DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN...?

[John Corn]

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"?

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!!!!!!!

 

[Roger]

John:

“You got your windshield cleaned, oil checked, and gas pumped,
without asking, all for free, every time?”

Yes and this provided many jobs to young boys or men.

“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?”

Well we never kept the keys in the car but we left it unlocked and nobody stole our 8-Track tapes.
We never locked the doors of our homes either.

“Lying on your back in the grass with your friends and saying things like, "That cloud looks like a ."

Yes and the clouds were real not the crap that’s sprayed on us today like Chem-trails.
Do you remember when jet contrails were vapor not chemicals?

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

Oh yes and do any of you remember Mom and Pop corner stores?

“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?”

You have no idea on how I would like to give that innocence to the children of today.
This was all possible before cable TV BTW. There wasn’t any MTV to pervert me.
I did pizza, pinball, Space Invaders, Missile Command and Pac-Man.
And since there wasn’t much on TV so I rode a bicycle and played football.
Having sex, doing drugs, or drinking booze didn’t even cross our minds.

“How many of these do you remember?”

“Candy cigarettes”

Yes! And there was a gum version of them where you could blow on one end and some kind of sugar crap came out of the other end. Yes!!!!! The candy cigarettes with the little red tip on the end!!!! They tasted awful but good at the same time.

“Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside
Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles”

Yes and you could return all the glass soda bottles for a refund thus get more soda. I didn’t like the Coke bottles because they were only 8 OZ. and now I’d kill to have them back.

“Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers”

Where have all the good times gone?

“Newsreels before the movie”
Get real!

“45 RPM records
Green Stamps”

Yep. We use to get the green stamps at the grocery stores and gas stations or wherever the hell they passed them out then turned in the books for products. I think there were yellow stamps as well.
45’s were the only way to get the top hits since there were no cassette tapes and you had to buy an entire album or 8-track tape to get the song otherwise.


“Metal ice cubes trays with levers”
They sucked since the output of a plastic tray was better. Not to mention that the grandparents never used ice so cracking these open was like...

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

My heart aches for times like these again.

I remember the Dukes of Hazzard being an influence on me while the kids of today have sh*t like Boston Public and MTV.

Where have all the good times gone?

 

[Roger]

I've got something to add here.....

Do you remember when you had to get off the couch and manually turn the channels on the TV or to adjust the volume?
Do you remember when you had to watch a TV show when it was on when there were no VCR’s?

 

[Nick]

Do you remember when...
...only The Shadow knew what evil lurked in the minds of men? The rest of us mere mortals didn't have a clue just how bad it would get
...as a family we listened to radio shows on the old Philco and each of us created the 'picture' with our imaginations?
...boys had pissing contests in the woods?
...you somehow knew not to eat yellow snow?
...we snuck small pieces of ice out of the back of the milkman's delivery truck?
...the mailman stopped to chat?
...your mom ran down to the corner grocery for a few minutes, the neighbor lady automatically became your new mother?
...your mom got back a few minutes later she wasn't arrested for child neglect?
...playing ball in the street and not getting killed?
...accidentally breaking a neighbor's window and not getting arrested?
...taking the ball and going home to face your dad?
...getting a lecture, a hug and a kiss on the forehead and not realizing you had just learned an important life lesson?
...you recalled that moment years later when your own child needed correction?
...our grandparents talked of "the good old days" and we didn't realize they had grown up in the great depression?
...you first said "Well, back in my day..."?
_____________________

Things I didn't know I didn't have and didn't even miss growing up...

Air conditioning, Color TV and pipes of PVC
8-track tape, cassettes or MP3
CDs, King of Pop or pop-top cans
Computers, WebTV, LANs and WANs
Email, IM and internetting
Guinness records, designer drugs or on-line betting
Mircrowaves, Hot Pockets and pocket fishing reels
McDonald's, Burger Kings or happy meals
Video games, Legos or transistor switches
Anything made in Japan, Korea, even China, except, er, their dishes
Digital watches, digital calculators and token rings
411, 911 or 1-800-ANYTHING
astronauts, space travel, except as science fiction
or electronic gadgets to help with my diction
I had never heard of R2D2s or Mr. Spocks,
cuz I was superman with a big blue sheet and bright red socks.

 

[Roger]

Do you remember when everything made in Japan was junk like a cheap transistor radios? Now if something is still made in Japan it’s probably of high quality.

 

[John Corn]

Remember how bad the first Honda cars were? They were rust buckets up north here.