Older Than Dirt

[Campy]

'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, 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 was Sears AND Roebuck. Either way, there is no Roebuck anymore. Maybe he died.

 

My parents never drove me to little league practice. 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 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 friend is cleaning out his grandmother's house 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 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. 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.

 

 

Have a great week!!!!!!

 

 

 

[Stephanie]

Well, now it's official, I'm Getting Older!! I knew it!!

[JCK88]

LOL....I'm there ahead of you!

 

 

[Ambergris]

I loved candy cigarettes.

[SueC]

OOps dont tell my age!

 

Edited to Add: I only know the generic ones, some of those things are pure yankee!

[Cat]

I delivered newspapers... Sunday mornings before church were sometimes the worst, and sometimes the very best.

 

I remember when the local dairy stopped delivering milk. Mom turned our "milk box" into a catch-all for the porch.

 

Our sprinkler was a pop bottle, too. They made a plastic thingy with a cork edge to stick into the top. Mom would sprinkle the clothes, roll tightly, and refrigerate them. (The moisture would permeate the clothes better after they sat, during dry weather.)

 

They still make the wax-bottle thingies. My kids like them for a novelty, usually when I make the birthday "hamburger cookies".

 

And I actually found the candy cigarettes a couple of weeks ago, at a local candy shop that sells a lot of novelty stuff! They're called "sticks" now, because of the politically-nice practice of changing things. The bubblegum cigars are just called by their gum flavor.

 

We used those metal ice cube trays for years and years.

 

And I think I still have my 45s around here somewhere... LOL

 

 

 

Older than dirt? Fine with me!!!

 

 

 

 

[KatMom]

Oh God.I remember all of them. I guess that makes me officially old. Katmom

[Andrea]

Yeah, not older than dirt yet but at least I don't have to tell my age!

[lunamother]

Older Than Dirt = Me

[Jeepers]

I remember 23 out of the 25.

[Aint2nuts]

I remember 10 of them, but honestly? Four of them are because they are still around.

[Trip]

Your all a bunch of puppys!! not only do I remember all of them I can add one..

 

We all took 10 milk lids to school to learn our numbers..lay out you 10 lids and then remove 3 whats left?...old calculators...

 

every boy had a pair of "Tennis shoes" black with a white rubber round thing on the sides..weren't they made by Converse?? they had to last thru a year..you wore goloshes(sp) over them in winter...called "Wear your rubbers" say that today and get laughed out of the house...

 

Trip

[Jeepers]

We didn't have a phone until I was about 12 so the numbers that started with a word was already phased out.

I don't ever remember a milkman coming around. I suppose we had one.

 

I do remember a time when there were no supermarkets. We went to the butcher shop for meat and then to the veggie/fruit market. I remember they were right beside each other in different buildings. I was about 0-8 years old then. Other stuff was bought around the corner at Danners 5 and Dime.

 

It was a huge deal when the first supermarket (Marsh) opened in town. Lawsy, they had EVERYTHING and an automatic door opener, push carts and gave green stamps to boot. I was 8 years old and very impressed.

[DenimDaze]

 

 

Some of the things I remember from visiting grandparents and other relatives in New Brunswick, Canada.

 

I thought the milk delivery and the party line were cool. The milk guy was treated like a good friend and introduced to the American grandkids. The milk looked wierd, it had this yellow stuff at the top of the bottle!

 

 

I got 14, so I won't mention my age

[Cricket]

I remember when you'd get drinking glasses in the laundry detergent boxes.

 

I remember buying savings bond stamps at school.

 

I remember the boys were excused from school the first day of hunting season.

 

I remember walking ten miles to school barefoot.... no, wait a minute... that was my DAD!

[mommato3boys]

Originally Posted By: Cricket

I remember when you'd get drinking glasses in the laundry detergent boxes.

Hey my mother still has some of those

I guess I am older than dirt. Yep I won't tell you how many I remember but I still have one of those coke bottles with the sprinkle top.

How about freezing your backsides of from sitting on the hand cranked ice cream freezer. The grands job on the 4th of July was to turn the crank on the ice cream freezer. I remember the little ones got to sit on top while the older ones turned it. It was pawpaw job to come by every once in a while and test it he would turn the crank and nope not yet. It would get so hard to turn that the older grandsons had to finish the job.



I am so old I guess I need one of these on a big front porch