I started my airline career on the B707 and we thought nothing of hand flying on a regular basis. Later on I converted to the B737-200 and once again we regularly hand flew from take off to top of climb and from top of descent to landing - we even hand flew circle to land! Also it was a matter of pride to close the thrust levers at top of descent and not open them up again until about 3 nm from touchdown (what they now called a CDA!).
Sometimes the autopilot was u/s and we would hand fly to the Canaries and back (4 hrs each way) at night! Even with the autopilot there was no Alt Acq and no Auto Throttle. Also No FMC - all fuel checks etc were manual.
Am not against automation which given traffic densities etc is a great aid but in the "olden days" we knew how to fly the a/c manually and took much pride in doing so.