Black and White T.V.'s/ no politics

email from a friend | 5/18/2022 | unknown

[sodpoodle]

Black and White TV

(Under age 40? You won't understand.)

You could hardly see for all the snow,

Spread the rabbit ears as far as they go.

Pull a chair up to the TV set,

'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.

My Mom used to defrost hamburgers on the counter and I used to eat it raw, sometimes. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in ice pack coolers, but I can't remember getting ecoli.

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the river 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 to cross-train 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 a gym.

Speaking of school, we all sang the national anthem. And staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention.

,P>We must have had horribly damaged psyches. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses?

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of me.

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 $49 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 a kid from down the street coming over and doing his tricks on the front step, just before he fell off.

Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house (no lawsuits back then).

Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof. It wasa neighborhood runs 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!

[Alas Babylon!]

Some sounds I remember:

The ice cream truck’s bells coming up the neighborhood.

Using a clothespin to anchor a playing card to your bike’s wheel to make that cool whirling noise.

Using caps guns with the paper tape with gunpowder on it to make real bang sounds.

Setting on the front steps eating watermelon, while seeing who could spit seeds the farthest and loudest.

The roaring whoosh from the grill when you Dad lit half a can of lighter fluid to get the charcoal going.

The sound from those bulky, tinny drive-in movie speakers your parents would hang on the car window.

The noise big four engine propeller driven airplanes made.

[Night Hides Not]

My dad had a Mercury convertible. I loved it when the top was down. Driving over the San Mateo Bridge, I'd stand up in the back seat, enjoying the blast of wind on my face.

I was about 8 YO at the time, truly a different era...I just turned 68.

I also survived Jump School, and driving in Germany for four years. Drove at least 30K miles at speeds in excess of 100 MPH.

Also liked to attend winefests along the Mosel River on Monday nights. Never got a buzz until the third bottle (most Rieslings' alcohol content is 8% +/-). Why Monday nights? Tourists were gone, townfolk let their hair down.

Now, I find the driving in North Texas to be much more dangerous than the German Autobahns. We've got some really bad drivers here.

[wbarmy]

There was a Tupperware full of bacon grease that was seemingly used to fry everything.

Tupperware? Man, your family was rich. We had an old Folgers coffee can with a strainer on top. But bacon grease made everything taste better. Except cakes. Mom used brand new Crisco for those.

[wbarmy]

I had the exact same thought, and posted mine a lot later than yours. Must have been wealthy to have Tupperware.

[wbarmy]

The roaring whoosh from the grill when you Dad lit half a can of lighter fluid to get the charcoal going.

I did that for my five children just a few years ago, while they were still all at home. Poured a massive amount of lighter fluid on the barbie, stepped back, threw the match, and watched a little Bikini cloud go up with a lot of noise. I think our dog peed himself from fright.

[muir_redwoods]

Building a tree house from 100lb of scrap lumber and 200 lbs of rusty nails scrounged from a construction site taught me everything I shouldn’t do when wood working.

[punknpuss]

while straight people are pathetic and neurotic...
_____________________________________________________________

and can’t dance

[Pollard]

or jump