“We got the generic frozen concentrate, and Dad made us put in extra water [in it].”

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"Mom worked hard to get a credit card after my dad died, and she used it almost exclusively so we could go out to lunch after church on Sundays. It was a big deal!"

"People just didn’t have A/C, even in the south where we lived.

Dad put a window unit in the den sometime in the '70s. It was a large house, with 12-inch ceilings, five bedrooms, and radiators for heating. Windows were for cooling."

"Hand-me-downs were like Christmas. My cousin was a year older and just a bit bigger than I was. I got so many cool clothes because her grandmother sewed."

"Yeah. I talked to my grandmas on Christmas Day every year, while Dad kept telling us to hurry up. We saw one grandma once a year, and the other…once every three to four years."  

"My NASA engineer father, who was an Apollo astronaut candidate (didn’t make the cut), used the Apollo 11 landing as an excuse to buy a color TV. It was, of course, broadcast in black and white. But we did get a color TV."

"There were always so many nice things at Christmas, which would have been considered extravagant at any other time. Aside from the mixed nuts (a favorite), there were marvelous homemade cookies and candies — not the regular homemade stuff that we had every day, but ones that were harder to make or took expensive ingredients."

"We got the generic frozen concentrate, and Dad made us put in extra water. Didn't taste very good that way."

"My grandpa (born in 1924) used to tell me that he and his siblings would get oranges in their stockings for Christmas, and it was a big deal to them!"

"We covered our hardwood floors with carpeting. We lived in an entry-level house, and hardwood floors were the norm. Carpet was a luxury.

"Canopy beds. Height of luxury in the 1980's!"