Old Fart

I got this via email and thought I would go ahead and make a post out of it. Sure, it dates me but what the hell. It's been around the block a few times, but I figgered I would do some commenting on it:

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 ...."
• 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?
• 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.
• How about 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.
• Summers filled with bike rides, baseball games, Hula Hoops, bowling and visits to the pool, and eating Kool-Aid powder with sugar.
• Do you remember what a double dog dare is?
  

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
• 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?

Well, I remember most of them.
Newsreels were gone but they played a cartoon or two before the movie. (Which cost me 50 cents. A pop was $.15 and a "Lucky Sucker" was $.05) Now all you do is sit there and watch previews or advertisements for a half hour before the movie starts. And pay out the ass for a ticket and goodies.

I never saw Laurel and Hardy, Howdy Dowdy, The Shadow Knows, and I've never heard of Nellie Bell, but I remember the rest of those shows. Along with The Green Hornet, Batman, The Monkees, Flipper, and Lassie.

A 57 Chevy wasn't my dream car, but I couldn't wait to grow up and buy a Camaro or Road Runner, and yes. We left the keys in the ignition.
Even when we parked in public areas, just in case someone needed to move the car! You never know, they made need to move it for some reason. We never locked the doors on the house either. What if someone came to visit and we were asleep? We wouldn't want them to be locked out!

The cheapest I remember a gallon of gas being is 25 cents per gallon. Shit - I don't think 25 cents would fill an empty Nehi bottle now.

Weapons in school? My dad always made sure I had a pocketknife to carry. Most boys in my classes carried knives. If not a pocketknife then a lockblade in a sheath on the belt. And the thought of pulling it out and using it on a classmate never entered our minds. It was a tool for cutting things, cleaning grit from under the fingernails, opening a box or playing mumbly peg. That was all. Getting caught with a pea shooter on the other hand carried a penalty. Those were used for spitwads which either ended up on the ceiling or the hair of girls in the class. You were assured of a trip to the principles office or a swat on the ass if you had one of those in the building.