Old? yep, looks like it

[kenai]

This one hit home for me. 24 out of 25
Older than 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 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.

Don't forget to pass this along!!
Especially to all your really OLD friends....

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."

[skein]

Dang, I got all 25 of 'em. As they say, been there, done that.

You know, bicycles were slow in those days but they didn't give you a crick in the neck and your .... uh .... well, you could walk after you rode one a while.

And how many times have you swerved your car accidently because you had to take one hand off the wheel to dim the lights.

We all chewed the wax from those little imitation coke bottles, but it wasn't very good.

What fun we had back then! :grin:

Skein

[lost_sailor]

Dang, I got a 16. So close.

Actually I came in right after they phone company stopped using the prefix words - "EMpire4-4806" - but people still used them.

And I never HAD PF Flyers ... so I couldn't run faster and jump higher.

Definitely not Howdy Doody old!

[Old Coot]

And on hot days the butch wax would melt and run down your forehead while your flattop went to heck.

Oh yeah - mine was EMpire 4-9292!

[blacktail]

I remember 10, so I guess I'm not too old!

Mike

[Thumper]

Argghhh. 25 for 25....... :depressed:

[treegolfer]

Happy to report that my long term memory is working pretty good today, as all 25 brought back memories. My grandkids keep telling me that I can't remember anything, but they must be just giving papa a bad time! It would be nice though if they would wear name tags with BIG writing to refresh my memory as to who's who.

treegolfer

[fortywinks]

Yes, indeed. 100% - older than dirt. The Shadow knows........., the Green Hornet too.

[Straydog]

Oh mmmmaaaannn.......... 25 for 25.

Our neighbors had a wringer washer and the "lady" of the house was kind of a mouthy, loud old gal. Every once in a while we would hear her yelling and dad would say "sounds like Mrs. Smith got her --- in the wringer again!" :shocked:

I was a fat kid and sweat alot anyway. The butch wax would melt and get my eyes! Man that stung!

The colored film over the TV really brought back memories! My Grandma swore by it. My Grandpa swore at it.

I still have a lot of 78 and 45 records that were my folks'.

One day recently I told my youngest she had to be careful with our CD' because they would scratch like a record. She looked at me and asked "what's a record?"



[ 10-24-2003, 10:38 PM: Message edited by: Straydog ]

[crabbait]

Got 'em all but they left some out. What about:

Burma Shave
Triple headers at the Drive-in
Vitalis
Mitchell 300s
Ipana
Beaman's Gum
Nash Rambler
Willy's Jeep

We had serials that taught us that good is good and bad always ends bad. There was:
The Lone Ranger
Hopalong Cassidy
Roy Rogers
Rin Tin Tin
Flika
Fury
Sky King
Lassie

There was really only one movie actor: John Wayne
One actress, too: Maureen O'Hara (what a woman)

Even mom and dad watched westerns:
Maverick
Wagon Train
Gunsmoke
Cheyenne

Now it's time to say goodbye,
To all our company....

EMpire 4-7150

[Straydog]

How about Father Knows Best and the Jack Benny show......... "Rochester!!!"

Jack Parr, Jackie Gleason and To Tell the Truth.....

Didn't need constant sex, drugs and rock and roll to be entertaining.

I remember when the whole family gathered on Sunday evening watch the Ed Sullivan show. I can still see him introducing the Beatles.....

[crabbait]

Red Skelton...and may God bless!

[ 10-25-2003, 12:22 AM: Message edited by: crabbait ]

[1pump]

I got 18 on the list, and BTW, crabbait, I actually have a Mitchell 300.

Those metal ice cube trays with the lever were enough to drive anybody insane. I used to get so P.O.'d trying to work those pieces of crap. I must have destroyed a hundred of them. [img]graemlins/eek13.gif[/img]

[Thumper]

Do you remember having the ice man bringing a 50 pound block to your cabin in Seaside?

Or the coal bin being filled at your house?

Or shooting your .22 off the back porch in the city?

Or hunting bandtails inside the city limits of Nehalem?

Or playing "Annie-Annie Over"?

Or catching one steelhead after another at Pete and Ruth Myerjergen's on the North Fork Nehalem?

Do you still have your folk's WWII ration books?

Did you love the hill-holder on your 1949 Studebaker? And cuss having to replace the fuel filter each winter on it?

Did you watch the flood waters pouring into Vanport?

Or just miss gittin' killed by a falling tree in the Columbus Day Storm?

Were you terrified by the big earthquake of 1949?

Did you love the big snowfall of 1949?

And did you swim naked with the nurses the warm summer nights of 1959? (Man! That one just won't go away :tongue: )

[ 10-25-2003, 06:50 AM: Message edited by: Thumper ]

[Straydog]

This is too much fun!!

Wonder what would happen if the kids today did as my buddies and I did....... ride our bikes with a shotgun across the handle bars on our way to hunt pheasants and quail. The Greyhound bus depot and and industrial park now sit on our favorite hunting grounds. When we got older, the old Mod. 94 30-30's hung on the gun rack of my buddies pickup so we could get an evening hunt in after school.

I didn't have a gun rack in my '55 Chevy, but he didn't have a 4 track stereo in his pickup.

Those ice cube trays were too much! :smile: Molases on homemade bread as a "treat". (sure way to ruin good bread......!) :depressed: Now, Grandma's home made donuts were a much different story!

I remember when Payless Drugs started displaying condoms in public view rather than hidden behind the counter. My dad boycotted Payless for a time over that one.

Who had the first Stingray bike in your neighborhood? Monkey hanger handle bars and banana seats!

Flatops, muscle shirts and "Devil With the Blue Dress On"....... That song ticked our parents off!

[ 10-25-2003, 08:55 AM: Message edited by: Straydog ]

[fishingchef]

It's hard to beleive that 4X is older then dirt but yupe.

I got my first tackle box with green stamps.

[Snapset]

If you drive east far enough and turn off the highway often enough, you will find the towns that still have Green Stamps signs, Enco signs on abandoned gas stations, and occasionally, Conoco pumps still pumping. I love to come into towns and see these signs. Reminds me of when I was a kid, and truth be told, it makes me want to move.

[AllThumz]

I wish you guys would stop it! I feel old enough as it is sometimes (the arthritis in my elbows and knees tells me that).

Don't forget Arthur Godfrey firing Julius LaRosa during one of his shows.

The Honeymooners
The Shadow and The Whistler on the radio ("Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows")

John

[Mad Mikey]

15 for me, some of em' just barely though.

Aaaahhhh......It's good to be young, sort of young anhways........

[1pump]

Or the coal bin being filled at your house?

<font size="2" face="verdana,arial,helvetica">Coal? In this part of the country? [img]graemlins/eek13.gif[/img]
My dad's from Cleveland, and spent a good part of his youth shoveling that crap. Better him than me.

Maybe some of you REALLY old fogies remember having furnaces in your house that burned sawdust, or wood chips, or hog fuel or whatever they called it. :whazzup:

[fishdog]

All 25 and a few more. Outhouse out back of the house , Pack water from the well to do dish's & to take a bath. I must really be older
then dirt.


Good fishin : Arch

[Smj]

Both my folks worked so grandma's is where I was before and after school. G-ma had the coal furnace and coal room with a hopper that sat afew feet from the furnace that had to be filled daily. You didn't want to let that furnace go out, as far as I knew it was a bear to get going again. Still can remember how I loved the smell of the coal room with it's blackened walls black dusty floors, and one little dim light in the middle of the ceiling. Remember "Klinkers" and the clawlike tool to remove them from the firebox?

G-ma had the ringer washer too, and two galvinized rinse tubs beside it, one for "blueing" whites and the other for every thing else. The old hose that hung off the wall to fill the washer and tubs, now that I think about it, must have been an old high pressure steam hose from the Butterfield mine my grandpa worked in, the mine ended up killing him too, some kind of lung and blood disease.

When I think back on some of the old things and activities of the past, I wish I had the stories and conversations from/with G-ma, as I sat there eating her special creamed chipped beef on broken fresh Wonder Bread and home made sweet pickles, on tape, or somehow preserved. All that's really left in my mind from those stories is that they were interesting.

Smj

Midvale Utah, Last of the '50s/first of the '60s.

[DipSeaDiver]

I'm not tellin'!!!!!

DipSeaDiver

[Silver Hilton]

I was feeling pretty old, but I only got 15. I feel better, now.

I do miss riding around on my bike after school, holding the shotgun across the handlebars, and nobody thinking it was odd or anything to be alarmed about.

[rojo]

Damn I'm old, got them all. Who remembers
set nets on Tillamook bay
being able to walk down the old wood tressel on top of the Barview jetty
Sause Bros. tugs in the bay at Taft.
flat head engines
Damn I'm old

[Wyndknot]

How can I remember all 25 and yet forget the name of someone I spoke to last week. I am firm believer that the reason time seems to go by
faster as we grow older is we can't remember what
the hell we did yesterday.
Here is a memory to stir the pot with, buying a
salmon that had been netted by an Indian standing
on a platform @ Celilo Falls before it disappeared.

[treegolfer]

How about driving in the Columbia gorge on the old highway because it was the only road into the gorge on the Oregon side. Or up the Santiam river without seeing Detroit Lake because the dam wasn't built yet. Or driving to Cove Palisades before Lake Billy Chinook was built and driving down on that narrow, twisting, gravel road to the Deschutes River.

treegolfer

[Paddlefish]

Dang! A perfect 25!

Lost-sailor, I think the "run a litle faster, jump a little higher" was actually Red Ball Jets.

We watched the first-ever Disneyland program on our first-ever television. "Fury, Sky King, and Hopalong Cassidy?" Sounds like Saturday morning at our house.

And then there was Winky Dink, the first-ever audience participation TV. You had to send off for your special clear plastic sheet, which stuck to the screen. Then you had to use your special black crayon to rescue Winky Dink when he got in trouble (quickly draw him a bridge or something.)

We knew Chris the milk truck driver by name and followed him down the street for the chance to grab a chunk of ice from his truck.

Mom never, to my knowledge, got stuck in the washer wringer and we had two clotheslines: one in the back yard and one in the basement.

When we went to watch the planes at the airport, the "big ones" were Braniff DC3s.

Dads taught their sons to polish their own shoes. (My 18-year-old doesn't even own a pair of shoes which require polish.)

Yep, I got my roller skates -- complete with key -- from Green Stamps (not those upstart Gold Bond stamps!) Years later, we'd take a skate apart and bolt both halves to the bottom of a board to build first generation skateboards.

T-shirts didn't have writing on them, and the brand names were small tags on the inside.

No cars had seat belts, and we kids basically LIVED in the back of the station wagon on cross-country trips.

And bicycle helmets??

The first McDonald's with its 15-cent burgers was amazing, but A & W still had the frosty mugs.

Postage stamps were purple, with Abe Lincoln on them, and cost 4 cents for decades, it seemed like.

Phone numbers with name prefixes? Nah, that was later. My phone number was a simple 58513. Grandma's was 2671, but there was no way to call long distance without an operator.

I guess the real proof of age, however, was when I heard one of my kids refer to the period of my childhood as "when the whole world was black and white." Based on all the pictures he'd seen, I guess it must have been. :smile:

[Thumper]

Man, Paddlefish, you really are old. I feel better now. :tongue:

[DAB]

Am I older than dirt,
Cooler Cuboards (spelling)
Wood burning cook stove
Out houses
Ice box that took a big block of ice
No running water in house
Exsposed electrical wires on Insulators nailed to the wall, rotary light switchs
Flat head engines 6cyl and V-8s Crank type Telephones.
And one place I lived as a kid we had coal oil lamps for light.
Makes me feel older than dirt.
D. A. Bench DAB

[jocose]

getting our first color television in .... mid 6os i think and being amazed at programs in living color...
peeing in a bucket on the back porch of my grandmothers house in gresham because she didnt have indoor plumbing until 1968.
wearing black high top converse shoes because there were no others.
smoking lucky strikes unfiltered behind the chicken coop...
hunting pheasants blocks from down town gresham.
playing on the dunes that were flattened when they put the south jetty on tillamook bay.
finding signs and remenants of the destroyed city that once was on the peninsula of tillamook bay..(what was that cities name?)
playing penny arcade games at rockaway oregon and really using pennies...

[Freakwater]

15......Sweet!
Go ahead......card me!

[jocose]

damn whipper snapper i got all 25 Freak and now ache all over... joco

[No Wishin Just Fishin]

Don't forget Uncle Miltie

[Freakwater]

Jocose,

Could just be my memory......Not what it used to be.

[corkyking]

Chesterfields - Lucky Strikes
Milkman - Iceman - Goodhumor icecream truck
wringer washers
We would walk 6 blocks on Saturday to watch TV at the neighbors.
Apple crate scooters.
When we moved to the San Juans they still had reef netters and crank phones

All 25 would make you at least 50 probably a little older.

You know we have been witness to an awful lot but I don't think we've seen as much as Gramma.

For sheer progress my Grandmother (i.e. our grandparents)has to have the the record. As a young girl she came from Ohio in a covered wagon and lived to see a man on the moon.

[Paddlefish]

Jocose,

Lucky Strikes? Then you must remember what LSMFT meant (and not the R-rated version that my teenage cousins taught me, something about "Loose straps mean floppy . . . something . . .)

And that "Atlantic City of the West" resort city which vanished was Bayocean.

[CAGEY]

World war 2 metal and rubber drives. Food rationing coupons, outdoor toilets with the old catalog, nickel ice cream cones, 5 cent bottle of pop, burn coal for heat and cooking, no running water, heavy quilts on the bed to keep from freezing to death. Yes i remember those days and dont care to ever experience them again.

[id. painter]

Got most of them ,, Good memories. But I feel like a kid still. id. p.

[jocose]

paddlefish its not just my fingers that are tired now days.. [img]graemlins/1zhelp.gif[/img] joco

[wannacatchem]

I got 24 of the 25 listed, plus some that others mentioned that weren't listed and I'm only 18! I just got a little gray before my time I guess

[Tanner]

Man, You guys are dinosaurs :grin:

Actually I can relate to 3,4,14,15,17,19,23

They aren't that old though cause I am only 37. :grin:

[ 10-29-2003, 04:05 PM: Message edited by: Tanner ]

[fish assassin]

I can still remember the folks phone number from when I was a
kid ... Cherry6-1496. I just can't remember what happened *yesterday*!! :grin: :grin:

-assAssin-