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As we were
finishing our hamburgers at Wendy's last week
my 8 year old Grandson ask me; "When you were little, where was your favorite
'fast food' place Gramma?" My answer to him was;
"when I was your age there was no such thing as "fast Food."
He looked at me with that "yeah sure" grin of his and said
"seriously, Gramma, where did you eat?"
"It was a place called HOME," I said. "My mother, your
Great Grandmother, cooked every one of my families meals and when it was time
to eat we all sat at the table together, and ate exactly (with no belly aching) what my mother fixed. Sometimes, there were things like creamed carrots that I
really hated but
I had to eat them anyway and I
learned to eat the stuff I hated first so I could
enjoy the rest of the
meal.
After supper there was always a yummy desert."
My grandson looked at me and said; "Boy were you lucky !"
And YES, I think I was Lucky.
~~~
Believe it or
not, I was 21 years old before I tasted a Pizza.
I thought it was soooo GROSS. It was ten years later
before I tried another one.
~~~
We have so many
trashy movies now I have started calling Hollywood "The Cesspool of
America." Unfortunately,
today's teenagers idolize the movie stars and try to
emulate them in any way possible. Try to picture your
Granddaughter going off to school without her panties on.
Oh well, Brittany Spears does it so it must be OK, right??
Will some one please tell me who the hell Brittany Spears is.
When I was a teenager the worst movie that came out
of Hollywood was "Blue Moon." Remember that one??
They actually kissed with their mouths SHUT and
it didn't look like some one siphoning gas.
~~~
When I was
little we lived in the country on a farm. I
can remember walking down our very long driveway
to the road (and yes, it was not paved) and
wait for my father to come home so I could jump
on the "running board" and ride to the house.
Don't know what a running board is??
Cheezz, go look it up!!
~~~
Do any of these
ring a bell ??
Candy cigarettes – having your older brother tell you that he
was going to put Another nail in his coffin when he lit his cigarettes.
He never smoked when Papa was home. We knew way back then that
cigarettes were going to kill us but we smoked them anyway.
Now, with all the Smart-assed lawyers strutting around
we can sue the cigarette makes as if they fooled us into thinking
their cigarettes were not harmful.
Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside.
Coffee shops with tableside jukeboxes.
Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers.
Having to milk the cows
every morning before going to school.
Had to wrap my hair up with a dish towel
to protect it from swishing cow tails,
Then putting the milk through the Separator that required
turning a wheel that created a centrifuge
separating the cream from the milk.
School bus drivers that waited at the end of your drive-way,
knowing that you would eventually come
tearing out the kitchen door.
Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles.
When you wanted one you simply asked for a POP.
Today a POP means a FIX of drugs of one kind or another.
Newsreels before the main movie and you could walk
in the movie anytime you wanted to – didn’t
have to leave when the movie ended – you could
actually sit there all day or night and watch it as
many times as you wanted to.
P. F. Fliers and their smell !! My brothers had'em.
Chewing
gum
in Blackjack, Clove and Teaberry flavors.
When being sent to the principal's office was nothing
compared to the fate that awaited the student at home
because we had to take a note home telling our
parents what a dreadful child we had been.
Going to the Principal’s office was a breeze compared to
what was going to happen to us when we got home.,
Our parents and grandparents were a much bigger threat than the
Principal!
But we survived, because their "Tough love" was greater than the threat.
And no one hired a
lawyer because our little hearts were broken
or we were liable to loose our self esteem.
2
plus 2 was ALWAYS
4 and the sooner you learned that, the teacher would
stop making red marks all over your homework.
If
you were not smart enough to pass to the next grade You had to do that
grade all over again. Now we are talking about a serious loss of self
Esteem, and we all knew that we did not want that to happen so we did
our very best and 99 percent of us never lost our ‘self esteem’.
If we misbehaved in school we were punished right then
and there and the teachers were the worst “tattle-Tails” around because
they ALWAYS told our parents.
Peashooters
- Sometimes those straws
were hard to come by but we could always roll up a piece of paper and
that worked just fine.
Telephones
that hung on the wall and everyone thought
they had to yell into them to be heard.
Telephone numbers with or without a word prefix...(Raymond
4-601).
An ‘Operator’ who ask “Number Please”
Party lines and knowing all the people that shared the same line and all
of us had a different number of rings identifying who the call was for.
We
participated in “conference” calls before we knew what “conference”
calls were.
45 RPM records
Green Stamps that we could trade for all sorts of neat things.
Hi-Fi's without the ‘surround sound’ that tickles
your feet when you turn it up loud.
Metal ice cube trays with levers.
Ice Cream makers that some one had to sit on when the
Ice Cream started getting hard and it was hard turning the handle.
Big ‘slab’ cakes that our Mothers made that was cut evenly
and our initials were put on each square. I loved to save mine until
the last so my brothers would offer me some really cool stuff if I would
give them my cake. I had a collection of marbles that wouldn’t quite.
Roller-skate keys
Cork pop guns
Pop guns that worked great at the Fourth of July bashes.
When they sold the caps that blew up when you
pulled the trigger and the hammer went down.
Fourth of July when your papa brought home a huge sack of
fireworks that he lit after the picnic.
Everyone went OoooHHHH, AHHHH every time one burst open
in the night sky.
Blowing up ant hills with the little ones that we were
allowed to light ourselves.
Drive ins with girls wearing roller skates (this came much later)
Studebakers
Washtub wringers that every kid in the
world got their fingers caught in.
The Fuller Brush Man
Didn't see too many of these guys in the country
Tinker toys
Erector Sets that had nothing to do with VIAGRA!!!
The Fort Apache Play Set
This was mostly a 'guy' thing.
Lincoln Logs and Paper dolls
There were absolutely NO McDonalds with the Golden Arches..
There were NO fat kids unless they were medically challenged.
5
cent packs of baseball cards -
with that awful pink slab of bubble gum
Penny candy and 5 cent Ice Cream cones.
25 cents a gallon for gasoline and you didn’t
have to get out of the car to put it in.
The ‘Attendants’ actually checked your oil and
the air in your tires
and
washed the windshield.
Cheezzz How innovative!! Now, how smart IS Oregon anyway??
Helping
your Mom shuck Pop Corn and then tossing it in
the air to let the wind blow away the corn silt and hulls
before popping it.
Sunday Fudge, cooling in the open window before beating
it.
Picnics in the mountains – eating your Mom’s fried
chicken and home made bread. Sitting on the bridge eating home grown
watermelons and spitting the seeds in the ditch. Having contests to see
who could spit a seed the furtherest.
Ah Yes……….. How lucky we were.
Remember when Monumental
Decisions were
made by going;
"eeny-meeny-miney-moe"?
Mistakes were easily corrected by simply Yelling, "OVERS!".
"A Race issue" simply meant arguing about who won the race.
Catching fireflies could happily occupy an entire evening.
It wasn't odd to have two or three "Best Friends".
The worst thing you could catch from the opposite sex was "cooties"
Having a weapon in school meant being caught with a slingshot.
A foot of snow was a dream come true.
Yep, that's me with my older brothers !!!
Sledding down a hill on a shovel .
Being pulled on the sled behind the car or horse was a RUSH.
Tubing down the mountain on Grand Mesa was totally Awesome.
Bails of hay at the bottom kept us from sliding across the
road and going off a cliff. Parents took turns hauling kids and
the inner tubes back up to the top.
And EVERYONE
shared their tubes with the kids that came without one.
The big truck tubes held two kids at a time.
No TVs back then but we had the Saturday morning Spook
Shows on the radio that included “The Shadow Knows !!”
Us Kids would lay on the floor in a semi circle in
front of the radio and listen to all of them.
Sunday night "Bad Dreams" were a norm.
Passing the Sunday Morning Funnies around.
Prince Valiant with the cute Page Boy” hair-do.
Brenda Star the Red Headed Reporter. Superman.
Flash Gordon. Alli-oop. Dick Tracy with the square chin.
Lil Abner in the beat up Over-alls. The Katz ‘n Jammer kids.
Blondie and Dagwood. Pop Eye. Red Rider and Little Beaver.
Maggie and Jiggs. ( We named two of our horses Maggie and Jiggs)
Mutt and Jeff. Did I forget one??
During WW II listening to Gabriel Heater on the radio doing the War
News.
No one uttered a sound during those news broadcasts ~
I had two older brothers “Over There” and my Mom proudly
displayed their Stars in the living room window.
Seeing the front page of the local Newspaper showing a log that
Has been half way chopped into. When I asked what that meant
my Mom said when the log is in two pieces the War will be over.
The paper never did show the log again but I remember
when we found out that the war was over we jumped
into the car and went to town.
There were so many car horns honking and so
many “stuck’ horns that wouldn’t stop honking.
Yelling
Kings-X
meant
no one could touch you when playing TAG.
We actually DID
play TAG and DODGE Ball and all those other
highly DANGEROUS Games and our Moms didn’t
call a lawyer when we came home with bruises.
.
If a boy did not have some scars by the time he was ten he was a WIMP.
We played so hard
at “Recess” the teacher made us rest our heads
On our arms for 5 minutes when we came back into class.
I repeat; there
were no FAT kids back then.
We
got a pint of milk in a small glass container with a cardboard cap
Every morning. It always had an inch of cream at the top. YUMMMM !
"Oly-oly-ox-in-free" made perfect sense and if you were still out there
hidden when the person that was “IT” yelled Oly-Oly-Ox-In-Free you
won!!!
Spinning around, getting dizzy, and falling down was cause for the
giggles!!!
Actually, just about everything was cause for the giggles.
Having the back of your hand slapped with a ruler meant that
next time you had better leave those giggles out on the play ground.
(Been-there Done-that a few times)
Playing JACKS on the side walk until the side of your hand
would crack and bleed.
Kneeling in the dirt ‘shooting Marbles’ for hours.
Trying to get those big DONNIES and AGGIES.
The worst embarrassment was being picked last for a team.
Boy have I been there done that too!!
But it did not ruin my self esteem nor did it hurt my feelings.
It just meant that I was a total klutz and everyone knew it!
Just because my friends didn’t choose me didn’t mean they weren’t my
friends.
It meant that they wanted to WIN what ever game we were playing
and I usually did not contribute much in the way of winning.
I never did have to see a physiatrist because of it.
Playing cards clipped in the spokes with a clothes pin
transformed any bikes into a motorcycle?
I really hope I don't have to explain what a Clothes Pin is!!!!
Riding on the back of my
older brother's bike
and having to get off a quarter of a mile away
from school so his friends would not witness the total degradation
of having to pump his lowly little sister to school.
Getting a new bicycle meant that Papa put a fresh coat of
Paint on my older sister’s bike.
Taking drugs meant orange-flavored chewable aspirin and the
Cod Liver Oil or that White Chalky stuff
that parents gave their kids every week……
Water balloons were the ultimate weapons. However,
chucking them out of a three story hotel
window
in
down town
Denver was NOT the thing to do.
A police man comes and sits with you until your parents return.
We knew we were going to “get It’ and did not want the
Police man to leave. Back then, this was not considered a felony
and we did not end up with a rap sheet.
Spending a lazy Colorado
Summer afternoon
floating down the Colorado
River on inner tubes with friends.
Taking off on a
warm summer day during summer break
from School and be gone all day
not coming home until dinner time and no one worried about you.
Packing a lunch
and riding your bike with friends
to a special meeting place.
Climbing trees
and building Tree Houses.
Living on a
farm and not having to wear a shirt
all summer except when we had to go to town.
This is definitely a 'guy' thingy!
Awwww
Christmas!!!
Remember
getting my first gun, a single shot 22 rifle.
I remember the tears in my brother's eyes when Papa ask him;
"is that another present over there behind
your mothers sewing machine??"
This was after all the rest of the gifts had been opened.
Remembering my
father bringing home my very first
"all mine" horse. It was ugly as sin and probably had
some Mule in it but it was mine and I rode it every
chance I had.
Again, my brother's memory kicking in.
Climbing on a
calf and having someone twist it's
tail so it would buck.
I was always the designated "Tail Twister."
I got really good at dodging those wild hooves.
I am so very happy that I remember ALL of this !!!!!!!
Now, where in the Devil did I put my car keys and why is
my dog Dudley staring at me. Did I forget to feed him ???
I wonder what our Grand Children will remember when they get our age??
I bet it isn’t going to be as much fun for them to REMEMBER as it is
For us….
Would you like
to contribute to my "Remembering" list ??
Come on, it's FUN. E Mail me
Here are some
contributions that people have e mailed to me.
I think you will like them
The fresh
summer smell of clothes that have been hung
to dry on a clothes line in the back yard
Taking turns
cranking the the handle on the Ice Cream bucket.
Having to add ice and salt till it was done.
Playing under the
street lights until bedtime and not worrying
about strangers sneaking around up to no good.
Home
BUFORD Families
in America Book 2005
Addendum to Buford Book 2005
Cemeteries
Letters
Obituaries
Photographs
Wills
And my ALL-TIME favorite ~ TRIVIA
~~~Clouds by Torie~~~
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