This brought tears to my eyes with fond memories!

MTboatguy

Fleet Admiral
Joined
Jul 8, 2010
Messages
8,988
'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 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 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 9.
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 21 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-- I delivered a newspaper, 7 days a week. It cost 7 cents a paper, of which I got to keep 2 cents. I had to get up at6AM every morning.
On Saturday, I had to collect the 49 cents from my customers. My favorite customers were the ones who gave me 50 cents and told me to keep the change. My least favorite customers were the ones who seemed to never be home on collection day.
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?
 

gm280

Supreme Mariner
Joined
Jun 26, 2011
Messages
14,590
Sounds like you lived close to me growing up... We were all poor but without crime. Another concept that folks don't believe these days...
 

WIMUSKY

Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Sep 26, 2009
Messages
19,798
Yep........ And crime? What was that? Parents cut us loose, they didn't worry. Nowadays it seems like the kids never leave the parents sight. Back then we respected adults, it came natural. Today, well........ We also talked to adults and adults talked to us. Now if you look at a kid they look away and you sure don't dare to talk to them...... Might have the cops on your doorstep. No I'm not speaking from experience. It's just the way society seems to be these days.....
 

GA_Boater

Honorary Moderator Emeritus
Joined
May 24, 2011
Messages
49,038
How can you have crime when the neighbors walked up the street or road to tell your parents about your behavior. They couldn't call because the party line was tied up. LOL
 

bonz_d

Vice Admiral
Joined
Apr 22, 2008
Messages
5,274
And back then TV was FREE. All 6 channels!

Grew up in a rural farm town that was on the Fox River and on the back side of a golf course. Used to spend my summers walking the edges and roughs of that golf course hunting balls which I would then try to sell to the golfers on the weekends for a nickel each so that my younger brother and I could ride our bikes to the Tasty Freeze and get an ice cream cone. When we weren't doing that we were either swimming or fishing in the river. Then maybe once a month our parents would take us to the Drive-in Movie. Anyone remember those?
 

Cofe

Lieutenant Commander
Joined
Apr 23, 2009
Messages
1,883
Yes it was a good time to grow up. We didn't have any locks on the house till the late 60's.
 

gm280

Supreme Mariner
Joined
Jun 26, 2011
Messages
14,590
I can also remember searching for empty soda bottles. And IF we found enough and cleaned them up, we would get enough change to buy a soda. But that was really hard to do since nobody drink sodas daily like now. It was a few weeks long or more effort to maybe collect enough bottles. Still amazes me to understand just how poor everybody was and not one murder, stabbing, robbery or any crime. Today, crime seems to be the results of being poor...a total misnomer but merely an excuse!
 

WIMUSKY

Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Sep 26, 2009
Messages
19,798
Penny candy..... And if you had a quarter.....:eek::whoo:
 
Last edited:

bonz_d

Vice Admiral
Joined
Apr 22, 2008
Messages
5,274
Or how about we had a neighbor, very old woman, that had a huge beautiful flower garden and she used to pay us 10 cents a bucket to go out into the cow pastures to get her pies to use in the garden. That was great fun and profitable for a couple youngsters.
 

southkogs

Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Jul 7, 2010
Messages
14,792
Penny candy..... And if you had a quarter.....:eek::whoo:
^^^^ We lived next to a dime store in Detroit.

One thing I miss terribly was going to the butcher shop, bakery shop, etc. As a kid, we could stop in with a quarter and get a couple of meat/pepperoni sticks or get a real donut at the bakery. The hardware shop was ole' Bill ... and he knew where EVERYTHING was in that messy store!
 

gonfishn

Commander
Joined
May 16, 2002
Messages
2,390
Don't forget hanging your clothes on the line in the back yard.. Exposing everyone on what color and size your under wear was.
 

littlerayray

Lieutenant
Joined
Feb 17, 2013
Messages
1,456
I remember playing outside till the streetlights came on playing road hockey actually playing as a kid my kids don't comprehend that I grew up with one channel on the TV cuz we had an antenna no computer and no video games and we only had one tv in the house
 

WIMUSKY

Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Sep 26, 2009
Messages
19,798
^^^^ We lived next to a dime store in Detroit.

One thing I miss terribly was going to the butcher shop, bakery shop, etc. As a kid, we could stop in with a quarter and get a couple of meat/pepperoni sticks or get a real donut at the bakery. The hardware shop was ole' Bill ... and he knew where EVERYTHING was in that messy store!

Yep, they wrapped the hamburger on the spoty. No pre packaging.....

I remember playing outside till the streetlights came on playing road hockey actually playing as a kid my kids don't comprehend that I grew up with one channel on the TV cuz we had an antenna no computer and no video games and we only had one tv in the house

And there was always some smart guy that would run over the snow chunks you used as goals..... Most would avoid them......
 

littlerayray

Lieutenant
Joined
Feb 17, 2013
Messages
1,456
Sorry wimusky we actually had roadhockey nets and goalies and most days we ran three lines per team and had refs we were well organized kids and we never argued with the refs either
 

southkogs

Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Jul 7, 2010
Messages
14,792
I remember playing outside till the streetlights came on ...
'cuz that's when you knew you had to be home! And about 5 minutes after the lights came on, you could hear your mom's voice 2 blocks away calling you by your first and middle name :eek:

And there was always some smart guy that would run over the snow chunks you used as goals ...
Wiping out on a breakaway because there was a patch of honest concrete that poked through the ice and snow :)
 

bonz_d

Vice Admiral
Joined
Apr 22, 2008
Messages
5,274
There was a small bowling alley about 2mi. from where we lived and during the winter they would run a youth league. Every Sat mom would give us $3.00 to share so we could play and have a soda with chips.
 

MTboatguy

Fleet Admiral
Joined
Jul 8, 2010
Messages
8,988
I used to always enjoy my games when I was young and played little League baseball because we all got a dollar and a ticket for playing the game, well with much of the candy at a penny a piece, you can guess what I did, that is right normally 110 pieces of red vines. Some weekends, I would spend 50 cents on a hamburger at the food stand and still get 60 red vines.

I stopped to pick up a beer the other day and they had a bucket of red vines on the counter, 10 cents a piece for one red vine! I shook my head in amazement, the clerk asked what I was shaking my head about, I told the red vines! She replied 10 cents is cheap, I look at her and smiled, not for me, that is 1000% inflation since I used to buy them as a kid!
 
Top