Black and White
Black and White
(Under age 45? You won't understand)
You could hardly see for all the snow,
Spread the rabbit ears as far as they go. (Some tin foil wrapped around each ear also helped reception)
'Good Night, David.
Good Night, Chet.'
My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning.
My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter and I used to eat it raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in ice- pack coolers, but I can't remember getting E.coli.
Almost all of us would
Have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then.
(We had farm pounds with cow turds floating around us)
The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.
We all took gym, not PE... and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now.
Flunking gym was not an option... Even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym.
Speaking of school, we all said prayers and sang the national anthem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention.
We must have had horribly damaged psyches. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.
(We didn't have a school nurse)
I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself.
I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations
Oh yeah... And where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!
We played 'king of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of Mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it didn't sting like iodine did) and then we got our butt spanked.
Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $99 bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.
We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either; because if we did we got our butt spanked there and then we got our butt spanked again when we got home.
I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop, just before he fell off.
Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house.
Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a jerk. It was a neighborhood run amuck.
To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family.
How could we possibly have known that?
We needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes.
We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even
notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac!
How did we ever survive?
LOVE TO ALL OF US WHO SHARED THIS ERA; AND TO ALL WHO DIDN'T, SORRY FOR WHAT YOU MISSED. I WOULDN'T TRADE IT FOR ANYTHING!
Pass this to someone and remember that life's most simple pleasures are very often the best.

I remember, the medicine was called monkey blood in our home back then.

I remember having a pocket knife in my pocket, all the way up thru when I graduated in 1969.

I remember most of us that played football had our shotguns and shells in our vehicles and as soon as afternoon football practice was over we go dove hunting.

I started working when I was 13. Stocking shelves in a grocery store, hauling hay, didn't matter, anything to earn a few dollars.

But as much as I can remember about those times, I would never want to go back.

Crazy horse,You are right that I NEVER want to haul hay ever again. (as an aside;I was hauling hay for Sheriff Jim in La Grange in 1972 when that kike Zindler made a move on the chicken ranch.That was something to remember.)They ran a clean house + would not service minors(got to obey the law ya know).And as to this current weapons check B.S. These folks are out of control during a panic feeding frenge.As to the plain clear + true of our youth;we all carried our .22's after school; We even left them with the teacher until we went home + shot rabbits knowing that they would be eaten.I must confess that I am ashamed that that same courtesy of rights of passage are not due my sons by Gods own right.The govt. is to blame.

How did we ever survive?

Dave

Because that was what was expected of us.

We didn't get a prize for merely participating.

I grew up with the understanding that no matter how good a person was at anything, there would always be someone bigger/faster/smarter/better looking or with more money, that was/is Life, PERIOD!

Those times have died, just as those of us that lived thru them are and they cannot be brought back.