Remember~

valley ranch

Garden Master
Joined
Dec 22, 2014
Messages
5,742
Reaction score
5,733
Points
367
Location
Sierra Nevada mountains, and Nevada high desert
Someone asked the other day, 'What was your favourite '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 'home,'' I explained.
'Mum cooked every day and when she 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 lad 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'd figured his system could have handled it:

Some parents NEVER owned their own house, wore jeans, set foot on a golf course, travelled out of the country or had a credit card.

My parents never drove me to school … I had a bicycle that weighed probably 50 pounds, and only had one speed (slow). Before I had a bike I walked.

We didn't have a television in our house until I was 7.
It was, of course, black and white, and the station went off the air at 10 PM, after playing the national anthem and epilogue; it came back on the air at about 12 noon.

Pizzas were not delivered to our home … but milk was.

All newspapers were delivered by boys and all boys delivered newspapers — I delivered a newspaper, seven days a week. I had to get up at 5.30 every morning except Sunday when I had a lie-in until 6.30.

Film stars kissed with their mouths shut. At least, they did in the films. There were no movie ratings because all movies were responsibly produced for everyone to enjoy viewing, without profanity or violence or almost 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 was cleaning out my grandmother's house (she died recently) and he brought me an old lemonade 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?
Headlight dip-switches on the floor of the car.
Ignition switches on the dashboard.
Trouser leg clips for bicycles without chain guards.
Soldering irons you heated on a gas burner.
Using hand signals for cars without turn indicators.

Older Than Dirt Quiz:
Count all the ones that you remember, not the ones you were told about. Ratings at the bottom.

1. Sweet cigarettes
2... Coffee shops with juke boxes
3... Home milk delivery in glass bottles
4... Party lines on the telephone
5.. Newsreels before the movie
6. TV test cards that came on at night after the last show and were there until TV shows started again in the morning.
(There were only 2 channels [if you were fortunate])
7.. Peashooters
8. 33 rpm records
9. 45 rpm records
10. Hi-fis
11. Metal ice trays with levers
12. Blue flashbulb
13. Cork popguns
14. Wash tub wringers

If you remembered 0-3 = You're still young
If you remembered 3-6 = You are getting older
If you remembered 7-10 = Don't tell your age
If you remembered 11-14 = You're positively ancient!

I must be 'positively ancient' but those memories are some of the best parts of my life.
 

digitS'

Garden Master
Joined
Dec 13, 2007
Messages
27,007
Reaction score
33,665
Points
457
Location
border, ID/WA(!)
Sure, positively ancient but ...

Mom always disapproved of Dad's cigarettes and they certainly weren't glamorized in our home. Sweet cigarettes? No. (Dad finally quit and became very anti-smoking after he realized that both his sons had taken up "the dirty habit.")

I grew up on a farm and in a small town. Coffee shops? No. I can remember when the first drive-in was built and when A & W came to town. Mom left me at the A & W once with 15¢ and I had a large mug and a small mug of root beer. I didn't have enough capacity for both. When she showed up and I sat down in the Oldsmobile, I almost exploded! Burped root beer all over the front of my shirt! I guess I wasn't used to carbonation ... a bottle of RC cost 25¢ and might be a monthly treat. I'd probably still have to share it with my brother.

I didn't have milk delivery until I was an adult and in a college town. TV came when I was 5, before that we gathered around the RCA Victor radio. The test card was taken off within a few minutes following the national anthem. After that, snow.

Ice tray with a lever? Sure. Before a refrigerator, we chipped ice off the block in the icebox, sometimes. It didn't really taste good, tho.

Best parts of my life? Sure, I was a kid. And, I didn't know anything and can still remember how important it was to me to learn to read well enuf I could understand what was in the newspaper ... because, things happened outside my small part of a very wide world. Things happened before I showed up, too.

digitS'
 

thistlebloom

Garden Master
Joined
Dec 1, 2010
Messages
16,473
Reaction score
17,414
Points
457
Location
North Idaho 48th parallel
I remember those candy cigarettes. My sister and I were hanging out with some kids in the neighborhood. Bad company! We all walked over the hill to a store my mom never shopped at and bought candy.
Not my sister and I because we never had money, but the kids we were with shared with us.

Some of the loot was candy cigs with powdered sugar that was in the wrapper so you could blow it like real smoke.
I had such a bad feeling about the whole enterprise. I knew my mom wouldn't be happy about what we were doing and who we were doing it with. I must have been quite young, 4 or 5 judging by my memory of the house we lived in. Funny how some memories stick...
 

digitS'

Garden Master
Joined
Dec 13, 2007
Messages
27,007
Reaction score
33,665
Points
457
Location
border, ID/WA(!)
Some of the loot was candy cigs with powdered sugar that was in the wrapper so you could blow it like real smoke.
I had such a bad feeling about the whole enterprise. I knew my mom wouldn't be happy about what we were doing and who we were doing it with. I must have been quite young, 4 or 5

IMG_20170426_084015.jpg
a Thistlebloom, newly hatched

:D Steve
 

Latest posts

Top