"We had party lines, meaning we shared a phone number with someone who we didn't know. If you picked up the phone and someone was already on it, you had to wait until they finished their call before making yours. We could only make 'necessary' calls, and they had to be quick. We didn't want to be rude and hog the phone."
"Back in the day, probably around the early '60s, guns were everywhere, and there were no mass shootings. At my high school, every pickup truck in the parking lot had rifle racks, usually with two rifles or shotguns. At 12 years old, my best friend and I would walk through our small downtown with our favorite shotguns slung over our shoulders, and no one would give it a second look."
"There weren't any escalators in the '50s and '60s, so stores and buildings that had elevators also had an attendant who would run it from one floor to the other."
Adults over 50 share distinctive everyday experiences from the past that younger generations would find unfamiliar or shocking. These include party lines where multiple households shared a single phone number and had to wait for others to finish calls, elevator attendants who operated lifts in buildings, the casual presence of firearms in public spaces without incident, and significantly lower entertainment costs such as concert tickets purchased at department store customer service desks for twenty dollars. These recollections highlight the dramatic technological, social, and cultural shifts that have occurred over recent decades, illustrating how normalized practices and safety standards have fundamentally transformed.
Read at BuzzFeed
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