Do Any Of You Remember When???

[christie]

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

Send this on to someone who 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,
Hula 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"?



I am sharing this with you today
because it ended with a double dog dare to pass it on.
To remember what a double dog dare is, read on.
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 tableside jukeboxes
Blackjack, Clove and Teaberry chewing gum
Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers
Newsreels before the movie
P.F. Fliers


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


Peashooters
Howdy Dowdy
45 RPM records
Green Stamps
Hi-Fi's

Metal ice cubes trays with levers
Mimeograph paper
Beanie and Cecil
Roller-skate keys
Cork pop guns
Drive ins
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

35 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?
A foot of snow was a dream come true?

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!!!!!!!

Pass this on to anyone who may need a break from
their "grown-up" life . . .I double-dog-dare-ya!

[momofrussell]

I enjoyed reading this! Thanks CC! Gosh, my husband and I were just talking about the Blue Chip Stamp place back in CA that both our moms would take us to, to turn those stamps in. I still remember it well.

And the Fuller Brush man coming to my grandma's house. My mom STILL has the old mops and funny thing is, we just went to the Fuller Brush store last month so my mom could buy the replacement heads.

And I still have our 45's and 33's.. I will not part with them.. we still have some 78's too!

I also remember watching Tom Jones with my grandma when I was little LMAO.. man did my Nana love watching him!!!! heehee It was her afternoon "crush" until my Gramps came home from work.


I also remember Bozo the clown and WONDERAMA.. man I LOVED Wonderama and "4 count burpies"! And Hobo Kelly...dind't she fly through the air with those REALLY REALLY big RED glasses on... LOL.. OH... and Romper Room

Oh and I really had to giggle at the TV taking 5 minutes to warm up. We had that console TV for YEARS!!!! So did my grandparents.

Man.. reading that brings back so many things... thanks for the trip!

a.

[lindy]

I don't remember most of that... lol. Probably because I wasn't born yet!

[momofrussell]

GEEE thanks Lindy.. rub it in!!! LMAO!!!!!

A.

[TriciaF]

Oh my...some of those things I haven't thought of in ages!!

Had the really ugly gym suit for sure. And girls weren't allowed to wear pants to school until I hit third grade. And we had no air conditioners at school....in 90 degree heat.

We had black and white TV and only 3 stations + PBS. I had no clue why they called him "Mr. Green Jeans" on Captain Kangaroo!! And there was HeeHaw and Bonanza and Laugh-in and the scandel Cher caused by showing her belly button on TV. And at night, the darn stations just went off, just the white noise came on after the John Wayne poem and the national anthem. There were NO kids shows on after fathers came home from work.....so we had to go play outside. There were no computers, no VCR's, no remote controls, no microwaves and no blow dryers. You really did have record players, my first album was the Carpenters!

I remember reading outside in the grass for hours...and there was no such thing in SC as a FIRE ANT! We went to the triple horror drive-in every Friday night....I saw Night of the Living Dead there and Ten Thousand Maniacs and all the vampire flicks.

I remember when the first MacDonalds came to town and the big deal was to go there with your report card because if you made A's and B's....they gave you a free order of french fries. And your parents gave you nada...cause it was expected that you would make good grades.

I remember drinking Orange Crush from the brown bottles and Chocolate Soldiers and peanuts in Cokes with Moon Pies. And we would scour the neighborhood looking for glass bottles to return to the store to collect the deposit and buy candy. And we learned to make snow cream out of snow and churned ice cream in a real churn, cranking the handle. And you went to the farmers market and bought peas and beans by the bushel and shelled them in bowls at night while watching TV til your fingers were raw. And mothers were forever "putting things up" in jars, tomatoes and all manner of gross stuff. And they really wore aprons! Oh and the metal ice trays for sure....along with the ice crusher that hung on the wall and had a handle you cranked round to chop the ice up. And screen doors all had a long spring and made that funny spring sound when they clanged shut. And we were deadly with a fly swatter.

Since there was really nothing to do inside....all the kids in the neighborhood played outside day and night and there were pickup ball games in the road and hide and seek and chase til late at night in the summer. We picked plums and blackberries. And we did lie back many a night to stare are the stars.....and we could actually see them. We had all- night jacks and rummy marathons and camped out in the tent in the back yard at age 9 without parents even checking on us once....cause the worst thing that happened was the ants found your spare peanut butter sandwich during the night.

We didn't take swimming lessons at a pool but learned to swim in a lake that we rode to in the back of a pickup truck......standing up if we felt like it. Oh, there were no seat belts or car seats.

My grandmother collected an entire huge set of dishes, one piece at a time from either the grocery store or gas station.....and I have inherited them....and to me they are priceless. We had a wringer washer and there is still one in my Grandma's garage.

We read the Bobsy Twins and Pippi Longstocking and all kinds of comics; Richie Rich, Archie, Casper, Josie and the p.u.s.s.ycats.

And we saw the first man walk on the moon and then ran outside to see if we could make him out up there. And our phone number was Sunset 7-1437. Vietnam was real and you had friends whose fathers had died there and you wore MIA (missing in action) bracelets to remember the people who didn't come home. And ERA stood for the equal rights amendment and we wore bracelets for that too.....and started to believe that women had rights and opportunities too.....despite few roll models and what we read in D.i.c.k and Jane.

Girls wore hats and gloves to church with easter outfits and all the stores were closed on Sundays. Getting a second car in the family was HUGE. And when the first volkswagon beetle came out and we got one....watch out world.

Of course, everybody had a loaded gun (or several) in their house even though they didn't lock the doors, or lock up the guns for that matter. But children knew better than to ever touch them without permission because parents spanked, the school spanked and my second grade teacher slapped palms with a ruler. I suppose we had our share of bullies, but don't remember being bothered because the dads rule (including mine) was.....I better not hear of you starting a fight at school, or running from one that someone starts with you. The boys didn't play on soccor teams but boxing teams and they really did beat the snot out of each other.

Your dog was your best bud and was definitely a mutt and went everywhere with you including the bus stop because there weren't any leash laws or fenced yards. And no one thought a thing about the kids having a fire at the bus stop in the morning to keep warm.

I wouldn't want to go back......love these modern conveniences...but the world sure did seem smaller and more manageable....maybe because you did interact with people more and your reputation was important to uphold.

Thanks, Christie. for the ride!

[Emilysmom]

I agree.....this was such a fun trip down memory lane!!! I was feeling a bit old when Lindy said she hadn't been born yet, then feeling much younger until Tricia said she couldn't wear pants to school till 3rd grade. For me, it was 7th grade, and it was a BIG deal when we were finally able to do it. At first, it was only on Fridays and it could NOT be denim.....had to be like dressy slacks. LOL I had some red/white/black houndstooth check WOOL bell bottom slacks with suspenders, and could NOT wait for Friday to roll around so I could wear them!! A year later, we were able to wear dressy slacks every day and jeans on Fridays. Before that time, when it was cold outside we wore our dresses with stretch pants underneath.

The ugly gym uniform!!! Mine in 7th grade was dark gray and it was ONE PIECE! Snapped up the front......unbelievably ugly!!

Tricia.....our phone number was Murray 3-4875. I hadn't thought of that in years!! I also had a POW/MIA bracelet that I wore and I thought about that soldier daily.

You know those stories about your parents having to walk to school, even in the snow? (5 miles both ways, lol?) I walked to school every single day until my senior year in high school......only about 6 blocks, but still!! And, there were no school lunches then so I walked home for lunch too! (you could bring a sack lunch to school, but I wanted to come home and watch the "Little Rascals" while I ate lunch!)

Does anyone remember putting clean clothes into the refigerator slightly damp before ironing them??? And the starch came in a bottle, not a spray can. We ironed hankerchiefs (what ever happened to those pretty lacy hankies my grandma carried in her purse??)

One thing I'll never forget is that we had a black and white console TV for many years. One of my favorite TV shows was "Bewitched", and at the beginning of that show, an animated character that looked like Samantha would fly across the screen with this banner that said "IN COLOR". I never could figure out why the show was not really in color on MY tv. LOL a few years later, we really moved up and got a color TV and suddenly, Bewitched really was "in color"!!!

In junior high, I took 50 cents for lunch. That was enough to buy my meal AND a chocolate shake and have a dime left so I could stop at "Sandy's" for a Coke on the way home. (That later became Hardees; basically same menu) When they raised the price of a Coke to 15cents, I thought it was the end of life as I knew it!

Teaberry gum!! (And the Teaberry shuffle on the tv ad for the gum). Sen Sen, and those candy cigarettes....LOL I remember riding my bike and pretending to be really smoking those...at like 8 years old!

One of the greatest birthday gifts I can remember was a Barbie Dream House......only it was totally made out of cardboard!!! For several years though....troll dolls were my favorite toy and my friends and I made home made houses for them.

Remember how, on TV, the husbands and wives slept in twin beds? Never together?

Yes.....I really do wish my kids could slip back in time and see how much fun it was to live "way back when"!!!

Susan

#nosmileys

[Emilysmom]

Oh!! I just remembered something else about school!!! The treat of "corporal punishment", lol was NO threat......we got spanked right in front of the whole class if we acted up at all! My first grade teacher would even lock us in her "coat closet" for 30 minutes or so if we talked during class. I remember being in that closet several times. One one occasion, the class and the teacher went home and I got left in the closet until the janitor came to clean the room and I yelled for him to let me out. My 3rd grade teacher would lift up our dresses before we got a paddling......hmmmm, I guess for added embarassment. It worked, because I only let that happen once!! The sad thing to me is that those teachers were ones I really looked up to, but I thought of them as being almost too old to still be teaching. Looking back, I'm guessing they were about 45!!!

Susan

[TriciaF]

Susan, I don't even know why this is, but I have run into others who also did it, we didn't call the troll dolls, "troll dolls" ever, they were known as d.a.m.n dolls. I can't for the life of me figure out why that was?

OMG! I just did some internet surfing and answered my own question.....we weren't crazy....they were dam dolls!! How about that.
I found the following on the site below:
troll.freeservers.com/

TYPES OF TROLLS DOLLS

DAM THINGS are the creation of Thomas Dam ( correctly pronounced "DOM" however most people mispronounce it as "Dam" Probably as a take of on the saying "d**n things" ) of Denmark. His creations are favored by most troll collectors and for good reasons. Dam trolls are well made, well dressed and have been around since the fifties. They became popular in the 1960's in America when they took the hippie generation by storm. Some Dam trolls made in the sixties are demanding hundreds of dollars today. Even the more modern Dam trolls seem to be holding their dollar value, that is to say, one can often sell their Dam troll for the same price, or more than what they paid for it. Below is a picture of three Dam trolls dressed as pirates. The one on the right was made in the eighties. It is called a 'NORFIN' which is the name given to imported Dams by the company E.F.S.. It is still a Dam.
The other two are Dam things made in the sixties. They are made of a harder plastic. Their dollar value is about fifty to one hundred dollars for the older trolls and about twenty to forty dollars for the newer troll.

Shoot....now why didn't I hold onto those things?? Susan, you still have any?

[justinsmom]

ok I remember some of the things and how about the Faygo commercial with the little red bouncy ball and the 3 stooges, lost in space lol. Oh how I miss the pop in the glass bottles, hey how about they put beer in plastic bottles and give me back my pop bottles .

[Chris]

I admit that I remember most of that stuff. I remember when all my dad had to do to get us to behave was to start to unbuckle his belt. I remember when all my mom had to say to strike fear in us was, just wait till your father gets home! My poor dad!

We were able to wear dress pants in the 7th grade and graduated to blue jeans in the 9th grade. Does anyone remember elephant leg pants, bubble shirts, red snap jeans, fringed jackets and lots of purple? We didn't think too long about what to do with our hair, it was as long as you could grow it. I remember my sister ironing her hair on the ironing board.

Moms left their kids in the car while they ran in the grocery store but we were never left home alone. Mom had dinner on the table everyday at 5:00. We knew it was time to come home when the street lights came on. Our dog went everywhere with us and always had puppies.

Remember when we would get homemade popcorn balls and candy apples when we went trick or treating? One of our neighbors always served hot chocolate. We never worried about someone tampering with our candy.

I remember candy cigarettes and bubble gum cigars. If you blew on the cigarettes, a puff of smoke (sugar) would come out. We always left the red end for last so that someone would really believe it was a real cigarette.

Remember when parents drank cokes and kids were only allowed to drink koolaid or milk? Getting a pizza was a huge treat.

Teachers ruled at school. I was too scared to do anything wrong and never got a spanking. I remember too many kids getting them in the front of the class. I never heard my mother say anything negative about a teacher until I was all grown. I remember when milk was .03 and how upset my mom was when it went up to .05.

Movies were .35 and I got .25 for allowance. We were only allowed to spend .10 on candy. The dime store really had things that cost .10.

We didn't have a color tv until I went away to college. My mom always stayed home until I went away to college.

I loved my Saturday morning cartoons, the Flintstones, the Jetsons, George in the Jungle, the Archies. When I got to be a little older, I remember running home from school so that I wouldn't miss Dark Shadows. My grandma always watched Peyton Place. My mom had a crush on Dr. Kildare. I probably got to watch more tv than a lot of kids because my dad often worked the afternoon shift.

We had a milkman. The bread truck would come once a week and we would get fresh cream puffs.

I remember fried bologna sandwiches, potted meat with mustard, spam, vienna sausages (I eat much better today!!), fried okra, fried squash, fried cauliflower, fried catfish, fried chicken, fried potatoes, fried pork chops, etc. Can you guess where I was raised?

I remember going to the drive in movie with my family on a Saturday night. The kids would go to the playground under the huge screen. Mom would make a grocery sack full of popcorn. Then when we got too sleepy to stay awake we would lie down in the back of the station wagon where mom put down nice comfy blankets.

Remember when most kids had several siblings? I had four sisters and that made me unique because there were five girls and no boys in our family but most of my friends had at least three kids in the family.

I could go on and on but need to get some work done.

Chris

[MB]

Thanks everybody for absolutely wonderful memories! I spent the day, with the rest of my extended family, touring the homes in which we grew up. We talked about alot of the things all of you listed. It was really a magical childhood.

Thanks again!

MB

[rickismom]

Yes, I remember a lot of this stuff. (Although I really do like today's ice cube trays over the old ones!)
I remember in the winter running to get the milk bottles delivered to outside our door, hoping that the top cream had frozen, because if it had, Mom would make "ice cream". And catching fire flies. And making clover chains a block long with two freinds. And definately the fuller brush man. \
And in addition to tinkertoys, my brother making marble shute a foot high with blocks.
My grandparents had a phone that an operater answered, with separate ear and mouth pieces. Pipilongstockings was my favorite "shocking" book.
Kool Aid. And "AID" meant "help" and "gay" meant happy. Oh, we had to be carefull- we had heard about people poisened with halloween candy.... but we could walk the street at one at night no problem. We camped out at night with no fear of weirdos attacking us. Pollution was what we called the billboards.

[Deborah]

What a great trip down memory lane. I finally had time out of my busy routine to read this thread and it really shows how much simpler life was "back then". I remember so much of those things and have great memories of my childhood. I guess that is why I try so hard to make sure my kids have memories to share with each other when they are grown.
I loved the lazy days of summer vacation..riding bikes anywhere and everywhere all day long without worry of someone snatching us, freezing koolaid in those metal ice trays , playing under the sprinkler and in the rain. Staying out after dark playing hide and seek.
I too remember the TV's that had to warm up and when we finally got color TV how cool we felt.
So many of those things listed in the post I can relate to.
My husband installed a screen door this past summer and it has a squeak to it. I won't let him oil it. He thinks I am nuts, but everytime it opens and I hear the squeak it reminds me of sitting in an old wooden rocking chair on grandmas front porch because her screen door had that same squeak.