‘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, 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 & 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 10. It was, of course, black and white,
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 4. It was an old black Dodge.
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. 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 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. 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)
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 – I learned how to drive on one with “stick shift” in WV hills! SKL
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.
Thanks Gene
I remember the “Bolo” paddle-ball game.
When the rubberband broke, the ball was tossed and the “game” was to avoid having my hide tanned by my mother with the wooden punishment tool left over!
She broke a few of these on my ass over the years.
Good times, good times!
I remember where I grew up: The diamond was at the end of the street where Dad taught me how to play baseball. Beside the diamond was a shopping center with a Drug Store that had a luncheonette counter inside the store. At one end of the shopping center was a little movie theater called “The Micro Theater”, it was the smallest movie theater I’ve ever seen. The baseball diamond has been paved over and there’s a big Mall beside it now. I’ve still got my memories
2 for me – cigarette candy (i think maybe just cause I grew up in Japan)
and Drive In movies, only becuase there is one in my town still that we go to.
Im 23.
hmm Im in the “dont tell your age ” group,hey caligirl do you speak Japanese or write it
You can still get Blackjack gum, along with Beemans, Clove, and Teaberry.
I remember the wax packs that had 1 sheet of bubble gum and some baseball cards. The gum tasted about the same as the cards! The cards usually met their demise as noise attachments on bicycle spokes. There was also a “cocoa” bar from Nestle that cost 3 cents while the chocolate bar from Hershey was a nickel. That was my introduction to economics…By the way, my score was 25.
Oh, and I also remember the ‘hell’ I caught from my Mom when I forget to bring in the milk that had been left in the milkbox on our back porch. And I thought I was the only one whose Mom used a Bolo paddle as a weapon of discipline. LOL
only 48 but i’m older than dirt
I remember when there were seperate water fountains/waiting rooms/dining area/schools/hospitals/everything for blacks and whites.
I was ten years old before I sat in the same room with a black child.
I think the last Klan rally in my hometown was in 1978. They held it at noon, at the courthouse square.
I miss milk being delivered, and I miss there being only three channels, and I miss most stuff was made to last. But if I could go back to that time, and do just one thing, I would get the hell out.
Along with the good, there was some really wicked shit going on in the good old days.
Take Care,
Mike
how did you people manage to survive in that historic era? Sorry i am 23
Isiah, try to imagine how things will be for you when you qualify as “old as dirt”. And it won’t make any difference with those here, including me, who are already that old. Because by then we will be dead.
I don’t remember 9,18, or 20… does that mean Alzhiemers…lol..
Isiah’s old as dirt list will have things like CDs, DVDs, VHS tapes, VCRs, payphones, mailboxes, gasoline, Chryslers, land line phones, cigarettes, CRT TVs, cash and credit cards, incandescent light bulbs, desktop computers (with separate tower, router, modem, etc and the noodles of cables to go with them), film…
Heck this might be on any of our old as dirt lists.
I remember the first ‘fast food’ in town was a Burger Chef…2nd was a Red Barn. Then came McDonalds. All of them had two windows that you walked up to from the parking lot to order. There was an overhang to (sort of) protect you from the rain & snow, but ordering was a lot better in nice weather. (After a few Great Lakes winters, they put big infra-red heaters up on the overhangs to melt the snow and keep you warm for a few minutes.) You ate your food either in your car or sitting at tables between the bldg & parking lot. Our family would splurge one or two times a month and we’d sit and eat outside in parkas. There was no such thing as inside dining. There was no such thing as a drive-thru. (Anywhere. None for food, none at banks, none for pay-phones.) McD’s menu was pretty meager…hamburger, cheeseburger, fries, shakes, soft drinks, and coffee. No Big Macs or chicken or salads. No breakfast! McD was THE place to go after school football games…hundreds would arrive all at the same time, and we would sit all over the grass, on musical instrument cases, the parking lot, the hoods & trunks of the cars.
I am still young but 4 out of the five cars we have still have dimmer switches on the floor, 3 of them have ignitions on the dash (2 with button starts) and 2 of them have semaphores (little indicators that pop out of the B pillar.
I do remember the milk man but we had metal lids and I also remember when the local store used to give us icy poles when it was a hot day because they knew our parents would pay the next time they were in!!
The candy cigarettes were called ‘Fags’ here. You can still get them but they don’t have the red ends and they are now called ‘Fads’!
24 out of 25. Black Jack gum may be regional.
I’m 22.. I only remember one, the candy cigarettes. I kinda miss those. My mom would even “light” them for me. Oh, memories.
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)
This still happens where i live… We only have 4 normal tv channels in this day and age, (11 if you buy a digital settop box)… and something similar happens on one of them!
Otherwise my score is 4 😛
Wait…I thought MY mom was the only one who used the bolo paddles for corporal punishment. We would hide them and she’d just buy another. At least we got to play with them before they became an instrument of discipline.
Great list. Thanks.