Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Fast Forward from Ralph 7

My good friend Ralph Valine wrote:
SOME OF YOU ARE TOO YOUNG TO REMEMBER THESE

Sit back, relax, listen, read, & smile. Kind of of reminds you to stop & smell the roses of life, and to give Thanks to God for Life and Memories!!!!


DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN...?

All the girls had ugly gym uniforms?
It took five minutes for the TV warm up?
Nearly everyone's Mom was at home when the kids got home from school?

Nobody owned a purebred dog?
When a quarter was a decent allowance?
You'd reach into a muddy gutter for a penny?
Your Mom wore nylons that came in two pieces?

All your male teachers wore neckties and female teachers had
their hair done every day and wore high heels?

You got your windshield cleaned, oil checked, and gas pumped,
without asking, all for free, every time?
And you didn't pay for air? And, you got trading stamps to boot?

Laundry detergent had free glasses, dishes or towels hidden inside the box?
It was considered a great privilege to be taken out to dinner
at a real restaurant with your parents?

They threatened to keep kids back a grade if they failed. . and they did?

When a 57 Chevy was everyone's dream car...to cruise,
peel out, lay rubber or watch submarine races, and people went steady?
No one ever asked where the car keys were
because they were always in the car,
in the ignition, and the doors were never locked?
Lying on your back in the grass with your friends
and saying things like, "That cloud looks like a ."
and playing baseball with no adults to help kids with the rules of the game?

Stuff from the store came without safety caps and hermetic seals
because no one had yet tried to poison a perfect stranger?

And with all our progress, don't you just wish, just once,
you could slip back in time and savor the slower pace,
and share it with the children of today?

When being sent to the principal's office was nothing
compared to the fate that awaited the student at home?
Basically we were in fear for our lives,
but it wasn't because of drive-by shootings, drugs, gangs, etc.

Our parents and grandparents were a much bigger threat!
But we survived because their love was greater than the threat.

Send this on to someone who can still remember
Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, Laurel and Hardy,
Howdy Dowdy and the Peanut Gallery,
the Lone Ranger, The Shadow Knows,
Nellie Bell, Roy and Dale, Trigger and Buttermilk.


As well as summers filled with bike rides, baseball games,
Hula Hoops, bowling and visits to the pool,
and eating Kool-Aid powder with sugar.
Didn't that feel good, just to go back and say, "Yeah, I remember that"?



I am sharing this with you today
because it ended with a double dog dare to pass it on.
To remember what a double dog dare is, read on.
And remember that the perfect age is somewhere between
old enough to know better and too young to care.

How many of these do you remember?

Candy cigarettes
Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside
Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles
Coffee shops with tableside jukeboxes
Blackjack, Clove and Teaberry chewing gum
Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers
Newsreels before the movie
P.F. Fliers


Telephone numbers with a word prefix...(Raymond 4-601).
Party lines


Peashooters
Howdy Dowdy
45 RPM records
Green Stamps
Hi-Fi's

Metal ice cubes trays with levers
Mimeograph paper
Beanie and Cecil
Roller-skate keys
Cork pop guns
Drive ins
Studebakers


Washtub wringers
The Fuller Brush Man
Reel-To-Reel tape recorders
Tinkertoys
Erector Sets
The Fort Apache Play Set
Lincoln Logs
15 cent McDonald hamburgers


5 cent packs of baseball cards -
with that awful pink slab of bubble gum

Penny candy

35 cent a gallon gasoline
Jiffy Pop popcorn

Do you remember a time when...

Decisions were made by going "eeny-meeny-miney-moe"?
Mistakes were corrected by simply exclaiming, "Do Over!"?
"Race issue" meant arguing about who ran the fastest?
Catching the 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?

Saturday morning cartoons weren't 30-minute commercials for action figures?
"Oly-oly-oxen-free" made perfect sense?
Spinning around, getting dizzy, and falling down was cause for giggles?

The worst embarrassment was being picked last for a team?
War was a card game?
Baseball cards in the spokes transformed any bike into a motorcycle?
Taking drugs meant orange-flavored chewable aspirin?
Water balloons were the ultimate weapon?

If you can remember most or all of these, then you have lived!!!!!!!

Pass this on to anyone who may need a break from
their "grown-up" life . . .I double-dog-dare-ya!

@@@@ News from Pigeon Falls– the little town in my garage where the trains still run, boys talk to rocks, and life goes on as usual– Nancy’s poltergeist showed up again yesterday. It was a bout four o’clock in the afternoon when the first batch of lighter than air saffron buns came out of the oven. They floated up to the ceiling. Now saffron buns are , in general, anything but light and airy. But these looked liked something out of a Three Musketeer Bar commercial. Nancy tried standing on a chair but she couldn’t reach them. Tommy TW came and offered to help . He went and got a step ladder. He pulled them down one by one and they put them in a closed basket. Then the basket started to rise so she put a heavy coffee pot on top and it stayed put. Eino came and Nancy was going to show him the magic buns but when she opened the basket it contained just ordinary, non floating, saffron buns. Eino said that it must have been some kind of odd air gust. Nancy’s little shop has the world’s weirdest air flow.
The Jacksons have split again. This time there will be no Pastor Marvel to bring them back together. One has to wonder if Pastor Moe is ready to take on this continuing task. While they work this out he is staying with their son and she is living in their house. This has not made the son happy as he has his own problems to deal with and his wife doesn’t really want his dad there. But it is his father so he is stuck.
****

Today's Link-Gen X Misanthrope-If you watch American Idol you can compare notes. If you don't she'll fill you in. Leave a DR. John in the comment . Please
Good day today. I did some blogging in the morning. Then started on the second book in the Ergon series. I'm having trouble putting it down. I did watch my soaps bu I read during the commercial breaks. My sister called and said I should drink coffee out of the cups we got as gifts yeaterday as we are too old to save things. There was some excitment across the street and to the right as a car caught fire. The police were there and a fire truck. All that excitment in my dull neighborhod. I visted all my links. Now I will take a breathing treatment.
GBYA

13 Comments:

Blogger Janets Planet said...

The real question is did anything happen to those who ate those saffron buns. I hope that Nancy is keeping a list of who got them.

BTW, I remember those things.

PS. Someone north of you needs to fess up on your surprise.

6:23 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I remember an awful lot of those things. Is what we have now progress? I'm not so sure.

8:03 AM  
Blogger Alpha Dude said...

Yeah, I remember those.

Thanks for that walk down Memory Lane.

9:19 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Boy did I enjoy this one!

I actually have a pack of those wax coke bottle shape things with colored liquid inside. I got it at IParty for goodie bags for Binkers BDAY. They had the candy lipstick and necklaces too.

10:59 AM  
Blogger Louisiana said...

sent you an email..will come back and leave you my comment..hugs.

12:56 PM  
Blogger Margaret said...

I remember half these things and the other half was before my time.

Even still, I feel so old now. Thanks! =O)

3:33 PM  
Blogger Alastair said...

I guess it's being a brit that meant a whole load of that stuff just went 'woosh' over my head, but i got the gist though.

Now you've got me all nostalgic for stuff in my childhood that would probably confuse most of your readers here - 'Wagon wheels', 'Andy Pandy', 'The raleigh grifter' for instance...jumpers for goalposts and all that...

I'll get me coat

3:57 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

"Eino said that it must have been some kind of odd air gust."

That's one of the funniest things I've read, lately!

* * *

I remember some of the things on that list, but I've heard of all of them. I was that little kid who always wanted to hang out with the grownups and hear their stories.

What a great read!

4:09 PM  
Blogger Nessa said...

Well, I guess I've lived alot. I still pick up pennies.

4:42 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I was telling my students one of my "The Grownups Wanted Us Dead" stories, and one young man said, "Fun stuff like that never happens to me!" I responded, "Put down your game controls, go outside and climb a tree."

7:51 PM  
Blogger Jo said...

Omigosh, that was wonderful. I remember every single thing on that list. My favorite thing to do on a summer evening was to play Oly-oly-oxen-free.

I had forgotten about the free glasses inside the laundry detergent. They were good glasses too!

Josie

10:08 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I can remember most of the things on the list, even though I can't remember what I ate for dinner last night. Funny, isn't it, what sticks in the mind. Like the fact that my first phone number was WHitney-17173 !

11:14 PM  
Blogger The Rev. Dr. Kate said...

I am too young to "remember" all of these, but I have parents who did! My children and I still lay out in the grass at the bottom of our hill and look up at the clouds and name the shapes we see. It is hard trying to raise children these days - the pace is so fast and so much is expected that spending an afternoon climbing a tree with a good book is a missed experience! Thanks for sharing.

4:41 AM  

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