Remember when ....

[Don P]

I've thought about doing the metal wrap on some of my boxes. The pepsi crates I remember had an egg crate pattern to hold each 6-1/2 oz bottle.

My BIL and SIL were here this weekend and we were talking about old quilts. My grandmothers were feedsack quilts that us cousins would sleep in a pile of, made into a pallet on the floor in front of the warm morning heater. I inherited 4 of them and we used them until they were worn out. Michelle took the good parts and made one good quilt for a nephew when he got married. One of those quilts had backwards swastikas on it, well before that german knucklehead co-opted an old good luck folk pattern.

[Nebraska]

You can still get jelly in glasses at least at Menards...

[WV Sawmiller]

BT,

  All the soda (We called everything CoCola where I came from) had the little partitions in those soda bottle flats. My first spending money was made picking up pop bottles along the side of the highway. I think I was getting 3 cents a bottle back then.

[beenthere]

BT,

  All the soda (We called everything CoCola where I came from) had the little partitions in those soda bottle flats. My first spending money was made picking up pop bottles along the side of the highway. I think I was getting 3 cents a bottle back then.

Recall the same return on empty bottles. When I was 4 or 5, I do remember waiting for mom to get on the phone, taking two empty bottles and walking the 6 blocks to the grocery store, where they would exchange the two empties for a full bottle as long as I didn't leave with the bottle. So I sat on the front steps and drank it. Trekked home and mom was still on the phone. 

[doc henderson]

I was prob. 5 and my brother was 4.  We had a big grocery store in town, but also a little market, right on highway 81 in Concordia KS.  We always got candy when we went there with mom.  I walked up to mom and asked for a dollar so I could go to the store.  She gave me a dollar and went on about her business.  It was prob. about 10 blocks away so I took my brother by the hand (safety first) and started walking.  It looked different walking than in the car.  I asked a few neighbors along the way and made it about 4 blocks when my mom pulled up in the car.  I got a swat and put in the car.  What the heck did I do, I asked her for the money and told her we were going to the store.  I guess she thought I was playing.  I guess she learned.  

[aigheadish]

I'm somewhat of a collector of those crates, I could totally see them being prized back in the day. I'll try to post a picture when I get home and take a fresh one. Presumably they gave them away back then. I've paid as much as 25 bucks for one, but usually get much better deals.

[Ed_K]

 Rita's mom made potholders out of milk replacement bags, I remember my mom getting the dishes and used the green stamps for bath towels. Rinse-so-blue had stripey towels.

[Old Greenhorn]

I remember when I was a little kid if one was lucky enough to get one of those soda or milk crates all you needed was a 2x4, a clamp on roller skate (just one) and a few nails to make yourself a scooter. Anybody else remember the design?
 As our design skills progressed, we would knock one side off the milk crate and nail it to the 2x4 for a seat, then nail on an axle perpendicular to the 2x4 for the rear end and put a carriage bolt through the front end of the 2x4 and another axle that would steer with a rope to control the steering, in so far as was possible. Then we'd go searching to for steepest hill we could find and have races.

[GRANITEstateMP]

Tom, did you get to meet Doc right after that?

[Old Greenhorn]

Nah! Doc was just a toddler then and he was focused on hunting down Candy.  I didn't know Candy but I bet she was worth it.

[SawyerTed]

In NC in the late 1970s we still had returnable "pop" bottles.  I worked in a grocery store and one of the chores for the new "bag boys" was sorting the bottles.  All one size Pepsi together, big Coke bottles, small Coke bottles, Dr Pepper, Mt. Dew, Fresca, Sprite, RC Cola, Fanta, and on and on - I'm having flash backs!     We sorted the crates to match the bottles by bottling company.  

I worked there about 18 months starting in 1978.  During that time returnable bottles were discontinued.

I also remember the old country store down the road from where we live now.  The store has been gone 30 years.  They sold hardware, nails, nuts bolts, screws etc along with other country store stuff.   The rubber washers for garden hoses and condoms were in the same section.  I asked the old guy behind the counter about product placement.  He said they are both rubber!

One time my wife had me stop at the old store for something.  She went in by herself.  When she came back out she said, "Ted, the fatback was in the cooler right next to the fishing worms!"  

My response, "I doubt the fatback will hurt the worms."  

One old store near here still had the potbelly stove, a cadre of ladder back chairs and the naturally occurring group of old guys who populated them.  I used to be a bit wary of them but came to miss them when the store closed.  

[Ianab]

We used to get money back for large beer bottles, and they would just be washed and re-used. Would have been mid 80s and I was living in a shared rental house with some buddies. 

"Hey, there's no more room in the garden shed for empty beer crates!!" 

So I said to load them up in the work van, which was a little Suzuki Carry, like 900cc mini-mini-van. It was about the size of a small garden shed, with wheels. Any we stacked it full and rattled off down the road. We got enough from the deposits to buy 2 more crates of beer, so that was Friday night sorted. 

Some places still have a deposit on bottles and even cans, but I have to wonder how efficient it actually is. The stores have to pay staff to accept the returns. Locally they have just reduced the size of the rubbish bins, and given us bins for recyclables. 

[twar]

I don't remember being very excited about moving to S. Carolina (from NC) in 1969, but as an 8-year-old, I did like the higher "wages". SC had a $.03 bottle deposit vs NC's $.02. Measured in candy, this was quite a windfall. But it lasted only a year before Dad's job moved us back to NC.

[thecfarm]

I sorted bottles in high school. 
I had 2 jobs, bagging groceries in a small store and I sorted bottles.
I grew up in a small town.
Everyone got paid on Thursday or Friday. That is when I bagged and a few Saturdays. Busy and I mean busy.
Then in the winter time, when it was going to snow we would be busy too. Which I always thought was funny. Last storm that slowed down the state of Maine was back in 1969. I was only 8, but climbed on top of the shed off to jump off into the snow. 
That was the last time we got snowed in.

[Peter Drouin]

I remember when I went to high school, I could leave my key in the truck, windows down, and shotgun hanging on the rack back window. No one touched it. A lot of us had guns and fishing poles hanging in the trucks. 

[Peter Drouin]

We did smoke shows in the school parking lot, not a teacher would even look out the window. cops did not care as long as keep the speed down. A 1968 Camaro with a 396 4-speed does 5 miles an hour when the wheels are at 100
After school, we all would end up at a big store parking lot and start talking bs who had the fastest car. A bunch of us like a parade go up on the bypass. One car in the lane the other to the right brake down lane. and go,   the road was black with rubber. Not a word from the cops   Even had guys from other towns with bs. We beat them all.

[thecfarm]

And we would go to school with the gun in the rack.

[Don P]

I thought I must have been misremembering the 2 cent deposit. We kept the ditches clean, at least of bottles, on the way to Mr Barnes store. Everything on the shelves had a healthy layer of red dust on it. We had to navigate by the squatters bench either outside or by the stove depending on the season. The stove had a sign on the wall by it "No spitting on the stove". Mr Barnes, who had to be at least a hundred, finally told us boys we had to spend a little cash money every now and then. Its all mansions now, somehow they look far poorer. My first reel was a South Bend my mother let me have enough of her green stamps for. My first bat bought with my money was more than any of us could handle, but if we ever connected  . I remember being short the tax when I was standing at the counter. My head went down and I started to turn away from the counter when the man behind me reached around and put down the difference. That feeling stuck 

[sharp edge]

   wisconsin...   of course its true, kids were raised in the bar, getting quarters from people they didn't even know, while there parents were at the bar getting lit.


             se

[WV Sawmiller]

    Dad said one time my grandma sent my uncle  to the store to get a half a slab of bacon. When he got to the country store there were a bunch of derelicts sitting on the bench waiting for someone to order bacon. The store owner always started cutting on one end and the derelicts did not want the end slices and were waiting for someone to order some so they could get to those choice center cuts. Just for spite my uncle went ahead and bought the whole slab so they had to keep on waiting.

[SawyerTed]

And we would go to school with the gun in the rack.

And EVERYONE KNEW crazy Eddie didn't need to have a gun...

[barbender]

 Ian, I would've liked to have seen that mini-mini-van, loaded up with all of those beer bottles😂

 I was reading a article the other day that was to the effect of what a farce plastic recycling is. It said much of the plastic waste that is sorted for recycling in the US,  ends up sent to Asian rim countries where is is never recycled anyways. Kind of an out of sight, out of mind thing. 

 I don't know how realistic it would be to go back to reusable glass bottles, but we sure generate a lot of plastic bottle trash. 

[gspren]

In the late 50s early 60s regular size bottles were .02 and quart bottles were .05, that was a treasure.
 We lived across the alley from my grandparents so either grandma or mom could send me to the local store/butcher shop with a list and no money, if the butcher wasn't sure he might ask me which it was for.

[Don P]

We built around Streator, IL several times. They were I think the biggest manufacturer of glass bottles in the country prior to plastic taking over. Like so many places they kind of dried up when we switched.

Remember those 2 liter glass pop bottles with the thick necks? I had a roomate that got into trouble with a girl connected to a local biker gang. They entered our house and one began banging on him in the kitchen. I broke one of those bottles over his head and he didn't go down, ruh -roh  . A good set of lodge compliments any home.

[Wlmedley]

When I was a kid we didn't have a TV set.Mom said it was a waste of time and money.The people who had one only got two channels and to get them the antenna had to be adjusted perfectly and usually quite a ways from the house as high on the hill as they could afford to put it.Maybe I was a little envious but sometimes for fun me and a friend of mine would slip through the woods and turn someones antenna and then hide and wait for them to climb the hill to adjust it.It was usually done after dark when we knew a popular show was on TV.The wonderful world of Disney comes to mind.