A common meme is one where you suggest that kids these days are unfamiliar with some item or activity from the past. The usual suspects are things like dial telephones, stick shifts, cursive handwriting, and so forth.
But this is ridiculous. There's so much period TV available that kids are familiar with practically all this old stuff. What you need is something that (a) went away a while ago and (b) never shows up on TV. It's actually hard to come up with examples, but tonight I finally did: opening a can of Spam with the little key taped to the bottom:
This occurred to me because I had Spam for dinner tonight. Yum!
Speaking of manual-shift cars, I see they have rebounded from a low of 0.9% (of new cars in the US) a couple of years ago back to a whopping 1.7%.
Older Ferrari’s with a clutch and a manual transmission go do $5000 to $10,000 more than their more numerous flappy paddle equivalents.
Haven't driven a stick in a long time, but if you put me in one I would have no trouble. The utes? Fergit about it. They might recognize it, but if they could get one moving?
Which flavor?
No. Haven't you been paying attention to the contemporary advertising? That is suppose to be "Sizzle, Pork, And Mmmm" ... 🙂
I have opened spam that way. Yes I am old.
It's not Spam, it's luncheon meat.
This type of opening key is still used in canned corned beef.
General Eisenhower personally thanked Hormel for making Spam during WWII, but then added “but did you have to make so much of it?”
dear god kevin, no one has ever really known what that muck actually is!
Spiced ham. There used to be a Wendy's commercial about chicken nuggets. What are they? You separate the chicken and assemble its respective parts. Which parts? Parts is parts.
Same thing only with pigs. Hog nuggets.
It's more like some kind of insect with an imaginary resemblance to ham.
If you had the ingredients listed on the can in front of you there is no physical way you could make it look or taste like spam.
I think spam was the general inspiration for The Day the Earth Stood Still. Has that 'found in a saucer' vibe.
I suspect that the people who say they enjoy spam are actually aliens in disguise.
Spam is huge in Philippine and, i believe, Hawaiian cuisine! Legacy of WWII.
When I worked for a sewer department, we sometimes had to open up active sewer lines. We called the semi-solid "stuff" floating by gold nuggets.
Dr. Science (for those that remember him, although he only has a Masters Degree -- in Science!) explained what SPAM is long ago. It's an acronym for Scientifically Produced Animal Mucous.
Dr. Science was right!
He wasn't a real "doctor."
Loverly spam! Wonderful spam!
I dunno. I've seen videos of kids baffled by dial phones, even though those show up all the time in movies. Part of what baffles them, though, may be the dial tone, which isn't usually audible in movies.
As for manual transmissions, knowing how to work one emphatically does not mean you actually can. They're extremely tricky buggers, or used to be - the ones I've driven on recent trips to the UK are much easier to use - and it took me loads of practice back in 1970-ought before I could reliably run one.
I've driven VW bugs (box full of neutrals if you miss), 25 foot box trucks, regular cars, and a Mazda Miata with a six speed. Put me in anything with a stick and I'll figure it out. They do take a touch, though.
I had a stick shift car before I had a motorcycle but shifting gears on a motorcycle is really what got me to fully understand how to properly drive a stick shift.
The difference between my first car, a 1972 Beetle, and my friend’s 2000s-era Toyota Tacoma is so huge in terms of operating the stick shift. Almost night and day.
Want to easily learn to drive a manual transmission? Learn on a VW bug from the late 60's. The clutch is so forgiving you'll learn in a day. I did. My next car, a 1969 Triumph GT6+ was a bugger. The travel on the clutch was maybe a quarter of an inch.
Wandering home after the bars on Kauai, any late night shop would have Spam Musubi - ono ono break da mouth.
I fondly remember the Hawaiian spam teriyaki. It's too bad there are so many ignorant food snobs commenting here.
I think I recall using a key like that for sardines in a flat, sort of rectangular can.
My father served in the navy in the Pacific during WWII. He said they had spam all the time. It was not permitted in our house.
Coffee cans used to open with a key too.
Fried SPAM and grilled cheese sandwiches. Love 'em.
There you go. The key is what you put on the spam to hide its flavor. (Kiddin’) I’ll eat almost anything with extra sharp cheddar on it.
My grandparents all lived out in the country and had motorized TV antennas on their roofs due to transmissions coming from distant cities in different directions. There was a controller box on top of the TV with a knob that you'd have to turn, depending upon which channel you wanted to watch (of the four or so available), to activate the motor that turned the antenna in the necessary direction. The dial of the knob would light up and you'd hear an audible "ch-ch" as it rotated step by step, the TV screen gradually changing from static to a more-or-less recognizable TV show.
I suspect seeing that setup would baffle most kids today -- and probably a pretty large percentage of their parents.
As would horizontal and vertical hold dials.
Some time a little earlier this century we had some local roofer or other home improver representative come to our door and cheerfully tell my wife how they'd gladly remove the TV antenna from our roof. It took my wife a few tries to get the lady to understand that we were actually using it. Yeah, cable was a thing, but we wouldn't pay for it. and broadband hadn't reached us yet.
We still have the rooftop antenna, and it does rotate, although there's not much need for that now. The newer TVs are better at picking up weaker signals, so one fixed position of the antenna works for all the channels. It was a different story when digital broadcasting was new; for a while it took some maneuvering to get some channels to tune in.
"Broadcast teevie" alone is enough to baffle. And the antennas we use now don't resemble the old dealies in any way.
Ha! I went to visit a fellow classmate in Northern China and his mother was so proud to put a can of Spam on the table for breakfast. I nearly fell over as I hadn’t seen spam in rains. I was in my 50’s then. In my 80’s now.
Learned to drive a stick shift and my first car was a TR3. When I went fully auto, I occasionally reached for the gearshift and clutch. You never forget.
You really never do forget. Every vehicle I’ve ever owned was stick shift. Now, I haven’t owned a car in 13 years because I live in a transit-rich city, but whenever I drive someone’s car or a rental, and it has a center shifter for auto, my right hand tends to rest there for a while as if I need to shift at some point.
a combination of me getting seriously ill last summer and my manual-shift car dying in the meantime meant i went about 10 months without getting behind the wheel. in june i had to move my wife's car, which is an automatic. my left foot instinctively went for the clutch, and when i couldn't find it, of course, i actually began to panic for a moment and "how the hell do i drive this thing" went through my brain.
When I was 8 or 10, opening the sardine can for Saturday lunch sandwiches with dad was one of my favorite things. I was the only child who liked 'em, and still do, but these newfangled pull-tab tins are a disappointment.
I kinda miss the way bars of soap opened then, too.
Ummmm.....how old was that can?
Not necessarily that old. And per: https://www.dezeen.com/2017/01/15/spam-alastair-philip-wiper-photography-tulip-pork-luncheon-meat-factory-denmark/amp/ the product is “good” for longer that the asserted five year shelf-life.
Slice of bread
Two slices of Spam
Slice of onion
Cheese on top
350 degrees for 10 minutes or until the cheese is melted the way you like it.
Don't burn your mouth.
Never ate spam in my life and other then Monty Python never saw it either.
An interesting statistic is the major cause of death of women with breast cancer is cardiovascular disease.
The last time I ate Spam, one of those keys was required to open it.
Love Spam! If it didn’t have so much saturated fat I’d eat it every day.
How much longer will the expressions "clockwise" and "counter-clockwise" still be useful?
(Our car still has a stick shift)