Posted on 11/26/2021 5:17:57 AM PST by sodpoodle
Someone asked the other day, 'What was your favourite '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 'home,'' I explained. ! 'Mum 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 lad 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'd figured his system could have handled it:
Some parents NEVER owned their own house, wore jeans, set foot on a golf course, travelled 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 10. It was, of course, black and white, and the station went off the air at 10 PM, after playing the national anthem and epilogue; 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...
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, seven days a week. He had to get up at 6AM every morning.
Film stars kissed with their mouths shut. At least, they did in the films. There were no movie ratings because all movies were responsibly produced for everyone to enjoy viewing, without profanity or violence or almost 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 Lemonade 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.
How many do you remember?
Headlight dip-switches on the floor of the car.
Ignition switches on the dashboard.
Trouser leg clips for bicycles without chain guards.
Soldering irons you heated on a gas burner.
Using hand signals for cars without turn indicators. > Older Than Dirt Quiz: Count all the ones that you remember, not the ones you were told about. Ratings at the bottom
1. Sweet cigarettes 2. Coffee shops with 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 2 channels [if you were fortunate]) 7. Peashooters 8. 33 rpm records 9. 45 RPM records 10. Hi-if's 11. Metal ice trays with levers 12. Blue flashbulb 13. Cork popguns 14. Wash tub wringers
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 11-14 = You're positively ancient!
I must be 'positively ancient' 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....I just did!!!!!!!!!
(PS. I used a large type face so you could read it easily)
re. hand signals...Had to use them, as well as electric directionals, during test for DL.
What, no 78s? Guy at music store would ask, “Big hole or small?”
All of them... And more...
Growing up, I think my neighborhood had an “Official” winter coat color....OD!
Church Keys, Floor starters, Car radios only received AM...
Remember everyone of them.
In our family dinner was at 6 and you had better be there. If you didn’t want what was served then it was put in the refrigerator and it was what you had when you got hungry later on.
No one left the table until everyone was done.
Brings back memories.
When I was a young lad, I had a fancy for the girl next door. She was cute and freckled and we had some good times holding hands and kissing. What makes me laugh now is recalling some of those times...she considered a really GOOD kiss to be what Wrangler Jane laid on Captain Wilton Parmenter from time to time. A long-mouth-closed-forceful kind of kiss. We were young. No tongue.
Those who watched F Troop will know of what I speak.
Oh yeah! And when the FM Converter came out...woohoo!
We didn’t have fast food when I was growing up,’
Things that have gone away...
Drive in movies.
Sunday drives
Picnics
Using any vacant lot as a playground
Not coming home until the street lights came on
Sex education
We played games to win not just participate
The families knew each other and if you did something wrong it got back to your parents before you did.
Taking public transportation from the time I was around 8, alone!
Walking to school (again alone)
Riding in the back of a pick up truck
It is a wonder we survived our childhood.
There were still a few 78s around when I was a kid in the 60s.
Once, around 2005, I was showing a young driller’s helper on a reverse-circulation rig how to set up the rotary sampler, and told him to keep it turning somewhere between the speed of a 33 record and that of a 45. Total blank look.
Melody Patterson.
Definitely NOT Guilty.
RIP
“You better be home before the street lights come on” was a brand new saying because your little town just got street lights. lol
IMHO it’s not about the era, it’s about the closeness of the family, the involvement and love of the parents for their children, and growing up in an environment in which children know they are valued and their parents have their best interests in mind - no matter how much they expect from them or how little they have.
Unfortunately, the above is hardly universal, in any era.
“Did not have “fast food” until I was around 16 when Jack in the Box showed up one day.”
Hey, same here! Maybe from the same town? Right behind the corner shell station? 4 cheese burgers for a dollar was great. :)
lol, I actually ended up with one of those later, after AM/FM became standard equipment.
There were no fast food places growing up where I lived other than a mom and pop pizza place and a dairy queen. A Burger Chef was opened when I was a teen.
I grew up in the late 1960’s and 70’s.
We still had a milkman and a guy who would bring to the house a tray of breads and Hostess cakes.
It was not all innocent. When I was 10 or so I would play doctor to the same age girl down the road. That went on for about a year or so until her little sister snitched on us and hell was unleashed.
Just some random thoughts on my childhood...
I never saw my father in a pair of shorts and he only wore jeans when he was actually doing manual labor, like yard work or changing the oil in the car. Otherwise, even on weekends, he would wear dress slacks and shirts.
With yard work, he always had my brother and I out there with him and he worked us hard. When it snowed, it was our job to get everything shoveled. From the age of about 10, I know how to start up the car because it was my job to get it warmed up so I could scrape the ice off the windshield. By the time I was 12, I knew how to drive it too and my father would take me to empty parking lots and country back roads to practice.
During summer when school was out, we never sat inside and watched TV. If my mother saw us around the house, she'd put us to work on chore after chore. So we never hung around the house during the daytime. We all had bicycles and we went all over town. Our parents never asked where we went or what we did but they always seemed to know if we got into any trouble!
When were were in Little League, my brother and I walked to practice and back by ourselves. There were no parents sitting in lawn chairs with coolers and snacks at the ready like they do today. They might show up for an actual game or two however. Those practices were brutal too. The coaches would have us running laps, doing pushups and getting cursed out if we were too slow running to first base or not paying attention enough in the outfield.
We had an “ice box” when I was growing up. I tried to explain this to my grand kids one day. They couldn’t understand. They still think we used an igloo cooler.
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