel was illegal in Texas.
@Brad Haines I hadn't heard that. I've seen no self service pumps.
We had milk delivery when I was little in the late 50's through early 60's. Pet Dairy truck driver brought bottles of milk to exchange for empty bottles. The milk was cooled by crushed ice in the truck. Hot summer days he'd give us kids a snowball to eat.
My neighborhood use to have a milk, butter & egg man, a bread man, ice cream man, a candy man and laundry man, most would drive panel trucks
You got your last story totally wrong. I'm a projectionist. Yes, we are now digital, but there is still someone up in the projection room, loading the movie ( it's not like putting a DVD in at home ), performing maintenance on the machine, loading trailers of up coming shows, and monitoring the sound levels and being ready to resolve any computer type issues that may arise.