How everyday American life used to work, and what replaced it. Prices, places, jobs, homes and habits, then versus now.
Then vs Now
Ohio, 1974. Walk into almost any kitchen in the state and you'd find the same seven things. Not similar things — the same things, in roughly the same places, in millions of houses. Six of them are effectively extinct. One is almost certainly within twenty feet of you right
Then vs Now
Your name. Your street address. Your phone number. Printed, bound, and delivered free to every household in your city. Also stacked in phone booths, hotel lobbies, libraries and gas stations, where any stranger could open it and find exactly where you slept. Nobody asked your permission. There was no opt-
Then vs Now
You flip open a catalog. Page 3,270-something. There's a picture of a house — porch, dormers, a bay window — and beside it a price. You fill in the order form. You mail it. Weeks later the stationmaster calls, because two boxcars are sitting on the siding with