I fall into the older than dirt category, and am happy to be there!



'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 & Robuck. 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. 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 10. 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 15 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.

All newspapers were delivered by boys and all boys delivered newspapers -- my brother delivered a newspaper, 7 days a week. It cost 5 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 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. There were no movie ratings because all movies were responsibly produced for everyone to enjoy viewing, without profanity or violence or most 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?
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 (hair curling rods too) 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 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 lever
18. Mimeograph paper
19. Blue flashbulb
20. Packard's
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're 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 OLD friends ....



p.s. I remember all of them so I really am older than dirt....WALT


The above was sent to me by a good friend of mine, so I’m going to add some of my
Own - - - how many can you add???????

How about going to the movies on Saturday night with just a Dime in your pocket – the movie
Cost five cents and a big bag of candy five cents. And you had to walk all of the way.

Saturday night serials at the movies

Little paper cards that you put on your bike, so it would sound like a Tommy Gun.

Brownie hawk eyes

Would you be so kind and enlighten me on item number 4 please? I have no memory of colouring or painting or even crayoning margerine. I recall a product called Stork which is still available over here but I have always thought of as being yellow.

Heres another item:
I am still using a very old Sunbeam toaster daily (still works like a champ) that my mother got from trading in Raleigh cigarette coupons,....(from the early 1950's)..This toaster is solid and a piece of workmanship,...Real chrome, it lowers the bread automatically and rises automatically when the toast is done,...no pushing anything up & down,...has adjust knob that actually works, dark or light and anything inbetween,....it is easily fixable was designed that way,...nooooo built in obsolescence or printed circuit boards like todays products.
We also had one of those big Zenith world band console radios / victrolla combos,....Remember listening to Arthur Godfrey singing "Abba Dabba Dabba Dabba said the monkey to the chimp" I even tap danced to that tune as a child in a recital. My costume was the "Phillip Morris" bell boy,...from the cigarette commercials..remember the slogan he yelled out,...."Call for Phillip Morris"
I was the only kid following the recital to come out on stage with no gift,...because I ate the whole box of Fanny Farmer chocolates that I got as a gift,..was I ever sick.

Heres one,....I remember fishing off Boston Light in my uncles skiff and catching flounder, haddock, cod and sea perch,....ALL with a drop line and filling bushel baskets with fish and cleaning them after getting home.

We took the coal driven steam locamotive train into South Station, Boston from Quincy Square and ate hot dogs at "Joe & Nemos" and italian ice at the Saint Josephs procession in East Boston or had pizzas at the original "Reginas Pizzarea" on Prince Street.
Our meat butcher in Boston's north end was Rocky Graciano's brother,...Rocky was a local boxer not related at all to well known Rocky Marciano though.
shopping from push carts in Hay Market square and from another butcher located under Fanual Hall where dad got pork sides and we would trim the pork and make sausages by hand at home using a king size hand crank meat grinder attached to a kitchen chair.

Combined, all of us have some interesting reading here visualizing how others experiences were. We didn't know then that it would be the good ol days today,....but we do now.
Today is tomorrows yesterday,...as I say on my signature,..."Enjoy each day as if it were your last,....eventually you'll be right"...... I think thats a Steve Wright quote?

Looking forward to seeing how long this topic runs,....reading one reminds of others, never fails.
We've shared experiences and a time period that others will never see,....great memories, great memories.
Martys