Born in 1939. Older than dirt! I remember kerosene lamps, a wood-fired cookstove, roasting ears of corn in the oven overnight before shelling it and having it ground for corn meal, butchering a steer and several hogs for the winter larder, the smokehouse with sausage and hams and bolognas being smoked, a two-hole outhouse because no indoor plumbing or electricity until 1947, cap pistols with roll caps, hightop shoes with a little pocket on the side for a pen knife, cars with suicide doors, farming with two teams of horses and a team of mules, a push lawnmower with no engine on it, a big old floor model battery radio and listening to The Lone Ranger, and The Great Gildersleeve, Life with Riley, Inner-sanctum, The Grand Ol’ Opry, Baby Snooks, etc., coming home from a one-room schoolhouse in the afternoon and Mom ironing while listening to Just Plain Bill, and Porcia Faces Life, and Ma Perkins, etc. on the radio, going small game hunting when there actually were a lot of ringnecks, rabbits and squirrels around, trapping for skunks, muskrats, etc, and skinning them and selling the hides, going to the hatchery and getting several hundred baby chicks to raise for laying hens and for Sunday dinners, playing “ante over the shanty” by throwing a sponge rubber ball back and forth over the schoolhouse roof, listening to the local brass band at a Saturday evening Sunday School picnic, walking off into the dusk holding hands with a girlfriend and stealing an occasional smooch. Those were the days!
"...cap pistols with roll caps..." Hehehe...I know I'm not the only one out there who would take the entire roll, put it on the sidewalk and drop a brick on it to make the whole roll explode!
It was loud enough to make your ears ring, but it sure went through a box of caps fast!
I can almost remember the narrow white box with red writing on the outside that held four or five rolls.
And, of course...toy guns. That your parents would buy for you. This was the most amazing toy gun I had...
Now, parents would call the police if they saw you with that. And the police might shoot you when they saw you themselves.