Memories

Someone asked the other day, 'What was your favourite '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 'home,'' I explained. !

'Mum cooked every day and when Dad got home from work, we sat down together at the dining room 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 lad 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'd figured his system could have handled it:

Some parents NEVER owned their own house, wore jeans, set foot on a golf course, travelled out of the country or had a credit card.

My parents never drove me to school.

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 10.

It was, of course, black and white, and the station went off the air at 10 pm, after playing the national anthem and epilogue; it came back on the air at about 6 a.m. and there was usually a locally produced news and farm show on, featuring local people....

I never had a telephone in my room.

The only phone 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, seven days a week. He had to get up at 6AM every morning.

Film stars kissed with their mouths shut. At least, they did in the films.

There were no movie ratings because all movies were responsibly produced for everyone to enjoy viewing, without profanity or violence or almost anything offensive.

If you grew up in a generation before there was fast food, you may 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?

MEMORIES from a friend:

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 it...

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 as the bottle that sat on the end of the ironing board to 'sprinkle' clothes with because we didn't have steam irons.

Man, I am old.

How many do you remember?

Headlight dip-switches on the floor of the car.

Ignition switches on the dashboard.

There were two postal deliveries per day.

Trouser leg clips for bicycles without chain guards.

The street lights were turned off at about 11pm each night.

Soldering irons you heated on a gas burner.

Using hand signals for cars without turn indicators.

Corona drink ( Cherryade) was delivered in glass bottles by lorry each week, and the empties returned.

Older Than Dirt Quiz:

Count all the ones that you remember, not the ones you were told about.

Ratings at the bottom.

1. Sweet cigarettes

2. Coffee shops with juke boxes

3. Home milk delivery in glass bottles

4. Party lines on the telephone

5. Newsreels before the movie

6. TV test patterns that came on at night after the last show and were there until TV shows started again in the morning..
(There were only 2 channels [if you were fortunate])

7. Peashooters

8. 33 rpm records

9. 45 RPM records

10. Hi-fi's

11. Metal ice trays with levers

12. Blue flashbulb

13. Cork popguns

14. Wash tub wringers

If you remembered 0-3 = You’re still young
If you remembered 3-6 = You are getting older
If you remembered 7-10 = Don't tell your age
If you remembered 11-14 = You're positively ancient!

I must be 'positively ancient' but those memories are some of the best parts of my life.

Don't forget to pass this along!!

Especially to all your really OLD friends....I just did!!!!!!!!!

Someone posted this and thought I would pass it on.

Denise

It is all so very true, we wonder if todays youth would be able to manage if they lived back then. To be honest if we had the power to send them back then my answer would be a resounding no. It would be too much of a culture shock, these things were an everyday occurrence to us. We never got much, but we expected even less. At least we were brought up to that way of life and it dawned on us gradually as we grew up.

You mention paper rounds, these were taken for the same reasons we took Saturday jobs to earn that extra little bit to get those things our parents couldn't afford to get for us. These days most parents can afford everything When I cancelled my newspaper delivery from my local newsagent because the walk to collect it each day was more beneficial than the newspaper, he actually thanked me for cancelling as he was having great trouble getting anybody to do the rounds he had even got a couple of pensioners doing a couple of the rounds. When he told me what he was paying I nearly volunteered myself.

Was life so much harder back then, of course it was. We just knew how to cope with it better.

Phil

I remember all of that I also remember having real Rice Pudding after Sunday Dinner ( we didn't call it lunch ). Rice was for pudding then not the main meal.

I remember taking the bottles back to the pub and getting the deposits back. Then spending the money on a Toffee Apple that a man used to sell out of a wooden wheelbarrow outside the Chestnuts pub.

I remember one Sunday evening my sister put all of the plates on the kitchen table ( we didn't call it the Dining Table ) to start doing the Tea ( we didn't call it dinner ) then she went round and put ham on all of the plates and went to get the salad. when she came back our little dog "Spike" was standing in the middle of the table and had cleared all of the plates.
I got a good hiding because it was me who wanted him in the first place.

I remember my paper round, six flippin mornings in all weather for Ten Bob.

Our first telly had two channels, the channel changer had 16 channels marked on it. But when BBC Two came out we had to have a new Telly, 625 lines and all that.

Never had a telephone in my room? We never had a telephone in the house. The first phone I had was in my flat when I moved in when I was 26.

I remember when Woolworths had brown paper carrier bags with string handles.

I remember when buses never had doors on the back.

I remember when butchers had sawdust on the floor.

I remember when the Dustmen came an tipped the dustbin (ashes and all) int a thing like a bath. Then they carried it up the path and tipped it into a lorry ( not a wagon or a truck ) and the ashes and rubbish used to blow everywhere and stink to high heaven.

I remember when houses used to have their chimney catch fire, the smell was awful. Mr Evans used to come with his sack piece of wood and bucket of water, he would soak the sack stuff it up the chimney and eventually the fire would usually go out. Unfortunately by blocking the chimney, the smoke from the fire would nearly kill you.

I remember when my mom and the next door neighbour used to stand chatting over the back garden fence. They were the greatest of friends for about thirty years and only ever called each other by their surnames.

Nostalgia isn't what it was. ?

I can remember all of those, though not in Brum.
Also:
Outside loo with a little paraffin heater in it in the winter to stop the pipes freezing and no light, so you needed a torch or a candle, and horrible long legged spiders with big yellow bulbous bodies
The tontine which my grandfather paid into over the pub every week for christmas.
Real bread (often still warm) , delivered in a little co-op electric van
Taking accumulators to the shop for recharging so you could listen to the radio.
Being made to drink 1/3 pint milk at school which had frozen in the cold and been put in front of the fire to melt and therefore was horribly warm. (that's what made me hate drinking milk)
mike

SB, you say about your mom and neighbour using surnames, I still live next door to both neighbours who I grew up with, and I still call them by their surnames.

Yes in those days to us kids it was always Mrs or Mr whatever or maybe Auntie........rare to happen now.

Denise

In my youth my best mate, who is now my brother in law. I always called his parents Mr & Mrs.............from the age of 14 until the day they died. They treated me like a son and always insisted I call them Bill & Rose but I never did. After calling them Mr & Mrs ............ for so long it just didn't sit comfortable with me using their first names.

Phil

I know what you mean Phil,Mum's neighbour for many years was Beatrice,I could never bring myself to call her that in later years either.

Just did not seem right.

I tell you something else that I don't like, this habit that seems to have arisen where children call their parents by their first name. I remember I heard one of my granddaughters use her mothers first name once. Did I tell her off, I asked my daughter what she was doing allowing it to happen. She said it was only a recent occurrence and she had scolded her on a couple of occasions about it. Thankfully I never heard my granddaughter do it again. Where did this come from?

Phil

My son in law calls his mother by her first name,it is not something I would be happy with.I earned my title so Mum it will be LOL.

OK Mum I don't mind calling you that.