All the girls had ugly gym uniforms , It took 3 minutes for the TV to warm up, Nobody owned a purebred dog, A quarter was a decent allowance, You'd reach into a muddy gutter for a penny. Your mom wore nylons that came in 2 pieces. You got your windshield cleaned, oil checked, and gas pumped, without asking, all for free, every time. And you didn't pay for air. And, you got trading stamps to boot, Laundry detergent had free glasses, dishes or towels hidden inside the box, It was considered a great privilege to be taken out to dinner at a real restaurant with your parents, They threatened to keep kids back a grade if they failed...and they actually did it! When a 57 Chevy was everyone's dream car...to cruise, peel out, lay rubber or watch submarine races, and people went steady. No one ever asked where the car keys were because they were always in the car, in the ignition, and the doors were never locked, Lying on your back in the grass with your friends and saying things like, 'That cloud looks like a...' Summers filled with bike rides, Hula Hoops, and visits to the pool, and eating Kool-Aid powder with sugar. Playing baseball with no adults to help kids with the rules of the game, Stuff from the store came without safety caps and hermetic seals because no one had yet tried to poison a perfect stranger, When being sent to the principal's office was nothing compared to the fate that awaited the student at home, Basically we were in fear for our lives, but it wasn't because of drive-by shootings, drugs, gangs, etc. Our parents and grandparents were a much bigger threat! But we survived because their love was greater than the threat. Didn't that feel good, just to go back and say, 'Yeah, I remember that'? And with all our progress, don't you just wish, just once, you could slip back in time and savor the slower pace, and share it with the children of today, And remember that the perfect age is somewhere between old enough to know better and too young to care. How Many Of These Do You Remember? Candy cigarettes Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside. Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles. Coffee shops with Table Side Jukeboxes. Blackjack, Clove and Teaberry chewing gum. Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers. Newsreels before the movie. Telephone numbers with a word prefix...( Yukon 2-601). Party lines. Peashooters. Hi-Fi's & 45 RPM records. 78 RPM records! S&H Green Stamps. Mimeograph paper. The Fort Apache Play Set. Do You Remember a Time When: Decisions were made by going 'eeny-meeny-miney-moe,’ Mistakes were corrected by simply exclaiming, 'Do Over!’ 'Race issue' meant arguing about who ran the fastest, Catching The Fireflies Could Happily Occupy An Entire Evening, It wasn't odd to have two or three 'Best Friends,’ Having a Weapon in School meant being caught with a Slingshot, Saturday morning cartoons weren't 30-minute commercials for action figures, 'Oly-oly-oxen-free' made perfect sense , Spinning around, getting dizzy, and falling down was cause for giggles, The Worst Embarrassment was being picked last for a team, War was a card game, Baseball cards in the spokes transformed any bike into a motorcycle, Taking drugs meant orange-flavored chewable aspirin, Water balloons were the ultimate weapon, If you can remember most or all of these, Then You Have Lived!!!
I remember a lot of those, but I'll add my own. When I was a kid, I would ride my bike to distant potato and corn fields, and the farmers ALWAYS let me jump up on the fenders and ride with them...all day, sharing their lunch, etc. Not one was worried about liability of me falling off, or causing trouble...and while they might have choked back a swear when something went wrong, they were pretty much God fearing men. Those were the farmers and loggers I grew up with, and while most are long dead, they gave me a sense of work ethic and love of agriculture that exists to this day. That is why our farm is still a farm, dating back to the Mayflower if you go back far enough, but in Maine officially to 1746 when the King of England granted us this land. Thanks to Veterans in my family and others of this great nation we have retained it and lived. That is 270 years; and we are still logging, farming, and still free.
Ugh, I was just thinking about the "good ole days" this morning when I dropped my daughter off at school. The process goes: Park, walk up to school, bang on the locked door until someone lets you in, find her name in a binder and mark the time I dropped her off and initial next to that. Repeat same process when I pick her up. "Back in the day" when I went to school, which was only the 90's, it was good enough for my mom to drop me off and I managed to walk into the school all by myself!! Same with getting picked up, they'd release us into a parking lot all by ourselves and he had to find the car completely on our own.
I'm not even 40 and I remember guys with guns in the gun rack of their truck at school and tractors being driven to school as a method of transport when the truck wouldn't run. 1 of those would earn you a trip to club fed nowadays. The other would earn you a bunch of honking, middle fingers, and general road rage for holding up traffic. Such is life nowadays I guess?
We were talking recently about another that probably most won't remember and that is buying flour in 100 lb sacks and the sacks were made of cloth which, when emptied, were than usually made into clothing for the family. Or how about washdays when we'd have to fill the kettles which got heated on the wood cook stove... Or that little shack out back. Yes, we could go on an on about these things. About school. Just by asking the bus driver, he would let us off anywhere. Our bus route came within 1 3/4 mile of home before making a long sweep before getting to our home. When the weather was nice, it was common for me and my brothers or sometimes just me to get off at that point and see if we could beat the bus home! Folks didn't care; driver didn't care; school didn't care. Bet that does not happen today.
I remember growing up with many of these things/situations..... But I definitely remember when "Blazing Saddles" came out, and that the children were NOT going to go with the parents to see it at the Drive-In. RIP Gene Wilder.
School-we don't let a kid off the bus under the age of 14 unless there is a parent at home. They bring them back and I or my secretary baby sit them until we can reach the parents to come and get them.
Guilty as charged!! Only the bus driver knew it too and would drive with a heavy foot while I was running through the woods!!
That's crazy to me, and I'm sure many more members.... I was allowed to let myself in off the bus at age 9... Younger if my older brother was coming home at the same time.
I can remember well when I was a little boy and the doctors kept after my parents to, "Get that boy a bike!" As most of you know, it is because I had polio at a young age and was cripple but thankfully overcame it. Yet, until around age 12 or 13 I was a puny skinny runt with very weak legs. So when I finally got a bike, it took me a while before I was able to actually ride it (no training wheels either). Once I could ride, I went as far as possible but remember many times having to sit along side of the road resting until I could get enough energy to make it home. Made it after dark many times. Did anyone worry. So far as I know, none did nor did I ever catch H for it. Unfortunately I did have to go without few meals. As for getting off the bus, it made no difference what age. When the bus stopped at a home, the kid got off. End of that ride. And I know for a fact that many times mother or dad was not home for many kids. Nobody seemed worried either.
Riding in the back of a pick up. When I played Little League all-stars, we would ride in the back of the coach's truck-a 1968 Dodge-to games in the neighboring communities. Mom and Dad-they were glad I was with Don-they didn't come to the games, they were working in the garden.
Guilty! But I didn't have a truck so my 30-06 was in the trunk of my Mustang so I could head right to the woods after school. Jumping on your bike, leaving the house at 9:00AM, and not coming home until dinner time. After dinner going back outside to play baseball or football or frisbee in the street until dark and then playing hide-n-seek for a couple hours after that. This was in the early 70's. Yep. A completely different childhood than kids have now.
I walked to school from first grade until I got my license at 16. Now days parents walk the kids even if school is just across the street. It's sad the way society has turned out.
Ah, those stupid training wheels! My step daughters bike had those on it, my wife "forbade" me from removing them. But after watching my stepdaughter pedal that bike for 2 summers and not get any closer to actually being able to ride, I took off the training wheels when my wife was away and we practiced in the grass. Within an hour she could coast down a hill, and within a week she could go wherever she wanted! Sometimes you gotta fall a few times to figure things out!
