Older 'n Dirt!!

"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 inte rnal 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 or 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 wa s 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 larger.

I was 13 before I tasted my first pizza, it was called "pizza 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 pizza 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.

Pizzas 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 m o vies 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?

MEMORIES from a friend:

My Dad is cleaning out my grandmother's house (she died in December) and he brought me 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 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 water because we didn't have steam irons. Man, I am old.

How many do you remember?

Head lights dimmer switches on the floor.
Ignition switches on the dashboard.
Heaters mounted on the inside of t he fire wall.
Real ice boxes.
Pant leg clips for bicycles without chain guards.
Soldering irons you heat on a gas burner.
Using hand signals for cars without turn signals.

Older Than Dirt Quiz: 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 glass bottles
5. Coffee shops or diners with tableside juke boxes
6. Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers
7. Party lines
8. Newsreels 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 r emembered 11-15 = Don't tell your age,
If you remembered 16-25 = You're older than dirt!

I might be older than dirt but those memories are the best part of my life.

=====
"Senility Prayer"...God grant me...
The senility to forget the people I never liked
The good fortune to run into the ones that I do
And the eyesight to tell the difference."

 

Amen I'm only 30 but I remembered 12 of those things I grew up on the Ranch my dad still runs and we never ate in town always 3 homade squares a day. I have the work ethic and values of someone 50 years old because of the way we were raised. I look at kids and young people my age and its sickening to see what our workforce has become not to mention the values they have. I'm not saying that hard working moral people dont exist they just seem to be few and far between.

 

HMM, Must be why the wife always sweeps up around my chair. I just figured it was because we live on a horse farm not that I was older than dirt.

 

I made the "dont tell your age" category...

no one go look at my profile.

 

Gawd, I remembered em all, kinda like it was yesterday. I'd forgotten the plastic film on the TV screen. We got ours (used) in time for Eisenhower's inaugeration.

Many of you don't even know who that was, or ever saw Truman on the news reels before the motion picture at the Saturday matinee.

Dan

 

GOOD LORD, YOU FORGOT A LOT,
HOPAONG CASITY
ROY ROGERS
GENE AUTRY
BOB HOPE
AMOUS & ANDY
AND IT AND MORE WAS LIVE ON RADIO !!!!!
THEN ALONG CAME TV,
ED SULLIVAN
ON WEEKENDS IN SUMMER , LOCAL STOCK CAR RACES LIVE
WRESTLING (FIRST PROGRAM THEY EVER WROTE A SCRIPT FOR.
QUEEN ELIZABETH`S CORONATION
JACK PAR (LATE NITE TV)
AND MUCH MUCH MORE
NOW I DONT KNOW WHERE YOU WERE RAISED BUT WE HAD A 3 HOLE`R OH YEA EVEN IN THE WINTER TIME, HAD RUNNING WATTER IN THE HOUSE (ONLY BECAUSE WE RAN A LINE FROM THE MILK HOUSE TO THE HOUSE,
MY FIRST BICYCLE HAD HARD RUBBER TIRES WITH A LOT OF THE SPOES BROKEN IN THE REAR WHEEL, IT WOBBLED TERRIBLY (GET THAT THING GOING DOWN HILL AND IT HAD A DEATH WOBBLE THAT WOULD EVENTUALLY SHAKE YOU OFF THE BICYCLE)
I REALLY DONT REMBER ANY OF THIS STUFF ITS JUST A FIGMENT OF MY IMAGINATION!
CLAUDE TEA BREWED IN KAILYS SOCK FOR ADDED FLAVOR, AHH GOOD !!!!

 

I made your're getting older. And tbarbee1, I think only certain areas have lost the hard working kids. Over here on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, the original shoremen raise their kids right. I was disciplined by the back of my daddy's hand and I always ate at home. I did all the work around the house and never had an allowance, but a hot meal and a place to sleep. When I turned old enough to push a broom, I started working with my father's hardwood floor business cleaning up after a job. Then as I got older I started doing more stuff and now we are more successful than ever since I can pretty much work on my own for him now. I'm still in high school but I have done more work in my life than most kids could ever claim. When the seasons change to fall and winter, I'm working on my cousins farm doing anything that's neede. We were raised with respect and under the golden rule. One of the reasons my gf's mother is letting me go out with her is because I respect her and her family. I just can't believe what the world is coming to, it just makes me sad. I'm trying to find a town like the county seat used to be, everyone knew everybody and it was just a good ol' small town America. Not anymore, native shoreman are getting run out of their home. Maryland is now the richest state in the country and has 2 of the top 10 richest counties, I don't like it. That means it's also one of the hardest states to live in financially. I can't wait till I go to college then find another town to settle in. I'm thinking Wyoming, it's beautiful country and it reminds me of the old Queen Anne's County.

 

Going to the movies Sat.(if you were good)and seeing 2 full length westerns,one serial,and 9 to 10 cartoons all for .25. That included,admission,a drink and one candyThe pump jockey checking your oil,tire pressures,wash the windshield,and pumping 3 gallons of gas for .24 a gallon.

 

I am young but I know some of them from seeing them at my grandparents house.

tarbee1, I have been told I have the work ethic of someone from 2 generations ago (coming from a 40 y/o saying I have a better work ethic than his generation). I came to a job I hated (and he knew it) mised a total of 4 days in 1 year time (once when I had the flu bad and once when my grandpa got a defibulator put in) Granted I only lasted a year but that is what he said.

I am 19 and proud that I grew up where I was taught that ethic.

Jon

 

Got every last one of the memories. haha guess I really am older than dirt.

 

Batting 1000! I'm not old, I just have a good memory.

 

I've actually bought several of those old Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers, and Gene Autry movies. I like watching the old westerns with actual heroes in them. And I own most of John Wayne's westerns. Can't find stuff like that on the tube anymore.

 

Old Dog, you must be old enough to have forgotten one more thing...YOUR CAPS LOCK!!!

 

I think I may have came off wrong Please dont miss understand me. I said these kind of people are few and far between not non existant. I have no doubt that there are some hard working kids out there but they become fewer and fewer as you drop the age from 50 years old to the teenagers.

 

Im not old enough to remember them when they first came out, but the truck I learned to drive in had the ignition switch in the floor also..

How old do you have to be to claim learning to drive a "three on the tree" with a floor starter?