Posted on 07/31/2017 5:36:51 AM PDT by sodpoodle
I think you'll enjoy this. Whoever wrote it could have been my next door neighbor because it totally described my childhood to a 'T.'
Black and White
Black and White
(Under age 45? You won't understand)
------------------------------------------------ You could hardly see for all the snow,
----------------------------------------- Spread the rabbit ears as far as they go.
------------------------------------- 'Good Night, David.
Good Night, Chet.'
--------------------------------------------
My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning.
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My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter and I used to eat it raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in ice- pack coolers, but I can't remember getting E.coli.
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Almost all of us would
Have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then.
The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.
We all took gym, not PE... and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now.
Flunking gym was not an option... Even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym.
Speaking of school, we all said prayers and sang the national anthem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention.
We must have had horribly damaged psyches. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.
I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself.
I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations
Oh yeah... And where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!
We played 'king of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of Mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it didn't sting like iodine did) and then we got our butt spanked.
Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $99 bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.
We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either; because if we did we got our butt spanked there and then we got our butt spanked again when we got home.
I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop, just before he fell off.
Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house.
Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a jerk. It was a neighborhood run amuck.
To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family.
How could we possibly have known that?
We needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes.
We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac!
How did we ever survive?
LOVE TO ALL OF US WHO SHARED THIS ERA; AND TO ALL WHO DIDN'T, SORRY FOR WHAT YOU MISSED. I WOULDN'T TRADE IT FOR ANYTHING!
Pass this to someone and remember that life's most simple pleasures are very often the best.
Screaming all the way down Ridgecrest on a flexi-flyer and shooting across Ponce de Leon Ave. because the only brakes you had were steel tabs that rubbed on the front wheels.
I'm still here, just suffering a little from dain bramage... I mean brain damage.
;(
I rode a bike and didn’t wear a helmet or knee and elbow pads!!!! *GASP*
14 years old. Family vacation. West texas. We ran out of gas. My dad has to stay with car and rest of family. So he tells me (14!) to hitch hike into the next town and get help. I did!
A lot of people want to live in a totally safe society where nothing bad ever happens and no one ever gets sick and no one ever dies. These people try to expand government in their quest to build that utopia.
Personally, I really don’t desire a safe society. We are all going to die. Bad stuff will always happen. I would trust in personal responsibility and let the chips fall where they may.
We played “Army” with BB guns and firecrackers (grenades)...
(The BB guns was kinda stupid)
You were expendable.
Riding bikes as a group to THE HILL.
It makes the pile of gravel look like an ant hill. It was a huge pile of dirt from the state highway crew who were building a freeway.
The path down the hill was steep and treacherous, a fall would result in horrific road rash and a long painful ride home.
I don’t remember a trip to the ER from that. I think the only ER trip was when I was running past a tree at night and caught my head on a low branch. Lots of blood. I still have the scar on my bald head 40 years later.
“We rode our bikes through the fog being dispensed by the truck spraying for mosquitoes!”
Hey, I remember doing that! And there were no problems as a result. I even remember when We rode our bikes through the fog being dispensed by the truck spraying for mosquitoes! Good times...
I have a friend who at 14 took a 6-8 week bicycle tour with his 16 year old brother and a buddy.
His mom told him he had to go to watch over his older brother
Every kid in our neighborhood had a toy gun. We played cops and robbers, cowboys and indians, soldiers etc.
We pointed them at each other and shot and you’d pretend to die if you got hit and you never heard of a school shooting
or a kid running around with an actual gun.
2, 5, 7, 9 and 11.
Loaded guns were clearly NOT allowed in classrooms. (They had to be unloaded, and left in the cloak room.)
During winter in Buffalo, we would take a ladder (a wooden one!) climb onto the garage roof and jump into the 4 foot drifts after a heavy snowfall.
Our school superintendent was an ex-FBI agent! Needless to say, one (both teachers and students) rarely got by with anything disruptive. It was all about respect and learning. And, respect was not just during school time it was all the time!
Our sheriff was 6;6” and an ex Texas ranger!
We did not lock our doors unless we left on vacation.
95% went to church on Sunday and you could not buy beer or wine on Sundays or shop at the malls/retail stores. It was A DAY OFF given by God to REST!
The football boys gym was baling hay during the summer! And, those guys are still strong in their 70’s!
Kids fought to get the few summer jobs at local businesses.
Mom made all our dresses. We had 5 each, one for each day of the week for school. By the end of the season they were faded. We also had to iron them.
The bed had to be made before we left the front door every day.
We walked to school, back and forth at lunch and home in the afternoon. Almost 4 blocks each way.
Mom’s had to call their kids home several times a day as we wanted to play with the neighbors as much as possible.
TV shows were heartwarming and funny.
We blessed God and He blessed Texas and America!!!!! AMEN!
Thanks for the post . . .I remember it well. The “good ole days” were just that. . .GOOD.
We ran around the neighborhood all day without adult supervision and when thirsty, we drank straight from the faucet behind the bushes next to the front door.
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