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.
Three of us walking miles to the country school were offered a ride in a farmer’s trailer. I slipped getting in just as he began driving. Fell flat on my face - bleeding and rocks stuck in my skin. Farmer still took us to school(no phones, so the farmer must have found out where we lived from the teacher and brought my mom to the school). Mother was horrified and did not recognize me, my face was so beat up;)
Sneaking under the fence at the golf club to swipe golf balls.
Playing down at the creek and swinging on the vines across it yelling the Tarzan yell.
Triangular front vent windows in the car. You would crank it until it pointed inward and you got an awesome breeze as you drove.
We did walk to and from school, and my parents were not arrested. I was out all day during the Summer, and my picture was not on a milk carton. I shot my bb gun all Summer, and the neighbors didn’t call the police. A tranny was something in your car. You didn’t lose your job for saying that you didn’t like your tranny. I walked around with my cap guns in a holster and wasn’t surrounded by 5 men in blue.
What’s missing is TRUST in our neighbors. Sadly, it’s gone.
Funny; I recall a lot of that.
But I realize now that our parents didn’t know that much about food-borne illness; we never heard it mentioned, or heard about any precautions.
I believe people did get sick from it - I remember a couple of childhood illnesses that could very well have been salmonella. It’s just that in those days, you didn’t run to the doc or the hospital for every sickness you developed. And if you did, most of the time the doc indicated household remedies and riding it out.
Held 'em at bay and stood my ground, laughing hilariously...until Mrs. Cook came out of the door, grabbed me by the ear, seized both my guns, marched me down to her office, applied 4 whacks on my tender little butt, called my Dad to come to the office.
I sat in the office (back straight, eyes straight ahead, no moving!) until my Dad got there, he assured Mrs. Cook that he would also administer appropriate punishment.
Got home, got a few more than 4 whacks from Dad, then had to go stay with my G-ma for a three day suspension and had to work my butt off.
To this day, I still think it was a good idea...I just wish I'd had a couple of hideouts to hit Mrs. Cook with after she imprisoned me.
I don't know what would happen under those circumstances today.
The simple possession of a, gasp! plastic gun! would probably result in expulsion, lawsuits and counseling, not only for me, but the whole school and my Dad.
(But I was always just a little bit more rowdy than the average little juvenile delinquent.)
We were baby boomers, families had 4,5,6 kids. You could lose one or two.
Baling hay (it was a special treat to drive the tractor), playing sandlot baseball, cleaning out the horse corral (not all memories are great), playing everything from Fort Apache to Star Trek in our treehouse, biking to the swimming pool, the Ryan sisters, Bazooka Joe bubble gum with the cartoon wrapper, cold bottled pop for a dime from a chest-type cooler, bows and arrows, choking clouds of dust from the gravel roads ...
Summer then was almost as magical as Christmas. And it lasted longer.
Trudging to the barn on cold winter mornings to feed the cattle and hogs, rain, snow and wind chilling to the bone.
Lugging water from the spring to the field for the men, a never ending job.
Learning how to work the garden. The smell of fresh tomatoes, peppers and how they tasted fresh from the garden.
When I said the word “allowance” my parents gave me a calf and bought the milk replacer.
Bottle feeding my calf and selling it.
Paying my dad for the calf and reimbursing him for the milk replacer and using what was left to buy two more calves.
Using our ageing team of horses to harrow the plowed and disced fields.
Minding not to let the horses get too hot.
Walking up and down a snow covered hill to pack the snow for a faster sleigh ride.
Building a fire at the top of the hill to warm ourselves during our nighttime sleigh rides.
Halloween hay rides.
Curled up in the hay with the prettiest girl there to “ward off the cold”. Not fooling anyone.
Being held accountable by any and every adult in sight.
Being given the key to the Deputy Sheriff’s pasture to have a place to gather and drink beer. He knew we would be safe there and not getting in trouble. Cleaning up before we left.
Hand cranking the ice cream maker to make homemade banana ice cream.
Damn, now I’m homesick for the good old days.
That’s almost a poem.
We played roof ball, and wall ball, and wire ball, and handball, and run-the-bases, and prisoner's base, and tag football, and "P-I-G" shot taking and matching on a basketball court. Those games were fun and free to play, and you didn't get isolated back then on special smartphones/electric-games/computers, away from socializing with lots of other kids in the neighborhood.
***Baling hay (it was a special treat to drive the tractor),***
Spent summers on my uncle’s farm. I was strolling alongside as he and another guy were baling hay when he told me to climb on the tractor and drive it. The other guy looked a little concerned, but my Uncle said, “Oh, she can handle it, she’s smart”. I was 9 years old!!!!!!
Don't forget stringing barbed wire and digging post holes repairing fences on a HOT summer Texas day. At the end of the day a boy knew what it was to be (excuse me) a real "man". And girls worked just as hard doing their (excuse me again) girl (like homemaking) things. Yep, fences didn't get built and hay baled and stored by itself.
Is that tuff enough? Our football coaches didn't think so. So at the end of the day we were expected down at the fieldhouse to get in some extra practice in the cool of the evening. As night fell we kind of disappeared into the night seeking rest and shelter. Slept many a night in the bed of a pickup truck somewhere between here and there dead on my ass. Oh well, maybe it wasn't that bad but it sure seemed like it at the time. Growing up and learning you're not indestructible - that's life.
Did it in STL county. Mostly normal.
The worst role was stacking in the barn. It was like a dusty sauna, and you had to wear long sleeves and pants or get scratched to death.
But driving the tractor was cush ... and fun.
Did pretty much the same, except at lunch, the mom of who evers house we were at would feed us lunch along with her kids. All my neighbors had my dads expressed permission to whip my ass if I did conduct myself like a gentleman on their property. Grew up in a rural farm community. Use to break off chunks of the cows salt block to rub on green apples. Of course we sterilized the salt chunk by rinsing it off in the cow’s water trough. Used to play a lot of baseball in the pasture. Mom would get upset if we came home having slide into second base, which was still fresh from the cow. Walking home from the barber shop after school (about 4 miles) the county sheriff on patrol would offer you a ride. When the school bus driver said sit down and be quiet, you did just that. All adults were addressed by their titles until you were give permission to use their given names. No draft for the Little League, you showed up and you got to play ball. All of the men my dads age had spent 3 or 4 years fighting the Japanese and Germans, some had the scars to prove it, we respected and admired those men greatly. They were the examples we wished to follow.
Remember too that most families had a dog - or two. We had a border collie for 15 years. He never wore a collar or had a leash. When we lived on our farm, he herded the cows for milking. When we moved from the farm to a town in a different county, he walked three of us to school and returned in the afternoon to take us home.
That was one smart and loving dog. When he no longer had to take us home from school, he remembered herding cattle and found some, (but sadly, they did not belong to us and were not milk cows, they were beef steers) - the owner was not happy.
Rules??? We had no idea what rules were....
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