A trip down memory lane for "older" youngsters

[NLOVNIT]

'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 jeans , 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 Montgomery Wards. Or maybe it was O'Neil's. Either way, there is no Montgomery Wards or O'Neil's anymore.

My parents never drove me to soccer practice. This was mostly because we'd never 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 12 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 own room. The only phone in the house was in the living room and it was on a party line. Before you could twirl the dial, you had to listen and make sure some people you didn't know wasn't already on the party 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 10 cents a paper, of which he got to keep 4 cents. He had to get up at 6AM every morning. On Saturday, he had to collect the 60 cents from his customers. His favorite customers were the ones who gave him a dollar 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?

Lori-

[Toby]

Lori

I was a morning paper boy. Had a bike with a wooden basket that I stacked the papers all the way to my chin and drove to my route. You are right about the people who were never there to pay me the 40 Cents a week. I finally got a monthly route. $1.75 a month and lot of them gave me two dollars.

While we didn't have fast food, we did have drive-ins, with pretty car-hops. Drive-in movies, soda fountains at drug stores, and no little league or soccer games. We watched test pattern for an hour before Kukla, Fran and Ollie came on. We got our first RCA 12" tv in 1950. BTW, no A/C in the house or schools in Miami. Didn't miss it since we never thought about having it. Cut the grass with a push mower. You could watch the grass grow over the septic tank so Dad made us cut it every week--all year long. s/Toby

[Petro]

Lori;

Thanks for your post as it was the same for me. The only thing I can add is we walked 3 miles one way to grade school including winter months as there was no school bus. When I tell my grandchildren they laugh and say "I suppose you were bare foot & it was up hill both ways too?"

Don

[NeilV]

Originally posted by Petro:
Lori;

Thanks for your post as it was the same for me. The only thing I can add is we walked 3 miles one way to grade school including winter months as there was no school bus. When I tell my grandchildren they laugh and say "I suppose you were bare foot & it was up hill both ways too?"

Don

I did have to walk the 3 miles and go up hill both ways. Thats what you did when the school was on the other side of Glens Hill from where you lived. If you had to go up one side and down the other to get there you had to go up and down again to get home. At least in the winter you could slide down if you had good balance and your boots didn't have sand imbedded in the soles.

It was against health regulations to go barefoot to school in the township I grew up in and they had a nurse make you take your shoes off and do a foot check on occasion to make sure you hadn't put your shoes on just when she came by to check.

Shopping was Sears, Woolworth or the Drugstore. Pizza was at the local bakery and fast food was from the grill at the dinner (if it took less than an hour it was considered fast).

[Glen41]

Country Fried chicken every sunday. With mashed potatoes and gravy and green beans or corn. Mmmm Mmmm. Brown bagging lunch to school. Coke came in little green glass bottles. Spam with little cloves stuck in it. Grease or butter on everything. Running outside to turn the TV aeriel when switching from channel 2 to channel 11. Little league on Friday nights with snow cones after the game. Trying to learn how to dribble a basketball on a gravel driveway.
Naw, I never did any of that stuff.

[rjf7g]

OK - I am getting the feeling I am a *little bit* younger than those of you who have responded to this thread thus far, but I can say even my life has been very different from what kids are experiencing now.

It was unheard of for a family to have more cars or TVs than people when I was growing up. It struck me over the holidays that this was the case or darn near it with every family we visited.

[historyljc]

Outdoor movie (wih serial) at the park on Friday nights, softball at the park on Saturday night, The Lone Ranger & Gunsmoke, etal. on radio, and if you were lucky, a dime Dairy Queen cone on the way home from church on Sunday night. Granny still had chickens in the back yard and always something good leftover on top of the stove in case a hungary grandkid came by. Peas came in a basket and had to shelled by hand. Everybody owned a pressure cooker for canning. Chickens for supper (or dinner) had to killed, cleaned and de-feathered. Took a sack lunch to school, there was no cafeteria. Recess and/or PE made sure you got exercise at least once a day. There was no fence around the school. Slides, swings, rings, etc available to all after hours. Best not get spanked in school - you wouldn't want what was coming when you got home. Clamp-on the shoes roller skates that always came loose at the worst possible time. "Go outside and play, if you can't find something to do, maybe I can find something for you.

[Freebird23]

Good old days? I was a milk hop,I would grab up the bottels of milk,run from truck to house,pick up empty bottles and take back .The milk man I worked for just slowed down for this,but he paid better than anyone else 10.00 a wk.With this I bought a new bike,air pistol,and went skateing,and to a movie every wk.I think I was about 11 or 12 doing this I could not think about my grand sons doing anything like this. Times change.

[Ding-a-ling]

Originally posted by Freebird23:
I was a milk hop,I would grab up the bottles of milk,run from truck to house,pick up empty bottles and take back

Hmmm. I don't remember any milkmen having a helper back in Allentown, PA in the 40s and 50s. They did their own running back and forth from those trucks that were designed to be driven while standing up. No seat to get in the way while going in and out.

[Route 66]

[Freebird23]

I do remember some of the old trucks were stand up ,but think they were smaller rts.It was earley 60s in Concord NC.

[NeilV]

Originally posted by Route 66:

The whine of the gearbox on those Divco Milk Trucks was our morning alarm clock. As long as he didn't rattle the bottles it was Ok.

We didn't have or really need safety seals on anything either as it was unthinkable for anyone to engage in product tampering. A simple silver dollar sized disposable cardboard plug in a very sturdy reusable glass bottle was all we needed.

Grandma would at times show up minutes later with something special she had made for our breakfasts in the wee hours of the morning and then hoofed it two miles so she could surprise us. The second squeeking of the front gate was the signal that she had arrived. After breakfast she would take us for a walk to say good morning to the neighbors. You knew that with a start like that it was going to be a really good day.

[FatDog]

milk men delivering milk, young boys delivering newspapers, kids of ALL ages walking to school not afraid of being swiped, teachers paddlin' you on the rear if you talked back, tube TV's, kids playtoys were the outdoors and a ball and a stick and didn't have to be plugged into the wall, the neighborhood alarm went off real loud every Friday at noon to keep us in shape in case the Ruskies finally attacked

[smlranger]

One of my fondest memories was on snow days getting out of school, heading down to my grandparents' farm for a day of sledding. They had a world-class steep hill that drew folks from all around the area. We would build a big fire at the top of the hill, and sled until we were so tired we could hardly stand up. Then, we'd go up to the farmhouse and sit around the wood stove in the kitchen to get warm and dry. My grandmother would bake fluffy biscuits and generally spoil us.