Older than 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 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 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 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?

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 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 the 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! Your 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 remembered 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."

WOW amazing how times has changed. I can remember when I  started  driving at 16,  if you had 10.00 you could fillup your gastank and still have money left over.  Thanks for sharing my dear sweet friend. Hope you have a Wonderful BLESSED Day!!
Love you!!
Michele

I loved reading this. Wow - what a walk down memory lane. I still have my grandmother's soldering iron and I have her little night cap (the one you wear on your head - not the one you drink). I remember the pot bellied stove in the kitchen where we heated up water to pour in the big wash tub to take our baths. I remember the little outhouse in the back yard way up on the hill past the garden. Even the church had an outhouse. We used to sit in the front porch swing and watch the passenger train go by several times a day. It was a treat to walk down to the local feed store and get a coke out of their machine and the biggest treat was the weekly visit to the Piggly Wiggly where we were allowed to buy a pack of chewing gum. We only had a radio for many years and then the black and white tv. We were poor I guess and yet it was the happiest years of my life. I spent hours on by bicycle with neighbors. We would leave at sun up and not come home until supper. Saturday's were always clean the house day and we didn't get to play until our bedroom met inspection. We used to run behind the bug sprayer truck and get lost in the fog of bug spray. (That was before we knew it could cause cancer). We also used to play in the big ditch beside the house when it would fill up with rain water. We never got any disease that I'm aware of. I remember our brand new little Corvair that had the little vents in the floor in the back seat. The heat sure felt great in the winter. No A/C in the house or the car. We had a great big attic fan that kept the house cool. Mama wore an apron all day. I have it packed away. Grandpa had a fruit/veggie truck that he would drive throughout the county and sell items. I loved going with him. I remember walking down to the corner and buying eggs from a neighbor. Everything was fried and homemade biscuits came with every meal. We had the little white cabinet that had a pull down box where the flour was kept. Mama kept a big metal bowl full of flour that she made her biscuits from. I remember watching so many times and yet I still can't make biscuits taste like her's. We had a wringer washer and we would sit out on the back porch shelling peas or shucking corn and wait for grandma to have a load of clothes to take out and hang up. We didn't get a dryer until I was married. While growing up we never had central air (we had one window air conditioner when I was a teenager and everyone would crowd in the dining room to get cool. We always ate together and daddy made us try everything on our plates. We didn't throw food away and we didn't go out to eat. We owned a drive in restaurant that had car hops and curb service but we still ate our own meals at home together.

I better stop before I start tearing up. I miss my childhood days and I apperciate everything my mom and dad and grandparents did for me. What an inheritance I have.

DebbieDoo

Awww (((((((((((((((((((((Debbie))))))))))))))))))))))))))) That was a wonderful story to read! I do remember some of the things mentioned.. my mom and dad never threw anything away back then.. they were in their 40s when they had me.. I can recite some of the stories they and my sisters have told me. I miss being little too!