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MEMORIES from a friend:
"Hey Dad," some kids asked their father 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," the father said. "All
the food was slow."
"C'mon, seriously. Where did you eat?"
"It was a place called 'at home,'" he explained. "Grandma cooked every
day and when Grandpa 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 the father was afraid he was going
to suffer serious internal damage, so he didn't tell him the part about
how he had to have permission to leave the table. But here are some
other things he would have told his son about his childhood if he figured the
son's 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 AND
Roebuck. Either way, there is no Roebuck anymore. Maybe he died.
Our parents never drove us to soccer practice. This was mostly because
we never had heard of soccer. We had a bicycle that weighed probably 50
pounds, and only had one speed, (slow). We didn't have a television in
our house until we were about 11, but my grandparents had one before that. It
was, of course, black and white, but they bought a piece of colored
plastic to cover the screen. The top third was blue, like the sky, and
the bottom third was green, like grass. The middle third was red. It
was perfect for programs that had scenes of fire trucks riding across
someone's lawn on a sunny day. Some people had a lens taped to the
front of the TV to make the picture look larger.
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 12. Before that, the only car in our
family was my grandfather's Model T Ford. He called it a "machine."
We never had telephones in our 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. I delivered a newspaper, seven days a week. It cost 7 cents a
paper, of which I got to keep 2 cents. On Saturday, I had to collect the
42 cents from my customers. My favorite customers were the ones who
gave me 50 cents and told me to keep the change. My 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. 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.
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
8. Newsreels before the movie
9. P.F. Flyers
10. Butch wax
11. Telephone numbers with a word prefix (OLive-6933)
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 remembere d 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!
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