Posted on 01/04/2003 12:12:42 PM PST by Dakotabound
"Hey Dad," My Son asked the other day, "what was your favorite fast food when you were growing up?"
"We didn't have fast food when I was growing up."
"C'mon, seriously. Where did you eat?"
"We ate at home," I explained. "Your Grandma cooked every day and when your Grandpa got home from work, we all sat down together at the table, and if I didn't like what she put on my plate I had to sit there until I did like it." By this time, my Son was laughing so hard I was afraid he was going to suffer some serious internal damage, so I didn't tell him the part about how I had to get my Father's permission to leave the table.
Here are some other things I would have told him about my childhood if I had figured his system could handle it.
My parents never: wore Levi's, set foot on a golf course, traveled out of the country, flew in a plane or had a credit card. In their later years they had something called a "revolving charge card" but they never actually used it. It was only good at Sears-Roebuck. Or maybe it was Sears and Roebuck. Either way, there is no Roebuck anymore.
My parents never drove me to soccer practice. This was because soccer back then was just for the girls. We actually did walk to school. By the time you were in the 6th grade it was not cool to ride the bus unless you lived more than 4 or 5 miles from the school, even when it was raining or there was ice or snow on the ground.
Outdoor sports consisted of stickball, snowball fights, building forts, making snowmen and sliding down hills on a piece of cardboard. No skate boards, roller blades or trail bikes.
We didn't have a television in our house until I was 12. It was, of course, black and white, but you could buy a piece of special colored plastic to cover the screen. The top third was blue, like the sky, and the bottom third was green, like grass. The middle third was red. It was perfect for programs that had scenes of fire trucks riding across someone's lawn on a sunny day.
I was 13 before I tasted my first pizza. It was a Sam's Pizza at the East end of Fruit Street in Milford. My friend, Steve took me there to try what he called "pizza pie." When I bit into it, I burned the roof of my mouth and the cheese slid off, swung down and plastered itself against my chin. It's still the best pizza I ever had.
Pizzas were not delivered to your house back then, but the milk was. I looked forward to winter because the cream in the milk was on top of the bottle and it would freeze and push the cap off. Of course us kids would get up first to get the milk and eat the frozen cream before our mother could catch us.
I never had a telephone in my room. Actually the only phone in the house was in the hallway and it was on a party line. Before you could make a call, you had to listen in to make sure someone else wasn't already using the line. If the line was not in use an Operator would come on and ask "number please" and you would give her the number you wanted to call.
There was no such thing as a computer or a hand held calculator. We were required to memorize the "times tables." Believe it or not, we were tested each week on our ability to perform mathematics with nothing but a pencil and paper. We took a spelling test every day. There was no such thing as a "social promotion." If you flunked a class, you repeated that grade the following year. Nobody was concerned about your "self esteem." We had to actually do something praiseworthy before we were praised. We learned that you had to earn respect.
All newspapers were delivered by boys and most all boys delivered newspapers. I delivered the "Milford Daily News" six days a week. It cost 7 cents a paper, of which I got to keep 2 cents. On Saturday, I had to collect the 42 cents from my customers. My favorite customers were the ones who gave me 50 cents and told me to keep the change. My least favorite customers were the ones who seemed to never be home on collection day.
Movie stars kissed with their mouths shut on screen. Touching someone else's tongue with yours was called French kissing and they just didn't do that in the movies back then. I had no idea what they did in French movies. French movies were considered dirty and we weren't allowed to see them.
You never saw the Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers or anyone else actual kill someone. The heroes back then would just shoot the gun out of the bad guys hand. There was no blood and violence.
When you were sick, the Doctor actually came to your house. No, I am not making this up. Drugs were something you purchased at a pharmacy in order to cure an illness.
If we dared to "sass" our parents, or any other grown-up, we immediately found out what soap tasted like. For more serious infractions, we learned about something called a "this hurts me more than it hurts you." I never did quite understand that one?
In those days, parents were expected to discipline their kids. There was no interference from the government. "Social Services" or "Family Services" had not been invented (The ninth and tenth amendments to the constitution were still observed in those days.)
I must be getting old because I find myself reflecting back more and more and thinking I liked it a lot better back then. If you grew up in a generation before there was fast food, you may want to share some of these memories with your kids or grandchildren. Just don't blame me if they wet themselves laughing. Growing up today sure ain't what it used to be.
Posted for your reminiscing pleasure on this Saturday in January.
The restaurant can also be identified by the following names - Whitey Castile's, the Porcelain Palace, or my personal favorite, Le Chateau Blanc (for 5 star dining and the finest in French cuisine).
WHITE CASTLE HAMBURGERS - SLIDERS
Yield: 10 servings2 lb Lean Ground Beef 1/4 c Dry Minced Onion 1/4 c Hot Water 3 oz Jar Strained Beef Baby Food 2/3 c Clear Beef Broth 1 pk Hot Dog BunsSoak 1/4 cup dry minced onions in 1/4 cup hot water until soft while you mix 2 pounds ground beef with 3 ounce jar of strained beef baby food and 2/3 cup clear beef broth. Keep patties uniform using 1/4 cup meat mixture for each patty, flattened to 1/4" and fried quickly in 1 T oil per patty on a hot griddle. Make 3 or 4 holes in patties while frying. Cut hot dog buns in half. Cut off rounded ends. Fry 1 t onions under each patty as you turn to fry 2nd side. Slip each patty into bun with 2 dill pickle chips, mustard and catsup.
I still remember that you didn't sass other kids' parents either. Because, somehow my parents found out about it before I could get home.
And we never locked our doors...how would our friends get in?
And we only had one car, Dad used it to get to work, so we had to walk everywhere, or wait for Dad to come home.
And we went to the Saturday matinee theater for a double feature and a cartoon for a dime!
We drank a lot of orange juice since we had five orange trees in our backyard, and we played in the orange groves at the end of the block (So Calif)
We would go to the other end of the block to my uncle's house and make fresh peach ice cream every Sat night during the summer. Course, we had to crank it because they hadn't put electric motors on the ice cream makers yet.
And we dressed up to go to church every Sunday morning. Coat and tie was the standard.
We would also sit around the radio in the evenings and listen to the variety and drama shows. Boy, did we have an imagination in those days. No TV screen to show us what was going on.
I'll have to keep remembering...more later, perhaps.
Actually I remember an awful lot of this, except the snow. It doesn't snow much in south Georgia.
Living in Pittsburgh in the late 1960s, we had metal milk boxes outside our front door for deliveries from the dairy man. Those boxes were especially useful in winter, when we used them to store our snowballs for the big battle with the other kids in the neighborhood.
Vintage year my friend!
On my 25th anniversary, my kids invited my best man who was also my best friend growing up in those "formative years." After the celebration, he and I drove to where we grew up and drove all around at 5 mph recalling everything we could. Man, talk about time travel. Cheers.
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