BellaOnline Forums News and Politics Senior Issues Remember when....?

This is kind of a jump off of another thread in this forum about "Nana what's a phone booth?" so I kind of wanted to refresh it as I got this in my email today.

So, Remember when...?

You could hardly see for all the snow, Spread the rabbit ears as far as they go. Pull a chair up to the TV set, 'Good Night, David. Good Night, Chet.'

My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning.

My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat it raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in ice-pack coolers, but I can't remember getting e.coli.

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then.

The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.

We all took gym, not PE ... and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now. Flunking gym was not an option, even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym.

Speaking of school, we all sang the national anthem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention.

We must have had horribly damaged psyches. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself!

I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations.

Oh yeah ... and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!

We played 'king of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of Mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it didn't sting like iodine did) and then we got our butt spanked. Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.

We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either because if we did, we got our butt spanked there and then we got butt spanked again when we got home.

I recall the kid from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop, just before he fell off. Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house. Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof. It was a neighborhood run amuck.

To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that?

We needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes? We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac! How did we ever survive?

And, Spanky's docile dog was a pit bull - he loved kids and they loved him back.

Thanks for the memories, I remember them well!

I love the bit about the pitbull!

Love it all! I can remember going out to play - ALL day - and mom never worried...

My best friend's dog was a rottweiler - we climbed all over him, fed him the stuff we didn't want off our plates, and teased him unmercifully, and he loved it all...

Our cribs and playpens were wooden, and (GASP!) painted with what was probably lead paint...

Thanks Vance!

Exactly, we used to go outside from the time we got up until it was time to go to bed. Sometimes not even coming in for meals during the summer.

I remember when there was no such thing as ADHD. We were just "incorrigible" and being "rascals" or just plain misbehaving.

The only medicine we had to take when we were not feeling good was St. Joseph's Chewable aspirin. Those little orange flavored pills just seemed to cure everything.

I remember being spanked before it became a felony. (Not that I enjoyed that but I certainly deserved it lol)

Comic books used to be ten cents. I used to be able to get a big bag of chips, a quart of RC Cola, and a comic book all for under a dollar.

Going to the Drive-In movies and playing on the playground there in my pajamas until the movies started.

It just makes me want to cry thinking about the Old Days.

Now I have to listen to the song "Old Days" by Chicago.

Speaking of songs, remember when you used to be able to understand the words to songs?

I remember when my mom would bring home the hamburger (ground beef) and she and I would always have a taste before she cooked it. The funny thing is that I haven't done that in so many years because of the news.
Yes, good old days.

Mom used to use either mud or baking soda and water for bee stings

Chloe, thats funny my mom us to eat raw hamburger also

We drank from the garden hose

We swam in the river, now its polluted

We always drank from the garden hose. It sucked when the hose was sitting out in the sun because the water came out hot at first.

My mom also used baking soda with a little sugar mixed with water for bee stings. I still make that today for insect bites and it works! My dad would just slap some mud on a bee sting and that, too, worked.

My daughter was horrified when I told her we took sack lunches to school, our salami and cheese sandwich wrapped in was paper and it still tasted good at lunch time.

My grandmother was "modern' because she had milk and dairy products delivered to her kitchen door.

The Watkins man would come around about once a month so mom could get her vanilla and spices from him.

We would pile in the car (all nine of us) and dad would drive us to Grandma's house every Sunday where all the other cousins, Aunts and Uncles gathered for dinner (lunch time) then sat around chatting while the aunties nursed their babies.

We also were outside in the summer from sun up to sun down without checking in with mom. We would play in the woods, the swamp, never got lost, never met any bogey man, and would get home in time for supper.

We all ate supper at the same time, same table and were not allowed to watch television until the meal was over, the dishes done, the kitchen clean. Then we had one hour of tv with mom and dad.

Our doors were never locked at night. Our windows, with no screens, stayed open all night. Once in awhile we would get a mosquito bite but never any major disease from it.

Bologna was real! It was pure beef and tasted kind of peppery. Salami was wonderful - no fatty, greasy taste there.

We collected our own eggs, got milk from our own cows and goats, canned our own fruits and vegetables.

Those were the days! Thanks, Vance.

Did you have a 'water hole' where all the kids gathered and swung off the tire tied on a tree limb? We did at my cousins, where they lived about a mile from a lake. We had to hike to get there.

Oh, yeah! The hose! That first gush of hot water was horrible, but we still did it, every day.

Yes Phyllis, no tire, but a rope from a tree and into the river we went

Vance - words to songs! Heck, I remember when you weren't allowed to SAY the words that are in songs now without getting your mouth washed out with soap! (Remember that bar of soap that was saved just for washing out the mouths of recalcitrant children!?)

Phyllis - Fuller Brush and Watkins! Yeah! My mom make angel food cake from scratch, and added Watkins Rose essence... yum!
And we didn't have a watering hole nearby, but we did have a creek... no one ever warned us about Giardia, drowning, or anything like that...and drinking out of the hose - ANY neighbors hose too - was grand, hot water gush or not!

Family dinners - oh yeah, those too! Nowadays my kids (26 and 28) live too far away from their cousins to even see them more than once or twice a year...and my grandsons haven't even MET one of their great-grandmothers...

How about roller skates with keys? Or making your own skateboards with an old pair of skates and a board nailed on?

Sunday supper - after church, about 1. Masses of artery-clogging food, and great conversation...and laughter, oh my goodness how we laughed...

Yeah I remember taking a school lunch in a brown paper bag and it was good at lunch still. Also Snack Pack puddings actually came in small pull tab cans then too.

Remember shaking up a soda, pulling the pull tab off and it sprayed out like a fountain. lol. I remember grape being the best for that.

Soda used to come in glass bottles.

How about the coffee can on the stove that grandma used to put bacon grease and the like in it and then used it to cook with.

singing "Boy the way Glen Miller played. Songs that made the Hit Parade. Guys like us we had it made. Those were the days." lol.

"Those were the days, my friend, we thought they'd never end.
We's sing and dance, forever and a day." loved that song!

Glen Miller was tops! I love his music. Mom and Dad were considered the hottest couple on the dance floor when we were kids.

Putting bacon grease in the can - ya, I remember. Scooping some of that out to fry up some potatoes, mmmmmm mm mmm!

Did you have the NeHi sodas in the little glass bottles? NeHi Grape was soooo good.

Water balloon fights! Rotten apple fights! Baseball in the empty meadow with the whole neighborhood gang.

Big family picnics that lasted all day long and dry ice in the tubs to keep drinks cold. Ignoring warnings not to touch the ice and having it stick on our hands, burning the heck out of our fingers.

Ice cream makers - taking turns sitting on the bucket while someone else turned the crank.

Chasing the chickens around the yard and Dad chasing us to make us stop harrassing his chickens.

Dry corn stalk tents to hide in.

Fox and Goose game in the snow.

"We'd live the life we choose - we'd fight and never lose.
Those were the days - oh, yes, those were the days."

I used to to deliver the Grit newspaper. Remember Grit? Ho w about Jewel T?

It used to be a delivery thing that had household stuff, lemaon aid and stuff like that as far as I can remember. Do you remember Jewel T or did you ever hear of them?

We used to have Fudgesicles (the original brand) and stuff delivered to the house and they used to have plastic sticks that we collected and built things with.

I remember the Fudgesicles - they were soooo good! I do not recall ever hearing of Grit (except in my cereal bowl) or Jewel T.

Was Jewel T like Watkins or Fuller Brush?

I dont know about Watkins. Never heard of them. I have heard of Fuller brush but never had them deliver anything.

Jewel T used to sell cookware, herbs, spices, stuff like that and they had their own delivery truck and such.

OMGosh, you never heard of Watkins or Fuller Brush? Wow! Watkins was spices, liniments, ointments, flavors (Vanilla and such), etc.

Fuller Brush started out as household brushes and expanded a little. Everyone in our community just had to have a Fuller Brush or two for cleaning and if you did not have Watkins Vanilla in your pantry you were considered not a very good cook.

My Grandmother's kitchen always smelled like cinnamon and vanilla, especially around Christmas time.

Hey - I'm not a senior and I have Watkins products in my house. They're still offering some of the best tasting spices out there.

I know! Watkins is fantastic. I do not use any other brand of vanilla and I love their herbs and spices!

I also like their Petro-Carbo Salve and Liniment.

I remember, vaguely, Jewel T, but I don't think my mom bought any - not sure about my grandparents, who lived 500 miles away when I was growing up....
Not much door-to-door stuff happening any more, people are leery of opening the door to strangers.
I think there are still pockets in the USA that have milk delivery - the fudgsicles of my childhood had wooden sticks though...

Ours were wooden at one time too then they came out with the plastic sticks that had diamond shape holes in them I believe, and you could put them together and build with them. They were fun.

Remember putting baseball cards on the spokes of the wheels of your bike and that was before we knew they were going to be worth money someday. lol.

Oh, and how we gloried in the noise the cards made on the wheels! ROFL

Ya! the cards on the wheels! So fun.

Remember the soda fountains in the drug stores? The 'soda jerks' were always tall, skinny and shy (in our area anyway). We had so much fun at the soda fountains.

And stores had roll up canvas awnings, usually striped. They would roll them down every morning then roll them up when the store closed for the night.

Drumsticks (the ice cream in a pointed cone, topped with choclate and sprinkled with nuts) were much bigger and better tasting back then.

Mr. Goodbar candy bars. Mike and Ike (can you still get them?) And a nickel would buy you a bag of penny candy.

Did anyone ever have the 'rock candy'? They looked just like small rocks. One day my mother pretended she was picking up rocks to put in a brown bag and brought them back to the car for us kids and said, here, I could not get you candies, so chew on these rocks! We really thought they were rocks till my smart older brother decided to take a bite. They were so good!

And 'chicken bones' - candies coated in some kind of crushed nut coating, mm mm mmmm!

Yep you can still get Mr. Goodbar and Mike and Ike candy.

Remember the NECO wafers candies? I used to eat rock candy too and the other instant sugar rush candies were the Pixie sticks. They looked like straws and were filled with colored sugar.

Oh ya! I remember Pixie sticks and NECO.

Root beer floats! They just do not taste the same anymore.

Tipping over outhouses! My brothers one Halloween put an outhouse on top of a telephone pole - don't ask! I do not know how they did it. There were a lot of boys in that group that night.

Trick or Treating with pillow cases instead of a little plastic pumpkin.

Sock Hops! I met my very first boyfriend at a Sock Hop when I was just 13.

Oh yeah, I have to brag a bit. I can't believe I forgot this. Our family was one of nine families to be the first ever to have Bubble Yum bubble gum. My father drove a garbage truck that dumped the big dumpsters back in 1976 and one of the drivers had a run to the Beech Nut plant in New York. Beech Nut or Wrigley, I don't remember who made it.

Well, they just developed this bubble gum and they gave a bunch of cases to the driver and told him to pass it out and try the gum and see how it was. We got like nine cases of it and I took it into school and sold it for a quarter a pack. A few months later it came out in the stores and was selling for fifteen cents a pack. My friends were mad at me lol. So that is my brush with fame when I was a kid. The first one in my town to have Bubble Yum bubble gum.

Wow, Vance! I am envious. that is some record to hold!!!

Bubble Yum was my favorite. We used to have contests to see who could blow the biggest bubble. I had a crooked tooth in front that kept popping my bubble, so I never won.

Roy Rogers and Gene Autry movies. My heroes!

I never got into the whole singing cowboy thing. I don't even really like the movie "Paint Your Wagon".

I like the other Clint Eastwood movies, John Wayne, Glen Ford, Jimmy Stewart, Charles Bronson, Ben Johnson ,Tom Selleck and Sam Elliot westerns.

Of course I also love the old shows like Gunsmoke, The Rifleman, Maverick, Bat Masterson, Bonanza (before Pernell Roberts)and the Big Valley. Thank you Encore Westerns for bringing back these shows. lol.

Oh, and I was going to say "Happy Trails" is my favorite cowboy song! ROFL
How about Sky King? Hopalong Cassidy? Zorro?

I do like the song Happy Trails but I like David Lee Roth's version the best. lol.

A nickel would buy you a whole bag of candy!

A nickel would buy a postage stamp

Climbing trees was the best fun! The higher you could go the more free you felt.

Here are some remember whens from me:

1. Remember when you played music on your record player.
2. When you got new music at the record store
3. When the only way to listen to music as you traveled was on the radio, mostly AM radio.
4. When you had to turn the dial to change tv channels
5. When you only had three tv networks and some local stations to choose from. We had less channels, but still better tv shows.
6. Remember when you had to dial on a rotatory telephone.
7. Remember when you couldn't carry a phone with you, but getting a telephone in you room was a big deal.
8. Remember when music was music and not a video
9. Remember when playing games meant playing Monopoly or other board games with your family or friends.
10. Remember saturday morning cartoons (Jonny Quest, Space Ghost, Pink Panther and many more)
11. I remember and miss Captian Kangaroo. He was a great tv friend when growing up

Thats my remember when list to start with.

Craig, I remember them well;
I also remember the Howdy Doody Show, with Buffalo Bob Smith
Also Howdy had 48 freckles one for each State of the Union

Howdy Doody was a little before my time. I was a child of the 1960s being born in the late 1950s. So, I grew upon on Captain Kangaroo and Saturday morning cartoons and not on Howdy Doody.

FYI, did you know that Bob Keeshan, aka Captain Kangaroo was the original Clarabelle the Clown on Howdy Doody? Unfortunately for him Buffalo Bob fired him without warning at a public appearance. Fortunately for the rest of us his leaving Howdy Doody eventually led to his creation of Captain Kangaroo by which he taught and entertained children for almost 30 years.

Donna Reed would wake up in the morning with her hair style perfectly arranged and her makeup flawless?