OLDER THAN DIRT
"Hey Dad," one of my kids 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. "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 colored
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 favorite
customers were the ones
who gave me 50 cents and told me to keep the change. My 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. 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 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?
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 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 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&HGreen 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!
I might be older than dirt but those memories are the best part of my
life.
Don't forget to pass this along!!
Especially to all your reallyOLD friends....
