Growing Up Isn't What It Used To Be

[AlabamaNomadRider]

'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 16.

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 -- It cost 7 cents a paper, and they got to keep 2 cents. They had to get up at 6AM every morning.

On Saturday, they had to collect the 42 cents from their customers. Their favorite customers were the ones who gave them 50 cents and told them to keep the change.. Their 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 greenstamps
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 best parts of my life.

[landman]

looks like i'm older then dirt.

[ringadingh]

I remember all of that stuff, I don't feel that old though, I must just have an excellent memory.

[waterman]

Same here Landman. Couldn't say yes to the milk question (6) as we milked our own cows.

[Loafer]

Ahhh.. Them was the days.

[nomadtom69]

We milked our own cow and I delivered it to a older gentleman who like fresh cows milk

[AlabamaNomadRider]

Some great memories here. We thought it was tough times but it just made us tougher. Wish I could relive some of those times.

[paul]

Damn, I remember them all. I must be dead !? ???

We had a TV with remote control. It worked by voice command. "Boy, get up and change the channel"

Friday night ritual, sit on the couch with dad and watch gunsmoke. I'm talking Dennis Weaver here folks.

[Loafer]

I too remember all of them. :'(
Dad would make home made french fries and cook up some natural casing dogs on Saturday nites. We were allowed to eat in the living room and watch rastlin' with dad.

[Idaho]

If this is the standard to test for "Older than dirt" status then I guess this makes it official. That will make my daughters happy. They've been claiming it for years.

[cactusjack]

I remember all except the home party line. We always had a private line.

One TV (black and white) in the house until my dad bought a 25" color set when I was 7. One phone in the house, on the kitchen wall. Even though we had a modern washing machine, my mom had an old Kenmore wringer washer in the basement and used it occasionally, but no dryer until I was maybe 11 years old. We had a clothesline in the basement where mom would hang clothes in the winter.

Now, we have 4 tv's in our house but only one landline phone. There is no milk delivery in Phoenix - I suppose it wouldn't stay fresh for very long. The newspaper costs $19 a month and we consider ourselves "lucky" if it's delivered before 7AM by a guy in a pickup truck driving about 40 MPH on our residential street.

[Idaho]

We had a party line and a neighbor who hogged the phone all the time. Then when you finally got the line she would listen in. We had issues with the neighbor.

[AlabamaNomadRider]

I know we were on a two party line but some people had at least a four party line. People could listen in on your conversations. I was dating so I had to be careful what I said to the girls. Didn't want to get the lady on our party line excited.

[ridemslow]

I remember going to the dairy to get milk in large steel cans. And store bought milk was in paper cartons. Delivery to the door was in glas bottles, but had a sealed lid not mad of cardboard. We only had 2 tv stations. And I remember when gasoline went to .18 cents a gallon, my grandad bitched saying it was gonna hit .25 cents berfore it was over..... In the fall we would put on mud-n-snow tires, only to have to remove them in the spring. We had to take a bath in the washtub. And That blackjack gum tasted awful... I prefered Beamans. Where do I land in this survey?

[Yellow Jacket]

I reckon I am older than dirt. Remember all of them. We also had bread delivered as well as milk. In the winter we had to be sure to get the milk off the porch before it froze and broke the bottles. We left the coins to pay for the milk on the window sill as he came by early in the morning. The house that my folks bought in 1948 had no plumbing. My dad installed all the plumbing including the well and the electric pump in the basement. Until that got done, we had a hand pump out back for water and an out house. My Mom still lives there.

Life was different when I was growing up back in the 40' and 50's.