Blast From The Past 1.

[nomdeplume57]

Got this years ago off the Web. Enjoy!

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, wore Levis , set foot on a golf
course, travelled out of the country or had a credit card.

My parents never drove me to 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 19.

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 never had a telephone in my room.The only phone 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 delivered a newspaper, six days a week. He had to get up at 6AM
every morning.

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?

[RAM]

You got my childhood almost exactly. Didn't have a paper route.
Bad Bob

[wrong99]

Ah yes, the milk man. Had to leave your empties out on the porch, with little flags that represented your next order sticking out of one of the empty (glass) bottles. My parents went to work early, so when I went out the front door on my way to school I would always raise the "chocolate milk" flag. I don't think my parents thought it was funny, though. Not once.
I also remember the bread man (first it was Colonial Bread and later Peter Wheat Bread) and, to this day, can still recall what it smelled like when he opened the back door of his truck. Like Heaven! The best filled doughnuts and pastries I ever had in my life, and that was 55 years ago. Then there was the ice cream man, who you could hear coming for a mile. Ten and 15 cent ice cream bars, probably three times as large as ones that sell today for $3.00. The ice cream man was the last holdout, but I haven't seen one in many years.
My father used to tell me about the ice man, with his horse-drawn wagon. But that was another time...
Mark

[Reel Geezer]

We had a party line telephone here on Lake Shore Drive until the late 1970s.

[Dale Noll]

No electircity until after WW2. And no indoor running water or toiltes in high school until 1950!
Nobody locked any doors either. Different world!

Dale

[Tom M]

We didn't have a milkman come to our house. We had 3 milk cows. Ginger, Penny and Elsie. Ginger and penny were average milk givers. If I remember right, they would be milked once a day, but Elsie was a different story. Dad had to milk her twice a day. I think she produced 5+ gallons a day. I remember milk would be squirting out on the ground when it was time to milk. What a cow!

We also usually had about 200 chickens annually. Mom used to sell eggs and milk from the house. We had a 2 gallon table top pasteurizer that she used to purify the milk and put it in gallon glass jugs for sale. folks from around the neighborhood would come to buy it. It was 25 cents a gallon for the milk and 25 cents a dozen for the eggs. If no one was home, Mom would leave the door open and people would come in the kitchen to get the milk and eggs out of the fridge, drop the money in a coffee can and be on there way.
When it came butchering time for chickens, Grandma's, Grandpa's, kids and all were involved. It was quite a process, but everyone had a job and did it. (I was a plucker) The next spring, Dad would buy a bunch more chicks and it all started over again.

Yes, we did have a bread man come by. He was the Omar bread man. I'll never forget that old red and white delivery van scooting down the driveway, brakes squeaking to a halt and as always, hurried in and out delivering the bread.
I never had a job like a paper route or anything. I was paid 25 cents an hour working for Dad on the farm. As I got older, I worked my way up to a dollar an hour. It didn't seem like much, but when you worked from light to dark, it added up!

Fast food was stopping the tractor, running over to the shade and scarfing down a sandwich that Mom brought over for lunch. She always seemed to be there just in time! If it was in the winter, fast food was a peanut and home made jelly sandwich.

I remember the old black and white television with the rabbit ears on top and the midnight sign off, and then the National anthem when it came back on. I remember when we went to Grandpa's house, we sometimes had to wrap a lamp cord around the antenna to get better reception. But it helped.
We used to have quite a few beef cattle over at Grandpa's house too. I remember going over there in the winter to give them hay and bust the ice off of the water trough's. It was kind of fun, but didn't take long for us to want to go home and warm up our fingers.
Our telephone was a crank desk top phone. I think we were two longs and a short. When we got a rotary dial phone I was confused with all of those numbers, but soon adjusted.
We always rode the old school bus to school. It was about a 1962 GMC I think. (I don't remember the one before that) Our bus driver was named Ernie and after a while we called him Col. Klink...lol. He was picky about that old bus, but he took great care of it.

I could go on and on about the good old days. Some things I miss dearly, some not as much. But if I had my choice of growing up then or now, it would be a no brainer. I wouldn't trade those memories for the world...

[scottorock]

Out of my league with this one. I was born in "73! Ive heard lots of stories form my Father and Grandfather. My Grandfather was the milkman. I was raised with more modern amenities, but with the same basic core values.

[Midway Tommy D]

One can easily figure out from this thread what "Old" in Old Reel Collectors Association refers to. And yes, I do remember most all those things. My Grandfather died in '58 and they had still had a crank phone, party line, delco wiring, outside hand pump water and outhouse, so I fit in just fine, although I was raised in the city with all the luxuries of inside plumbing.

[Jonathan P. Kring]

Many of these things sound familiar. If I had any memory left, I could probably remember some of them.