Remember

Though this is not original, I thought it was very relevant for Woodsdale Kids:

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 kitchen 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 13. 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 6am and there was usually a locally produced news and farm show on, featuring local people.

I was 16 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 shin 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 6a.m. 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 many 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?

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 in. 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 was the bottle that sat on the end of the ironing board to sprinkle clothes with because we didn't have steam irons. Man, I'm old!

How many of these 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 heated 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.
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 juke boxes
6. Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers
7. Party lines on the telephone
8. Newsreels before movies (and cartoons!)
9. P. F. Flyers
10 Butch wax
11. TV test patterns that came on at night after the last show and were there until shows started again in the maorning. 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-fis
17 Metal ice trays with lever
18. Mimeograph paper (with ink that smelled very funny)
19. Blue Flashbulbs
20 Packards
22 Cork popguns
23 Drive ins
24 Studebakers
25 Washtub wringers

If you remembered 0-5 = You're still young
6-10 You are getting older
11- 15 = Don't tell your age
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.