Blogging Melodrama

Do You Remember?

Boy this is a memory flogger for all us old farts that actually remember all this stuff; like me.  LOL   Do You Remember???
Sit back, relax, read, and for heaven’s sake smile. It will kind of remind you to stop and smell the roses of life, and to give thanks to God for life and memories.  Your memories may be quite different from these, but one day, you will reminisce your good old days… today.

DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN...? All the girls had ugly gym uniforms?  

They were heavy and clunky, but we didn’t care, cause we all hated gym then anyway.It took five minutes for the TV warm up?  

Ours was the size of a small chest freezer with a tiny 6-inch screen in the center and several knobs in front below the screen.  We called it the redwood stump with the big knothole in it.  Ah…and everything was in living black and white.

Nearly everyone's Mom was at home when the kids got home from school?  

Mine took in laundry, ironing, and did sewing and mending for everyone.  She also made special Irish-lace trimmed hankies and sold them at the town beauty shop.  Another way mom made money and still stayed home for us kids; she grew African violets for the local nursery.  This was all done from home; because she didn’t need a business license to make some extra money from her own skills like today.Nobody owned a purebred dog?  

Oh yes they did, my grandfather ran a string of pedigree beagles in competition and one of my uncles had pedigreed standard bull dogs.  I even had a pedigreed collie that could have given Lassie a run for the money in shows if it weren’t for 1 flaw in her markings; she had 2 black hairs in her beautiful white ruff main around her neck.

When a quarter was a decent allowance?  

Nah! It never was, but we didn’t care because the storeowners treated us to candy and gum; because they liked us and we didn’t vandalize their stores.  We would never have dreamed of defacing someone’s property…. our parents would have killed us.  You'd reach into a muddy gutter for a penny?  

Yep! And for a bus token too, they were worth five cents cash in Canton, Ohio when I was a kid.  That’s way better than a penny. Your Mom wore nylons that came in two pieces?  

Only on Sundays to Church or to School functions; concerts, PTA etc.All your male teachers wore neckties and female teachers had their hair done every day and wore high heels?  

They could have been poster parents for the Ivy League any day of the week.  Talk about intimidating…. whew!  Ever watch the Christmas movie “A Christmas Story”?  That’s when I was a kid.


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?  

Ah! But sadly that was before the oil companies and the drug manufacturers owned our government.  Now that’s the good old days!Laundry detergent had free glasses, dishes or towels hidden inside the box?  

Ya, and they had their factories in the United States. It was considered a great privilege to be taken out to dinner at a real restaurant with your parents?  

We only went out on special occasions, usually on payday.  We went to get groceries and got shrimp baskets and ice cream for dinner at a local restaurant.  Man that was living.  The shrimp were larger than that tiny stuff you get now days too.  The ones we got could have passed for a chicken leg.They threatened to keep kids back a grade if they failed. . And they did?  

Ya, damn it….I was one of them.  I was held back for being 2 points below passing.  Passing was 70 and I got 68 in English in the 8th grade.  All my grades averaged out together were well over the 70 for the year, but because I had one grade below the 70 I was held back that year.  Sucked.

When a 57 Chevy was everyone's dream car...to cruise, peel out, lay rubber or watch submarine races, and people went steady?  

Not at my house.  We had a 57 T-Bird…titty-pink with port holes on the sides..  Boy do I have some memories of cruising in that baby.  Mmmmmmm MMMMMmmmm
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?  Not on the cars or our houses…No one would bother anything.  Lying on your back in the grass with your friends and saying things like, "That cloud looks like a.."   We still do that.

And playing baseball with no adults to help kids with the rules of the game?  
Or any other game for that matter, like kick the can and red rover and statue and stick ball and our version of football, volley ball and basket ball.Stuff from the store came without safety caps and hermetic seals because no one had yet tried to poison a perfect stranger?  We would have wondered why the manufacturer didn’t want us to get into it.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?

Got that right, the kids now days would have to learn to be kids first instead of rushing into being adults with sex and violence as their every day life.

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 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? How about summers filled with bike rides, baseball games, Hula Hoops, bowling and visits to the pool, and eating Kool-Aid powder with sugar.  Or how about shoving your gum into the sugar bowl so it would have a sweet flavor the next morning when you’d dig it out from the bottom.  I got a few whacks for that one, but it never stopped me.  LOL

I am sharing this with you today because I got hit with a double dog dare. To remember what a double dog dare is, read on. 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 buying at the candy store for a penny or 3 cents?
Penny candyCandy cigarettes Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside
These were all a nickel:Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles
Coffee shops with tableside jukeboxes Blackjack, Clove and Teaberry chewing gum
5 cent packs of baseball cards - with that awful pink slab of bubble gum
Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers (Now known as pogs)Newsreels before the movie (Movie tone News)
F. Fliers (I had a Western Flyer from the Western Auto Store.)
35 cent a gallon gasoline Jiffy Pop popcorn
Telephone numbers with a word prefix...(Raymond 4-601). (My first telephone number when I was a kid was 273-R)Party lines (Ya, what a pain in the butt; nib shit neighbors eavesdropping) Home made potato guns, sling shots, whistles, drums, carved toys and rubber band tanks made from empty spools of thread.
Peashooters Howdy Doody 45 RPM records (78’s)S&H Green Stamps Hi-Fi's
Wind up record players with the extra center shaft for 45’sMetal ice cubes trays with levers Mimeograph paper Beanie and Cecil Roller-skate keys
Sock hopsCork popguns Drive-ins
Snake dancesStudebakers, Model T’s
Trundle seats
Tinkers
Junk men who came around collecting junk.Washtub wringers The Fuller Brush Man Reel-To-Reel tape recorders
8-track tapes
view findersTinkertoys Erector Sets
Tonka trucksThe Fort Apache Play Set Lincoln Logs 15 cent McDonald hamburgers
Soda Fountains and Ice cream stores were where everyone met after school.   Going “eeny-meeny-miney-moe” made decisions? Remember when mistakes were corrected by simply exclaiming "Do Over!"? "A race issue,” meant arguing about who ran the fastest? Catching the fireflies could happily occupy an entire evening?  Squishing them on fingers and wrists for jewelry and filling fruit jars for lanterns.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? In Ohio it had to be a blizzard for me to not have to go to school.  Country kids were excused but the town kids had to attend.  We didn’t have extra make up days; you did the work for the days you missed and got graded on it or got held back.  We also had to pay for all our supplies, books and anything else we needed for school.  There weren’t any freebies.Saturday morning cartoons weren't 30-minute commercials for action figures? TV was live, so anyone that made a mistake, you got to see it right then.  If you missed something it was because there was something more fun to do somewhere else to waste your time in front of that stupid box.  The radio had better stories to listen to at night.  G-men, Fibber McGee and Molly, George Burns and Gracy Allen, The Lone Ranger, The Shaddow, Gene Autry, Jack Benny, Red Skelton, Mystery Theatre and many more."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? Playing canasta caused war at my house.  We played a lot of euchre.
Baseball cards in the spokes transformed any bike into a motorcycle?  And sticks shoved in the spokes made the rider shoot out over the handlebars.Taking drugs meant orange-flavored chewable aspirin? Not at our house…it meant getting a shot from the doctor.Water balloons were the ultimate weapons? Still areIf you can remember most or all of these, then you have lived!!!!!!! Now if anyone needs a break from  "grown-up" living, make a list of things you can remember that brings you the joy and carefree thinking of childhood.  Cause that’s what life is all about!  I double-dog-dare-ya!

posted by Jan myrz @ 5:49 PM