Ah, for a cheap paperback and a ‘real’ ice cream sandwich

Feeling hot and stuffy in your car, but not enough for air conditioning?

No problem! Open the nearest vent just a crack and soon a nice breeze will be …

Wait a sec! Cars don’t have these window vents today. It’s a blast of cold air or nothing.

How a feature that was once this useful vanished from the automotive landscape is beyond me.

In fact, there must be a conspiracy to get rid of beloved everyday features of life. That’s “get rid of,” as in “banish from our lives forever,” not “replace with something better,” because nothing better ever has shown up to replace them.

Let’s take a look at some other old-time stuff that’s gone the way of the pterodactyl.

Cheap paperbacks: There was once a time when you could walk down to the local grocery (yes, “grocery”) and grab a new thriller novel from the rack. You knew it was good because it was by a famous writer like Mickey Spillane and it had a picture on the cover suggesting gunfights and beautiful women. Cost for an evening of reading? Try 25 cents. No – subscription TV is NOT a replacement.

Home accordions: If you didn’t have a piano in your living room, you probably had its little brother, the squeezebox accordion, which a surprising number of adults could play decades ago. It was great for family singalongs and for teaching the kids music so they could play in the band or sing in the chorus. Also, with the accordion you didn’t have to endure snarky comparisons with Paderewski.

Card tables: I don’t know how many families or neighborhood friends still get together for card games these days. But even if you didn’t play Bridge or Canasta, the kids could use it for Animal Rummy or doing their homework or the adults for figuring out their bills when every other flat surface was tied up.

Sandboxes: Except for the plastic ones shaped like turtles or caterpillars, these once-popular (and cheap) backyard devices can run more than $100 today. I thought the best ones were made of wood and were big enough to serve as mysterious mountains or faraway worlds. Regardless, a sandbox could keep an imaginative kid with a tiny shovel busy for hours on a warm day.

Real ice cream sandwiches: By “real” I mean a slab cut by the storekeeper from a brick of three-flavor ice cream and plopped between two crunchy waffles, for maybe 10 cents. If you bought a seven-cent soda in a glass bottle to go with it, your afternoon had reached its zenith.

Colorful telephones: Say what you want about the 1970s, but when else in our history could you buy a lime green or sunburst yellow phone – even if you couldn’t carry it around?

Nasty ice cubes: Does anyone remember the plastic fake ice cubes with a fly embedded in the center, great for making someone panic while sipping a cooler? We sold lots of them in our store. In fact, they helped put me through college.

No, I don’t think my favorites of past times will return no matter what we do. Life changes, and we must change with it. Some old-timey products, like rumble seats in cars, vanished for a reason – like maybe flappers and their beaux got tired of being rained on at 45 mph.

But give me a cheap murder mystery and a true waffle ice cream sandwich and it’s party time. Just try to keep the accordion down, though.

Tom Mooney is a Times Leader history and genealogy writer. Reach him at tommooney42@gmail.com.