| Do You Remember These? |
| Those of us entering geezerdom will appreciate this. For those who are not, look at what you missed and aren't you glad. "Hey Papa," one of my grandkids 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, 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 AND 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 8. It was, of course, black and white, but Dad bought a piece of colored plastic to cover the screen. The top third was blue, like the sky, and the bottom third was green, like grass. The middle third was red. It was perfect for programs that had scenes of fire trucks riding across someone's lawn on a sunny day. Some people had a lens taped to the front of the TV to make the picture look larger. 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. 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. The milkman would bring the milk in bottles and pick up the empty ones left on the porch. All newspapers were delivered by boys, and all boys delivered newspapers. Your trash was not bundled up or put out at the road - most of the time we burned it in an old barrel behind the house or Mr Poston would pick it up and dump it in his front yard. (The county landfill?) Our dogs ran free. The only time you would see a dog catcher is when there was a rabid dog in the neighborhood. We never had a house dog. And we never fed our dogs gourmet meals - they only ate table scraps or cheap dry dog food. We never had organized sports - except at school. Usually all the kids in the neighborhood would play football in the front yard of Greg Mask's house. Or basketball was played in the field between my house and Marcus Comer's. Baseball was played either at Five Points, where the Lassiter Junkyard is now or over on Snead Ave - with Alan and Randy Snead and Ricky McNeeley and others. 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. A Royal Crown Cola bottle. In the bottle top was a stopper with a bunch of holes in it. I remember it as the bottle that sat on the end of the ironing board to "sprinkle" clothes with because steam irons hadn't been invented yet. Head lights dimmer switches on the floor. Moonpies. Pepsi with nuts poured into it. Bazooka Joe bubble gum. Beech-Nut chewing tobacco. Hop-a-Long Cassidy, The Cisco Kid, Amos n' Andy, Sky King, Roy Rogers, The Lone Ranger and Tonto. 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 irons you heat on a gas burner. Using hand signals for cars without turn signals. Man, I am old. 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 bottles 5. Coffee shops with tableside jukeboxes 6. Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers 7. Party lines 8. Newsreels before the movie 9. P.F. Flyers 10. Butch wax 11. Telephone numbers with a word prefix ( TWing5-2019) 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. Packards 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 are 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 the best part of my life. |
| So, as the Train of Life keeps chugging along, another page written of my Childhood Memories of.... Rockingham Remembered. |
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