OLDER THAN DIRT

[Halona]

OLDER THAN DIRT

LightningBugs / Older 'n Dirt!!

"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 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 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 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&H Green Stamps
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 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!!!!!!

[wheezer]

Thats so cute Halona!!
I remember 18 things you mentioned~But you forgot to add the fun part about our memories! We got to run the streets or hillsides (depending on where you lived).
I also remember when firecrackers and cherry bombs and bottle rockets were legal and you could buy them for 15 cents at the firework stand!! That was cool times!! heehee

[irenetheserene]

ME! I guess I'm in the "Older than Dirt" category. If I wanted extra money I rode around on my big old Schwinn(sp) heavy bike, one speed, and collected pop bottles and washed them and took them to the store to get a few cents. Since we lived right across from a dump I found alot! ;D And they were filthy--all caked up with mud.....

Anyone remember how they sprayed for mosquitos? A truck would ride around and spray a mist. Now how dangerous was that? Us kids would all run outside when it came by and stood in the fumes.


If we were lucky we would go for ice cream on a Saturday night with mom and dad in our car--get the ice cream and sit outside in our car and eat it. That's what everyone did. But that didn't happen every week.

I remember my mom would ask me to get a box of skoal for dad when I went to the candy store. I was always afraid to ask but the owner gave it to me anyway. I loved the candy lipstick, the fizz straws, the syrup bottles, licorice (purple, red, green, black, raspberry- thick and thin versions), smarties, bottle caps, The Monkees cards and bubble gum. flying saucer wafers, wax lips and moustaches, jawbreakers, the round bubble gum - grape, cherry were my favorites, root beer barrels.

Our 4th our July consisted of a picnic at my aunt and uncles and then we would come home and light our sparklers! If it was a good year, my dad would light a road flare! Yeee Haaaa! We also had those rolls of caps that we'd hit with a hammer and ruin the sidewalk. We also had those snakes--which also ruined the sidewalk. I can remember being 10 years old and setting off paks of firecrackers that my neighbors would confiscate (being cops) and bring home and give us! They would set of Cherry bombs and M80's? (is that what they are called). They'd scare the crap out of us.

When I was 6 years old I used to go down the yard with my neighbor's who were practicing to be in the State Police. They had 22 pistols and holsters. They would set up cans and shoot them. They would let me shoot the gun too and I would hit all the cans too. Can you imagine any parent allowing that these days?



Irene

[Msjulier]

I score very high. I lived in the midwest growing up and the milk wasn't homogenized so the cream rose to the top and would freeze during the winter and we would eat it like ice cream-Think of the cholesteral.

loved the drive-in movies. Remember seeing the original Invaders from Mars and it was the scariest movie.

[Phalon]

I'm in the "Don't tell your age" category. Too late - a co-worker found out and has been teasing me endlessly that this is my last good year. He, of course, is slapping 50. The geezer.

Irene - your post, as well, as Halona's, brought back tons of memories.

[Lesa]

This thing put me in the "Don't tell your age" category, but I'm only 32.

[Halona]

OMGs.. Irene ..I remember those things too that you mentioned...esp the mosquito spray truck and we played in that...geez