You know you're old when.....

[Circlotron]

.... you wear a flat cap and go around 'helping' people:

...when you repeatedly read "you wear a flat cap and go around 'helping' people:"
and you keep thinking it said "you wear a cat flap and go around 'helping' people:

 
 

[VK3DRB]

... when you know what the Information Superhighway is.

... when you know what "echo." does in a DOS batch file.

... when you know the resistor colour code.

... when you know the 12x table without having to use a calculator.

... when you know Morse Code.


 

[Brumby]

... Yep!

... Yep!

... Yep!

... Yep!

... Bugger!!!

[Ed.Kloonk]

..when you remember that your bank used to be known as 'The Wales'

[pardo-bsso]

The music I used to listen as teen is now in a classics/oldies radio station
The only convenience my car has is a fresh air vent
I'm young enough to know the B52s and saw them live.

(here we still have people in trucks or horse carriages selling fresh eggs and produce on the street)

[Quarlo Klobrigney]

You remember watching channel 1 on the TV in the US.

https://www.tech-notes.tv/History&Trivia/Channel%20One/Channel_1.htm

[pardo-bsso]

You remember watching channel 1 on the TV in the US.

I also remember that on midnight tv stations were powered off to save electricity.
And looking at the test card waiting for cartoons at morning

[NivagSwerdna]

When you don't have the attention span to read the whole thread.

[pardo-bsso]

When you don't have the attention span to read the whole thread.

That's for the "You know you're young" thread. (and probably is named different than thread)

[Brumby]

..when you remember that your bank used to be known as 'The Wales'

... when you remember that bank as being originally known as "The Bank of New South Wales"

(It's now called Westpac.)

[bsfeechannel]

When you know how to change a tyre.

Check

When you remember cars without airconditioning.

Check

When your car doesn't have cruise control.

Check

When you have driven thousands of miles on dirt roads with a normal car without whining for 4WD.

Fail

When you can use a street directory.

Check

When you hate Internet Explorer

Check

& Google Chrome

Meh

nearly as much as you hate Safari.

Couldn't care less.

[jonovid]

when the Japanese made cheap electronics and Dick Smith sold it
when a cell phone was a luxury and the size of a brick. 
when the year 2000 was the future and Science fiction was still fiction.
when flare jeans & disco was cool
when Hollywood was wholesome family entertainment.
when there was only male and female.....and they lived happily ever after!
when smoking was a lifestyle choice not a death sentence.

[themadhippy]

you remember when most towns had at least one shop selling electronic components,and i don't mean tandys or maplins.
Everything was closed on sunday apart from the newsagent,but even they were only open till midday
Pubs closed in the afternoon ,and no kids were allowed in them.
The national antham being played at the end of the days tv broadcast,and when you turned of the telly the picture disapeared into a dot in the middle of the screen
If you wanted to listen to something on the radio or watch tv you had to wait for it to warm up

[Gyro]

Everything was closed on sunday apart from the newsagent,but even they were only open till midday]Everything was closed on sunday apart from the newsagent,but even they were only open till midday.

Not forgetting half day closing - Thursdays in Sidcup.  In hindsight, I've no idea what that was about! 

[themadhippy]

I've no idea what that was about!

To ensure staff only worked a maximum of 5 1/2 days, the work time directive of the 1900's.

[Neilm]

When you know how to change a tyre.

When you remember cars without airconditioning.

When your car doesn't have cruise control.

When you have driven thousands of miles on dirt roads with a normal car without whining for 4WD.

When you can use a street directory.

When you hate Internet Explorer & Google Chrome nearly as much as you hate Safari.

When you remember cars with manual chokes.

[Gyro]

Ah the joys of manual chokes!   

On cold frosty mornings...

1. Judge the outside temperature and amount of frost on the car, pull the choke out by a carefully learned amount.
2. Operate the starter and hope that the engine starts.
3. If the engine doesn't start quickly...
4. Smell petrol and realize that you've flooded the engine.
5. Push the choke back in, gently apply full throttle to avoid the accelerator pump pushing in yet more petrol.
6. Operate the starter to blow out the excess petrol whilst still failing to start.
7. Goto 1.
8. Repeat the cycle until either the engine starts or the battery goes flat.

Assuming that the above is successful, and you're not catching the bus...

9.  Adjust the choke to set the engine to fast idle.
10. Pull out onto a busy road, picking your gap, and simultaneously attempt to accelerate while yanking the choke out to it's full extent to prevent the engine from dying and causing a collision.
11. Carefully modify the above procedure whilst the engine warms up in stop-start traffic.
12. Once the engine has warmed up, forget that you've left the choke out! Stop at traffic lights and wonder why the engine has died and there's a strong smell of petrol.
13. Slowly apply full throttle whilst restarting.
14. Look mournfully at the fuel gauge.

That's how it worked on my old wrecks anyway.

Remember when automatic thermostatic chokes came it? They were worse! 

[vk6zgo]

Ah the joys of manual chokes!   

On cold frosty mornings...

1. Judge the outside temperature and amount of frost on the car, pull the choke out by a carefully learned amount.
2. Operate the starter and hope that the engine starts.
3. If the engine doesn't start quickly...
4. Smell petrol and realize that you've flooded the engine.
5. Push the choke back in, gently apply full throttle to avoid the accelerator pump pushing in yet more petrol.
6. Operate the starter to blow out the excess petrol whilst still failing to start.
7. Goto 1.
8. Repeat the cycle until either the engine starts or the battery goes flat.

Assuming that the above is successful, and you're not catching the bus...

9.  Adjust the choke to set the engine to fast idle.
10. Pull out onto a busy road, picking your gap, and simultaneously attempt to accelerate while yanking the choke out to it's full extent to prevent the engine from dying and causing a collision.
11. Carefully modify the above procedure whilst the engine warms up in stop-start traffic.
12. Once the engine has warmed up, forget that you've left the choke out! Stop at traffic lights and wonder why the engine has died and there's a strong smell of petrol.
13. Slowly apply full throttle whilst restarting.
14. Look mournfully at the fuel gauge.

That's how it worked on my old wrecks anyway.
est
Remember when automatic thermostatic chokes came it? They were worse! 

I never worked out why Brit cars were so hard to start in the morning.
I can understand in the UK, because it gets a bit colder than most of Oz , but even in a Perth WA Winter, there was a profound difference.

In mid-winter, I would go out to my EH Holden, scrape the ice off the windscreen, kick the pedal so the accellerator pump squirted some raw juice into the carby, turn the key, & it started!
"Pommy" cars I had in the same period would have to go through the routine you described----admittedly, they were older than the Holden, but even making allowances for that, the difference was stark.

When I went to the UK for a year in 1971/72, we had a 100E Ford Popular, which hated starting, & many cold mornings we walked to work, instead!

At Christmas time '71, I went to Scotland, where, in the other Perth, I rented a car from the local VW dealer.
Unfortunately, he was out of VWs, but had a Ford Cortina Estate, which was a few years old.
Well, it was a pig!
Hated starting---I can't remember if it had a manual or auto choke, but the stink of unburnt fuel surrounded it after each start.

The final straw was when it "died" just as I was entering a dual carriageway with quite a lot of traffic, then did its starting "party trick".

I took it back, & demanded something else----this time they did have a VW, but it looked like somebody had been using it in a rally--- covered with mud, scruffy inside, generally "not up to their normal standards".
They wanted to "detail" it first, but I insisted, drove  the muddy thing down the road to the carwash,so I could actually see with the headlights, then continued on my trip, driving all around the North of Scotland.

The VW started impeccably every morning, the heater worked spectacularly well (another failing of the Ford), & left me with a very good impression.

[CatalinaWOW]

Much of this stuff is specific to your region of origin.   While I remember when most of the neighbors still did not have indoor plumbing and when none of the roads in my area were paved, people living just a few miles away already had those things.  And while our neighbor had a coal furnace and still had coal deliveries well into the 1960s, he was by far the last to switch over to either electric heat or natural gas.  My grand-fathers town in rural Kansas was one of the last two or three to switch over to "modern" telephones in the late 1960s or early 1970s.  Prior to that they had a town operator, party lines and magneto cranks for dialing.  The Bell System (one of those things that makes Americans feel old if they remember) paid for the conversion to reduce their costs of interface for long distance service.

[themadhippy]

1. Judge the outside temperature and amount of frost on the car, pull the choke out by a carefully learned amount.

1A. apply cloths  peg to keep the choke out as  the locking mechanism has broke

[BradC]

The VW started impeccably every morning, the heater worked spectacularly well (another failing of the Ford), & left me with a very good impression.

"Volkswagen?! That's not a car, it's a two storey Victa!".

[vk6zgo]

You know you're old when.....

You find yourself singing songs in a "Gabby Hayes" voice.
Know who Gabby Hayes was.

Sing "Thank Heaven for Little Girls" in a "Maurice Chevalier" voice.
Know who Maurice Chevalier was.
Don't cringe a bit at the lyrics.

Remember Professor Julius Sumner Miller.

Remember "Killer Kowalski".

You are shocked to find you are older than Keith Richards!

[Ed.Kloonk]

..when young blokes refer to manual chokes being a thing of the past.

 

[bsfeechannel]

Aladdin kerosene lamp and charcoal iron.

Beat that.

[Quarlo Klobrigney]

You could buy a new car in any color you wanted, as long as it was black.