Posted on 05/30/2002 1:18:53 AM PDT by brat
Older than dirt.......
We were cleaning out my mother's house and found an old Royal Crown Cola
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 she 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.
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Many Do You Remember??
lights dimmer switches on the floor
Ignition switches on the dashboard
Heaters mounted on the inside of the fire wall
Real ice boxes [Ask your Mom about that]
Pant leg clips for bicycles without chain guards.
Using hand signals for cars without turn signals.
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Older Than Dirt Quiz>br>
Count all the ones that you remember-not the ones you were told about!
Ratings at the bottom.
1. Blackjack chewing gum
2. Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water
3. Candy cigarettes
4. Soda pop machines that dispensed a bottle
5. Coffee shops with tableside jukeboxes
6. Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers
7. Telephone Party lines
ewsreels before the movie
9. P.F. Flyers
10. Butch wax
11. Telephone numbers with a word prefix (Olive - 6933)
12. Peashooters
13. Howdy Doody
14. 45 RPM records
15. S&H Green Stamps
16. Hi-fi's
17. Metal ice trays with lever
18. Mimeograph paper
19. Blue flashbulb
20. Packards
21. Roller skate keys
22. Cork popguns
23. Drive-ins
24. Studebakers
25. Wash tub wringers
If you remembered 0-5 = You're still young
If you remembered 6-10 = You are getting older
If you remembered 11-15 = Don't tell your age,
If you remembered 16-25 = You're older than dirt!
Especially to all your really OLD friends.
Hubby had what was called a "flat-top" hair cut and used Butch wax for quite a while even after we got married. And when we got married, the car he owned was a Studebaker Lark.
Thanks for the trip down Memory Lane!
I make new dirt everyday, yet how can that be old? ;-)
And as a kid, I remember the wringer washer down in the basement...and how mom had to crank the handle on the wringer, and pull the clothes through...and then hang the clothes outside(Because who had a dryer)...if it was raining outside, or the snows of Chicago had rolled in, the wash was hung down in the basement where the menfolk had strung the clothes lines...
Its no wonder that in those days, women had a day reserved for washing, and a day reserved for ironing...my moms washday was Tuesday, and she spent all day washing clothes..then Wednesday was ironing day and all day was spent ironing...
When you think back on it, we have it easy today...we have our automatic washing machines, and our automatic dryers, and permanent clothes and bedding..we can throw our laundry into the washer, whenever we wish, dry it quickly, and voila, before you know it, the wash is done...we dont have to reserve whole days for laundry and ironing...
And our moms did all that laundry and ironing business, while still preparing homemade from scratch meals, and from scratch baking...
Now on to the telephones...we had name prefixes...there was 'AL for Albany, 'SP' for Spaulding, 'BE" for Belmont,and on and on..we were AL2-6381...my parents kept that phone number until they moved to California in 1983, and it was hard to remember to say in later years, that our phone number was now 252-6381...one time I slipped, and called it AL2-6381, and my kids thought I was nuts...they had never realized that phone numbers had name prefixes in the beginning...
We also had a party line...shared with my aunt and uncles family who lived downstairs from us...sometimes when you wanted to make a phone call, you picked up the phone, and there was no dial tone, because someone else downstairs was on the phone...if you were real careful and quiet, you could listen in to to other peoples conversations...
Iceboxes? Well for some reason we always had an electric refrigerator...we never had an icebox...but when I was a very little girl, we lived in a three story apartment bldg, and some of the other tenants had iceboxes...I always remember waiting on the front stoop and watching for the iceman, and his cart and horse...altho we did not get ice, the iceman always nicked a small chunk of ice off a block for me, and gave it to me in my little hankie...nothing was sweeter in the summer than to suck on a piece of shiny piece of ice from the iceman...
I dont recall seeing the 'ragman' on this list...does anyone else remember the ragman? When my parents and aunt and uncle first bought their first house together(A big two story, two apartment house), there was a barn, yes a barn, in our backyard...and this was in the middle of inner city Chicago...apparently in earlier days, this barn was home to a local dairy, and there were stalls for the cows...and upstairs in the barn, pigeon coops, and all manner of stuff...
So my dad and uncle wanted to tear down that barn, and build a garage(Not that we had a car yet, but the menfolk were hopeful and optimistic)...well, there was so much stuff in that garage, which would be useful for someone, not us tho...so they contacted the 'ragman' and his services...
Once about every two weeks, this little old man came down the alley with his horse and cart...earlier in the day, the womenfolk went out and bought some sort of smoked fish, and good bread, and boxes of jam filled, sugar coated doughnuts...The ragman was invited in, to the first floor, and our family piled in as well, and there were my aunt and uncle, my mom and dad, me and little brother and my two cousins and the ragman all jammed up to my aunts kitchen table, and we would share a breakfast of smoked fish, good bread, jelly donuts, and milk and coffe...then we would all pile out into the barn, the ragman would make his selections for shipping off that day, the menfolk would load the stuff up, us kids would play with the horse, the women would do the dishes...finally the ragman and the adults would conduct business, and money changed hands...
We just thought this was the greatest of Saturday mornings, because we got to play with that horse, and have what we considered a luxury breakfast..to this day, I call jelly, sugar coated donuts, 'ragman' donuts...
Butch Wax? I asked my hubby about that a few weeks ago, and he did explain it to me, it was an important implement of his grooming his hair, and looking snappy...
Glass Milk Bottles, and Home Delivered Milk? We always had out milk delivered in the glass bottles, and as a little girl, I was in love with the milkman, he was a cutie...
I also remember milk break in school....mid-morning, after recess, we came in, and in each classroom, there would be wooden crates, which contained small bottles of milk with the paper tear tab...our parents paid for the milk, I think it was like a dime a week(really poor kids got theirs for free)...If our parents were feeling overgenerous, we got to pay extra, and got to have chocolate milk...
I remember just about everything on the list, so yes indeed, I am older than dirt...
I actually did that while watching my momma and Aunt doing laundry on the back porch in Mississippi. They took me to the outhouse to clean me up afterwards.It scared the ....well you know, out of me
I have to ask, Rush, how did they clean you up in an outhouse? I've been in a handful of outhouses and when I have, my goal was to get out of them as soon as I could. LOL
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