older than dirt

[weewillie]

'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 19.
It was, of course, black and white, and the station went off the air at midnight, after playing the national anthem and a poem about God; it came back on the air at about 6 a.m. and there was usually a locally produced news and farm show on, featuring local people.

I was 21 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.

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. There were no movie ratings because all movies were responsibly produced for everyone to enjoy viewing, without profanity or violence or most anything offensive.

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 on the telephone
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 o nly 3 channels [if you were fortunate])
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
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 some of the best parts of my life.

 

[DrEntropy]

yup... Dirt's my little sister.

 

[anthony7777]

weewillie, ill just say i remember too many of them,

 

[PAUL161]

Well, I remember them all! So what's that tell you. I remember laying on the floor listening to Boston Blackie, The Lone Ranger, The Thin Man, Amos & Andy, and many, many more on our big Philco radio. We didn't get a tv until 1949, the second in the area. TV came on at 6 in the evening and went off at midnight and we only had 3 stations, 3,6 and 10. Friday night was the fights and we had a house full of people. The men would gather around the tv and watch the fights and the women would be in the dining room gossiping, or something like that. I remember walking 3 miles to school, summer and winter and three miles back. Wasn't unusual, that was quite common back then. I could go on and on. Wow, did you bring back some memories. Some good and some not so good.

What I failed to mention was, the tv had a 3 foot square cabinet with doors on it and a 5 inch screen.

 

[14dna]

Thanks Willie;

I remember too much of that stuff.
This just gives my kids a reference to prove I'm older than dirt.

Dave

 

[tony barnhill]

Older than dirt here! Should we add other things to the list?

 

[Guest]

Growing up in New York,I still look for an air raid shelter when I hear a fire dept siren go off.Remember the soda machines that would actually mix the coke[syrup and selzer]in a paper cup? I sometimes have faint memories of when the dirt was still molten magma.

 

[GregW]

I'm only 42 and I remember 12 items on that list. Puts me in the "don't tell my age" category. (Guess I screwed that up)

 

[TR6oldtimer]

Ah, I remember, I remem, I think I rem, I forgot....

I remember all those and the air chiller hanging out of the passenger side window. Six volt electrical systems on cars. I remember reading Pilot Jack Knight (still have one of the books), tether ball, pickup sticks, erector set, Daisey BB gun, flex-i-flier (the one with wheels) I remember when I knew all the names of the neighbors, and if I did something wrong, my parents heard about it. I remember my first Big Wheels (an old trike with the frame turn upside down). I remember when the dishwasher was me, and the dish drier my sister.

I remember when we first looked to family, then community and church for support and assistance.

 

[MGjoc]

Remember the soda fountains??? We had two in our home town in Kansas. I also remember that my brothers and I each got a new pair of shoe at the start of each school year and that had to carry us thru until the next year. And, we got to look at our own toes thru the new x-ray machine at the shoe store. My brother and I got a quarter a week for allowance which was enough to get us into the saturday afternoon matinee with enough left for a snack. My days as a youngster were very good.

Cheers - Dennis

 

[Sherlock]

I remember one, but then I'm a young 'un still...

But reading through that, it almost makes me yearn for a simpler time of life, not to say that things were necessarily easier, I just think that we make life far more complex these days and I'm not entirely comfortable with all of it...

 

[Darwin]

I remember those day. The drug store in our town had a soda fountain and counter with those ugly red metallic plastic seats on them. The soda fountain was closed many years ago and the drug store closed last month. There is a rumor going around that one of the owner's grandkids is going to reopen the place as a 50's style hamburger joint and soda shop. I only hope it happens. I miss the good old days. $9 for a movie and $4 for a box of popcorn? Not for me.

 

[tomshobby]

I also remember them all. I also remember traveling before there were Interstate highways. And air travel when people dresses up and the airlines acted like they really appreciated your business.

 

[DrEntropy]

TWA tri-tails!!!! :laugh:

 

[TRDejaVu]

..... Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.


And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they won't believe you.

 

[Guest]

You left the parts out about Dad beating you with broken whiskey bottles and living in a septic tank. Sincerely M.Python

 

[TRDejaVu]

Septic tank, luxury.....

 

[Guest]

Still hooked up,though.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the laugh.We're getting another 14 inches of snow.I needed it.

 

[tony barnhill]

Tom Mix & Hopalong Cassidy & other cowboy Saturday morning serials at the movie theater...10-cents to get in