10 replies to this topic

[scubaski]

OLDER THAN DIRT

'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, wore
Levis , set foot on a golf course, 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.

Christmas trees were all 'live', Christmas bulbs were all 'big' and Christmas cookies were all 'home made.' We bought our gifts 'downtown' and merchants warmly said, "Merry Christmas".

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 5. It was, of course, black and white.

I was 13 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.

We didn't have a car until I was 40. It was an old black something.

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 yo u d idn'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 w ere 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. Touching someone else's tongue with yours was called French kissing and they didn't do that in movies. I don't know what they did in French movies. French movies were dirty and we weren't allowed to see them


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 irons you heat on a gas burner.
Using hand signals for cars without turn signals.
Blackjack chewing gum.
Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water
Candy cigarettes
Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles
Coffee shops or diners with tableside juke boxes
Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers
Newsreels before the movie
P.F. Flyers
Butch wax
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)
Peashooters
Howdy Doody
45 RPM records
S& H greenstamps
Hi-fi's
Metal ice trays with lever
Mimeograph paper
Blue flashbulb
Packards
Roller skate keys
Cork popguns
Drive-ins
Studebakers
Wash tub wringers

If you remembered 0-5 = You're still young
If you remembered 6-10 = You are 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 the best part of my life.

Don't forget to pass this along!!
Especially to all your really OLD friends...

[Parrotman]

OLDER THAN DIRT

'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, wore
Levis , set foot on a golf course, 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.

Christmas trees were all 'live', Christmas bulbs were all 'big' and Christmas cookies were all 'home made.' We bought our gifts 'downtown' and merchants warmly said, "Merry Christmas".

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 5. It was, of course, black and white.

I was 13 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.

We didn't have a car until I was 40. It was an old black something.

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 yo u d idn'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 w ere 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. Touching someone else's tongue with yours was called French kissing and they didn't do that in movies. I don't know what they did in French movies. French movies were dirty and we weren't allowed to see them


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 irons you heat on a gas burner.
Using hand signals for cars without turn signals.
Blackjack chewing gum.
Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water
Candy cigarettes
Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles
Coffee shops or diners with tableside juke boxes
Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers
Newsreels before the movie
P.F. Flyers
Butch wax
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)
Peashooters
Howdy Doody
45 RPM records
S& H greenstamps
Hi-fi's
Metal ice trays with lever
Mimeograph paper
Blue flashbulb
Packards
Roller skate keys
Cork popguns
Drive-ins
Studebakers
Wash tub wringers

If you remembered 0-5 = You're still young
If you remembered 6-10 = You are 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 the best part of my life.

Don't forget to pass this along!!
Especially to all your really OLD friends...

I must be dirts Grandfather! But yes those are fond memories....

[Racer184]

• Pick up trucks had chains to hold the tailgate closed.
• TVs, Radios, and phonographs had ON/OFF buttons; they did not use electricity when you turned them off.
• You could use a public bathroom without having to listen to the jerk in another stall talking to his wife on his cellphone

Edited by Racer184, 09 December 2008 - 07:24 PM.

[uwfan]

Couldn't decide if I shouldn't tell my age or I'm older than dirt...hate to think it's a regional thing that kept me in the "shouldn't tell my age" category...Milk delivery in Alaska--don't think so.... LOL!!

[ScubaPunk]

Our one and only phone in the house was in the Kitchen, and it too was a party line, but we could tell the voices of the people on the phone, cause they were usually our neighbors! It makes you feel kind of sorry for the kids today who will never get to experience the simple things in life. Someone said and I agree, that you will never truly appreciate an ipod until you've had to fight to pull the tangled tape from your eight track out of your car stereo.

[Landlocked Dive Nut]

I don't remember ALL of those things mentioned, but I remember enough of them so I guess I'm middle-aged. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

[Dive_Girl]

While I am not old enough to know all the items on the list, living in rural Idaho and Monatana created a slight time warp that gave me the opportunity of some of these.

Head lights dimmer switches on the floor. <--the first car I got to drive to high school was my grandmother's car. I lived in Montana at the time. We got driver's licenses at 14. I can't remember the type of car it was but I recall needing two parking spots. One to park in and one next to me so I could open the door that was as long as a car was wide. It was maroon. Instead of snow tires and chains, my dad loaded unsplit log sections in the trunk for weight. This car had the dimmer switch on the floor and to this day I still talk about the genius of that switch.

Pant leg clips for bicycles without chain guards. <--we used wood clothing line clips

Using hand signals for cars without turn signals. <-- we used them on our bikes too since we were on actual backroads contending with vehicle traffic as well as tractors, combines, and anything else John Deer made.

Candy cigarettes <-- if you exhaled through them, powdered sugar came out and looked like a puff of smoke. We were as cool as the Enjoli perfume girl.

Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles <-- you put in your money, opened a slim door, and pulled the glass bottle out of one of the ports. We would find these in the old drug stores. In the South, my ex used to talk about adding a couple peanuts to his coke bottle.

Coffee shops or diners with tableside juke boxes <-- they still have diners with tableside juke boxes in New Jersey.

Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers <-- we had milk delivery in Southern Idaho!

S& H greenstamps <-- I remember these because they were still popular through the late 80s, check it out on Wiki.

Drive-ins <-- we would load up a friend's truck with bean bags in the back and back-in to watch movies at the drive in. Wednesdays were $5 for the car load.

If you remembered 6-10 = You are getting older

[RiverPearl]

Daddy would pop corn and we would string it to hang on the real Christmas tree
Allowances were for "extras" and that was only after we did our regular chores on Saturdays
I was the remote control for our black and white tv because I was the youngest, also got real good at adjusting the vertical and horizonal lines
Mom made birthday cakes (and the frosting) from scratch..300 hundred strokes per cake or 150 per arm! No electric mixer, wooden spoon only (still have the bowl and spoon)
Us kids had to hang out the wet clothes, no dryer here, but it was really fun in the winter cause you could actually hang them up without clothes pins cause they would stick to the line from the cold...I only did this once... needless to say Mom didn't see the humor...she had to wash them over since the next day they were all on the ground!!!!
No air conditioning......staying cool meant opening windows and doors and hoping for a breeze...I still don't like air conditioning.....give me fresh air...
Staying cool meant draping a hose, on full spray, over the clothes line (barren of clothes of course) and running under it!!
Daddy grew a garden and Mom canned and froze
We said grace before every meal.........

Edited by RiverPearl, 10 December 2008 - 03:50 PM.

[Hipshot]

I was 13 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.

Being of Italian descent, I had pizza much earlier in life. "Pizza pie" was a totally different thing. It had a crust on top, and had stuff like veggies and egg in the middle.

Since my grandmother, who made the pizza, was from southern Italy, I was having something that more resembled "Sicilian" pizza, long before it became popular.

Rick



Non scholae sed vitae discimus. - Latin for "We learn not for school, but for life."

[Mitch0129]

Well, I remembers 12 of the items so I better not tell my age! On the other hand, are they talking about my age in body or in state of mind?

[diverb0b]

Eatmore choclate bars -----5 cents .coke .........7 cents milkshakes.... 10 cents