OLD

[Slowpoke]

Just for fun!
"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 little league practice. 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 water 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& Green Stamps
16 Hi-d="">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.

Don't forget to pass this along!!
Especially to all your really OLD friends....
=====
"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."
Have a great week!!!!!!

[swagger]

I was looking at a Playboy the other day and realized I was 8 years older then the centerfold . But I got nothing on that!

[medicchick]

Is it bad that I'm 26 and remember 6 of them?

[H75thRangers]

Bought my non-car owning, renter Mom, first color TV with tax-free VRB money in '70 in Bien Hoa RVN. I think you were my neighbor. Great Stuff!

[EvilCouch]

Is it bad that I'm 26 and remember 6 of them?

In exactly the same boat.

To be fair, records were still being used fairly widely when I was a kid, drive ins are still around, old fashioned diners are still rocking the table-side jukeboxes, crappy roller skates in the 80's still needed keys, cork popguns own, especially when you cut the string off, candy cigarettes didn't die that long ago and glass bottles are still cool.

Wait, that's 7. Guess I'm even older in the brain. Yippie. :/

[Ranger Bill]

Finally, a quiz in which I got a perfect score.

[FIST TEAM LTR]

Funny.
I cleaned out my Dad's garage attic last year (he's 85)
(3) 8 track players. Old beer "Picnic bottles",Cardboard 12 gauge shot gun shells.A wooden coffee grinder. porcelin door knobs, a "tube radio" a Black & White TV.

When I was young a "car jacking" had a totally different meaning.
Home early was 9:00 pm.
My Father's rath made the R.I.s look friendly.
"Dime stores" were around, not "Family Dollar".
I was the "Remote control garage door opener"

[42L5V]

I was looking at a Playboy the other day and realized I was 8 years older then the centerfold . But I got nothing on that!

I'm 38 - It hurts worse when you realize that you are old enough to be her father...

[medicchick]

Is it bad that I'm 26 and remember 6 of them?

In exactly the same boat.

To be fair, records were still being used fairly widely when I was a kid, drive ins are still around, old fashioned diners are still rocking the table-side jukeboxes, crappy roller skates in the 80's still needed keys, cork popguns own, especially when you cut the string off, candy cigarettes didn't die that long ago and glass bottles are still cool.

Wait, that's 7. Guess I'm even older in the brain. Yippie. :/

My cousins like to do the same think to their cork guns Ranger EvilCouch.

I remember my first record I ever bought was Madonna. If I actually stop and think hard, I can remember growing up with 10 of them. My grandparents had the last party line in Grand Rapids, and never gave it up.
Did anyone else have the gum cigarette's that blew "smoke" also?

[Ranger Ron]

Well Slowpoke, at least two of us remember all 25.

When I was in grade school, my best friend lived on a farm and his phone number was: "0191J4 Please" (It's amazing I can remember that and some days I can't remember my wife's name)

[Ranger Ron]

Well Slowpoke, at least two of us remember all 25.

When I was in grade school, my best friend lived on a farm and his phone number was: "0191J4 Please" (It's amazing I can remember that and some days I can't remember my wife's name)

Good God, that sounds like a scene from the "Andy Griffith" show....

Damn right! You also had to be careful what you said on his "Party line". When you said goodbye, if you just listened, you could hear everyone who had been listening, hanging up.
(but I was too young to carry a bullet in my shirt pocket.)

[McD]

I scored 2
!#$#@^*&^)(*%$@ 70's