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Related: Culture Forums, Support ForumsIf You Remember These 16 Things From the 1960s - You're Officially Old
1. Rotary Telephone
2. Saturday Morning Cartoons Were Sacred (extra points if you remember ""Winky Dink and You" and its interractive magic drawing screen)
3. Milk Was Delivered to Your Door
4.Cars Had Style But No Seatbelts
5. You Could Get a Coke for a Dime
6. TV Had Only a Few Channels (and a station signed off with "The Star-Spangled Banner" before going to the Indian head test pattern)
7. Beatlemania Was Everywhere
8. You Played Outside Until the Streetlights Came On
9. You Remember Watching the Moon Landing Live
10. Drive-In Theaters Were the Place to Be
11. Hula Hoops and Yo-Yos Were the Ultimate Toys
12. Penny Candy Was Actually a Penny
13. Hairstyles Were Big—Literally ( beehives to bouffants)
14. Record Players Were the Heart of Every Home
15. You Wore Bell-Bottoms and Loved It
16. Everything Was "groovy," “far out,” and “outta sight” 
Extra credit:
Even though "The Wizard of Oz" was first broadcast in color on November 3, 1956, you didn't see the Emerald City in color until your father was able to make the nine adjustments necessary to produce a clear image on the very expensive home tv.
National TV news broadcasts in the United States were typically around 15 minutes long until 1963, when CBS expanded its evening news broadcast to 30 minutes, with Walter Cronkite as the anchor.
Dave Garroway was founding host and anchor of NBC's "Today" show from 1952 to 1961
The local television station ended its broadcast day with "The Star-Spangled Banner" before displaying the Indian head test pattern.
How many did you get? (I got all 16. But then, I'm 75.)
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Silent Type
(12,412 posts)
LastLiberal in PalmSprings
(13,292 posts)Silent Type
(12,412 posts)
Ocelot II
(130,569 posts)For extra credit, let me add these:
Hair rollers you slept on, or you dried your rolled-up hair wearing a big plastic hood connected to the hair dryer with a hose.
Roller skates you clamped onto your shoes with a key.
Snow suits made of wool that the snow stuck to, and rubber galsohes.
Cars whose back doors opened front to back (I nearly fell out of one of those, since there were no seat belts either).
Speaking of cars, station wagons where the kids flopped around in the back, reading comic books and looking for Burma Shave signs - also no seat belts.
Damn, I'm old.
rsdsharp
(12,007 posts)
House of Roberts
(6,535 posts)I was the one who bought the first color tv in my family in 1980.
My family's record player was part of a Zenith AM radio, and only played 78 rpm records. We had a collection of 78s that included Benny Goodman, both Dorseys, Glenn Miller, the Ink Spots, and Eddy Arnold (my dad's favorite singer).
I remember tv not broadcasting until noon, and coming on with a news program before the soaps started
LastLiberal in PalmSprings
(13,292 posts)Frank Sinatra.
Even though I told everyone that was the only thing I wanted from Mom's belongings, my kid sister sold it at a yard sale.
Wuddles440
(2,094 posts)and I didn't know it? Because based on your description of the Zenith radio/record player and the music collection, I swear you must have been living with my family!
Frasier Balzov
(5,064 posts)fargone
(625 posts)
2naSalit
(102,857 posts)And I'm not 70 yet.
RB77
(86 posts)I was flying on “Orange Sunshine” - - - I guess I’m old. 🤓
boonecreek
(1,513 posts)I'm 74.
flor-de-jasmim
(2,282 posts)introduced to DDD (direct distance dialing) at the World’s Fair in NYC in 1964.
I probably saw the W of Oz in color first at a friend’s house, where I’d go to watch Bonanza in color. In 1960/61 my sister begged my dad to buy a color TV, which he said he would only do when the price dropped below $250. He thought it never would, but in two years it did and I still remember opening the box!
I remember all the rest, plus ironing my hair, using empty frozen OJ cans as large rollers, when eating at Italian and Chinese restaurants was considered exotic (at least in southern NJ), when there was exactly one Mexican restaurant in the Boston area and it served warmed up frozen food, and on and on…
hvn_nbr_2
(6,794 posts)Yep. I remember when rotary dial was an advance. Previously you lifted the handset off a hook and the operator came on the line and asked, "Number please?" You orally told her (they were always women) the number you were calling.
ultralite001
(2,555 posts)Chicken dinner... 100%
TVs + radios still had TUBES, baby!!!
+ then the transistors arrived...
some_of_us_are_sane
(3,210 posts)
KitFox
(571 posts)My sister and I sent away for the Winky Dink screen and it never came. We were dashed. We wanted to draw those high wire escapes. I had not thought of Winky Dink since! My folks owned a drugstore with a soda fountain and for a time we had 5 cent and 10 cent soft drink glasses and 5 cents a scoop ice cream cones. Here’s another: Attaching playing cards to the spokes of our bike wheels with clothespins pretending they were motorcycles. Thanks for posting all the memories! 😊
murielm99
(32,989 posts)Mine arrived in a timely manner.
LiberalLoner
(11,467 posts)some_of_us_are_sane
(3,210 posts)
lapfog_1
(31,906 posts)which, when I first heard it, I thought it was creepy. I think I was like 8 or 9.
highplainsdem
(62,222 posts)Otherwise, I remember all of those.
hunter
(40,698 posts)That was fairly common in our neighborhood.
Marthe48
(23,185 posts)With some suddenly vivid memories 
I might vaguely remember the Winky Dink drawing. Maybe I can find a clip on youtube.
How about Soupy Sales? He came on after the cartoons, and we kids loved the show.
Jeebo
(2,560 posts)Cokes that cost six cents and came in six-ounce bottles. That must have been the late 1950s.
I remember all 16 except that specific cartoon. It might have been on ABC or CBS; NBC was the only network we could get consistently and reliably. ABC and CBS only came in depending on weather and atmospheric conditions, and even then, the ABC station in Birmingham came in with a herringbone pattern, and the CBS station with a lot of snow. The NBC station in Montgomery always came in strong, though, so most of what I remember from the middle and late 1950s and early 1960s was NBC. Oh, and we never had a color TV until the early 1970s. I was "out of the nest" by then and bought my own first color TV in 1973.
About the Wizard of Oz: That is the first movie I ever remember watching. I was five and CBS showed it one Sunday afternoon and I sat on the floor in the living room and watched it raptly. It was the summer of 1955 and we had just bought our very first TV, a big wooden console TV, a piece of furniture, with the picture made up of fat horizontal lines that you could see halfway across the room. That movie had a profound effect on the five-year-old me. It's still one of my favorite movies, but it connects with me on a much different level now than it did when I was a small child.
I was 19 when we all sat in our den and watched Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking around up there. At one point I remember walking out into the front yard and standing there gazing up at the moon and thinking, "Wow! There's somebody there!" And that thought was stunning to me. I love science fiction, and yet, until then, no science fiction writer had imagined that when people walked on the moon for the first time, there would be hundreds of millions of people all over the planet watching it live on television. That was a speculation that was too wild even for science fiction.
I guess I'm "officially old". I turned 75 two months and three days ago, and I found out two weeks and two days ago that when you reach that three-quarter-century mark, you don't have to take off your belt and shoes to get through security at the airport!
-- Ron
Xavier Breath
(6,644 posts)The rotary phone, drive-ins and the streetlight curfew were all parts of my childhood. We lived in a small town and I have a faint recollection of milk deliveries around the time I went to kindergarten. It was from a dairy one town over with all the cows being local. Right after they stopped delivering we still made a point to go the dairy to buy milk and ice cream instead of the market.
airplaneman
(1,387 posts)I was at a friends house they were so bummed that the landing interrupted Star Treck that they turned off the TV after the One small step speech.
Number 16. Add Rad and Narly
Oops I’m giving away my age
-Airplane
IrishBubbaLiberal
(2,561 posts)Captain Kangeroo
Batman, w/ Adam West
Flipper
Jacque Cousteau
Rowan & Martin Laugh-In……Twiggy
MuseRider
(35,176 posts)I'm OLD! I am also glad to be old, I think that although there were some very hard and awful times it is going to be so so so much worse from here on. 71 last December. I am glad to still be here but it is getting harder to work with that.
J_William_Ryan
(3,496 posts)We didn’t have color TV until 1968.
Dorothy V
(508 posts)despite being not quite 72.
Mom looked great in her poodle skirt, and Dad's car was up-to-date with curb finders.
Yep, I'm ancient!
lapfog_1
(31,906 posts)but then my father entered some sort of contest in 1959 and won a "big color TV"... which lasted until sometime in the 1970s so I always watched "The Wizard of Oz" in color... right around Thanksgiving I think. It was an "event" to watch it, like New Years eve and the parades on New Years Day plus arranging the TV schedule to watch Cotton or Sugar bowl ( but not both), then the Rose bowl, and finally the Orange bowl. That was it... there were other bowl games, but nobody cared about those.
I lived a LONG ways into the sticks so milk delivery was not an option. You wanted milk, you traded something with a neighbor with a milk cow.
Hairstyles were never big in the middle of Kansas. Only on TV
Hula hoop fad was before my time.
I don't remember cokes for a dime... could have been, but I don't remember it.
Walleye
(44,862 posts)
snowybirdie
(6,689 posts)saw J.Fred Muggs live through the window of NBC! Im really old!
Walleye
(44,862 posts)We got our first TV in 1954 I remember it being wheeled into the house. And then a few months later our aerial went down in hurricane Hazel we could turn it toward Philadelphia or Baltimore just the three networks. Just turned 76. But I found out when I got my summons for jury duty that being over 70 you can just decline so that’s one advantage.
Hela
(476 posts)I got 13, but then I'm only 64. 
(How do we not have a peace sign smiley?)
rurallib
(64,688 posts)Also because my parents were friends with the people that owned the local tavern I would get sent there with my wagon to get:
1) a loaf of bread
2) 2 packs of smokes and
3). A case (24) of bottled beer
Times were a little different
WestMichRad
(3,264 posts)The phone would softly vibrate a little when the neighbor received a phone call. You could pick up the receiver and listen in (or join their conversation), but they’d hear a click if they were listening when you picked up.
“Private conversations “ weren’t always private!
On edit: 16 out of 16, BTW.
Wuddles440
(2,094 posts)especially A&W and Dog-N-Suds. HoJo's for seated service.
JoseBalow
(9,496 posts)
Brother Buzz
(39,914 posts)I have NO memory of the moon landing. Zero, zip, zilch, nada
Now, ask me about the X-15 program….
As for that TV test pattern, I religiously watch it for fifteen, twenty minutes every Saturday morning, patiently waiting to the broadcast to resume. Curiously, the first program I watched was The Wonderful World of Brother Buzz.
SamKnause
(14,897 posts)Dave Garroway Today show. I don't remember that.
TommieMommy
(2,907 posts)
OldBaldy1701E
(11,176 posts)And, I would add one thing to number one: Not just rotary phones... party lines! 
CareyOn
(91 posts)Queen Elizabeth"s coronation was the first thing I watched on a very small tv that my family had just purchased.
Have no recollection of Winky Dink, but Dave Garroway on the Today show was big in our house.
80 years old. The moon landing was huge and I watched it mesmerized while caring for a toddler and newborn.
Clouds Passing
(7,946 posts)
yellowdogintexas
(23,696 posts)I am so old that I actually used one of those telephones on a stick with the earpiece attached by a thin cord, and remember a telephone operator in our small town. And Party Lines.
I remember houses with only a cistern for water supply, and outdoor toilets.
My mother had a wringer washer and we hung laundry out to dry.
Yavin4
(37,182 posts)Yep. That actually happened. Doctors would come to your house to check on you.