Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Brought to You by Robert-- Are you seriously old? I seem to be!


    
   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. 
My parents never drove me to school. 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 never had a telephone in my room.The only phone 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. He had to get up at 6AM every morning.
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.  
OK here is the fun part of the Q & A
Older Than Dirt Quiz: 
 Count all the ones that you remember,
        not the ones you were told about. 
 Ratings at the bottom.  
 
1. Candy  cigarettes
2. Coffee shops with tableside juke boxes  
3. Home milk delivery in glass bottles  
 4. Party lines on the telephone
5. Newsreels before the movie  
6. 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 only 3 channels  [if you were  fortunate])
7. Peashooters  
8. Howdy Doody 
9. 45 RPM records  
10. Hi-fi's
11. Metal ice trays with lever 
12. Blue  flashbulbs
13. Cork  popguns 
14. Studebakers
15. Wash tub wringers
OK! no one will be looking over your shoulder, how did you do???
If  you remembered 0-3 = You're still young
If  you remembered 3-6 = You are getting older 
If you remembered 7-10  = Don't tell  your age
If you remembered 11-15 =You're older than dirt!  
 
I might be older than dirt but those memories are some of the best parts of my life.
Don't forget to pass this along!!
Especially to all your really OLD friends....  

7 comments:

  1. Thanks for the laughter too funny. I'm still smiling. I will pass it along to a couple of my OLD and good friends.

    jmesparza821@gmail.com

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  2. Ahh! I am getting older since I knew personally about 4 of those things listed. I don't want to be "getting older"! It made me smile to see metal ice cube tray with the lever -- my Mom had those in her freezer and boy was it hard to get those cubes out!

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  3. Haha! This really is funny, but also very true. Life was so much simpler then. I wish we could go back to having television channels that switched off at midnight then we'd have no option but to sleep early. It would also be nice not to have so much of violence and profanity in our TV shows and movies. The good ol' days...

    sarah.setar@gmail.com

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  4. These are great - ty for the smile :)! LOL will be passing on.

    Pam S

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  5. Hahaha that was hilarious and it's still amazing how so many things have changed. It used to be so simple.

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  6. Haha... this is so much fun. I'm going to pass this on to some older friends of mine!!

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  7. Cute post. I remembered only 8 items on your list -- but I still feel older than dirt.
    --Vonda
    2much2reid {at} comcast {dot} net

    ReplyDelete

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