DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN...?

DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN...?

 All the girls had ugly gym uniforms? 

It took five minutes for the TV warm up?   

Nearly everyone's Mom was at home when the kids got home from school? 

Nobody owned a purebred dog?   

When a quarter was a decent allowance? 

You'd reach into a muddy gutter for a penny? 

Your Mom wore nylons that came in two pieces? 

All your male teachers wore neckties and female teachers had their hair done every day and wore high heels? 

 

  

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 did? 

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 " and 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?   

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? 

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 muc h bigger threat!  But we survived because their love was greater than the threat. 

Can you can still remember  
Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, Laurel and Hardy,
Howdy Dowdy and the Peanut Gallery,
the Lone Ranger, The Shadow Knows,
Nellie Bell, Roy and Dale, Trigger and Buttermilk. 

As well as summers filled with bike rides, baseball games, & Hoops, bowling and visits to the pool,  
and eating Kool-Aid powder with sugar.  
 

Didn't that feel good, just to go back and say, "Yeah, I remember that"?  

 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 tableside jukeboxes  B

lackjack, Clove and Teaberry chewing gum 
 

 Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers 

Newsreels before the movie and P.F. Fliers   

Telephone numbers with a word prefix...(Raymond 4-601). Party lines    

Peashooters
 

Howdy Doody Hi-Fi's
45 RPM records 78 RPM records! 

Green Stamps 

Metal ice cubes trays with levers Mimeograph paper

Beanie and Cecil 

Roller-skate keys

 Cork pop guns 

Studebakers 

Washtub wringers 

The Fuller Brush Man 

Reel-To-Reel tape recorders   

Tinkertoys 

Erector Sets 

The Fort Apache Play Set  
Lincoln Logs 

15 cent McDonald hamburgers
  5 cent packs of baseball cards - with that awful pink slab of bubble gum
 

Penny candy
 

25 cent a gallon gasoline
 
Jiffy Pop popcorn 

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"? 

The worst thing you could catch from the opposite sex was "cooties"?  

Having a weapon in school meant being caught with a slingshot? 

Saturday morning cartoons weren't 30-minute commercials for action figures? 

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!!!!!!!




Submitted by RichK on Tue, 08/28/2007 - 6:12am.

Ghostwriter,

This was way too good, but a great way to start my Tuesday.  YES!!!  I remember those days, along with a few other things.  Like going to the barber, when they were still called barbers, sitting in the chair that had the paper roll for your head.  Candy dots on wax papaer.  Candy stores.  Only having to walk to the grocery store, the sausage store, the bakery.  Taking a shopping cart along with you to bring back the groceries.  Paper bags only. Four major daily newspapers. Watching the Kennedy expressway, Int. 90/94 being built along with the new interstate system and President Kennedy riding it for its inauguration. Being at the Cubs game at Wrigley field at the first internationally televised baseball game by something called a satellite in space.  Rotary dials on phones.

Cooling off on a hot day by cracking open a fire hydrant.  (We had our naughty side back then, but that's about as bad as we got) Going to the corner drug store for purchasing a soda or LEGAL drugs. Having a tavern, not a pub, on almost every corner.  Being warned that we had better be home if the street lights were on.  Something called a curfew, & parents meant it, checked on us & grounded us when we broke it!  Sunday night sock hops at the local high school. Having a day or two off from school because of the most recent blizzard & it's 23 in. of snow that pretty much stopped the city.  Going downtown for a movie & burger at Wimpy's was a big treat.  Fianlly getting old enough to allowed in the adult swim time at the local park district pool.  Playing baseball, softball, hockey (With rubber balls & brooms) in the street, sometimes under the lights, street lights. Going into the corner tavern for a drink of water.  No problem.  the guy who owned it knew all of us & our parents.  Two of my friends lived above the tavern.

I could go on but I'll leave some room for my fellow bloggers.  I'm sure we will have more.  Thanks for the great start & trip down memory lane.

"Doubting is the first requirement of knowlege. Aquiring more knowlege is the requirement of higher intellect."  JATFUR.

RichK




Submitted by John5146 on Tue, 08/28/2007 - 11:56pm.

Rich, I think the satellite was "Telstar"? I do remember Jack Brickhouse making a big deal out of it but on our b/w TV we noticed no difference, circa 1962 or so.




Submitted by Marsha on Wed, 08/29/2007 - 8:08am.

I've really enjoyed this blog, and I've tried to remember stuff left out but you have most of it there Ghostwriter.

I remember toys, especially my Chatty Kathy doll and Thumbelina.

Would you believe I still have Thumbelina? 




Submitted by RichK on Wed, 08/29/2007 - 9:36am.

John5146,

I'm pretty sure that you are right @ Telstar.  I still remember sitting in the lower grandstand behind the CUBS dugout on a typically beautiful CHICAGO afternoon & it was either Jack Brickhouse, whom I met once (very nice man) or Pat Piper coming over the PA system to tell us that we were now a part of history.  I also remember seeing the game on the sports segment of TV that night.  If I'm not mistaken, they used a split screen, something new for the day.  Thanks for the reminder.

RichK




Submitted by OneMann on Wed, 08/29/2007 - 11:02am.

Thanks, GhostWriter.

How about deciding who bats first by grabbing the bat and alternating hands until someone's covered the top of the bat?

Changing channels meant you wanted to watch the "other" station, and involved getting up and walking across the room to twist a knob on the front of the TV set?

Smuggling a transistor radio with an earpiece into class to listen to a World Series game?

Graduating from eighth grade meant you passed tests that would stump most college students today?

You could find many folks' genealogy in their family Bible?

Beaver Cleaver was funny?

 




Submitted by RichK on Wed, 08/29/2007 - 11:29am.

OneMann,

Thanks for more on this.  YES. A resounding YES to all of them.

RichK




Submitted by GhostWriter on Wed, 08/29/2007 - 11:31am.

Remember when the remote control on the TV weighed about 40lb and had names. Our remotes names were, Eddie, Cheryl, Burnard, and Steve. Remember the commands for the remotes, Turn it up, turn it down, stop it from rolling, and change the channel.

Marsha, I remember my favorite toy was my Smoke gun. I took it too school one day for show and tell. I remember when I brought it in class, my teacher yelled at me because I didn’t break it. I started too cry because I thought she wanted to break my gun. Then I found out she wasn’t talking about breaking my gun, she just wanted to see if it was loaded. She was referring to an open breach. Can you imagine an eight year old carrying any type of gun too school today.

            Remember when Banks gave away mechanical banks? I still have my poppye dime bank. It holds ten dollars in dimes and won’t open until it is full. I still have my tonka truck.

 




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