Older Than Dirt, Huh?

[Studlover (imported)]

Remember, it's funny. Don't take it seriously.

Hey Dad," one of my kids 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 'at home," I explained.

"Grandma cooked every day and when Grandpa 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 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, wore Levis,

set foot on a golf course, 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

AND 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 11, but my grandparents had one before that. It was, of course, black and white, but they bought a piece of coloured plastic to cover the screen. The top third was blue, like the sky, and the bottom third

was green, like grass. The middle third was red. It was perfect for

programs that had scenes of fire trucks riding across someone's lawn on a sunny day. Some people had a lens taped to the front of the TV to make the picture look

larger.

I was 13 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 chin and burned that, too. It's still the best pizza I ever had.

We didn't have a car until I was 15. Before that, the only car in our

family was my grandfather's Ford. He called it a "machine."

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. I delivered a

newspaper, six days a week. It cost 7 cents a paper, of which I got to

keep 2 cents. I had to get up at 4 AM every morning. On Saturday, I

had to collect the 42 cents from my customers. My favourite customers were

the ones who gave me 50 cents and told me to keep the change. My least

favourite 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. Touching someone else's tongue with yours was called French

kissing and they didn't do that in movies. I don't know what they did

in French movies. French movies were dirty and we weren't allowed to

see them.

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 Kati 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?

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 heat 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! Ratings at the bottom.

1. Blackjack chewing gum

2. Wax Coke-shaped bottles with coloured sugar

water

3. Candy cigarettes

4. Soda pop machines that dispensed bottles

5. Coffee shops with tableside jukeboxes

6. Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard

stoppers

7. Party lines

8. Newsreels before the movie

9. P.F. Flyers

10. Butch wax

11. Telephone numbers with a word prefix (Olive-6933)

12. Peashooters

13. Howdy Doody

14. 45 RPM records

15. S&H Green Stamps

16. Hi-fi's

17. Metal ice trays with lever

18. Mimeograph paper

19. Blue flashbulb

20. Packards

21. Roller skate keys

22. Cork popguns

23. Drive-ins

24. Studebakers

25. Wash tub wringers

If you remembered 0-5 = You're still young

If you remembered 6-10 = You are getting older

If you remembered 11-15 = Don't tell your age,

If you remembered 16-25 = You're older than dirt!

Don't forget to pass this along!!

Especially to all your really OLD friends

Life may not be the party we had hoped for, but while

we are here, we might as well dance!

.

[Mac (imported)]

Remember, it's funny. Don't take it seriously.

If you remembered 0-5 = You're still young

If you remembered 6-10 = You are getting older

If you remembered 11-15 = Don't tell your age,

If you remembered 16-25 = You're older than dirt!

Life may not be the party we had hoped for, but while

we are here, we might as well dance!

I remember all 25. How old is dirt?

[An Onymus (imported)]

Here's something similar that has been going around.

You're getting old if you ever got a buffalo nickel in change.

You're getting old if you ever rode in a new car with fins.

You're getting old if you remember when the Top 40 were all on 45 rpms.

You're getting old if you remember seeing Adlai Stevenson on the news.

[Mac (imported)]

Here's something similar that has been going around.

Got a perfect score on those, too.

[talula]

Gosh, I'm really not old as such but these are things I remember when I was younger.

Bread was 30 cents and it had a big red sticker on the end to let you know.

Rod pretzels at the drug store were a penny out of a big can next to the register - aside the soda fountain.

40 cents would buy you a hot dog, french fries, and a Green River over at the YMCA.

Postage was a nickel and had a picture of Washington on it in Blue. Penny stamps feature Lincoln in purple. Then the price went up to 6 cents and had Roosevelt.

Bottle deposits were 2 cents. And god help you if you walked away from the store without paying your deposit. There were no cans except beer.

Highbeam switches were on the floor. Grandma started her car by stomping on the accelerator to get the starter to kick in. Ignitions were on the dash as were the headlight controls and windshield wipers (which only had two speeds - fast and ludicrist). Heaters worked too well (except for volkswagons). The front windows always had a vent. The dash was made of steel. Alot of cars looked like they had eyebrows and teeth from the front. The radio always took about 5 mins to warm up in the wintertime before it would start playing.

Television had to warm up too so you turned it on, then got a glass of milk from the kitchen before Captain Kangaroo would appear. If you lived in the city you had a set of rabbit ears that you would constantly need to re-arrange. If you lived anywhere else your choices were thus:

Live without television or enjoy the snow.

Purchase a high gain antenna and rotor and constantly re-arrange it to keep out the snow as best you could.

Subscribe to cable which for a whole $2 a month guaranteed that they might be able to pipe stations as far as 60 miles away without snow.

Santa Claus letters meant looking through the Sears, Wards, and Penny's christmas catalogs first.

Putting your finger in the end of your cork rifle and then pulling the trigger hurt like a motherfucker.

FM radio was very unusual and rare to find in the home. Hi-Fi's were quite common however. Always mono-phonic and quite often seen with cigarette butts or quarters taped to the end of the tonearm to add extra weight, thus giving a richer sound or reducing scratch problems. Some got so heavy they were playing both sides of the record at once.

Mr Potato head was a great candidate to have your H.O. scale Union Pacific engine mow over. Tiger Tanks where meant to put your sister's eye out-and lord did I try. Erector sets included a wonderful diagram on how to hook up the "enclosed" electric motor in such a way that you could get un-suspecting victums heart to stop by the use of 2 "D" cell batteries and a hand crank. My poor sister, lord did I try.....

Milk was delivered

in glass bottles with cardboard

tops (modern day pogs?). He also delivered cheese and other dairy products. You always remembered the milkman and the postman at the holidays.

Mom's kitchen knives were always sharpened by an elderly gentleman walking down the street with a foot grinder in a wheel barrow. He hawked while he sharpened.

Subway cars had wicker seats that smelled bad.

"Born Free" came out when I was 7. Dad took us to see it and I cried all the way home. Movies were a quarter for us kids. Mom would give us 50 cents to go see the film with enough left over for popcorn, candy, and pop.

Well, this is enough so I'll stop with this last bit.

Grandma's telephone started with "Euclid". Our phone number was 8-6245. We had a party line and it would ring twice when it was for us. Calling long distance mean't dialing your number, waiting for a beep, hanging up, then sitting by the phone until it rang again meaning your party was ringing.

talula

[Studlover (imported)]

I have to admit that I got a perfect score on the quiz also.

No, I don't know how old dirt is, but all I can say is that I am not "over the hill," I am "down in the valley."