Forum Game: Gone for Good – Things That Have Disappeared

Hello everyone,

this thread is about the things that used to exist. Time has simply made them disappear. Here, we can reminisce about this or that together and chat about it. I’m sure you can think of things that have just vanished from our everyday lives without a trace.

I hope you all enjoy this thread.

Best regards, Ina

Modem

Who still remembers the sounds a modem used to make when dialing into the Internet? It sounded like something from another planet. And it took forever for the connection to establish. Did I have AOL back then—or did we all? And it also took a very long time for a website to load. How fast we’re online today! Back then, you had to spend a lot of time at your computer just to get onto the web.

Best, Ina

What comes to mind that doesn’t exist anymore today?

I told my kids that back in the day, the phone line at home was busy whenever someone was surfing the internet. It’s hard to imagine that now. We don’t hear phrases like, “Get off the internet—I’m expecting a call,” anymore 🤣. 
The other day I remembered that for a while there were dialing prefixes you could use to make cheaper phone calls. 01013 or something like that. 

Best regards, Tatjana. 

The first thing that comes to mind is my “Flotte Lotte.” Do they even still exist?
I was still using mine in Norway, but then I threw it away because I didn’t have enough space in my moving box.

It was a strainer with a handle, and inside there was a kind of blade attached to a crank. I always used it to make applesauce. Turning the crank would force everything through the strainer.

My beloved bread bag from my childhood days. It was a cult classic. You can only find something like that in the East German Museum now. Leather on the outside, a plastic liner on the inside, and that awesome metal twist clasp with a slit.

I still have my “Flotte Lotte”—but I hardly ever use it.

Back in the day, there were only three TV channels and just one TV. We had to agree as a family on what to watch. But even if you lost the drawing, it was still a lovely evening spent together. 

Floppy disks and the Walkman—the younger generation doesn’t even know what those are anymore 😁


Love, Inge

Who still knows what a Datasette is? 😀

Love, Inge

How about carbon paper? It came in black or blue. If you wanted to make multiple copies of a document on a typewriter, you had to insert lots of sheets of paper with carbon paper in between.

  And woe betide you if you made a typo. Then you had to scrape off the wrong letters on every single page with a razor blade.

Today, with just one click of a button, you can print as many copies as you want. And how quickly a typo is corrected!

Pay phones are gone. 

My kids always say I’m the only one who still sends faxes—fax machines aren’t really used anymore. 

Yes, I still remember tracing paper. And typewriters, too. I had to write business letters without any mistakes in school/during my apprenticeship. If there was a mistake in the very last word, I had to start all over again. Tippex and electric typewriters didn’t come along until later. 

I also remember shorthand. I really enjoyed learning it. A 1 with a dot underneath: “I take the position that”  🤣

The Persil paddle, and those laundry plungers, as well as the laundry mangle for getting the soapy water out of the laundry, and the Ruppel, or washboard

Best regards, Inge

Exactly, Ina, we secretaries know that. The carbon paper (sometimes purple, too) really stained your hands. The copy sheets were so thin, almost like parchment.

I still remember shorthand (dictation shorthand), too—the pen and the shorthand pad.

Those teletypewriters are gone too; writing on them, with punched tape and punch cards, was part of our training back then.

Changing the ribbon on Optima typewriters.

Spinning tops (toys from the GDR)—they came in different sizes and colors, along with a wooden stick with a string attached. I’d love to try that again sometime.

Diskettes and floppy disks and much more.

Andrea, I used to have a spinning top like that—I’d whiz it all over the village 😁

Love, Inge

What did you think of Dederon aprons? My mom always wore one at home. When I think back on her, she’s always wearing that pink apron. It was like a uniform you wore around the house. It was practical, after all. Dirt practically rolled right off the smooth surface, and you had two pockets for (cloth) handkerchiefs. Back then, we didn’t have disposable tissues yet. 

Yes, the smock apron has disappeared too— it was like armor for the German housewife. I wore them myself when I was a very young housewife, but they fell out of favor relatively quickly because you’d sweat almost to death in those things if they were made of modern synthetic fibers—the cotton smocks were still okay, but the patterns… oh dear, let’s not even talk about them :-)

Best regards, Inge

The infamous hood dryer as a plastic floating contraption, or as a fixed unit, just like curlers, is also hardly ever seen anymore

Best regards, Inge

And on top of the smock, Grandma would wear a “regular” apron so the smock wouldn’t get dirty right away. For Sundays, there was the “good” smock.
I still have a smock in my closet—just as a keepsake.

I also still have a really old portable typewriter and an electric typewriter. Unfortunately, my ex sold the big calculator with the paper roll.

The good old tape recorder is gone, too. But vinyl records seem to be making a comeback.

I also still have my first camera, on which my dad had carved my name (he had great handwriting). Back then, you still needed film cartridges. An heirloom roll of film is still in the closet.

The phone ☎️ with the round rotary dial. Some people had a brocade cover for it, to make it look more elegant. 

Those awful, stiff girdles with the suspenders attached. 🙄

Linoleum floors. Nobody installs those anymore. But they lasted forever. Here in the house, we had them in red and blue.
My grandma had gray ones in her bedroom, and there was also a lilac-colored, puffy bedspread with a ruffled edge on the bed. Do they still make those today? 

Scissors Sharpener
Back in the day, someone would always come by to sharpen knives and scissors at people’s front doors.

A scissors sharpener actually rang our doorbell the week before last (he even showed his ID…).
And there’s one who regularly stops by a kitchenware store in downtown Neuss.

I still have a “Flotte Lotte” too. At least 15 years ago, it was still easy to buy 😉

Checkbooks…they basically don’t exist anymore, do they?!
Even the clearing checks—without which, just three years ago, you couldn’t get a single court document from the court (back then they were still €7… nonchalantly raised to €12 with the switch to bank transfers)—are sitting in my filing cabinet, gathering dust.

Checkbooks—that reminds me of those checks.
They were also a form of payment.
Though mostly for businesspeople, if I remember my business studies classes at vocational school correctly.

The knife sharpener still comes to our front door once a year. He sharpens everything from lawnmower blades to bread machine discs.

Tape recorder: Back then, you’d record your “playlists” from the radio, and woe betide the presenter if he talked over your favorite song.

Back then, I used to write contracts on carbon paper at the office. They’d then be duplicated using that carbon paper. Copiers didn’t exist yet.

Whistling kettles are probably almost nonexistent now, except maybe when camping. We always had one of those sitting on the stove. And there was also a heavy iron there. It would get hot from the stove, and then my mom would use it to iron.

Cassette recorders are probably completely out of style now. We still have a cassette radio like that in our 30-year-old car and our RV (which we just sold). I also had a Walkman, and I actually still have it.

Triangular milk cartons

Oh yeah, the cassette recorder. It felt soooo cool to own one.
We’d even give away cassettes we’d recorded ourselves. It was always quite a hassle when you were recording songs from the radio. The presenter would often talk over it, and then the recording was ruined.

Yeah, Monika, I still remember those duplicating masters, too. I used them at first to make copies of school assignments and worksheets for the students.  They always smelled so strongly of alcohol. The students would always sniff them.🙈
And does anyone else still have VHS tapes? I don’t think VHS players exist anymore either.
Vinyl records and record players, on the other hand, are making a comeback...

Oh, and 8mm cameras! When our kids were born, we bought one. For indoor shots, you needed spotlights to make sure it was bright enough.
A few years ago, I had all my 8mm films digitized.

How about this? I still have it and use it. It’s just that this little bottle cap doesn’t fit anywhere. It used to be for those little coffee cream bottles.

And does anyone else still have VHS tapes?
Yes, I still have quite a few of them, but the VCR doesn’t work with my TV anymore because newer TVs don’t have SCART ports.

Oh, such lovely things. I can still remember most of them quite well. And Andrea and a few others even still use those old treasures. Back then, they were everyday items; today, they’re rarities.

The other day I saw on TV that a modern stereo system was being advertised that explicitly included a cassette deck. The presenter said this trend is making a comeback. A singer (Lana del Rey) released her new album on cassette in 2020. And more and more artists are following suit. Everything comes back around eventually. But does that mean we should keep everything?

We still had VHS tapes, too. We’d transferred the movies onto them that we’d recorded with that huge camcorder shortly after 1990. Back then, we thought they’d be preserved for eternity. But that wasn’t the case. We digitized them using other devices. Now we can watch them on DVD.

My son told me recently that CDs are designed to remain readable for only about 10 years. After that, it becomes increasingly difficult to play them. As things stand today, data is only truly safe on portable drives or in the cloud. Well, the good old photo album with glued-in pictures, on the other hand, has a lifespan of 100 years or more if stored properly.

Best regards, Ina

Yes, I have a lot of VHS tapes, too. They have recordings of our children and our wedding on them.

There used to be special milk cartons for school. I don’t think they exist like that anymore. They were handed out there.

Andrea, I still have those little bottle caps and all kinds of utensils, some from Tupperware.

Ina, I can’t really confirm what you said about the CDs. We play CDs very often, some even again after years. But they’re all still fully functional. There are many among them that we’ve had for well over 20 years.

By the way, our stereo also has a cassette player. In the bathroom, I always listen to cassettes in the morning, and they all play perfectly.

Are there actually still clothes presses around? Back in the day, we used to put a lot of things through the press. I don’t see any of those anymore. To be honest, I could really use one every now and then.

I still have my SKT, too. pressure cooker Original GDR. I just don’t have the aluminum inserts anymore. You can still buy those rubber sealing rings now and then at Ossi markets; it’s still in good shape, not brittle. My roast always gets nice and tender in it.

I also still remember those hot mangles from my grandma. I once went along when she picked up her laundry there back then. Today you might only still see some lettering above the shop.

Online at a....n there is also a book about these “vanished things” from GDR times.

I even still have my cutlery from school days (school meals), and I love using it.

Yeah, I used to have a pressure cooker like that, too. I loved cooking in it. Those were the days...

I still have my children’s cutlery—it’s almost 70 years old now. Someday, my great-grandchildren will get it. My granddaughters use them when they come to visit us. That’s how I learned to eat with a knife and fork. I’ve already passed on my son’s children’s cutlery set.

Do you remember those hand mixers with a rotating mechanism? My mom used to have one. It was great for whipping egg whites or cream. 

Oh yeah, the good old milk jug—I guess nobody needs that anymore either. I used to buy milk with it at the store around the corner when I was a kid.

VCRs and video rental stores

*** Does anyone else still have VHS tapes?
Yes, I still have quite a few of them, but the VCR doesn’t work with my TV anymore because new TVs don’t have
SCART ports anymore***

There are adapters for that. My husband also has a lot of VHS tapes—let’s see how much longer they’ll still be watchable. But with the adapter, the VHS recorder works with the new TV, too.

Hi girls,

tell me—do you guys remember those paper or cardboard dress-up dolls? They were dolls—some of which you had to cut out—that came with lots of outfits that you either had to cut out yourself or were pre-cut so you could easily detach them.

I used to love playing with those. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen anything like that these days.

Summery greetings from Monika

YES, I really liked those, too.
And they’re still around today—right here as craft instructions!

Here:

https://www.crazypatterns.net/de/search?keyword=anziehpuppe+bastelanleitung

Yeah, exactly—that paper dress-up doll. I used to love playing with that, too.

It’s great that something like that still exists. Thanks, Veronika.

Yeah, it’s great that little girls can still play with them today.

I can think of something else. Back in the day, there used to be dolls at the fair—mostly black, inflatable ones that looked like babies. Some of them even squeaked. Their mouths were round or oval, and they had big, round eyes. My dad once brought me one—it was green with a bow on its head. I had it for a long time and loved playing with it so much. At some point, it even had to be glued back together at the seams. I think they were called “Winkie.”

Those little paper dolls were so cute—and so adorably drawn back then. I can still remember them exactly.

I used to love making those weaving sheets during holiday activities. An A5 sheet of colored paper that had been slit. You’d weave colored strips through the slits. It made beautiful patterns.

I also have a terrible memory… for her youth initiation ceremony, my sister got one of those little padded pouches that opened up, where you were supposed to put handkerchiefs (of course, cloth handkerchiefs with little flowers on them and a crocheted lace edge). It closed on the side with a bow. It never really caught on. It probably just sat in the linen closet “for best.”

I suppose at some point, cloth handkerchiefs will be a thing of the past, too. Everyone just uses tissues now. Or maybe, precisely because of sustainability, cloth handkerchiefs will come back into style… Who knows.

Best, Ina

Yeah, I had a Winkie like that, too—I loved it! And I have no idea where it went.

Waaaah, try Googling “Winky”—they cost a fortune these days.
And with the passage of time… now I don’t even think they’re that great anymore. 🤣

Do you still remember the Gogomobil or the BMW Isetta? Those were very popular cars in Germany back in the day :-) Small, and you could park them against the house wall with just one hand ;-) :-))))
I know a Gogo could fit three kids aged 8, 10, and 13, plus their parents and a big bag of picnic food, because my dad drove one of those back in the ’60s.

Love, Inge

Yeah, one of my uncles had an Isetta, and he drove it all the way from the Ruhr region to Rimini. 🤣
Back then, we had a Beetle—we called it the “Pretzel Beetle”—and we’d take it on vacation with five people inside. There was no rear shelf for the bobblehead dog; there was just a recess behind the seats, and that’s where I sat, nice and soft on jackets and bathrobes. So Dad fit behind the wheel, Mom sat next to him with her feet up—since the footwell was also packed with luggage—and my big brother and Grandma were in the back seat, of course with travel bags squeezed in between them too, because the trunk was completely full.
Sometimes you wonder how we managed to survive all that....

That reminds me of something else about cars back in the day.
When we were new drivers (I got my license in 1976), we drove around in the last of those old clunkers—the 2CV, the Beetle, the Renault 4—but all in pitiful condition.... “Until the TÜV tells us to stop” was the motto.
Today, you hardly ever see anything like that anymore. When young people drive, they do drive small cars, but they’re absolutely fine in terms of quality.

Veronika, I’m amazed that Winkys still exist and that they cost a fortune now. I don’t even think they’re that great anymore. I had a rare one in green and, of course, I dressed it up. I loved doing that even as a kid.

When I first started driving at 33, I also had an R4, and I absolutely loved driving it—even on long trips.

I’m familiar with the Isetta, too, as well as the Beetle. It was sometimes a real space miracle. But even back then, it felt a bit too cramped for me.

I just thought of something else—the spin dryer. Back in the day, you still had to take the laundry out of the machine—or the wash tub—and put it in the spin dryer. What a hassle! Nobody knows what that’s like anymore. My mother even used to do laundry in a wash tub in the laundry room, which had to be heated up beforehand. 

We didn’t have central heating either. In the bathroom, a large boiler (or whatever it was called) had to be heated with coal or wood for the bathtub. It was made of gold-colored metal on the outside—maybe brass.

Monika, I also remember those wash tubs with a stove attachment at the bottom. Then there were those rollers—usually two sets of two, very closely spaced wooden or metal rollers—through which you’d push the laundry to rinse out the soapy water when you were finishing the wash. Then there were those laundry beaters—they were bell-shaped devices with a perforated part inside that moved to beat the laundry once it came out of the boiling lye. And then there was the infamous washboard—the “Ruppelbrett”—on which my mother always scrubbed my father’s work clothes and treated them additionally with a coarse laundry brush, which you see less and less these days. As a young housewife, I also still used a separate laundry wringer.

Best regards, Inge

So I kept using this little tabletop spin dryer for a long time, because back then, as a young girl, I didn’t have my own washing machine yet (only one in the communal laundry room). The spin dryer was great for hand-washed laundry.

My mom also kept washing with this WM66 (pulsator washing machine) for a long time, and used this tabletop spin dryer with an inflatable rubber ring alongside it. If you didn’t put the laundry in smoothly enough, it rattled like crazy. You had to hold it firmly with this lever.

Back then my grandpa rode the Berliner Roller (moped/motorcycle)

Do you still remember those plastic carry baskets for girls/women? You could snap them together at the sides to make a basket.
I recently rediscovered this basket bag in a well-known shoe store. Everything comes back eventually, just more expensive.

Andrea, my dad rode a 98cc Sachser—that was a small motorcycle from Fichtel & Sachs. Since we’re from Schweinfurt, it was a matter of pride to ride something like that back in the day ;-) :-)  And my ex had a Heinkel scooter—you don’t see those anymore either. You sat on it like in an armchair because it had a wide seat and nice wide footrests underneath; I even dozed off back there while we were riding. I couldn’t fall off because whenever we rode, I was always strapped in with a seatbelt—my ex, like my dad, really emphasized that.

Best regards, Inge

Oh Andrea, your vivid description of the washing process just took me back decades. We also had a WM 66 and a separate spin dryer like that. The whole bathroom would flood because the hot sudsy water came out at the bottom on the side. And it had to drain into the drain under the bathtub. So you stood on a grate so your feet wouldn’t get wet. And prayed that the spin dryer would spin peacefully, which it rarely did. You had to place the wet laundry very precisely in a circle against the wall, otherwise it was absolutely awful ... like riding a horse gone wild. You couldn’t hold it still, only press the off switch at some point. What times those were!

And afterward, the laundry wasn’t dry, just spun. Then you had to hang it on the line to dry. But we only had a small bathroom for 6 people. We didn’t have a drying attic. The only option left was the clothesline outside in the drying area. There were long wooden poles that you used to raise the laundry, once it was all pegged on, high up into the wind. Everyone could see your laundry, which we didn’t like much either.

Later, we used the WM 66 for preserving food. You could also warm up bockwurst in it for the house party. It really was an all-rounder.

I can’t say much about cars. We didn’t have one.

Best, Ina

Who still remembers the **coffee grinder**? As kids, we always called it Mom’s coffee helicopter😂😁😉—that hand-cranked coffee grinder. It’s nothing like today’s coffee machines. But honestly, hand-brewed coffee tastes way better than that machine-brewed stuff.

Best regards, Inge

My mother did it that way her whole life. After my father passed away, she lived in our house for several years; my husband always went over to her place for coffee—he didn’t like the coffee I made or the coffee the assistants at the practice made.

Oh, I’d really love to have tried that special coffee sometime, since you’re all raving about it so much. When I was young, my parents always drank “Moccafix.” It came in 125 g bags for 8.75 M, so it was very expensive. But coffee beans had to be imported at great cost. We kids drank “Im Nu.”

We had an impact coffee grinder. It didn’t hold much, but it ground anything you wanted. My brother still has one today and uses it to finely grind his dried chili peppers. Back then, you could still repair appliances yourself.

Another thing that’s increasingly disappearing is piles of coal in front of houses and driveways. In the summer, the coal we’d ordered was delivered by truck and simply dumped at the roadside. We kids then had to spend hours carrying the coal down to the basement with our parents, bucket by bucket. By evening, we were all black as coal, and then it was bath time.

All winter long, we used it to heat our tiled stoves in the rooms. The heat lasted a nice long time. Even as a child, I could light a fire in the stove all by myself. Apples were roasted in the oven compartment, and in winter the wet gloves were put over the little stove door on the flap. If the stove or the door was too hot, the wool gloves would felt—so afterward they were even more windproof and let less cold through.

Best, Ina

Ina, those piles of coal on the sidewalks and in the driveways really shocked me after the fall of the Berlin Wall, because we never saw that in the West. It was a very unfamiliar sight to me.  Because when we ordered coal, the dealer would carry it in sacks down to the basement, where it was either emptied into the coal bin or dumped right into the basement if they were briquettes—which we kids then had to stack. Aside from the fact that a pile like that wouldn’t have stayed there long—since anyone who wanted some would probably have helped themselves—that’s unfortunately exactly how it turned out.

Best regards, Inge

There are adapters for that.
@ Veronika: I tried in five specialist stores. They all said the same thing—there’s no such thing.

I still have a clothes spin dryer, though I haven’t used it in ages.

When we kids were at Grandma’s, there was always a fight over the best spots by the tiled stove. The heated tile in bed at night—oh, that was so cozy.

My dad used to always bring a pot of water with him to make coffee. He didn’t like the taste of it when made with my water.

We also stacked up tons of briquettes. Back then, it was “oh man, do we really have to do this?”—and today, they’re wonderful memories of a happy childhood.

We used to have a big coal stove in our kitchen for heating. We also cooked on it. Once, when I was on kitchen duty, there must have been a flare-up or something like that. My hair was singed, and my eyebrows and eyelashes were gone. For a 12- or 13-year-old, that was quite a scare.

I can think of something else, too.
 Those paper health insurance slips are gone, too. These days, you just hand over your card and that’s it. 
Best regards, Marita 

***I checked at five specialty stores. They all said the same thing: there’s no such thing.***

You have a PM....

@ Veronika: Thanks!

The good old “butter trips” aren’t a thing anymore either. We used to go on them quite often.

Do you still remember trading stamps? I was always allowed to stick them into the stamp booklet.

My grandma would always take me along during the holidays when she went to “collect payments.” They would cut a little slip off the customer card and collect the money. Work for Grandma, holiday fun and bike rides for me.

Dear Marlies, where we lived, these colorful stamps were called "Konsummarken." I always pasted them into a Konsum booklet. At the end of the year, it was sent off to the Konsum association, and we got about 50 East German marks for it. Basically the forerunner of today’s electronic points-collection systems when shopping.

What else do we no longer have today?

Going to school on Saturdays
That was pretty awful, especially in winter. You always had to get up early because school started at 8 a.m. So as a child, you only had Sundays off.

Smoking compartments on trains
Also awful. I remember that when I was doing my apprenticeship and took the train toward Berlin early at 6 a.m., sometimes there was only 1 car for non-smokers; otherwise there were only smoking compartments. The whole compartment, from front to back, was under a blue cloud of smoke. Even if you only walked through the compartment, you smelled like smoke afterward.

Smoking was allowed in restaurants back then, too. That no longer exists today either. I personally don’t miss it.

Self-service ticket machines on buses
The device was mounted at the back of the bus. You put in either 20 pfennigs (or less, or trouser buttons) and pulled out your own ticket. Sometimes you just pulled the lever so the other passengers would think you had "bought" a ticket. The sound when you pulled that lever was, so to speak, your legitimacy for riding along. The whole thing was, of course, purely mechanical, nothing digital. We didn’t even know the word "digital" back then. That only came up with the first digital watches. Suddenly there were digits on the watch faces that showed the correct time all by themselves. You no longer had to read the time yourself.

Cash registers that ring when they open
Well, another thing that is becoming rarer and rarer today—except at flea market dealers. Today there are only beeping scanner registers that work with or without staff. In the past, a saleswoman sat there and typed in each item amount individually. And at the end it went bing and the cash drawer popped open. Some registers rang when the cash drawer opened.

That sound also reminds me of old typewriters. In the past, they would also strike at the end of a row and it went "bing." Then you had to use a lever to move on to the next line. That doesn’t exist anymore either. Today there are only keyboards that require very little finger pressure. Back then, with typebar machines (yes, I learned to type on one of those black things ("Erika")), the levers liked to get jammed at the front. And your fingers really had to work to strike the type onto the page. The little finger on the right hand was always red and hot, because it was the weakest and was responsible for so many letters. The shift keys alone, which lifted the whole front section of the typewriter, were really heavy. And that holding-up work had to be done by the little finger all by itself. Today, by contrast, little fingers just fly over the keys without having to make an effort. But today would be nothing without yesterday.

Best regards, Ina

I loved those “butter trips” too—I used to go to Heligoland quite often, for example.

And I’m familiar with discount coupons as well. Some stores, like Müller, are bringing them back.

Back then, we had ticket machines on the buses where you could stamp 10-ride tickets one by one. And you could still buy tickets at the train stations. I don’t miss the smoking cars either.

And yes, I had to go to school on Saturdays too. That’s when we had classes like art.

Those good old cash registers...

Back then, what was almost as important to my daughters as cell phones are today was the Walkman; you hardly ever see them anymore, just like cassette decks, and those huge boomboxes are pretty much gone too.
 Who still remembers them? Those beautiful music cabinets with a radio on one side and a record changer underneath, and on the other side a compartment for glasses and/or a bar. I had one of those too; it was a gift from my godmother for my first wedding.

Best regards, Inge

Yeah, Inge, I remember that music cabinet too. My uncle had one just like it with a TV, radio, and record player. There wasn’t even room for glasses in there anymore. You could use it to make the TV “invisible,” so to speak.

Since you just mentioned TVs, Monika, who else remembers those little portable TV sets? At first, they were only available in black-and-white, but later they came in color, too. We had a little black-and-white one for camping and such :-)

Love, Inge

Yeah! Back then, everything seemed to come in a portable version. I had a portable record player—the speakers were the two halves of the lid, with a handle on the front. Really handy.

Yeah, Inge, I remember those too—portable TVs. And portable transistor radios. We used to have those as teenagers “for when we were on the go.” By the way,

there aren’t any CRT TVs anymore either—or those big, bulky computer monitors. I was still working on those 20 years ago.

Oh yes, the good old days.

Ina speaks for all of us secretaries. That’s exactly how it was. The heavy shift key, lever for line spacing, typewriter ribbon, and so on.
As an apprentice, I got to type on those "Optima" typewriters , or sometimes on those old black ones with the round keys (when the colleague who always typed on it wasn’t there); that one was super easy to type on. As a teenager, I only had that portable typewriter at home (similar to the Erika).

We, too, initially had to shovel coal piles into buckets and down into the cellar; later came the sacks with the briquettes. As a child, I didn’t like going into the cellar in the evening to bring up coal; it was all the way back in the corner, and I was always scared there.

Does anyone still remember the good old ponytail holders, with the two little balls on them and elastic? I loved them in all colors. I still know how to use them today.
I could actually make some myself. I do have elastic cord and beads here.

Do those foldable toothbrushing cups made of plastic still exist? They were plastic rings in different sizes that stacked inside each other when folded up. The whole thing had a bottom plus a lid. Folded up, it looked like a round tin. Pulled upward, it looked a bit trapezoid-shaped, and it held water.

Oh, and that portable TV, called the “Junost”—I had one of those as a young girl in my first one-room apartment.

I also remember piles of coal on the sidewalk from the Ruhr region. While my parents shoveled the coal into buckets and hauled it down to the basement, I, as a small child, would sit on top of the pile and nibble on the coal. 😂
Later on, the coal truck had a very modern feature—a mini conveyor belt that extended all the way to the basement window and automatically fed the coal inside.
We never had briquettes, but some time ago, while visiting someone’s home, I got to marvel at a basement full of them. Someone was collecting them—as collectibles, not for burning. And the imprints on the sides showing where they came from were highlighted in bright colors.

Yes Andrea, I can remember the braid holders very well. I always wore those too, the ones with 2 red balls; they looked like cherries. I also had hair clips that looked like little bows. I can still see them very clearly in my mind’s eye. Funny how your brain stores away little things like that.

I also still remember the plastic fold-up and fold-out cups. And the much-loved drinking cups with the dots on them. Everyone had their favorite color. Indestructible. And the elastic shopping nets. They were tiny, but when you put a lot in them, they stretched out enormously. They never tore, either. I kept a little blue-and-white shopping net like that for nostalgic reasons. You just don’t see any of that anymore, or only as a collector’s item.

What else disappeared back then?

The scoop of ice cream for 20 pfennigs. Of course there are still scoops of ice cream today. They’re not gone. But we’ll never be able to buy them at that price again. In summer, our allowance was always enough for that. At our ice cream parlor there were always only 3 flavors: vanilla, chocolate, and fruit. We were happy with that. There was always a long line, and you waited patiently until it was your turn.

Of course, you could also eat an ice cream sundae there. It came with real, freshly sugared strawberries and whipped cream. Of course, it was also served in pretty, colorful plastic ice cream cups that had a white rim at the top. Already cult classics by now.

Best regards, Ina

Another thing that’s disappeared is those CB radios—and the radio operators :-) That was an open radio band on the 11m band. Back then, I also met and fell in love with my current husband through the radio. In our family, everyone used the radio—my parents and my siblings, too. It was a wonderful and crazy time, when I think back on it today.

Love, Inge

I remember those hair ties with the little balls on them, too, Andrea.
The mother of a former classmate used to make them at home.

I don’t even know how many of those hair ties I broke because my hair was so thick.

As for the prices of ice cream scoops, I’ve long since forgotten how expensive they were back then, Ina.
In general, the cost of living and incomes were on a completely different level back then.

Rattling balls …from the ’70s…
they really hurt if you weren’t good at it.

Oh yeah, and there were regular problems with noise-sensitive neighbors.

Rubber Band Jumping :-)

All you needed was a rubber band (usually from underwear) and you were ready to go.

Best regards, Ina

Exactly, Ina, I used to love doing that. Or that cat’s cradle game. Just your fingers and a long piece of string tied in a loop, and off you went. Kids today don’t even know it anymore.

There were also plastic bottles with screw caps; we’d make a hole in the cap, and once the bottle was empty, it was used as a “squirt bottle.” We’d simply fill it with water, and then we’d “write” words outside on the concrete paths. We were pretty inventive; we were never bored.

I really liked the cap guns. They’d probably be banned today. The caps came on a roll. You put them in the plastic gun, pulled the trigger, and then the little metal lever would hit the caps; it always made such nice sparks and was loud. Or we’d take a stone and tap the caps to make them spark.
Yes, I didn’t just play with dolls.

“Matschbrötchen”—my kids loved them. I thought those things were pretty gross.

Who else remembers those old kitchen tables where you’d pull out a drawer that hid one or two bowls for washing dishes? Grandma still had one of those.

Or the good old drip candles. I went through a lot of them, and yesterday I found two more in an old box in the basement.

I still remember a lot of the things you’ve listed and described. Off the top of my head, I thought of the laundry wringer (it was in use during my childhood—back then we still had a laundress who came over for the big laundry loads—and it sat in our basement for even longer), the alcohol-based stencils at school, a wooden coffee grinder that I kept in the kitchen for a long time, my mother’s well-worn Hermes Baby typewriter, which should still be lying around somewhere in the attic—and not to forget: the “Döschwo” or the “Duck,” the Citroën 2CV: we even drove one of those rickety little cars with a big cargo area back in Chile. I remember with horror the “Gstältli” or, later, the hip belts with elastic bands attached, to which the hand-knitted wool socks were tied… We found his slide rules in my husband’s office, and in high school math class, the “logarithm bible” was an indispensable tool.
With so many things we’re digging up from our memories, our children and grandchildren shake their heads in bewilderment—I wonder what it will be like for them one day?

That’s right—I remember the slide rule from my school days. They came in metal and plastic, with a sliding bar and that movable transparent sliding part for reading the result. I thought it was great. Too bad it’s gone missing.
Do they even make those anymore?

That wooden coffee grinder with the crank on top—my mom used it a lot, sometimes even at the campground, since you didn’t have electricity there. As a kid, it was really fun to grind coffee with it. Later, I kept it on my kitchen cabinet as a decoration. No idea where it ended up. It’s a shame, really, about such great treasures.

Is that offset printing process still around? It involved thick white sheets of paper, and you needed that purple tracing paper that rubbed off so much and stained everything (not carbon paper). You’d type on it with a typewriter, and there you had the master for the thermal copying process— or whatever it was called.

Scrap pictures for poetry albums or similar things. I think you still see those every now and then. Decal stickers?