'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 '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, never wore Levis, never set foot on a golf course, never 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 19.

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 21 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.


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 6AM every morning.

On Saturday, he had to collect the 42 cents from his customers. His favorite customers were the ones 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 (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 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 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 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 some of the bestparts of my life.

I got 24/25, I feel old.....

Having the national anthem play before a movie.

23/25

Keith

When I was a kid I bought more cigarettes than ANY chain smoker...

AND I have never even smoked ONE cigarette in my WHOLE life.

I used to ride my bicycle to the 7/11 store, a few times a week to buy cigs, for my mom and my dad... Pall Malls, and Camels...
And a few grocery items as well...

I always wondered why they did not just buy a carton, or two, and keep them on hand.

That is no doubt the reason I am a HORDER today.

I HORD guns, ammo, cleaning supplies, socks underware, Scotch, olive oil, dog/cat food, ie EVERYTHING... AS I do not want to run out at a bad time.

I do not have ANYBODY to send to the 7/11 on a bicycle...

I remember the discussions about whether it was correct to allow the word "damn" as in "frankly my dear I don't give a damn" to be said in Gone with the wind.
Also, the outrage about the movie "the outlaw" showing a man and woman in bed together.

I remember as a kid, that the 7-11 or what ever it was called, kept an open pack of cigarettes to sell them one by one to kids @ two cents each.

Keith

25/25 and I was buying cigarettes long before there were 7-11's, or even mcDonalds.

How many of you guys had a hardware store that would "break" a box of 22lr for you and sell them one at a time?

The only one I missed was Blackjack gum. I never heard of it. I also looked it up to refresh my memory and still never heard of it. Maybe it wasn't popular in my area?

I think I need to go lie down.....

Blackjack gum? Came in a blue package with black writing.

Mom would give me a quarter and tell me "one quart of milk, a pack of Camels, and be sure to bring home the change." I had to have a note from her before the grocer (one man) would sell me the Camels. Snuck one ONCE! Coughed A LOT!

Playing cards in bicycle spokes

Taking my JC Higgens single-shot .22 to grade school and the teacher (Miss McGaragle) would make me put the rifle in the cloakroom. "Course, I kept the ammo in my pocket.

And, much later, taking a flight on Western Airlines from San Jose, CA to Seattle to shoot with friends. I put my Ruger 357 under the seat and the ammo in my carryon. No problem.

Now days, if your 8-year-old chews a pop tart into the shape of a gun ...

Nice stroll down memory lane!

Thanks

quote:

Originally posted by Hog Killer:
I remember as a kid, that the 7-11 or what ever it was called, kept an open pack of cigarettes to sell them one by one to kids @ two cents each.

Keith

7-11's were so named because they opened at 7 am - about an hour before the real grocery store and they closed at 11pm - about 3 hours after the real grocery store closed
When I was a kid there were no all night open convenience stores

Also, Beemans Gum, Chicklettes, Gum Cigars and black licorice pipes and candy cigarettes
I have not seen Gum Cigars, licorice pipes or candy cigarettes for years

And don't forget 6x16 car and pickup truck tires with inner tubes,
- Cadillac hubcaps on the your 1938 Plymouth coupe you drove to school,
-getting a California Driver's License at age 14 because you lived in the county not the city, and had to drive to school,
-never locking the doors on your house or car..-(and houses all had he same lock anyway, a great big "skeleton" (master) key.
-starting every school day with a Pledge of Allegiance..and lots more.

My allowance was 25¢ per week, which I could use to buy two bus tokens to get to town and back, admission to a theatre with 5 feature movies (you'd watch from 10 am, 'til midnight on Saturdays if you were in your teens and allowed to stray out that late) buy a candy bar or a bottle of RC or a bag of popcorn,and still come home with 3¢ change you could buy three "jawbreakers" with,
- walk the 6 miles home if you missed the last bus because the movie got out late,
-No big box stores or supermarkets, for everything except hardware you got it almost all from the corner market if you lived in the outskirts of town,
You could buy .22 ammo for 5¢ (.22 shorts) or 7¢ (.22LR) a box of 50 at the corner market too,
-inflation drove store-bought bread from 4¢ a loaf way up to 7¢ a loaf and it was considered a national disgrace on about the same scale as our national debt.

I could go on, but it makes me want to cry...

There were no McDonald's
No burger King
Cars had AM radio as an option!
No Seat-Belts
Heaters were options in Pick-up trucks
AC was in the "Big Cars"
Bumper Jacks
Sunoco-260 gas was the best for "mussel-cars"
Gas station Service attendants in uniforms pumped your 25 cents per gallon "Ethel"
School "Crossing Guards" called "Safeties"
I carried a gun to school,not to shoot my classmates, I was on the schools shooting team.
Dress codes
Notes from the teacher to take home after you got a beating in school for disrupting the class,only to be beat again by your parents.
Smoking in the boys room
You never used an adults first name. All sentience's were ended with 'yes Sir, no Mam,etc.
Duck & Cover!
"Our Mr.Sun" science movies done by Westinghouse.
...and on and on.

20/25

Would buy cigarettes at the age of 10, just told the clerk they were for my grandfather.

Staying at Grandmother's house for a couple weeks in the summer. She'd send me to town with 50-cents to get her a cardboard box of Garrett's Snuff. There was always enough left for a box of "Sen-Sens".

Remember those?

You could buy a pack of cigarettes from a vending machine for a quarter and there would be two pennies change slipped inside the cellophane.

Sleeping on the flat area behind the back seat, under the rear window, on long drives. There weren't any speakers there only the one on the front dash for the AM radio.

Those were the days.

Forgot--25/25 plus.

25 for 25. Damn.....didn't think I'd make it this long.

I'm with you: 25 for 25 and 16 out of 17 on Rapidrob's list as well! LOL!

Our milk co at one time went hi-tech ,replacing the wooden box with galvanized steel with a layer of insulation. But that meant no cream coming out of the top in freezing weather.

Somewhere about 1960 the commercial laundry here in Brooklyn finally thought it was time to replace their very reliable chain drive trucks with the modern ones !

I think I only got 15 on Rapidrob's list but it could be the failing memory!

25/25

We used to take an unopened soft drink, and use an ice pick to stab a hole in the cap then suck the bottle dry. Took a while, but it seemed like a cool way to drink it at the time.

My dad took the soft drink bottle away from me if he caught me drinking with the entire top of the bottle in my mouth. I had to learn to drink with my upper lip "in" the bottle.

We all liked to load the soft drink bottle with shelled peanuts after we opened it, and as we drank it, particularly if it was a Dr. Pepper. When we could get it, RC Cola was our all-time favorite. I couldn't drink grape soft drinks for some reason. They made me throw-up.

On the long drives the four of us kids used to fight over who got to lie in the back window of the car.

I ordered some baseball cards back in the late 50s. I overpaid a penny, and with my order they sent me back a small card indicating it was good for a 1 cent credit on my next order. Never ordered anything else, but I still have the card.

now you've got to explain to the young'uns what an ice pick is. And why you could find one in every kitchen.

And we had great entertainment and proper Hollywood heroes. For those old enough for radio, The Shadow was my favorite. Early TV brings to mind Sky King, Flash Gordon, and a host of others.

quote:

I remember as a kid, that the 7-11 or what ever it was called, kept an open pack of cigarettes to sell them one by one to kids @ two cents each.

The country store near where I grew up used to keep an opened box of 20 Ga shells he'd sell me for 12 Cents each because I couldn't afford a whole box at one time

Well I aced it.Damned glad to remember + to have lived in that age,but then my mother + grandmother were pleased to live in their age as well.

Anybody remember the Saturday morning CBS TV program "Winky Dink"? Winky urged all the kids to buy his Magic Message Screen. I finally got my folks to buy one for me, probably for a quarter. It was green transparent plastic and you put it in your TV screen and Winky would give you the Magic Message in three parts. You would write the strokes of each part of the message on your green screen covering. Big deal-it usually said something like "Be good for your parents", or "always do what your parents tell you". I forgot to take my Magic Message screen off after the end of the program and, by early Saturday afternoon, the damn thing melted onto our priceless RCA TV screen. We never did get all the residue off the screen. Should'a sued ole Winky's arse off.

Woulda missed most because -- on the mission field we lived like pioneers. Add wood stoves, rain barrels, dressing your own chickens/sheep, slingshots and "tennis" shoes with high tops and no arches for 57 year-old me...

Black vinyl upholstery in cars that was hot in the summer and clammy in the winter. Waiting for tube radios in cars to warm up. Grand openings of gas stations that always included 'freebies' with any gas purchase during opening week. Fizzies (those miserable tablets that required a dozen or so to make a drink that tasted like the advertised flavor). Free matches available at cigarette machines. Cap guns and cap grenades. Suction cup archery sets that quickly lost the suction cups. Balsa wood model planes. Beemans gum (still the best).

I grew up in New Jersey and I was in High School before there was a McDonalds within bicycling distance.

I still have trouser clips to keep my pants fron getting into the chain of the EXPENSIVE
bicycle I bought in the late 1970's, $600 in 1975 dollars, I actually spent less on the first two cars I owned (bought rather than parental hand-me-downs) COMBINED and I drove
them for several years each.

I still remember being required to ask permission to leave the table I never did eat my peas, I still don't is they are frozen peas
(canned or fresh I actually enjoy)

I still don't eat "French Cut" green beans
I have sworn a blood oath that I will never do so short of actual death from starvation, it has not come to that yet... and if it does someone is going to DIE by my hands.

my parents DID own their own home

My Father's comment about "Credit cards" when "Bank Americard" (later renamed Visa) was that "Hey look, Loan-sharking has gone mainstream!"

Roebuch was dead before I came along but I can remember his name sill being on the store
But back then the Sears store was in the center of town, because there was no "mall" on the outskirts of town

When I first learned what Soccer was I wondered how anyone could run continuously for an hour and be happy about a game that ended I a Tie.

My Bicycle weighs less that 20# a fact that fascinates friends with "modern" bicycles with actual "Suspension". and what bugs them more is that I've actually ridden the thing more than 100miles in a single day (several times, they are called "Century Rides")

I have no memory of a house without a TV, but I remember the brand of TV we had, it was a Dumont, and the place where they were made was within bicycling distance, it was later replaced with a Westinghouse made 30miles away.

my current TV has more screen area than the first eight TV's combined and uses less power than my desklamp... or atleast did until I installed a modern LED bulb in my desklamp that uses less power than the old night light that kept you from tripping on the doorsill on the way to the bathroom at 0:dark-30

I remember when my Grandmother got her first color TV, unfortunately the thing I wanted to watch most in color was broadcast in Black & White... the Apollo 11 Moon Landing.
That color TV later became OUR first color TV.
We actually got our first NEW color TV the summer between Jr High and High School.

I had a telephone in my room... after I was already working.. the first time it rang it was a wrong number... at 3:45AM after I had been up for 36hours driving back to NJ from Georgia.
The phone was then moved to the blanket chest in the hallway.

When my parents got their first house we were moving in with his Aunt, a retired school Teacher who stayed In the house for another 5-6 years until there was a vacancy in the retirement home she had planned on moving to
when she retired. the first improvement my father made as having the "party line" replaced with a private line. My Mother was a Nurse who could have delays on receiving a phone call because she was "on call" several nights a week.



As for the list I was born in 1961 and I still score 17 of 25.

FWIW there are three active, operating drive-in-theaters within 10 miles


I might be older than dirt but those memories are some of the bestparts of my life.[/QUOTE]

The first "color" TV I ever saw was at a neighbor's house. It was a Black & White TV that you placed a colored film over the screen. Everything was shaded a brain destroying combination of reddish and greenish. It didn't look realistic at all.

We built and rode a soap box derby. I still have the scar to prove it.

One of my favorite toys for a year or so was a wooden top. I had a half dozen of them. I could make that puppy dance.

Only The Shadow Knows.
Thanks I loved those radio programs.

Eastern Europe?
No TV until I Was 10, no phone, no warm water, except when we warmed it up on the stove ( cook wood stove ) in big pots so bath was on e a week all four of us one after the other
Food majority was our garden, fruit trees a our chickens, ducks, geese, rabbits, pigs
Canned, smoked , cooked. No fridge of course.
Cigarettes I stole from my Dad cause he smoked 3+ packs a day and beer when I went to pub with pitcher for my Dad.
Those were the days.
My kids think I grew up on different planet
The day Russians invaded and my Dad said Good, it won't turn out like in Hungaria. My grandma fed few soldiers sandwiches and then they left

I actually remember far more than were on the list and I really am older than dirt - 80 last week. I can well remember buying my father a bag of 'old north state' and a pack of 'OCB' papers when I was 5 years old with no questions asked. Of course this was a country store and they knew both me and my father well. Were the old times better? Don't really know but being 80 ain't exactly a piece of cake either.

8 / 25



but I am not an American

Happy Birthday zimbabwe!

reading this again made me think, and laugh, and then sigh a bit for those long gone days. My Dad's fishing buddy had a 46 Overland with the key in the dash. You could take the key out driving down the road so "Uncle Benny" could pass his keyring with the bottle opener (remember those?) around for us all to get a cold soda out of the metal Coleman Cooler and open it.

I bought a new Toyota FJ Cruiser last fall, and it has the key in the dash. Brings back memories...

Rich

I was born in 1950 and I remembered all 25/25.
I was about 5 when we got our first TV - black and white with a huge 13 inch screen (round).

You could buy candy cigarettes for a nickel a pack and a Coke for 10cents plus 3 cents deposit. we used to pick up the bottles we found and turn them in for a Coke.

Southern California -

Building skateboards out of roller skates so we could go "sidewalk surfing"

Gradma had a washing machine with a wringer and used it before she hung the clothes on the line to dry. Nearly everybody had a clothesline.

Penny loafers

The Helms Bakery truck would come down the street to sell breads, pies, donuts, etc.

Ticket books at Disneyland - thus the phrase "E-ticket ride"

Shooting at a trap range that was replaced with houses and is now part of Parkway Calabasas

Pacific Ocean Park - "POP"(pronounced "pee-oh-pee")

Walking out of the airport and across the runway to go to and come from an airplane at LAX. You entered the plain by a staircase.

The EPA still didn't exist but the air and water was cleaner than today

Regular families went on camp outs

Playing marbles and tops around a circle

Carrying a transistor radio with an extending whip antenna

The Sears, Penneys, and Wards catalogs carried rifles and shotguns you could order by mail

The girls at school wore garter belts to hold up their stockings

Going to swim at public pools. we called them "the plunge"

Riding bicycles to Harry's Bait and Tackle in Playa del Rey to buy a 25¢ drop line and a 25¢ bag of shrimp so we could go fishing off the Ballona Creek bridge. This was before Marina del Rey was built. The area is filled with tall appartments and condos now.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, garter belts...

Big Chief tablets and those fat pencils.

When I got my first box of 48 Crayons I thought I was Picasso. Used the black up first.

Got my Polio vaccine in school in the 2nd grade in Clovis, New Mexico.

Watched Boston Blackie on TV. "Enemy to those who make him an enemy. Friend to those who had no friend".

Built crystal radios in the Boy Scouts.

Amos & Andy was one of the funniest comedies on TV. Now they are not allowed to be shown. (Those early black actors should be in the Hall of Fame. Must have broken their hearts as they got older and became reviled by their own people.)

Riding a stick horse.

Plastering your chest at night with Vick's Salve when you caught a cold.

UUUUhhh Amos and Andy, the radio show, used white actors. Only when they moved to TV were black actors used.

When we used to go on vacation, which always involved a long car ride, we stayed in a Court, never in a motel or hotel. It was the Cactus Court, Boots Court, Oceanview Court, Cottonwood Court, or any other court we happened to drive by late at night that had their Vacancy sign lit, but the "NO" part unlit.

We thought we were rich when my father finally started stopping at Best Western motels.