an old email forward: One of my kids asked the other day, 'What was your favorite fast food when you were growing up?' I told them 'We didn't have fast food when I was growing up, all the food was slow.' He said, '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. 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, 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 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. But, it's still the best pizza I ever had. We didn't have a car until I was 4. It was an old black Dodge. 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 5 am. every morning. On Saturday, he had to collect the 42 cents from his customers. His favorite customers were the one s 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 (after she died) 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? Headlight dimmer switches on the floor of the car. Ignition switches on the dashboard of some cars. 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. Bell bottom pants. 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. Milk delivered 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 greenstamps 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 26. Metal hair curlers 50's and earlier small clip one, 70's large barrel ones, even oj cans If you only 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!
Thanks Grad...for my mother-in-law's birthday last year I found these "Older Than Dirt" car cupholder coasters and bought two for her. She has never let that go. I know she just picks with me, but I just sent her this and put a disclosure on the top.
"Headlight dimmer switches on the floor of the car." Why the hell did they ever move off the floor? Damn Japanese cars that had it on the turn stalk? It's a hell of a lot easier to tap a button with your foot than take a hand off the wheel and turn off your brights. I drive Greenwell Springs road and others a lot at night. I HATE having to use a hand to turn brights on/off, especially when I'm in a curve. One of the dumbest design moves ever! Anybody with me? :usaflagwa
Go look at some of the posts on MasterMind's 5 years of newer albums thread. Reading some of those is like drinking from the f*cking fountain of youth.
I am only 26 and my dad had a 1985 Dodge Ram Charger 4x4 and it had the switch on the floor. I forgot all about that until you just said something about it. I remember the night I got it buried in my buddies sugar cane field. Once we pulled it out with a tractor and washed it, i thought i was home free. At the time I did not know where the mud liked to hide and when my dad drove it the next day and closed the door, you can just imagine how much dirt fell into the driveway. In all reality, he really wasnt all that mad, he hardly ever used the four wheel drive and he was actually kinda happy i used it. I was sh!tting bricks though.
In 1973 my parents bought a new Toyota Corolla station wagon. I remember we took it to the HS football game that Friday night. It was the first time it had been driven at night. People kept flashing their lights at us as dad looked for how to turn the brights off. We finally pulled over, he got out of the car and spent who knows how long looking for the button on the floor. While he ranted, mom got out the owner's manual and figured it out. He fussed the whole way home! On another note, that car had 2 front buckets and a bench for the 2nd seat - my sisters sat there. My brother and I rode in the back back where there was no seat. That's how we test drove it too. That was perfectly normal back then.
S&H Greenstamps. Wow, that brings back memories. My mom did that religiously. She would shop at the local Piggly Wiggly especially on double green stamp day. I would help her fill out the book (yummy tasting stamp glue, not!). We would drive from Kaplan into Lafayette to cash it in for whatever it was worth. Growing up poor in Kaplan, a trip to Lafayette was like going to Disneyland. FYI, my first car was a 1970 Datsun B210 Station Wagon, which was smaller than some compact cars of today.
Older than dirt is slightly older than me, perhaps. I don't remember Howdy Doody because we didn't have TV until 1961. Only got one channel. My childhood TV icon was Mister Moose on Captain Kangeroo. And Bullwinkle. I like me some mooses.
