A to Z - W

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'm having so much fun wracking my brain for items that have existed in my life time. I hope you are enjoying these items as much as I am. 

Wall-mounted telephones. Ours had an insanely long cord that was always twisted and even though it was really long I could only pull it far enough to get inside the basement door and close it and stand there on the top step for privacy.  

Woolworth's. I loved this store.  I come from a very small town and this was the only store we had. But even if it wasn't the only one it would still be my favorite.  I loved the cheap prices, the wild items and all the different stock they carried.  It was varied like a CVS or a Walmart and cheap! Our store was old and carried the original sign that said F.W. Woolworth five and dime store. I bought a lot of nail polish and lipstick for a dime. The retail chain was founded in 1879 and went out of business in 1997. Because the company had not trademarked the name in other countries where they expanded, such as the UK, Australia and Germany other companies adopted the name and are or were still running after the original F.W. Woolworth's chains closed.  
Some Woolworth's stores had lunch counters, and on February 1, 1960 in Greensboro NC four black students sat at a segregated lunch counter in Woolworth's and were denied service. This sparked a six month sit in that became a landmark event in the US's civil-rights movement. In 1993 an eight foot section of the lunch counter was moved to the Smithsonian museum. The Woolworth's store site in Greensboro is now the site of a civil- rights museum which opened on the fiftieth anniversary of the sit ins.

   

Washington Mutual   The bank with attitude. The first bank that had fun and pulled in a younger hipper crowd. How they managed to screw up I will never understand.  I was sad to see them go. Washington Mutual Bank's closure and receivership is the largest bank failure in American financial history when it collapsed in 2008.

White out- the gloppy old liquid style.  I love the new easy to use rollers that are instantly dry.

Watch live tv. This used to be the only way to watch tv because there were no dvrs, pause, ff or rewind features. You had to watch commercials. I actually didn't watch them but used them as the time to change laundry, do dishes, something active and useful so I did not sit for the whole hour long show straight. For this reason only I miss the commercials but I do not watch live tv except for sports, and I am not alone in this viewing style.

Wrist bands When I wanted to go to a concert and see a band I had to wait in line to get a wrist band and then I could line up to buy the concert tickets. Sometimes I had to camp out to get tickets to shows when they didn't offer wrist bands.  Now you just get online and order your tickets. A lot less work and stress than the old days.

Whole album- Now in the age of buying a single song before the age of downloading MP3s you can purchase exactly which song you like from any album. Before you could by a single song on a 45s, which had a flip side so you got two songs, but only the songs the record company thought would be a hit would be released on a 45. If there was another song you wanted from the album you had to by the whole album. You also listened to the whole album in the order that the musicians intended it to be played. 

Happy writing!