Do You Remember When...?

(aka... I have nothing else to post about today so this is what you get)

• It took five minutes for the TV warm up? This was my grandparents tv for the longest time
• All the girls had ugly gym uniforms?
• Nearly every one's Mom was at home when the kids got home from school?
• Nobody owned a purebred dog?
• When a quarter was a decent allowance?
• You'd reach into a muddy gutter for a penny?
• Your Mom wore nylons that came in two pieces?
• 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? Once again, I remember my grandma have this
• 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? Not me... I skippde a grade. My 3rd grade was 6 weeks in summer school
• 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? Have you been up north??... go to any bar and the keys will be in the ignition
• Lying on your back in the grass with your friends and saying things like, "That cloud looks like a ..." I still like to do this.
• and playing baseball with no adults to help kids with the rules of the game? don't forget about having ghost runners. They could run really fast and score a run from no matter what base they were on.
• Stuff from the store came without safety caps and hermetic seals because no one had yet tried to poison a perfect stranger?
• When being sent to the Principal's office was nothing compared to the fate that awaited the student at home? Hell yeah!! Dad and his belt. I was a goody-two shoes tho' so didn't spend much time there... my sister did tho'
• 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.
• Candy cigarettes
• Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside
• Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles
• Coffee shops with table side jukeboxes
• Blackjack, Clove and Teaberry chewing gum - don't forget sen-sen
• Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers
• P.F. Fliers
• Telephone numbers with a word prefix...(HEmstead 7-1538).
• Party lines
• Peashooters
• 45 RPM records - I think my first 45 was a Shaun Cassidy record
• Green Stamps
• Hi-Fi's
• Metal ice cubes trays with levers
• Mimeograph paper
• Beanie and Cecil
• Roller-skate keys
• Cork pop guns
• Drive ins - now it is NML
• Washtub wringers - once again , I vaguely remember my grandma washing clothes on a washboard and wringer
• The Fuller Brush Man
• Reel-To-Reel tape recorders
• Tinkertoys
• Erector Sets
• The Fort Apache Play Set
• Lincoln Logs
• 15 cent McDonald hamburgers
• 5 cent packs of baseball cards - with that awful pink slab of bubble gum - why, oh, why did we ever eat that gum???
• Penny candy - I liked it when we were finally old enough to ride our bikes to the penny candy store. My favorite... the communion wafer tasting spaceships with little dot thingys in them.
• 35 cent a gallon gasoline
• Jiffy Pop popcorn - I burned the stuff every time
• 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 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? - snow days even better. I loved it when the snow would drift really high against the back of the chicken coop and we would climb on the roof and do back flips off the roof into the snow.
• Saturday morning cartoons weren't 30-minute commercials for action figures? do they still show Bugs Bunny, Wil E Coyote and such??
• "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?