Remember When!

[ssgtt32]

Another Goody For The Oldtimers:

My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to
get food poisoning.

My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat it raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in icepack coolers, but I can't remember getting e-coli.

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring!)...no beach closures then.

The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.

We all took gym, not PE... and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym)
instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now..

Flunking gym was not an option... even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym.

Speaking of school, we all said prayers and sang the national anthem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention.

We must have had horribly damaged psyches. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.(what's a school nurse?)

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself.

I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations.

Oh yeah!...and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!

We played 'king of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of Mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it didn't sting like iodine did) and then we got our butt spanked.

Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.

We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either because if we did, we got our butt spanked there and then we got our butt spanked again when we got home.

I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop, just before he fell off. Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house. Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof. It was a neighborhood run amuck.

To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that?

Did we need to get into group therapy and anger management classes? We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac! How did we ever survive?

LOVE TO ALL OF US WHO SHARED THIS ERA, AND TO ALL WHO DIDN'T, SORRY FOR WHAT YOU MISSED. I WOULDN'T TRADE IT FOR ANYTHING !
:banana:

gotta love that banana

semper fi
Maurice

[Roulette]

Very True and refreshing to read, Thank You Maurice.

[recon532002]

Gosh I remember butter and sugar Sandwiches. Going to the saturday movie theater Watching the Lone Ranger It cost 25cents. Monster movies like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Frankenstein, and the Wolfman. Mickey Mantle and Roger Marris. Crackerjacks Watching old war movie on TV John Wayne and the like. 57 Chevies I had Red Ball Jets. Fishing any time and having time. And all Star Wrestling Walking along the railroad track and finding an old railroad spike. Why can't I go back.

I do remember RECON:thumbup:

[GySgtRet]

would on most Fridays or Saturdays advertise that he would be making a movie run. He would ask for donations at least a .10 each and take whoever wanted to go to the movies wait for the movie to end and take us all back home. On the last day of school he would take the entire bus to a place called the Twin Kiss for ice cream and for every "A" you got on your last report card for that school year would give you a dallor for every "A". He did this out of his own pocket and owned his own school bus. He was a humble man, a farmer. I didn't realize how I would appreciate him and his kindness till I grew p. We all or maybe it was just me gave him crap, (if we did give him crap he wacked the crap out of us) regardless of how we acted. He was a heck of a guy, a humble farmer a humnitarian. I didn't know this or look at him in this way till I grewp. Thanks for brining back some good memeories....

[Osotogary]

I remember sitting on top of an old abandoned water heater, of which there were three, in a vacant lot along with my brother and a neighbor. You see, we were all ready to blast off on our rocket ships to outer space just like Flash Gordon did on the television serials. All of a sudden the air raid sirens went off all across San Franciso. Of course we were startled but nevertheless we were determined to resume our adventure..until..we looked up into the sky and saw what now looked like a trainer flying over head with a huge red meatball painted on it. Dammmmed if we didn't scrub our lift off and skeedaddle as fast as we could to our homes and hide under our beds until the all clear.
This little adventure, along with trying to make the perfect over easy fried egg at "Uncle King's" home on a daytime visit, using all of his eggs, getting egg shells and yolk all over the place; feeding his cat eggs until he got sick of eggs; finding Uncle King's Pall Malls, trying to smoke and blowing smoke in his dogs face; then blaming it all on my brother when my Father arrived to find a friggen mess (Hey, my brother also tried to pin this little fiasco on me. LOL), all were part of an era that survived without political correctness.
Ssgt32's list sure brought back a whole lot of memories. I know that I could very easily be part of that list.
Thanks.

[yellowwing]

I do not remember so many kids with asthma or taking pills for ADD.

Hanging out with older cousins was really cool. They showed me how to make slingshots. :banana:

[Marine84]

And, don't forget: you had to get up and move your butt across the room to change the channels on the TV, worrying about scratching your favorite albums (yes, kids there was actually a piece of vinyl that you could put on a turntable, set a needle down on it and MUSIC came out of the speakers), hanging out at the creek in the summertime, not getting your own car to drive until YOU could afford to buy yourself one and even then it wasn't no NEW BMW, letting your own immune system fight a cold off, not having your own phone in your room and if you did it was an extension line and NOT a seperate number, PARTY LINES (where you actually SHARED the same phone line with a neighbor down the road, outhouses......................

[Osotogary]

You might have been forced to watch Lawrence Welk on the television..if you had one. LOL

[Marine84]

Amen to that...............or Hee Haw and remember Dark Shadows?

[junker316]

I remember finding things to do like fishing or hiking compared to sitting indoors all day playing video games. Riding my bicycle for miles with out worry of being to tired to make it back home. Going for hours playing football, without pads, and having fun. Peanutbutter and jelly sandwhiches was a regular part of the diet and if I got hurt it had to be serious before I went to a doctor. There wasn't lawsuits for stupid accidents like spilling hot coffee on yourself. You laughed at yourself for being stupid enough to spill it in the first place. Every Mom in the nieghborhood had grounds to spank you if they caught you doing something that you shouldn't be doing and then again when your parents found out about it. There was little pushed about child abuse because a parent spanked their children. Computers where concidered a convenience not a necessity. The in thing was the walkman radio and cassette player. Children didn't have $100 dollar items with them just to sport around. And a dispute was handled without calling every policeman in the area and then sueing your nieghbor. Sicknesses were the flu, a common cold, and a snuffy nose not AIDS, Herpes, and E-Coli. There was respect for ones elders. Music was of love, happiness, and fun not murder and killing or destruction.

Maybe we missed out on all the fun in life back then...Naaaaa.

[lovdog]

There wasn't such a thing as "an allowance"!! If you wanted money, you had to earn it. And, there was always picking up pop bottles - a penny for the small ones & a nickel for the quarts!! Or dump picking on Saturdays was a regular site visit!!! All kinds of treasures to be found there. The kid that was lucky enough to have the red rubber inner tube tire was everyone's friend cause that made the best slingshots!! And the steelies that you found on the railroad tracks that the coal cars discarded, they were about 1/2" to 3/4" in diameter made the best ammunition for the trusty weapon. You had to chop wood to start the fire in the furnace, cause everyone burned coal or wood. You got your coal by going over to the "boney pile" (discarded coal waste)! My dad would lower me down over the side with a rope tied around my waist, when I found a good size lump, I'd tie it on & he'd pull it up. It was a little dangerous back then cause the bottom of the boney pile was constantly burning red hot, and you better not lose your balance. Usually by the time I got back up to the top, my boots were smoking! If you did this nowadays, your kid would have you committed to a permanent jail cell for abuse!! I always thought it was kinda cool!!
We didn't know we were poor cause there was always someone that was worse off than you.
If you had trouble at school or on playing sports, you settled it with your fists, not a gun like it is today.
Men respected women then - even if you were in a bar room, if someone swore with a woman present - he better look for a fist to the mouth!!
Teachers were feared, everyone of them had a special paddle - some even drilled holes in them to cut down the wind resistance. Our Assistant Principal used to crack us one on the back for no reason - then tell us that was for later when he knew we would do something out of line and him not being around - he was usually right about that!!
Snitching on someone was the ultimate crime - you kept your mouth shut no matter what!! Nowadays, they encourage it!!
Take me back to the simple times when it was really fun being a kid!! SF

[rsta]

Ya'll are taking me back! I remember when stop signs were yellow, the new fangled gadget called the television replaced listening to the radio, the call learned from the "Lassie" series was "ee-ock-ee", answered by your best buddy in the same manner, and "every" adult knew who you were, who your folks were, where you lived, and where they worked! Gas was 24.9 cents a gallon, cigarettes were 19 cents a pack, and minimum wage was 65 cents an hour. Gee, those were really swell times!

[sgt tony]

This is the life that i loved. such things as gas wars .05 a gallon then there was eithel that was for the hot rods oh the smell was grand where kids could go camping at the creek and they was not someone to worrie about doing you no harm. ah the best days of my life

[OLE SARG]

Another thing us kids had back then was RESPECT for our parents and all adults!!!!!!!!!!!!! Is really lacking in today's youth. When we went out to play we made do with what we could find, i.e., a stick made a neat pistol or rifle, etc. We didn't have many overweight kids back then because we had to walk to school, in fact we walked or ran everywhere we went. THE GOOD OLE DAYS!!!!!!!!!!

SEMPER FI,