Monday, June 13, 2011

THOUGHT YOU MIGHT ENJOY THIS:

'Someone asked the other day, 'What was your favorite fast food when you were growing up?'
'We didn't have fast food when I was growing up,' I informed him. 'All the food was slow.' 'C'mon, seriously. Where did you eat?'
'It was a place called 'at home,'' I explained!
'Mom cooked every day and when Dad got home from work, we sat down together at the dining room table, and if I didn't like what she put on my plate I was allowed to sit there until I did like it.'
By this time, the kid was laughing so hard I was afraid he was going to suffer serious internal damage, so I didn't tell him the part about how I had to have
permission to leave the table.


But here are some other things I would have told him about my childhood if I figured his system could have handled it :


Some parents NEVER owned their own house, never wore Levis, never set foot on a golf course, never traveled out of the country or had a credit card. In their later years they had something called a revolving charge card The card was good only at Sears Roebuck. Or maybe it was Sears & Roebuck.
Either way, there is no Roebuck anymore. Maybe he died. My parents never drove me to soccer practice. This was mostly because we never had heard of soccer. I had a bicycle that weighed probably 50 pounds, and only had one speed, (slow)
We didn't have a television in our house until I was 19.
It was, of course, black and white, and the station went off the air at midnight, after playing the national anthem and a poem about God; it came back
on the air at about 6 a..m. And there was usually a locally produced news and farm show on, featuring local people. I was 21 before I tasted my first pizza, it was called 'pizza pie.' When I bit into it, I burned the roof of my mouth and the cheese slid off, swung
down, plastered itself against my chin and burned that, too. It's still the best pizza I ever had..
I never had a telephone in my room.
The only phone in the house was in the living room and it was on a party line.
Before you could dial, you had to listen and make sure some people you didn't know weren't already using the line. Pizzas were not delivered to our home but MILK was. All newspapers were delivered by boys and all boys delivered newspapers –my brother delivered a newspaper, six days a week. It cost 7 cents a paper, of
which he got to keep 2 cents. He had to get up at 6AM every morning. On Saturday, he had to collect the 42 cents from his customers. His favorite customers were the ones who gave him 50 cents and told him to keep the change. His least favorite customers were the ones who seemed to never be home on collection day.
Movie stars kissed with their mouths shut. At least, they did in the movies. There were no movie ratings because all movies were responsibly produced for
everyone to enjoy viewing, without profanity or violence or most anything offensive.
If you grew up in a generation before there was fast food, you may want to share some of these memories with your children or grandchildren Just don't blame me if they bust a gut laughing.
Growing up isn't what it used to be, is it?

MEMORIES from a friend :
My Dad is cleaning out my grandmother's house (she died in December) and he brought me an old Royal Crown Cola bottle. In the bottle top was a stopper with
a bunch of holes in it.. I knew immediately what it was, but my daughter had no idea.. She thought they had tried to make it a salt shaker or something I knew
it as the bottle that sat on the end of the ironing board to 'sprinkle' clothes with because we didn't have steam irons. Man, I am old.
How many do you remember?
Head lights dimmer switches on the floor.
Ignition switches on the dashboard.
Heaters mounted on the inside of the fire wall.
Real ice boxes.
Pant leg clips for bicycles without chain guards.
Soldering (hair curling rods too) irons you heat on a gas burner.
Using hand signals for cars without turn signals.


Older Than Dirt Quiz :
Count all the ones that you remember not the ones you were told about.
Ratings at the bottom.
1 Blackjack chewing gum
2.Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water
3. Candy cigarettes
4. Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles
5. Coffee shops or diners with tableside juke boxes
6. Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers
7 Party lines on the telephone
8 Newsreels before the movie
9. P.F. Flyers
10. Butch wax
11.. TV test patterns that came on at night after the last show and were there
until TV shows started again in the morning. (there were only 3 channels [if you
were fortunate])
12. Peashooters
13. Howdy Doody
14. 45 RPM records
15.S&H green stamps
16. Hi-fi's
17. Metal ice trays with lever
18. Mimeograph paper
19. Blue flashbulb
20. Packards
21. Roller skate keys
22.Cork popguns
23. Drive-ins
24. Studebakers
25. Wash tub wringers
If you remembered 0-5, You're still young
If you remembered 6-10, You're getting older
If you remembered 11-15, Don't tell your age,
If you remembered 16-25, You' re older than dirt!
I might be older than dirt but those memories are some of the best parts of my life.

(another one stolen from an email, I get the best emails)

5 comments:

Alice said...

I remembered 7

getting older!

Bob G. said...

MSN:
OM-freaking-G!
Someone was following me around our house when I was growing up...LOL!
I remember ALL of this stuff...and my mom used a (Schmidt's) BEER bottle for her "sprinkler", but had the same cork with a metal topper with holes.
Used to hear the clothes "sizzle" when mom ironed them.

MY first car ('68 Buick Special) had a dashboard ignition, and confused the hekll outta me when I got my next car (column ignition)...LOL.

Fast food for us was LEFTOVERS...ROFL!
(or cold cuts)

We used RUBBER BANDS to keep pants off of the chains on our bikes.

And for the record...I am now (officially) OLDER than dirt...
But we're not talking dirt from ancient MESOPOTAMIA, right?

Thanks for the wonderful trip down memory lane.

Stay safe down there.

Anonymous said...

I remember phones before dials, operator asked "number please".Of course party line, and when someone did not hang up,nobody else could use the phone. Had one neighbor juse walked into another's house and hang up the phone without a word.

Joanne said...

#14 for me. I have a vague recollection of glass milk bottles though. oh and being able to stay at the movies all day and watch the same flick over and over again! Now, there's really nothing worth watching and you have to take out a loan to see it once! UGH! Blessings, Joanne

CWMartin said...

I got thirteen. Here's some more I remeber:
Washing machine with top mounted crank ringer;
A blackboard to play with;
Broomstick horses;
the big tub with drains in the bottom for rinsing the clothes;
Bins full of mason jars and ball rings and lids for home canning;
The hand cranked pan for tomato juicing;
The glass pane between the tv's picture tube and you;
Wayne Rothgeb and Engineer John;
Doctor house calls.