A to Z - D

For my A to Z Challenge theme I will be posting items that are no longer with us or are close to becoming extinct.

These are great items to use if you are trying to set a time period in your story or to stay away from if you want your story to be timeless.

I have such wonderful memories of the Drive in movie theater. I wish I could share this experience with my kids.  Unfortunately there are not too many drive in movie theaters to be found. I loved being given candy in my pajamas and hanging out in the back of the station wagon with my blanket, toys and the rare box of candy. I am sure that I was fast asleep before the movie even started so my parents got a date night and didn't have to worry about finding a sitter.
There were more than 4,000 drive ins in their hey day despite the fact that they could not operate year round in much of the country. This is one of the reasons I am sure they fell in popularity. Plus you could smuggle in people and food. Although I still smuggle food into the movie theater.

Sticking with the driving theme I remember when Drive up tellers were an innovation. You no longer needed to leave your car to go into the bank. Oh the convenience.  Today we don't actually need to talk with bank employees.  I can't even remember the last time I actually had to speak with an employee at the bank.  I know these still exist but I don't see them built into new banks and I wonder if the old ones that exist are even staffed.

Yesterday I wrote about CRTs that were used in computer monitors. Today I am taking you back in time to Dial up internet. If you don't know what this is you are lucky.  You can watch the movie "You've Got Mail" to see it in slow action.  Although in the movie it always connects and doesn't take very long.  Dial up internet was at least reassuring in that you knew it was trying to connect by the dial tone and the static-y noise while you were waiting to connect. I cannot think of anything else that was good about it in comparison to what we have now. But back then it was the only way to get onto the internet.

Continuing with dialing; I grew up in a small town and we did not need to Dial an area code, in fact we only had to dial the last five digits to call people. It was a lot easier to remember everyone's phone numbers (another thing you don't have to do now since they are all programmed into your phone) when they were only five digits. Where I grew up the first of the five was either a 2 or an 8 so that made it even easier.  I live in CA now where I have to dial an area code to call next door.  I don't know if there are still some places where you don't have to dial an area code if you are within the area code but with how many numbers we all have now and all the new area codes that keep popping up I am sure that we will need to dial area codes everywhere soon.

Disposable cameras.  These are not that old but they went from being a staple for vacation locations, parties, weddings, etc. to being replaced by everyone's phone.  Of course the rest of their demise will be discussed in my F post.

Thanks for visiting.
Happy Writing and Happy Easter.