MacBook – trying to get data off of a late 2008 macbook onto a brand new macbook pro

so I have an old macbook (late 2008 aluminum, running snow leopard). The display stopped working last week and since they told me they can't fix it, I've taken the opportunity to get a brand new macbook pro with retina display. It's running the most recent (so far as I know) Mavericks (10.9.4).

My problem is I'd like to get files off the old computer. I did back it up about a month ago, so I can get some stuff off of my external drive, but I'd feel better if I could just get in to the old computer and make sure I got all my photos and stuff.

The problem is that the two computers don't have anyway of connecting to each other. I thought I could get a firewire to thunderbolt and cable and just use the old one like drive (I did this before at some point with some other computers) and I went and got the cables without double checking an apparently my 2008 macbook doesn't have a firewire port, which is really confusing because now I don't know where I was doing that before.

I know I can connect the two with an ethernet cable (if I spend another 30 bucks for another thunderbolt adapter. ugh.) but I'm not sure if that will work because I definitely don't have sharing on on the old computer. I'm pretty sure I could use the old computer with an external screen, after buying -another- adapter, but I don't have access to an external screen either.

I absolutely do NOT want to have the apple store migrate the whole computer over to the new one. There is so much on it I don't need (I was engaged in a long sporadic process of cleaning it up when the screen broke).

do I have any other options? Is there some way I can turn on filesharing without being able to see the screen? Is there really no way to do it with USB? That's the only input the two machines have in common.

Otherwise I guess I'll just have to find someone with an external monitor.

Thanks for any advice!

Al