Someone 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!          
 
 
 'Mom 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 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, never wore Levis , never set foot on a golf course, never 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 & Roebuck.  

 
 Either way, there is no Roebuck anymore. Maybe he died.      
 
 
 My parents never drove me to soccer practice. This was mostly because we had never heard of soccer.      
 
 
 I had a bicycle that weighed probably 50 pounds, and it only had one speed (slow)    .  

   

 
   

 
We didn't have a television in our house until I was about 16.      
 
 
 It was, of course, black and white, and the station went off the air at     midnight    , after playing the national anthem and a poem about God; 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 was 16 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.      
 
 
 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          –          My brother and I delivered a newspaper, six days a week. It cost 7 cents a paper, of which he got to keep 2 cents. We had to get up at    6AM    every morning.      
 
 
 On Saturday    , we had to collect the 42 cents from our customers. Our favorite customers were the ones who gave us 50 cents and told us to keep the change. Our 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. 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?      
 
 
 More MEMORIES:      
 
 
 While cleaning out some of my mother's stuff after she died I came across 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 water because we didn't have steam irons. Man, I am old.      
 
 
 How many do you remember?          
 
 
 Head light 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 table side jukeboxes        

 
   

 
6 . Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers          

 
   

 
7. Party lines on the telephone          

 
   

 
8 .  Newsreels before the movie          

 
   

 
9. P.F. Flyers          

 
   

 
10. Butch wax          

 
   

 
11. 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 3 channels...          [if you were fortunate       )          

 
   

 
12. Peashooters  

 
   

 
13. Howdy Doody            

 
   

 
14. 45 RPM records          

 
   

 
15.S&H green stamps          

 
   

 
16. Hi-fi's        

 
   

 
17. Metal ice trays with a 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 some of the best parts of my life.  

 
 Don't forget to pass this along!!
 Especially to all your really good  

             old friends

Just kidding.  I'm old as dirt.  I recall every single one of those items you rattled off.

Here's my story:

When my son was a young teen, I fished an old hand cranked can opener I took from my parent's house when I finally headed to college, and have toted around ever since.

I handed it to my son and asked him what he thought it was.  His head had nothing but question marks floating over it.  At least he decided is was some fancy tool for making pastries of some sort.  When I told him it was a can opener he was more confused until I grabbed a can of tuna fish and showed him how it operated.  He just rolled his eyes.

I think I'm going to leave that can opener to him in my will.

Thanks so much for the trip down memory lane

and yes, I remember most of those things, and yes I suppose I am old too.

You really should give credit to the original author though.

It is funny that most of the ladies I see can't comprehend a world without Facebook, much less cell phones or cable.

but to "borrow" another line. "the good old days weren't always good, and tomorrow's not as bad as it seems"

It is still fun to take an occasional walk down memory lane though.  

I will say one thing about the present, how many of us "old guys" ever thought we could be getting this much pussy at our "advanced age" and that we'd be able to do it with as little effort as it takes to order a pizza? (or for us that are really old, that we could even get a pizza delivered to our homes. lol)

When I was young my mom would send me to the store to get her two packs of cigs and she told me to keep the change. I would get myself a candy bar and a coke, plus have a few pennies left over. All this for just one dollar the good old days.

Yes I remember most of what on your list.

Picked up my granddaughter in an old borrowed car, and when she got in she complained it was warm, i told her to open the window.  After a long pause, she said "where's the button"  When I told her she would have to turn the window crank handle, she could not comprehend the concept.

I remember all 25. The blue capped cream soda in a bottle for 10c being my atf.

But I'm not older than dirt. Dirt has me by several million years.

A few you may have forgotten.

Polaroid cameras, so you had to pull the photo piece out after taking the photo and shake it and wait for the photo to appear.

8 day clocks that you had to wind by hand.

Non powered lawn mowers.

This was fun, thanks for posting. Much better than threads about Johns falling in love with their hooker. Or Johns complaining about the screening process.

This is such an easy arrangement, I can't for the life of me figure out why some of these guys make things so difficult and want to try to fuck up such a good thing.

Your post brought a little humor and light reflection, I enjoyed it, thank you

-- Modified on 8/10/2015 9:01:21 AM

Was bought by Richard and Maurice McDonald in 1955, which means, you would have came across fast food.

Your family may not have used it as much as people do today after soccer, foot ball, baseball or other evening activities for dinner.  

Always wondered why parents feed their kids this crap after good physical activity!

Thirty yards to the Outhouse (written by Willy Makit, illustrated by Betty Dont)

Reading Zane Grey by kerosene lantern and watching the REA string electricity down the lane, only to have it go to the milk barn first.

Spending a week in the forest cutting and hauling enough wood to last the winter.

Hoeing the weeds from the five acre garden. (I like the ho'ing I do now much better)

I'm not older than dirt, I'm older than rocks It also helps to have grown up in the country where "civilization" didn't show up until after WWII.

The "good old days" weren't necessarily "good"

Before there was dirt the earth was either molten or really hard stuff. Now I don't remember any of that. but there are some things I remember that you missed.
1 Victory Gardens,
2 War Bonds & Stamps
3 Black out Curtins
4 Air raid sirens but never one for real other than Pearl Harbor
5  VE and VJ days and the horny sailor kissing a pretty woman in Time's Square (I think)
6 MacArthur's "I shall Return"  
7 10 cent admission to movies
8. Harry Truman as President  

You get the picture, I fucking OLD but still fucking LOL

If you remembered 6-10 = You are getting older

the bottles sitting in a lake of ice water and you pulled a bottle along a rail and through the coin operated gate. Bottle came out ice cold and dripping with water. Best was the orange flavor.

had summer homes when New York City was very young? It was a time consuming trip from the city to Harlem up a cow path called "Broadway".

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Molly,  I have met with you several times and the is no way that you could have gotten more that 3 or 4 correct.  I guess I will have to come see you and explain what some of these things are.

I'm in my mid 50s, and we had fast food when I was growing up. Some of my friends played soccer, and we always had a TV in our house, though we only caught 3 channels which you had to stand up to change (and shake the antenna for reception)  

While I do remember a bunch of stuff on that list, a lot of it are more like my parents generation.

but I remember getting out of class in high school, grabbing my .22 rifle out of my locker and going hunting rabbits 1/2 mile off campus...

I had to carry my bike to school because we couldn't afford tires, it made it very difficult to park it in the bike rack, it kept falling over.

Wrap aluminum foil around your rabbit ears to extend them to get better reception?

My Dad had a good remote control, he'd say hey dummy go change the television to channel 3

I remember VHF and UHF television stations, holy crap I'm an old bastard

And those annoying nerdy types would look things up in a real hard copy encyclopedia (Encyclopedia Brittanica, if you were rich; down at the library if you were poor) instead of using Wikipedia.  The Motion Picture Production Code was around from the 1930s into the late 1960s.  Very famous "work around" case = Hitchcock's Notorious where a 2.5 minute kiss is broken up into 3-second increments.

(There was a comic book code, too, to protect kids from the evils of humor, entertainment and other social horrors.  MAD was originally a comic book but became MAD Magazine to side-step the CCA.  Anybody remember when MAD Magazine was 100% ad-free and funny?

to keep the screen from "rolling" only to have it stop the moment you got out of your chair, and then start again the moment you sat back down? lol

Scary Funny Face

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..so, so true. We never had a color TV when I was growing up. My computer monitor is larger than the TV I got when I moved out and that wasn't color either. I never was much of a TV watcher and when mine went belly up 30 years ago I threw it out and never replaced it. Now I wouldn't even know how to turn one on let alone actually hook it up

I remember everything you mentioned on your posting. Our household was pretty much the same except we did eat out every now and then and I never had a paper route

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He remembers Studebakers and also Hudsons and DeSotos.
He recalls telephones before they even had dials.  You just picked up the phone, the operator got and asked you, 'Number, please."
He went to school with Clarabell's daughter.  She didn't have a red, rubber nose.
When he went to the record store to buy a 45 he could listen to it right there in a little booth with a turn table.
He loved "Andy's Gang" and especially Froggy The Gremlin

...But we didn't chew gum growing up.  

I wore P.F. Flyers when I played high school basketball.

I'm not so old either. I'll be 62 this fall.

I only got "getting older" rather than "older than dirt" which is how I feel. I did have a Lionel electric train under the tree as a little kid. This "survey" was fun

used a shotgun, I used a rifle

for those of you that never had the opportunity to be tutored by a drill sergeant..

"this is my rifle,
this is my gun,
this is for killin'
this is for fun"

We used to sit up in front of the Tellevision and watch "test pattern"
When T V did not work
Pull all the tubes and go to the drug store and see which tube was in the worts shape and by a new one and hope it would work another week or two before having to replace another one.

how easy they got it. It was tough wading through nine feet of shag carpet to change channels

Sorry, but I am almost 60 some of those seem to be about my age...

Yes, I recall most of those.. Dinner always at home... I was a military brat, so the out-to-dinner was a military chow hall.. I do recall the first restaurants I went to were pizza places.

I purchased a PONG game console for the family TV when I was 16...

I was a paper boy for a city that had a morning and evening route.. I woke at 3:30AM and moved to the lazy boy recliner in the living room that over looked the driveway/front yard. I "rested" until the newspaper guy drove up and dropped of my papers on the front porch. I folded and delivered the papers by bike. Went to school, came home and delivered the evening paper.. Oh, what fun... I hated collecting money (monthly in my case)... They never wanted to pay you or never answered the door.

How about junior chemistry sets.. lots of good chemicals to blow/burn things up.. Mercury to roll around in your hand...

Drive-in theaters

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I'll give a hundred to one odds that those are not her original words, but no matter, it was and is a very entertaining thread although it's a certainty that it wasn't penned by someone born in the 1960's.

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My parents had an 8 track deck and I even had my own CB handle!

I can relate to so many of these things.  Until I read the complete list, much had been forgotten.  Growing up in a small town, just about everyone knew whose kid you were.  Creating any mischief was nearly impossible.  I remember getting into a fight and no sooner did I walk through the door I was grounded.  Seems the kid on the receiving end was a nephew of one of my parent's dear friends.

We had one movie theatre in town, it played one movie for weeks.  Twice during the week, three times on the weekend.  There were 12 stations, no cable.  You wanted to change the channel, you got up and turned the station.  What were remotes?

We spent the vast majority of out time outside, we can home for dinner when we were called.  Sunday dinner was mandatory, don't even think about making plans.  I could go on, but just so many memories were resurrected with that list.    

I'm not sure whether to thank you for stirring up long forgotten memories, or reminding me that those days are lost forever.

No, I'm not referring to Candy, the cute K-girl.

Nowadays, if you want some candy, you go to the 7-11, corner drugstore - I mean superstore - or an X-mart and buy a cellophane bag of 25 gummi bears or mints for 99 cents.  It used to be 30 gummi bears, but they wanted to raise the price without raising the price  

Long ago, in the days of knights and damsels in distress, there were big boxes (like a crate of oranges big) of loose candies of all types.  You'd take a brown paper bag, fill it up with handfuls of your favorites, put it on the scale and pay by the pound.  (There are still some stores that do that, but those are now "specialty shops.")  

I suppose I could try to remind folks that "penny candy" once referred to candy that actually cost one penny or less per piece

We needed a big outdoor antenna on a pole, to catch our measly 3 stations, and we had to go out and spin it for reception every time we changed the channel. We were not only the parents' remote control, ("Hey go make it louder."  "Hey go make it softer."  "Go change the channel."), we also had to go out and spin the antenna (usually in the rain) while they hollered from inside, "Little more, little more, stop! Go back!"

We never had uhf here, but I always wondered what that extra dial was for with the high numbers.

Ha! Had 'em both. In fact, I still have the Atari in my basement. I hooked it up for my kids when they were little, and they were astounded by the primitive "state of the art" graphics.

Even a pound cake is only 12 ounces now!

It's wasteful and an insult to the consumer's intelligence.

And home milk delivery is back.

two...

cassette player - if you still have one laying around... put a cassette inside... then go ask some kid (younger than 16) and ask them how to operate it. they won't a have a clue!

Polaroid cameras - if you have one... ask one of those younger than 16 kids how it works. then show how it works. they'll probably shit their pants!

Why in the hell did they ever get rid of that?  I remember my parents had a care with that when I was kid.

Also, there is a drive-in about 1 hour from here still in seasonal operation