Older than Dirt

These are for my Mature Friends, some call us Senior Citizens



'Someone 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!
'Mom cooked every day and when Dad 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, never wore Levis, never set foot on a golf course, never 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 & 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 19.
It was, of course, black and white, and the station went off the air at midnight, after playing the national anthem and a poem about God; it came back on the air at about 6 a.m. and there was usually a locally produced news and farm show on, featuring local people.
I was 21 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.
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 -- my brother delivered a newspaper, six days a week. It cost 7 cents a paper, of which he got to keep 2 cents. He had to get up at 6AM every morning. On Saturday, he had to collect the 42 cents from his customers. His favorite customers were the ones who gave him 50 cents and told him to keep the change. His 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. There were no movie ratings because all movies were responsibly produced for everyone to enjoy viewing, without profanity or violence or most anything offensive.
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. 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 jukeboxes
6. Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers
7. Party lines on the telephone
8 Newsreels before the movie
9. P.F. Flyers
10. Butch wax
11.. TV test patterns that came on at night after the last show and were there until TV shows started again in the morning. (there were only 3 channels... [if you were fortunate] )
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 some of the best parts of my life.

All 25. But, I gotta admit that I really do like the new things like indoor plumbing, water that didn't come from a cistern, central heat and AC.

Really showing my age now:

-carbide headlights

-most all 22's shot short, long, or long rifle

-using real beeswax on hunting boots

- General store, Drug store, five & dime

-independently owned grocery stores...you could go to the store and pick up some flour and sugar and have them put it on your tab..........lots of families had a running tab and paid at the end of the month.

Woolworth's

I remember all but the carbide headlights. Never saw any of them.

We could only afford 22 shorts but they worked.

Ice delivered to the house for the ice box mentioned.

Wow, I didn't feel old until I read this.

Those bowling ball size road flares they used to mark road construction. I have one in the attic.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqXnBXmPQ3U

Dad had these rigged up on hard hats for coon hunting.

One or two for a penny candies and nickel candy bars that were a lot bigger than the candy bars they sell now days for seventy to eighty cents plus sales tax. You could also get the nickel candy bars in a six pack for a quarter and there was no sales tax on anything.

Skelly gas and buying fireworks at the gas station all year long. Cherry bombs and M-80's too.

Yep
Fishin with M-80's

Never forget a friends Dad was lighting those big red 3 inchers with a cigar, thru the cigar and put the 3 incher in his mouth. Not much on plastic surgery back then. Really messed him up.

How about:
Sock Hops
Hobos (they used to mark your house with chalk if you gave them food so their other hobo buddies would know where the easy marks were)
Playing cards in the spokes of your bicycle tires for that "realistic" motorcycle sound
Mr. Cola - When Cokes were a puny 6-1/2 or 10 ounces, Mr. Cola was a giant 16 ounces!
Turkey Shoots - with real turkeys for targets. I shot one when I was 10 and we had it for Thanksgiving.

By the way, those bowling ball size road flares they used to mark road construction were smudge pots. They were a lot of fun at Halloween.

And a not-so-fond memory from the old days - Did anybody ever have a neighbor that loaded his shotgun with rock salt for those rascally kids stealing his watermelons? Ouch!

Hey redfred,....My cousin and I were shot at by one of those rock salt loaded shotguns. Didn't hit us though. Hauled buns and those were the best tasting watermelons I ever ate.

I was raised on a small farm/ranch between Muleshoe and Farwell and $ wasn't real plentiful. I'm 72 and this is some of the stuff from my rear view mirror.

If you did a mans job, you were considered a man.
A man that wouldn't fight when insulted wasn't much of a man.
A man who told a lie was never trusted again.
Kids often couldn't make it to school when the crops had to be gotten in.
Gleaner Baldwin combine that was pulled by a Farmall tractor.
Met my first Jewish guy when I joined the USAF in 1964.
Not all of the guys on the football team could afford cleats or even sneakers. They were called tennis shoes.
Went to Lubbock and saw my first TV at a fair. We knew that we would never be able to afford one.
The draft. Military service was called "doing your duty".
Cutting up Black cat firecrackers to get the powder out so we could make a bomb or a pipe cannon with gravel.
Nearest Doctor was in Clovis New Mexico.
Polio and the Salk vaccine. Lots of kids died from it.
A neighbor who did 18 months in prison for getting a girl pregnant. Several years later she admitted that he hadn't done it.
Counter checks at the bank.
Being able to grab the 22 single shot 22 and use it when I could keep both ends off the ground. Warned to never waste shells.
Dang few deer in Texas and hunting was jack rabbits.
Musicians smoked marijuana, truck drivers took bennies to stay awake and one guy got hooked on heroin. They were called dope fiends.
Licorice sticks and candy cigarettes.

There's more and they weren't always the good old days.

I remember lots of those...

How true that post is.

I scored 20 on the 'remember things'. Just reinforces what my boys have told me for years.

What's sad is everything in that post I remember, guess I'm livin up to my kids name for me. Ol' Man

Ya know what old is? Remembering them today but not remembering them tomorrow.

smudge pots!

I bought .22 shells at 7-11 when I was a teenager.

My brother and I used to walk along the road and collect Coke bottles, cash them in, and buy boxes of .22 shells at the local general store. I worked at a Western Auto when I was a kid and we sold guns and ammo, and sold fireworks all year long. My dad opened up a new account at the local bank, and he got a brand new pump shotgun as a gift. I smile to think about what would happen nowadays if you walked out of a bank with a shotgun.