I suppose it would be mostly practical skills, cooking, fixing things. Usually had to be done by people themselves.
Maybe also mental things like navigating (with or without paper map) and remembering their daily and weekly agendas.
What other things would be a big difference with the people today?
Lots of semi truck drivers know how to drive a manual and semi truck driver is one of the most common occupations in the US. Everyone at my company’s location knows how even though we have an all automatic fleet.
Edit: Just to address the premise of the question only a couple of us were driving 50 years ago.
Is it really?
How scary is it to drive down a big hill?
Yeah it really is. Most everyone trained before the last 15 years were likely trained on an asynchronous manual transmission.
In good weather? Only the first few times. In bad weather? I’m on high alert like a dog who knows the mailman is delivering a vacuum cleaner. Take it slow, make sure the brakes work, and know where the runaway ramps are. A manual transmission is usually preferable for mountains for better control or for at least the illusion.
Stay safe out there! Godspeed!
You likely already know this but if anybody else reading is interested, this is because if you test for your commercial license in an automatic then you’re restricted to only automatics. The schools are still teaching manual, so it doesn’t make any sense to learn that then test in an automatic and get that restriction.