OT for the Old Folks on the Board

[Darwin]

A friend sent this to me, and I got the full 25 points in the quiz at the end:
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"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 bottles
5. Coffee shops with tableside jukeboxes
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.

[Ailin]

Just in to the dirt with 16.

[Nanohedron]

Good Lord, I'd forgotten all that!

I prefer the word "superannuated".

[jim stone]

Air was clean; sex was dirty.

[antstastegood]

Can I be an honorary old person?

My elementary school used a mimeograph as of the mid-1990s, I've been told about almost everything on that list, and people used to say I was "born 40" because of my personality. (I'm also in the process of fixing up a pretty old typewriter.)

[Nanohedron]

Can I be an honorary old person?

Sure. Can I be an honorary young person?

[burnsbyrne]

I scored 23. I'm an old f*rt!

[emmline]

14. Guess that means I won't tell anybody.

[Lawrence]

Way older than dirt at 23 of 25.

I probably don't remember telephone numbers with word prefixes because my home town was too small to need them. I do remember when our phone number was only 4 digits. So, maybe I qualify for 24 of 25. I don't remember newsreels, but we didn't go to a lot of movies when I was a kid.

[susnfx]

I remember skate keys very well - they didn't do us an awfully lot of good since the only places we could skate in our little town were concrete driveways (there were no sidewalks in residential areas) or the sidewalk "downtown" - as I recall, it ran in front of the bank and maybe the stores on each side of it.

There was no such thing as school lunch - we all walked home and back during our lunch break. If we were very lucky and could scrounge up the cash, we could "eat downtown" where in the restaurant we could get a hamburger with fries for 50 cents and a drink (one size only - in a glass) for 10 cents.

Our movie house ran an early show and a late show - kids 25 cents, adults 50 cents. Movies weren't rated, but if they were, they would have all been G. The only snack was popcorn that was shipped to the theater in huge boxes already popped and dumped into the heating machine. It was served in a small paper bag - one size only - for 10 cents.

Lawrence - your post just reminded me - we only dialed four numbers too. And if the electricity went out, we could dial the operator and ask her what time it was. I imagine she just looked at her watch and then she'd tell us - we always assumed she was right and set our clocks.

Susan

[MarkB]

I've made it to geezer status, also "what is air conditioning" (open or close the window depending on season), horse drawn milkwagons, ice trucks, our first refrigerator, first TV, permenant press shirts and sheets, the Tupperware products. Pinky Lee, and Howdy Dowdy, Soupy Sales, My Friend Flicka, Sky King, and on and on

MarkB

[Wombat]

I think I'd have scored more (better?) if I were American. I'm close to dirt as it is.

I wonder how much of this stuff is culture specific? I remember reading recently an article by an American who had read an interview with the Beatles in which one said that, as a child, what he'd wanted more than anything else was a Meccano set. The author claimed that none of his friends knew what a Meccano set was, and he still didn't. I was, incredulous.

[vomitbunny]

17. But I came from a small town in the sticks, so my score is probably inflated a notch or two.

[IDAwHOa]

17 of 25 and I am 45.

I remember skate keys too. I also remember a song about brand new roller skates and a skate key!!!

[Jack]

I don't even have 20 years under my (pleather) belt, yet:

Neither of my parents never had a credit card

I didn't have running water or phone till I was 15..

I never ate out. Literally years went by between times we got to eat out.

I remember a lot of those things on the list, too.

I think it depends where you grow up. I grew up in rural West Virginia, where it was about 1950. It was 1972 last time I checked.