This thread has become quite a trip down Memory Lane. I'm glad some of you are also old enough to remember some of the things we now have as a necessity as being a luxury when we were kids.

Re: Air conditioning - we didn't have an air conditioner until I was about 11 or 12 years old. Before that, my dad used to put a huge fan in the living room window every summer. It was made of steel and had to weigh at least 50 pounds (not anything like today's plastic window fans) and it kept the front end of the apartment bearable even during the hottest days. I really don't remember what it was like falling asleep on those hot muggy nights without a/c but I guess that's no problem when you're 8 or 9 years old.

Likewise, my parents would occasionally take me to the movies on a hot summer night simply because those theaters were one of the few gathering areas that had air conditioning. I remember the first time I went to a theater at night (it was a hot summer evening) and saw a grownup movie - it was a Martin & Lewis comedy (Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were partners in a very successful comedy team then).

Re: Milkman- We had a milk machine (a vending machine that sold quarts of milk in cardboard containers) in the basement of our apartment building so, even though I saw plenty of milkmen in the neighborhood, my family didn't use one. We did, however, have seltzer and chocolate syrup delivered to us every week. The old, heavy seltzer bottles with the spray spigot on top were fun to play with, and making an egg-cream became an adventure.

Re: Television - No cable then. We had 6 or 7 over the air broadcast channels and some would go off the air each night at 11:00 p.m. before coming back on at 6:00 a.m. If you tuned to those channels when they weren't broadcasting you'd probably see a test pattern.

If you went to a movie in the mid 1960's you'd probably have to wait on line, and while waiting you'd get a theater employee asking you to sign a petition that was anti-"pay t.v." (what they called cable then).

There weren't any vcr's then, so if you wanted to watch a movie at home, you'd have to watch what was being broadcast on t.v.