Someone asked the other day………….
‘What was your favourite fast food when you were growing up?’
‘We didn’t have fast food when I was growing up, I informed him, ‘All our 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, & 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 guy 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.
Other things I could 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, travelled 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 11:00 p.m., after playing the national anthem and a poem about God. It came back on the air at about 6:00 a.m. And there was usually a locally produced news and farm show on, featuring local people…
I never had a telephone in my room.
Our only phone was on a party line.
Before you could dial, you had to listen and make sure some people weren’t already using the line.
Pizzas were not delivered to our home…but milk and bread were.
All newspapers were delivered by boys and all boys delivered newspapers – my brother delivered a newspaper, six days a week. He had to get up at 5 AM every morning.
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. Don’t blame me if they bust their gut laughing.
MEMORIES:
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:
- Headlights dimmer switches on the floor.
- Ignition switches on the dashboard.
- 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!
Your count will get a rating at the bottom.
- Candy cigarettes
- Coffee shops with tableside jukeboxes
- Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard lids that popped up on cold winter mornings
- Party lines on telephones
- Newsreels before the movie
- TV test patterns that came on at night after the last show and were there until TV shows started again in the morning. (Only 3 channels! If you had a TV!)
- Pea-shooters
- Howdy Doody
- 45 RPM records
- 78 rpm records
- Hi-fi records 33 1/3 rpm
- Metal ice trays with lever
- Blue flashbulb
- Cork popguns
- Studebaker
- 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 11-16=You’re older than dirt! THAT’S ME!
I might be older than dirt, but those memories are some of the best parts of my life.
Don’t forget to pass this along!
Especially to all your really OLD friends
