Older Than Dirt

OLDER THAN DIRT

LightningBugs / Older 'n Dirt

'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." I remember this so well....sitting until my butt was sore. Using quarts of ketchup on the liver and downing glass after glass of milk. Asking for extra napkins to spit the peas into. Always getting caught.

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 & 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. Actually, I did play soccer, but the bus brought you home after practice and I believe I was a freshman in high school. 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 5. It was, of course, black and white. I remember a color TV, but we only could get three channels and the rabbit ears with crumpled tin foil on the ends would need to get adjusted. On Sunday you watched bowling, bowling or more bowling. And, we saw The Wizard of Oz every year from the time I was 8 until my own kids were 13. Classic.

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 4. It was an old black Dodge. We had a car, but my old mind isn't sharp enough to remember what is was.

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. Ah yes, the party line and one neighbor always monopolized it! Jeannie Youker. Mom would get excited to see her car go down the road so she could use the phone! And cell phones?! Forget that!!!

Pizzas were not delivered to our home. But milk was. Neither was delivered to my house which was so far in the sticks, the only milk delivery would have been the cow coming into your yard.

All newspapers were delivered by boys and all boys delivered newspapers my brother delivered a newspaper, six days a week. I had a paper route, but again, not until I was in high school. For a job, it sucked. It did. It cost 7 cents a paper, of which he got to keep 2 cents. He had to get up at 6AM every morning. On Saturday, he had to collect the 42 cents from his customers. His favorite customers were the ones who gave him 50 cents and told him to keep the change. His 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. YUP. 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. We were advanced and used rubber-bands. 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.
Blackjack chewing gum
Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water and I would even chew the wax for fun!
Candy cigarettes Yup, now that was a smart invention, ha?
Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles yup, and they were just the right size
Coffee shops or diners with tableside juke boxes LOVED these
Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers
Party lines We've come a long way baby
Newsreels before the movie
P.F. Flyers
Butch wax No idea what this is, but I'm thinking it has something to do with hair?
TV test patterns that came on at night after the last show and the noise!
Peashooters
Howdy Doody
45 RPM records My first one was Michael Jackson, "Beat It". How embarrassing.
S & H greenstamps and we had to LICK 'em. imagine?!
Hi-fi's In particular, a Close-N-Play. Wow!
Metal ice trays with lever These things were dangerous!
Mimeograph paper
Blue flashbulb
Packards now THAT was a car!
Roller skate keys
Cork popguns
Drive-ins These were GREAT and why, as kids, were we so infatuated with the bathroom?
Studebakers
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 scored 17.

I might be older than dirt but those memories are the best part of my life.