I am interested to know what life was like from the words of people who were still children then or they were from 16-30 years old.
I am interested to know what life was like from the words of people who were still children then or they were from 16-30 years old.
Since I haven’t seen it mentioned, I will point out that smoking was extremely common and everything vaguely smelled of cigerettes until public smoking bans started coming into effect in different areas.
I grew up at the tail end of this period and have a core memory of going to a restaurant in an area that hadn’t yet fully banned public smoking. The hostess of course asks if you want to be seated in the smoking or non-smoking section, and in the non-smoking section everything still vaguely reeked of cigarettes. Then to go to the bathroom you walk through the smoking section which reeks even more of cigerettes (the sections are just different sides of the restaurant with standard restaurant dividers that are only chest height and intended mostly as sound blocks) and just everything had some amount of cigerette smell to it
I recall eating at fast food restaurants and sitting in the smoking section. Just lighting up in a freaking Wendy’s. McDonald’s had branded ashtrays.
My grandmother grew increasingly angry as smoking sections disappeared, then laws came into effect banning smoking in certain public areas. She grew up with everyone smoking everywhere. It was normalized in society during the prime of her life, and if you didn’t have smokes, then you probably either were weird or didn’t have it together.
I was working at Wendy’s when they had those little metal disposable ash trays. I had to take a few to use at home. Crazy to think just how much smoking cigarettes was just everywhere.