" My grandparent , carry in 1912 , were the first of their MANY siblings to have a bath INSIDE their theater . "
I’ve always been fascinated by stories from my elders about what life was like before I was born. It’s incredible to see how much has changed (and the things that somehow remain the same). Recently,u/helpmegetthrough1askedolder adults on Reddit to share the signs that someone was well off back in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s, and a lot of their responses surprised me. Here’s what they had to say:
1.“Two cars in the driveway.”
2.“Meat with dinner every night.”
3.“A color TV. A 27” color TV. I remember seeing my first 30" … then a 36" … believe me — childhood me would think people of the future must live in movie theaters if they own and watch movies on an 85" television. Which is larger than the pull-down-screen the grade school movies of my youth were projected on. The magic ofThe Jetsonscame to life, siiiiigh."
4.“An extra living room for guests.”
5.“A dishwasher.”
6.“Children with braces to straighten their teeth.”
7.“Having a perfect lawn and a lawn service to mow for you. Lawn services were not nearly as common as they are today.”
8.“In the ’70s, if your house had a tennis court, you weremoney.”
9.“Air conditioning.”
10.“An in-ground pool and an intercom system in your house. My current 1995-built house has the original intercom system, and I cannot bring myself to tear it out.”
11.“Going on vacation to somewhere other than visiting relatives; traveling by airplane.”
12.“The poor folk all had unpaved, straight, short driveways. The rich folk had circular driveways. I’m sure this wasn’t the majority of them, but to this day, when I see a circular driveway, I think, wow, those guys must be well off. Yes, I know this makes no sense, but it’s funny how first impressions on a young person can last a lifetime like this.”
13.“In my neighborhood, two bathrooms. Pretty uncommon.”
14.“At Christmas time, the rich people would have huge trees with the white flocking stuff sitting in the living room window. They always had their curtains open so everyone could see right in their house.”
15.“Each of the kids had their own bedroom.”
16.“Having extracurriculars, like ballet lessons. Most of us just had to hang out not at home.”
17.“Our rich neighbors had their basement finished in 1970s glory. Shag carpet, 8-track player, strobe light, an extra bedroom for the maid, water bed, air hockey game, and pinball machines. And one of the very first VCRs (cost around $2K).”
18.“Massachusetts coastal town: Yacht Club parking sticker, country club parking sticker, and a private beach sticker. An awful lot of very affluent people drove fairly nondescript cars, particularly old money. Anyone with all three stickers for sure was upper middle class.”
19.“The rich family on our block of middle-class families would give out full-size candy bars at Halloween.”
20.“I grew up in a working-class neighborhood. Went to a classmate’s house after school one day (1970), and what a revelation. A housekeeper greeted us at the door with, ‘Hi Miss Amy, who’s your friend? Will she stay for dinner?’ and took my friend’s coat. The entry room was an atrium with light streaming in from above, lots of huge plants, and a big working circular fountain in the center. Her house was huge (they had 10 children, both parents were professionals). Her yard was vastly deep. But I was most impressed with the 5-gallon jug of milk in their enormous refrigerator with its own spigot. Amazing experience!”
21.“My grandparents always said that having an American Express card was a sign that you had ‘made it’ back in the day.”
22.“Well, according to my preteen sister, it was the fact that you had a TV Guide instead of the pull-out from the Sunday newspaper and, apparently, could afford paper towels. She went to someone’s house who had those things and came back in wide-eyed astonishment at the wealth of this particular family. In her defense, paper towels were not yet a thing. Most people used cloth kitchen towels that some people called tea towels. But we had a good laugh at that.”
23.“Having your own phone line. We had a party line where four families were on one phone line. You just picked up the phone and if someone was talking, you hung it up and waited your turn!”
24.“An entertainment console: a big horizontal cabinet that held a radio, TV, and a hi-fi record player or, if you had really made it, stereo!”
25.“I was told only about three years ago by a friend that they thought my family must be rich because we built a brick house in the early 1960s. All the other houses around us were made of timber.”
26.And finally, “I remember when my neighbors got MTV. I went over there and watched it for hours. We never had any sort of cable anything.”
