Bring back any memories?

[lvdkeyes]

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 'home,'' I explained.! 'Mum 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 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, traveled 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).

We didn't have a television in our house until I was 10. 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 6 am. And there was usually a locally produced news and farm show on, featuring local people...

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, seven days a week. He had to get up at 6am every morning.

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 is cleaning out my grandmother's house (she died in December) 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 patterns 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-Fi's
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.

[Gaybutton]

I'm ancient too, so get your elbows off the table! And don't dry your hands on the 'good' towels. And don't sit on the 'good' furniture. And don't eat that - it's for company.

[RichLB]

I admit it, I''m ancient. I remembered all of them except "sweet cigarettes", unless that was about the chocolate paper covered fake cigarettes. Those I remember. Here are some other childhood memories.

1. Wax lips.
2. Cinnamon toothpicks (hand made)
3, Tin foil balls (kept by every kid for the WWII effort.
4. Good Humor trucks
5, Butch wax
6. Rumble seats on cars
7. Playing card collections (saved by kids for the pictures)
8. Women wearing hats and high heels to go to the bank.
9. Gabriel Heatter (You have to be REALLY old to remember him)
10. Clip on roller skates

Well, those should betray the passing years. Anyone remember them all?

[Gaybutton]

Anyone remember them all?

For me, not all. I don't remember Gabriel Heatter, although I remember a Merrill Heatter - a television show producer, I think. I wonder if they were related. I also don't remember tin foil balls.

A couple more I remember, now that I'm thinking about it - penny gum-ball machines with the horizontal crank handle. Half the time the gum-ball would be ejected from the machine and end up on the ground. I'd chew it anyway.

And the big, red, nickel coke machines.

[RichLB]

Gabriel Heatter was a national newscaster on radio during WWII. He'd start every show with a sonorous "There's good news tonight" or "There's bad news tonight". I remember every wife with an overseas husband glued to the console radio to get the latest war updates from him.

[lvdkeyes]

I remember all of them plus the ice man bringing blocks of ice for the ice box, playing kick the can and Red Rover, stopping for coke and toast after church (it came to 25 cents which was the minimum for sitting in a booth), sock hops, high school organized roller skating parties and playing marbles either "rings" or "pots". Anyone have more to add?

[RichLB]

This is fun. To add to children games, remember when playing hide and seek meant that you could go into any backyard in the neighborhood without anyone objecting or calling the cops. Do that today and you'd likely be shot.

[Alex]

I'm ancient too, so get your elbows off the table!

That's one of the very few bad habits I've totally taken to in Thailand, I have to admit. I still feel guilty occasionally, but then I just look around and see all the others, young and old, doing it as well... This would have gotten me in big trouble as a child, no doubt about it.

[lvdkeyes]

We played a game we called 'relievio'. No idea where the name came from. We split up in teams. One team went to hide. The other team counted to 100 and then went to find the others. When found one by one they were brought back to a square at the corner of the sidewalk. They could be freed by another member of the team coming and stepping in the square to free them. The game never seemed to end before the street lights came on which was the signal to get home.

[christianpfc]

I remember TV test patterns and two TV channels, but that was in the GDR.

And I remember not everyone had a telephone (landline that is, there were no mobile phones yet. And the first mobile phones had to be built into a car because they were not portable.) And I remember life before internet and taking pictures with chemical films.