Myers Depot Metal Detectors

What a dime means to you

frankiefry

frankiefry

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I was just reflecting back to the early 60's when I was a kid and remember the ice cream truck coming around our neighborhood. All the kids on the block would run for their housesw to beg a dime off their Mom's, me included. A nickel would get you a popcicle, but a DIME got you a really big Good Humor Ice Cream bar. Most of the time we just got the nickel. On the rare occasion that I ever had a dime, I would walk to the candy store, never alone, and I could buy 10 pieces of penny candy. You know, bazooka bubble gum with the comic wrapped around it, or wax lips that you could chew like gum, maybe a licorice whip, or a candy necklace that would make your neck all sticky as you sucked off the candy beads. So the next time you find a dime, think about what it means to you, and more important, what it probably meant to the one who lost it. Please feel free to add your own memories to this thread. I'm sure there is more than a DIME's worth of stories out there waiting to be shared. : )
 
As a kid, I lived 3 doors away from a corner grocery/hardward store, and they sold penny candy as well. I can remember scrounging through tall weeds looking for discarded pop bottles to turn in for 2 cents apiece that could then be spent on the candy. Sometimes I got really lucky and found a discarded quart pop bottle; they had a 5 cent deposit on them!

Do you remember the little dots of candy that came on a strip of paper that looked like a piece of cash register tape? You ended up eating as much paper as you did candy. And don't forget the tattoos that you would lick and then stick them on your arms and legs and anywhere else you could think of.

Yeah, I too, was a kid from the 60's (born in '56) so your memories are similiar to mine. Thanx for the reminder!
 
My father has given very similar reports regarding the value of a nickel or dime in his childood. Most of his went to comic books. When I first got into the yard of his childhood home with a detector he laughed. I told him I thought I had a good chance of finding a silver dime. He told me if he had ever lost a dime when he was a kid, we would have stayed in the yard on his hands and knees all day and night until he found it.

I didn't find any dimes in his yard! A dozen or so wheats, and some older bits and relics, but not one old nickel or dime.
 
I was born in 1945 and grew up on our family farm. My Grandparents lived with us and I usually ended up helping my Grandfather. After a days work, I remember him giving me a nickel and telling me to go and buy a big bag of candy. Even then, things had changed since he was a boy.
 
I grew up in the 70's and remember also looking for bottles to get deposits on when I didn't have enough change. When I had enough I would walk to the closest 7-11, about 8 blocks away and usually buy a Nehi and some M&M's. I guess because of plastic we don't do bottle deposits anymore...:(
 
Born in 58. Can remember buying Mallo cups for a nickel. A dime would get you the economy 3-pack. All my dimes were invested in Mallo cups. They had little cards inside with a point value. This value varied. The game was to collect 500 points and mail in your cards. You received several other candy bars made by the Mallo mother company. They should have sent you a dentist's credit card redeemable at your local tooth doctor.

I ate a lot of Mallo cups. Still have all my teeth. I know not why.

OT
 
My son went to his uncle's the other day and did yard work for about 8 hrs., my brother paid him $60.00. I told him when I was a kid (about 1960), I would help my grandfather plant his garden and he would give me 25 cents for two hours work. And I was happy with a quarter !
 
Ah yes... the penny candy store...and they would ring up the sale -FOR A PENNY! And candy seemed to be tastier then, no preservatives or extra stuff... just sugar and flavor and chocolate and nougat or nuts etc. Don't read the ingredients on candy now... ruins the experience. A five cent ice cream cone (ten cents for a double header), nickel cokes at the soda fountain, and quarter cheeseburgers. Yep, of course, the income was proportionately less as well. A family of four could do well on $5000 a year...
and $10,000 meant you were in hog heaven. RickO
 
Every time an old coin surfaces, i always wonder to myself what it was worth to the "loser". A dime in the early 1900's had some buyin' power. Maybe some kid was sent to the store with that dime to buy milk, bread, and allowed to spend the change on himself........ And imagine if that same kid lost it on the way to the store. Ooof. Bet his buns were tingling when he got home with no dime, no food. Every old thing, coin, jewelry, causes me to wonder what and how its story was, how it ended up lost, by whom......... and what it meant to them. Imagine losing a dime at the height of the depression. You'd likely search long and hard for that dime. When I was a kid in the early 70's, 10 cents would get lots of penny candy - 10 swedish fish - BIG ones! And as someone else mentioned, collecting returnable bottles on the side of the road with a little red wagon, to take them down to the local drug store, cash em' in, and "invest" in candy and soda. In my early teens in the early 1980's, video arcades consumed my quarters at an alarming rate.

I dig keys all the time, and I usually think that really messes up a person's day. Got a lesson in it recently, though. Lost my extra key / car alarm control for the miata, and I'm afraid to even find out the replacement cost. Anti theft chip, double sided key and alarm/ lock control. I bet $100 isn't out of the question. Being on the "losing" end sure sucks!
 
I remember a little crossroads store, sitting by itself, in the middle of the country where a dime would buy a Coke out of an old fashon chest-type bottle cooler, the kind with rails you would move the bottle along and then pull up through a gate. There a nickel would buy a HUGE Baby Ruth bar that took an hour to finish or a Moon Pie that was like eating a piece of Heaven itself.

I remember sitting in my grandmother's car, doors open under the shade of a huge tree, eating my treat and sipping my Coke while a June Bug with a thread on its leg circled endlessly in the summer heat; life was never sweeter!
 
I was born in '57', and grew up in projects in the south Bronx. There was a greek pizza place across the street from the projects. I remember getting a very large slice of pizza for .25 cents, and a drink for .10 cents. I too remember the penny candy. And I think bakooka was by far the best deal. You got the piece of gum, a joke and a fortune all for one penny.
 
FelixtheCat said:
I grew up in the 70's and remember also looking for bottles to get deposits on when I didn't have enough change. When I had enough I would walk to the closest 7-11, about 8 blocks away and usually buy a Nehi and some M&M's. I guess because of plastic we don't do bottle deposits anymore...:(
Click to expand...

wow...brings back some good ole memories...We did that too...lol we use to pull a red flyer wagon up the the high school and look for soda bottles and take them up to the convenience and get some hubba bubba/bubblicious and fararra pan assorted candies.. (lemonheads/boston baked beans/cherry chans/jaw breakers) And when I lived in Miami....we use to take our pennies and run up to the sub station where they had a 1 cent gum machine.
 
Good thread FF.
I remember a Coca Cola distributor across the street from the local ball fields, my friends, my brother and myself would always stop by the distributor after playing ball. In there entryway was a Coca Cola vending machine. You could buy a Coke for a dime, you had to leave the little glass bottle in the carrying case next to the machine. Yes they were in the little glass bottle.
Now today whenever I find a dime I think of the "good ole days" of summer break from school, playing ball all day long and drinking those little glass bottles of Coca Cola. Drinks taste better in glass bottles, I don't know why, but they do.
 
digdug1968 said:
Every time an old coin surfaces, i always wonder to myself what it was worth to the "loser". A dime in the early 1900's had some buyin' power. Maybe some kid was sent to the store with that dime to buy milk, bread, and allowed to spend the change on himself........ And imagine if that same kid lost it on the way to the store. Ooof. Bet his buns were tingling when he got home with no dime, no food.
Being on the "losing" end sure sucks!
Click to expand...

That part of a quote reminds me of a story my dad told me when I was a kid, he lost ten cents going to the store at 5 years old, for his mother, he went home crying because he lost it and she beat him near to death. :mad:

I hated (and still do ) his mother for that, I may sound harsh but when she died I took a dime to her grave and told her to spend it well in H**l..:lol:


But on a brighter note I remember my brother and I walking across the tomato field to the drug store with a quarter to get a box of red vines.. everyting tasted better then I do agree.:yes:
 
Born in 1942- I remember 5 cent cokes in the big fat red machine; and how many remember the little wax bottles that had drinks in them ? And the ice man - he gave us slivers of ice when he delivered the blocks of ice. steve in so az
 
steve in so az said:
Born in 1942- I remember 5 cent cokes in the big fat red machine; and how many remember the little wax bottles that had drinks in them ? And the ice man - he gave us slivers of ice when he delivered the blocks of ice. steve in so az
Click to expand...


Oh yeah, the wax bottles full of colored water. Bite the end off, drink the sugar water, chew the wax. The boston baked beans mentioned earlier were killer, too!

I actually have three old red wagons here, I bought them all at yard sales, a few years back, when my now 7 year old daughter was a tot. Two are 50's or 60's "greyhound ball bearing" brand, One is older and very heavily built with no name. I bought them for her thinking that every kid deserves a "real" made in america, heavy duty, red wagon. This spring she took it up the hill in the alleyway, and rode it down, though she wasn't well informed of the importance of dragging your feet as brakes"...:roll: well, she got a tough lesson on vehicles with a short wheelbase and high speeds. (they are twitchy, hard to control, and change directions fast. A few barrel rolls / endos later, she was a walkin' brush burn. Yep, chip off the old block!

About ten years ago, the last two local to me "mom and pop" stores closed. Both were only a few hundred yards from me, penny candy and all. Single family homes with storefront windows - such homes are all over my area, but no longer "active" stores. It's a bit sad that I can't just hand her a dime for a job well done, or a treat, so that she can run, unattended,(safely) off to the store to excitedly "shop" for some treats.:( Maybe sit there on the front step with a little friend and talk, savor a summer day of freedom, while eating penny candy with a little red wagon sitting beside them. Maybe with a big shaggy mutt type dog, too. Those are the little experiences that make childhood so grand, ya know? No big budget, just plain old fun.

I also agree on the cokes in the glass bottles. I remember a machine with a door on the front that you opened, then pulled a bottle from the mechanism. Oh yeah, a frosty bottle. With real sugar, not corn syrup. Cheapest I remember was .25 cents.
 
Great thread!!!!

I've enjoyed all of the stories thus far....Here's mine

First...I remember when I was 12-13 years old...my mom would occasionally give me a buck...I would run to the hamburger stand and get a cheeseburger...fries...and a coke...loved those summer days!

Another memory...quite a few of you mentioned collecting pop bottles...well when I was a kid...coke and pepsi was transitioning to plastic and cans...so I collected the cans to recycle....I usually earned a couple bucks from two full trash bags of cans....then go buy topps baseball cards. However, one day...while searching for cans, I stumbled across someone's "stash" of beer hidden under some trees at our local pond. There were two 24 packs of budwiser...being 13 years old or younger, I did what most kids would do when they found beer....No not what you think...I poured them out and collected the cans. Well...during dinner that night...my two older brothers who were in high school at the time, mom and dad and myself were all talking about the day events, well I brought up about the two 24 packs of budwiser I found and explained that I poured all the beer out, both of my older brothers gave me dirty looks. After dinner I found out what all the dirty looks were about...it seems that I stumbled upon my brothers stash of beer, they were planning a party with friends that night at the pond. The best part about the whole deal was that my bro's could do nothing about it to me...they knew that if mom and dad found out their punishment would be worse than what they would do to me. I think one day, I should buy both of my brothers a case of beer though.
 
If I had a dime in my pocket, I'd make a party with my friends
with these (Pixie sticks with basically colored sugar).

Afterwards, we'd compare colorful tongues. Ahhhh..childhood.
 

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