"Hey Dad," one of my kids 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," I informed him. "All the food was slow." "C'mon, seriously. Where did you eat ?" "It was a place called 'at home,'" I explained. "Grandma cooked every day and when Grandpa 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 kid 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 figured his system could have handled it: Some parents NEVER owned their own house, wore Levis , set foot on a golf course, traveled out of the country nor had a credit card. In their later years they had something called a revolving charge card. The card was good only at Sears Roebuck. Or maybe it was Sears AND Roebuck. Either way, there is no Roebuck anymore. Maybe he died. My parents never drove me to soccer practice. This was mostly because we never had heard of soccer. 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 11, but my grandparents had one before that. It was, of course, black and white, but they bought a piece of 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. Some people had a lens taped to the front of the TV to make the picture look large. I was 13 before I tasted my first ****a, it was called "****a pie." When I bit into it, I burned the roof of my mouth and the cheese slid off, swung down, plastered itself against my chin and burned that too. It's still the best ****a I ever had. We didn't have a car until I was 15. Before that, the only car in our family was my grandfather's Ford. He called it a "machine ." I never had a telephone in my room. The only phone in the house was in the living room and it was on a party line. Before you could dial, you had to listen and make sure some people you didn't know weren't already using the line. ****as were not delivered to our home. But milk was. All newspapers were delivered by boys and all boys delivered newspapers. I delivered a newspaper, six days a week. It cost 7 cents a paper, of which I got to keep 2 cents. I had to get up at 4 AM every morning.. 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. At least, they did in the movies. Touching someone else's tongue with yours was called French kissing and they didn't do that in movies. I don't know what they did in French movies. French movies were dirty and we weren't allowed to see them. 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?
Ahh, the memories.... We had to sit at the table too. When we started eating in the living room, we had TV trays to put our plates on....and still had to ask to be excused. I remember when the first Hardee's was born in our city. They had this cool thing called a drive-thru. We used to walk thru it. The best place to be during the day was the 7/11 and at night was the skating rink. You carpooled there or rode your bike. If you were a boy, you rode your bike home. Girls got their bikes put in someone's car and carpooled home. Talking back to your parents was called "sassin'" or "being mouthy" and earned you a backhand or 'the eye'. <shudder>...'the eye'.... You truly believed they'd 'knock you to China' like warned and didn't do whatever-it-was again! You also believed there were starving children in China/Africa/India/insert-the-country-here and if you didn't eat all your dinner one of those poor children would surely die because of it. When "teller cards" (ok, kids, they're now called debit cards) were introduced, along with the Automated Teller Machine (ATM), grandmother thought there was this little teller in that box, just waitin for someone to hand a card. Of course, grandmother didn't trust that box, so never got a teller card & continued to used the "inside teller girl" until grandmother passed on. She also never understood how that box would give you money on the weekend when the bank was c-l-o-s-e-d. Our parents never drove us anywere. If you couldn't reach it by foot or pedal it was just too far away and you didn't need to go there! We were priviledged to have a television set when I was in middle school. We had 3 channels...the 3rd was UHF, WHOOHOO!! We got those channels using rabbit ears with 'tin foil', and the 'clicker'? That was me! We had a window unit for air conditioning in our kitchen and used oil for heat. The pipe to fill the oil stuck up out of the yard right beside the hose...we never understood why we got in so much trouble when we were caught playing "flush the snake" in the pipe (put hose in pipe...turn on water). My brother and I would race in the house and to the kitchen to be the first in front of the window unit in the summer and steal blankets from each other in the winter. When the power "went out" (read: got cut off), we told ghost stories and walked with candles. If it was really hot, we'd "camp out" in our sleeping bags on the front porch. We had 1 telephone in the living room on the wall...with a cord and it was rotary. Also had a 10-minute time limit and no ANYTHING after 8 pm. All homework had to be done before dinner, and we had to make dinner since the kids were the only ones home early. We'd heard of computers but hadn't ever seen one of those monsters. It was a proud day, however, when mom brought home an electric typewriter! Wow, she had arrived now! I knew: what 'crank the window' in a car meant, how to jimmy a locked car with a coat hanger, how to fit (quietly) in the trunk of the car for the drive-in (that was a movie place, young'uns), 10 ways to fix a bike chain with and without any tools, exactly what spot to stand in in the living room so that the Lawrence Whelk show came in crystal clear, every path thru the woods...as well as what was on either side of the path , the best fishing holes, how to pick wild blackberries with minimal chiggers, and that if I didn't come running home from playing with the other kids when mom called at dinner time my hide would be t-a-n-n-e-d...so was always running when she called! teeheehee. Anyone else? Frogger
Thanks Frogger.... I really enjoyed your memories! We played Red Rover Red Rover a lot. All girls would write their first name and the boy's that they liked last name on all their school tablets( in case they ended up married to them...LOL). We played he loves me...he loves me not... pulling petals off of flowers. King of the Hill on our hugh snow piles up north. My heart is smiling! Peekaboo
At recess, we would play, "Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?" So and So stole the cookie from the cookie jar.... "Who ME?" "Yes You!" " It couldn't be" "Then WHO?", So and So stole the cookie from the cookie jar, "Who ME?" Yes you, ........... And the last one at bell time to go in was the THIEF! So much fun back when and it didn't cost a dime..... aahhhh...
