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Thu 16 Aug, 2007 09:19 am
OLDER THAN DIRT
LightningBugs / Older 'n Dirt!!
"Hey Dad," one of my kids 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. "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 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 AND 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 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 15. Before that, the only car in our family was my grandfather's Ford. He called it a "machine."
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. I delivered a newspaper, six days a week. It cost 7 cents a paper, of which I got to keep 2 cents. I had to get up at
4 AM every morning. 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& 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 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.
=====
"Senility Prayer"...God grant me...
The senility to forget the people I never liked
The good fortune to run into the ones that I do
And the eyesight to tell the difference."
If you remembered 11-15 = Don't tell your age,
lovely
I went to the Howdy Doody show when we lived in New York....
many of those apply if you're just born in another country.
All except three --
Butch wax
S & 16 Hi-fi's (although I remember Hi-fi's)
Packards (I remember them, but don't recall seeing them on the road in my day)
That can't be right!
I am not old as dirt!!!
But, I do have very fond memories of all those things! :-D
When I was little and was living in Canada, which was mainly a poor community back then, we heated our place with our kitchen stove. You know the big old stoves with the rack at the top.
My brother and I would each get $1 after spending a whole day stacking wood in the wood shed.
My cousins would bug us to get off the phone (party line, we used rarely) because they were always on the phone. I remember my mother getting frustrated because every time she wanted to make a phone call (rare), there was always someone on the other line. That memory, I can do without.
We went to my grandmothers house across the street to wash our cloths on her ringer washer. I remember thinking how cool that thing was and how nice and easy it made washing the cloths. I'd hold the cloths pins for grandma while she hung the cloths on the line outside.
My grandfather gave me and my brother all his empty glass pop bottles to cash in, which was an exciting day for us, I tell ya.
That's when penny candy was penny candy :-D
I remember a knob on the dash in the cars and I think it was a choke knob. Not sure though.
We gad no video games or computers, so we spent most of our time outside playing with a ball or some jacks. Sledding and skating in the winter, along with building snow men/women/children/animals and of course, we can't forget the igglo and snow tunnel making. We had lots of snow in these parts back then.
It was a treat when one of my uncles would hook a horse or 2 up to a wagon and we'd go for a sleigh ride. Hell, we still do that :-D
I love those memories :-D
Now where did I put that AC/DC CD?
Quote:6-10 = You are getting older
I only remember about seven of those things on that list. Surprising! I always thought that I've already turned into some old curmudgeon, but according to this thing, maybe I still have a few good years left!
However, I just saw an ad that said 50% of men over 40 have some form of erectile disfunction, so I guess the Viagra isn't far off...or maybe when that starts happening I'll just give up sex altogether.
Anyway, that little list made me feel relatively young, virile, and even a little bit sexy. Anyone want to have a quickie in the A2K back room?
Quote:6-10 = You are getting older
I only remember about seven of those things on that list. Surprising! I always thought that I've already turned into some old curmudgeon, but according to this thing, maybe I still have a few good years left!
However, I just saw an ad that said 50% of men over 40 have some form of erectile disfunction, so I guess the Viagra isn't far off...or maybe when that starts happening I'll just give up sex altogether.
Anyway, that little list made me feel relatively young, virile, and even a little bit sexy. Anyone want to have a quickie in the A2K back room?
my first car was a packard. Everyone in those days had an "ash pit" in their back yard, it was a concrete box where you put all the burnable trash and simply burned it.
BBB
I remember all of them.
Some things not included on the lists:
Great Depression: hobos, food kitchens; hand-me-down clothing
School desks with ink pots
Black Studebaker Touring Cars with eising glass windows & engine cranks
Cars with rumble seats and side running boards
Victory gardens
Uncle Sam Needs You posters
white margarine with yellow food coloring that had to be mixed in
Saving the aluminum lining in chewing gum packages
Winding string into big balls
Rationing books: food, clothing, gas
Standing in line to buy mayonaise and meats
Raising rabbits and chickens to provide meat for family
Buying war bond tickets in school
Radio programs: The Shadow, The Green Hornet, The Lone Ranger
FDR radio broadcasts
Telephones: Operators asked "Number please"
Filling S & H Green Stamp books
The Saturday Evening Post and Norman Rockwell magazine covers
Girls putting their hair in pincurls everynight
Stuffing socks in girls bras to have bigger breasts
Jitterbugging at school dances
Reading a friend's copy of "Forever Amber"
Saddle shoes
Japanese best friends sent to internment camps
Dating sailors from the nearby navy base
Getting airmail letters from boyfriends overseas
Getting two mail delivers each day
Standing in line to watch the movie "Snowwhite & the Seven Dwarfs"
Getting bonus dinnerware when attending movies
Boys getting Mohawk haircuts
Picking tomatos and walnuts on farms due to labor shortage
Whew! My brain hurts from trying to remember everything. Enough for now.
BBB
When I was a boy, we only had dirt. I think we got our first water when I was ten. Fire - Can't recall that we had it, when I was living at home. We grew our own beans and sometimes were able to bring down a passing meadow lark.
when i was nine years old my dad's employer had a phone installed in our house - i still know that number : 35 04 82
, but i can't remember ebeth's number - it's on speed dial !
about that same time - 1939 - the company also bought the first automobile - a three-wheeler !
i was somtimes allowed to accompany the driver and operate the turn signals and the "hand-operated" windshield wipers - i sure was proud !
in 1953 a bought a RED 100 cc
IMME motorcycle - left behind in germany
when we came to canada , i learned to drive a car on my brother's STUDEBAKER POWER HAWK - man , what a beauty !
(i did have a german motorcycle license but had never driven a car in germany) .
our first car was a 1959 VW-BEETLE - gone to volkswagen heaven by now
the 1960's were already out , but we saved $100
by buying a '59 !
hbg
Those were called incinerators, in Los Angeles anyway. The concrete thing for burning trash, not the Beetle...
When I was ten years old, I thought the .01c gum machines were the greatest invention on the planet. Kept asking my mother for pennies.
Au1929, great thread and some, not all, good memories.
I don't remember PF Flyers or Butch Wax, but we were pretty poor and I was a girl, so maybe those things were for boys.
We never had Coca Cola at home, it was considered a special treat that we could have on driving trips to grandparents in Colorado.
Also on long trips, we would always carry a bag of water in case the car overheated. And in case we broke down. Vital in the desert.
We got a wringer washer when I was about 11. I was terrified that it would eat my fingers as I passed clothes through the wringer.
TV when I was 12. How exciting!!
We didn't live on a paved road until I was in 4th grade.
My granny raised and killed her own chickens and grew fruit and vegetables in the back yard--not because of "organics" but because she would never think of buying those things at the grocery store.
Oh, and handpacked icecream at the little grocer down the alley. Yum.
Au, I remember everything except butch wax. Could that be short for the famous Butcher's wax?
The butch wax was used to keep crew cuts straight up!
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