Do you remember??

[Bob Pasternak]

Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning.
My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat it raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in ice pack coolers, but I can't remember getting e.coli
Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then.
The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.
We all took gym, not PE.. and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now.
Flunking gym was not an option... even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym.
Speaking of school, we all said prayers and sang the national anthem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention.
We must have had horribly damaged psyches. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.
I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself.
I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations.
Oh yeah... and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!
We played 'king of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48 -cent bottle of Mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it didn't sting like iodine did) and then we got our butt spanked.
Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.
We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either because if we did, we got our butt spanked there and then we got butt spanked again when we got home.
I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop, just before he fell off. Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house. Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof It was a neighborhood run amuck.
To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. Ho! we could we possibly have known that?
We needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes? We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac! How did we ever survive?

LOVE TO ALL OF US WHO SHARED THIS ERA, AND TO ALL WHO DIDN'T- SORRY FOR WHAT YOU MISSED. I WOULDN'T TRADE IT FOR ANYTHING.

[Sherri48]

Remember When.....
The girls had ugly gym uniforms?
It took five minutes for the TV warm up
Nearly everyone's Mom was at home when the kids got home from school?
Nobody owned a purebred dog?
When a quarter was a decent allowance?
You'd reach into a muddy gutter for a penny?
Your Mom wore nylons that came in two pieces?
All your male teachers wore neckties and female teachers had
their hair done every day and wore high heels?
You got your windshield cleaned, oil checked, and gas pumped,
without asking, all for free, every time?
And you didn't pay for air? And, you got trading stamps to boot?
Laundry detergent had free glasses, dishes or towels hidden inside the box?
It was considered a great privilege to be taken out to dinner
at a real restaurant with your parents?
They threatened to keep kids back a grade if they failed. . ...and they did?
When a 55 Chevy was everyone's dream car...to cruise,
peel out, lay rubber or watch submarine races, and people went steady?
No one ever asked where the car keys were
because they were always in the car,
in the ignition, and the doors were never locked?
Lying on your back in the grass with your friends
and saying things like, "That cloud looks like a ..."
and playing baseball with no adults to help kids with the rules of the game?
Stuff from the store came without safety caps and hermetic seals
because no one had yet tried to poison a perfect stranger?
And with all our progress, don't you just wish, just once,
you could slip back in time and savor the slower pace,
and share it with the children of today?
When being sent to the principal's office was nothing
compared to the fate that awaited the student at home?
Basically we were in fear for our lives,
but it wasn't because of drive-by shootings, drugs, gangs, etc.
Our parents and grandparents were a much bigger threat!
But we survived because their love was greater than the threat.
Do you still remember
Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, Laurel and Hardy,
Howdy Doody and the Peanut Gallery,
the Lone Ranger, The Shadow Knows,
Nellie Bell, Roy and Dale, Trigger and Buttermilk.
As well as summers filled with bike rides, baseball games,
Hula Hoops, bowling and visits to the pool,
and eating Kool-Aid powder with sugar.
Didn't that feel good, just to go back and say, "Yeah, I remember that"?
I am sharing this with you today
because it ended with a double dog dare to pass it on.
To remember what a double dog dare is, read on.
And remember that the perfect age is somewhere between
old enough to know better and too young to care.
How many of these do you remember?
Candy cigarettes
Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside
Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles
Coffee shops with tableside jukeboxes
Blackjack, Clove and Teaberry chewing gum
Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers
Newsreels before the movie
P.F. Fliers
Telephone numbers with a word prefix....(Raymond 4-601).
Party lines
Peashooters
Howdy Doody
45 RPM records
Green Stamps
Hi-Fi's
Metal ice cubes trays with levers
Mimeograph paper
Beanie and Cecil
Roller-skate keys
Cork pop guns
Drive ins
Studebakers
Washtub wringers
The Fuller Brush Man
Reel-To-Reel tape recorders
Tinkertoys
Erector Sets
The Fort Apache Play Set
Lincoln Logs
15 cent McDonald hamburgers
5 cent packs of baseball cards -
with that awful pink slab of bubble gum
Penny candy
35 cent a gallon gasoline
Jiffy Pop popcorn
Do you remember a time when...
Decisions were made by going "eeny-meeny-miney-moe"?
Mistakes were corrected by simply exclaiming, "Do Over!"?
"Race issue" meant arguing about who ran the fastest?
Catching the fireflies could happily occupy an entire evening?
It wasn't odd to have two or three "Best Friends"?
The worst thing you could catch from the opposite sex was "cooties"?
Having a weapon in school meant being caught with a slingshot?
A foot of snow was a dream come true?
Saturday morning cartoons weren't 30-minute commercials for action figures?
"Oly-oly-oxen-free" made perfect sense?
Spinning around, getting dizzy, and falling down was cause for giggles?
The worst embarrassment was being picked last for a team?
War was a card game?
Baseball cards in the spokes transformed any bike into a motorcycle?
Taking drugs meant orange-flavored chewable aspirin?
Water balloons were the ultimate weapon?
Ahhhhh...the good old days!!!!....If you can remember most or all of these, then you have lived!!!!!!!

[ARJ]

That was a wonderful time indeed. It really is too bad that a lot of folks missed out on it! The late 40's & '50's were great IMHO.

[bncinwv]

Better yet, 35 cent a gallon gasoline and with a minimum 8 gallon purchase they actually gave you a glass that you could assemble into a set!!! Holy cow, maybe we shouldn't admit to remembering these things, or should we admit to it, print them out and show the younger generation?????? My daughters still don't belive me when I explain party lines to them!!!!
Bingo

[simonsrf]

My 20 year old son can't imagine not having a microwave!

Fortunately, I remember all of them.

Thanks for those terrific memories

[dscott]

WOW, those were the days,great memories.

[Parrothead]

Yep, remember them all plus a few more. Like the path to that little building out back. While in Kansas a couple of weeks ago I visited my farm where I grew up. And also our family cemetery. We did not have running water. My grandparents did not have electricity until 1950. We listened to the radio there powered by car batteries. Remember Fibber McGee and Molly, Inter Sanctum, The Lone Ranger, etc. on the radio. Canned goods came from the basement not the grocery store. Did anyone ever have egg on a paper? Brown paper from the store layed on a wood stove and an egg scrambled on the paper, no butter or oil needed. Sugar cookies straight out of the wood stove oven. Thick cream on your cereal right from the milk jug. Yes, those were the days. Maybe these things are part of what makes our forum so great, many of us are from that era.
Happy trails........................

[bncinwv]

Wow Sue,
Talk about bringing a memory back, I had not thought about an outhouse in a long time. Now there is something to tell the kids, there is no comparison to January in the mountains of WV at the grandparents and having to walk up the path to do anything on a seat that always seemed to be at least 30 degrees colder than the 10 degree temperatures outside. Now you got me shivering!!!!!!!!
HA HA,
Bingo

[richfaa]

25 cents got you 2 hot dogs with everything and a coke. Pin ball machine cost 5 cents to play..and it paid off. Listening to Rosie Roswell broadcasting Pittsburgh Pirates baseball games.. from a ticker tape. Our private phone number was 4446 and when you picked it up a person said...number please. Spending a entire day playing..mumbley peg. I was six years old and walked to school..by my self....Blackouts..The coalman and the iceman the ragman..Streetcars,,the ones with cow catchers on the front.
The Harmonicats...peg o my heart...gold stars in windows. There were many families that did not and never did own a car.
Listening to the Joe Louis..Bill Con fight on the radio with my Dad.. I was 5 years old..I remember// My Mom crying and my Dad swearing, in Italian, because something had happened at a place called Pearl Harbor..her kid brother was there.

We are growing so old..

[scductman]

We had no running water or electic till I was 8 and still remember the good times. It is good to go back to that time.

[clutch]

A lot of good memories there. Would I want to go back?? Naaa

[rogersuemegan]

Wow, I do remember most of these things, also did not have indoor plumbing until I was 8, first TV at the age of 9, and we had "chores" as we lived on a dairy farm. We could go out and eat out of the garden, we went "swimming" in the cow, water tank while the cows were drinking the water. Also the 5 cent A & W root beers with free "baby beers". Our parents didn't worry about where we were and who we were with, as they knew all the neighbors and looked out for each others kids! When we said we were bored, it didn't take long for a long list of things to do was given to us, not to choose from but things that we were expected to do. Our parents did not ask us what we wanted for dinner, or when we wanted to go to bed.... we did what we were told to do or else.... Mom warned once and only once, then came the punishment, which helped us to remember to do it right the first time. Our parents had time for us, to read to us, to play outside with us, to teach us right from wrong, and I swear they had eyes in the back of their heads as they ALWAYS knew when we were doing something wrong.. I just wish my grandkids had it as good as we did back in the 40's and 50's. Our parents stayed married, and we never had to explain how many step- parents and brothers and sisters we had. I would not change a single day of my childhood for even one day of todays world as a child.

[bullroc3]

I still have a pair of plastic orange horse shoes that Gulf was giving away with a fill-up. Would love some of that extra kick today!!