And that Space Age design!
Wow! Refrigerators in those days had a lock system that was connected to the handle. You didn’t just pull the handle–you pulled it down as well to unlock the door. But in the sixties, fridges became frost-free (old fridges were called iceboxes), which meant that the freezer no longer accumulated mounds of ice that left the freezer resembling an igloo. And let’s not forget the ‘Tarantino’ ice trays–all metal and you pulled a lever that loosened all the cubes.
As was typical, the old fridge went down in the cellar when the new one arrived. The cellar fridge was used for soda and beer. These beverages were purchased in returnable bottles, by the case. Coke, Pepsi, Seven Up, Hires, Wink (‘the sassy one’), Miller, Rolling Rock, Schaefer (‘one beer to have when you’re having more than one’), Stegmaier, Black Label (hoo-boy, what a sexist TV ad), and Miller (‘the champagne of bottled beer’) all came in stackable wooden cases. In high school, I accompanied a friend to load his uncle’s twenty-six empty beer cases–time to get deposit fees refunded! Someone might have had a problem…..
Coke bottles showed the town of origin on the bottom. Sometimes you’d get really old Seven Up bottles with the 50’s slogan of ‘You Like It–It Likes You’ (WTF!!) on the bottle. Fresca (a horrendous lemon/lime soda, ‘it’s a blizzard’) had really unique bottle shapes, as did RC Cola. My teetotaler father actually bought a case of Michelob, which premiered in sleek, shapely bottles. All bottles had metal caps requiring an opener. The inside of the cap was lined in cork. Soda companies later realized they could incentivize people to buy using contests where you collected sayings or pictures that were found under the cork. I won a a set of miniature NFL helmets for drinking Coke.
All phones were black and made of iron, but with the sixties came the Princess phone. A plastic phone resembling a football–the small dial faced you and the cradle was half of the standard size. The Bryants’ oldest daughter wanted a pink princess phone for her 16th birthday. Not only was this worthy of national news, but she got a separate line just for her! Unheard of!! Particularly when you knew that some people still shared party lines. Five year-old me was terrorized when I picked up the phone at my aunts’ house in the coal regions and heard someone talking.
Record players became ‘stereos’ as mono recordings were phased out by the end of the sixties. The record player was housed in a large cabinet of real wood. The speakers were below the turntable, safely housed in a darkened screen. When stereo came, you could buy second speakers that fit into the system, but in many cases, the phonograph needle and stylus were created for mono and didn’t cross-dress, so to speak. So by the end of the decade, we made the jump to a stereo system, still in a cabinet, but now with two speakers maybe a foot apart (which of course negates the stereo effect). Both stereos came with a large spindle for ’45’ singles. This heavy fist-sized invention allowed you to stack several singles above the turntable–when the song ended, the stylus retracted and signaled the spindle to drop a new record. Then the phono arm played the next song. This is truly one of those innovations that causes those under 40 to scratch their heads in 2022.