Do You Remember... ...when all the girls had ugly gym uniforms and 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 and you'd reach into a muddy gutter for a penny? Mothers wore nylons that came in two pieces and 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?
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?
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.
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"? How many of these do you remember? Candy cigarettes
Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside
Pop machines that dispensed glass bottles
Coffee shops with table side 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 (VErmont 8-9470).
Party lines
Peashooters
Howdy Dowdy
45 RPM records
Green Stamps
Hi-Fi's
Nickel Sticks
Bells from The Good Humor truck
Jiffy Pop popcorn
Coming home when the streetlights came on | 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
5cent pack of baseball cards with that hard slab of gum
Penny candy
35 cent a gallon gasoline
White Castles 13 for a buck |
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!!!!!!!
If you don't remember, then just stick your tongue to a frozen pole... Go On... I double-dog-dare-ya!
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