Oldies but Goodies! Things from a childhood, long forgotten by today's group

[Texas Transplant]

These are really good.

MEMORIES!



Before the Internet or PC or the MAC......

Before semi-automatics and crack....

Before Playstation, SEGA, Super Nintendo, even before Atari...

Before cell phones, CD's, DVD's, voicemail and e-mail....

way back...way..... way....way back.....



I'm talkin' bout - hide and seek at dusk,

Red light, Green light

Red Rover....Red Rover.....

Playing kickball & dodgeball until the first ... no ... second

no,third streetlight came on.

Ring around the Rosie

London Bridge

Hot potato

Hop Scotch

Jump rope

Duck....duck. ...GOOSE! !!

YOU'RE IT!!

Parents stood on the front porch and yelled (or whistled) for

you to come home - no pagers or cell phones

Mother May I?

Hula Hoops

Seeing shapes in the clouds

Endless summer days and hot summer nights (no A/C) with the windows open

The sound of crickets

Running through the sprinkler

Cereal boxes with that GREAT prize in the bottom

Cracker jacks with the same thing

Ice pops with 2 sticks you could break and share with a friend.



but wait.....there' s more....



Watchin' Saturday Morning TV.... Roy Rogers, Sky King, Lone Ranger

Watchin' Sunday morning oldies (Abbott & Costello, Three Stooges)

Shirley Temple movies, Little Rascals, Ma & Pa Kettle

Catchin' lightning bugs in a jar

Christmas morning

Your first day of school

Bedtime Prayers and Goodnight Kisses

Climbing trees

Swinging as high as you could to try and reach the sky

Getting an Ice Cream from Mr. Softee

A million mosquito bites and sticky fingers

Jumpin' down the steps

Jumpin' on the bed (and getting hit with the yard stick when the bed broke).

Pillow fights

Sleep-overs

Runnin' till you were out of breath,

Laughing so hard that your stomach hurt.

Being tired from PLAYING!

WORK: meant taking out the garbage or doing the dishes.

Your first crush.

Your first kiss (I mean the one that you kept your mouth CLOSED and your eyes OPEN).

Rainy days at school meant playing "Heads up 7UP" or hangman" in the classroom,

Remember That ?

Oh, I'm not finished yet....



Kool-Aid was the drink of the summer.

So was a swig from the hose.

Giving your friends a ride on your handlebars.

Wearing your new shoes on the first day of school.

Class Field Trips with soggy sandwiches.

When nearly everyone's mom was at home when the kids got there.

When a quarter seemed like a fair allowance;and another quarter a MIRACLE!

When ANY parent could discipline ANY kid, or feed him,or use him to

carry groceries... And nobody, not even the kid, thought a thing of it.

When being sent to the principal's office was nothing compared to the fate that awaited you 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! And some of us are still afraid of em!

Didn't that feel good? Just to go back and say, "Yeah, I remember that!"

Well, let' s keep going!! Let's go back to the time when...



Decisions were made by going "eeny-meeny- miney-mo".

Mistakes were corrected by simply exclaiming, "do over!"

Race issues" meant arguing about who ran the fastest.

Money issues were handled by whoever was the banker in "monopoly".

Catching fireflies could happily occupy an entire evening.

It wasn't odd to have two or three "best" friends.

Being old, referred to anyone over 20. (GEE! I'm officially old!)

The worst thing you could catch from the opposite sex was cooties.

Nobody was prettier than Mom.

Scrapes and bruises were kissed by mom or grandma and made better.

It was a big deal to finally be tall enough to ride the "big people" rides at the amusement park.

Getting a foot of snow was a dream come true.

Abilities were

 

[JR F]

I go back a little bit farther.Out houses,No electric,NO TV..Heck,I'am getting old...JR

 

[Bob G.]

FYI....... semi-automatics were being made a lonnnnggggg time ago!!!



Bob G.

 

[Edward Lea.]

Our semi-automatics were the "rubber band" guns made using the rubber from cut up tire tubes as the rubber bands.

 

[Greg Meyer]

Ahhhh JR... try this... My best friends grandmother (we were about 11yrs old) still had a summer kitchen at the farm and a "crank" phone... Our phone (a large black desk phone) required that you give the number you wanted to the operator... Rain water was collected off the roof into a "cistern" for use in laundry, etc... Levis dried on those wire frames so they would have a "crease".... Laundry required a "wash machine... two rinse tubs and a "wringer"... Our house had a "coal bin" and a "coal chute" ... and the "thermostat" was an "open or close the damper" instruction from an adult... You had to go down into the basement and light my grandparents hot water heater and then let it get hot... There were still oats all over inside my grandfathers "garage"... When I was in high school a good running model A ford cost $50.... and there were lots of them to be had...(you wanted one with a fuel pump so you didn't have to back up hills)... And, I could ride my bike out of town followed by my dog with a rifle or shotgun over the handle bars and no one called out the National Guard.

 

[Jim Storck Sr2]

Remember the slinky,78 records,reel to reel tapes.wooden paddle with ball attached with rubber band,plastic toy soldiers,flippn baseball cards,clamp on roller skates,scooters made with wood milk crate and 2x4,stick ball,playing bottle caps,zip guns (sorry got carried away)

 

[Mike L.]

Hey Tex....Try this link 'back to the 60's'...its pretty good!!!!
http://moreoldfortyfives.com/TakeMeBackToTheSixties.htm

 

[Jim Duncan]

The fun thing about this is that I am 32 and I remember all but a few things. I am trying so very hard to raise my son with those same fun things that I remember. I can only hope that my son will get the same feeling I did when I caught my first lightning bug in a mason jar and my Grandmother kissed me for what seemed like an eternity. Thank you for making me feel like I'm not the only one who remembers how fun it used to be.



And my favorite thing ever was NEVER having a locked door in the house......

 

[JR F]

greg..I was the one who would do the coal...gravity heat..If It giot really cold get a blanket and set on the register...Bank It In the evening for the whole night....Coal dust everywhere...JR

 

[Larry Harp]

Some things I remember....



My mother and I moved from Dallas to Muskogee OK to be with my grandmother to help her out in her later years. (Nowadays old people go to "assisted living centers") My mother had a modern washing machine and dryer and a window unit air conditioner...my grandmother would have nothing to do with neither one. She stuck with the old wringer washer and the tubs...with the Mrs. Wright Bluing and the Clorox in the big brown glass jug. The air conditioner bothered her rheumatism, so my mother finally sold all three of them.



I remember riding in my grandmothers old De-Soto that didn't have a back seat...the kids stood up in the back. I think it was called a Coupe'...probably a late 40's model. My mother bought a new 1954 Chevy 210...green with a white top. I came across the papers in her stuff after she died...she paid $1859. for it. It had a rope of a thing across the back of the front seat that I loved to hang on to and bounce on the back seat.



I remember riding down the street with my mom, one night and seeing a color TV inside someones house. We drove around the block 3 times to get a look at it. What a couple of hicks.



While I lived in Muskogee I could drive my bycycle anywhere in town with my two dogs following along. On the 4th of July we could pop firecrackers, sky rockets, cherry bombs, and pop-bottle rockets for the 4 day preceding the 4th...and without adult supervision. When I lived in Dallas I could get on the bus and go downtown or out to fairpark and ride the rides. This is when I was 11 and 12...can you imagine letting an 11 year old roam the streets of Dallas today?!?! You would be jailed.



I got one of the first Frisbee's for Christmas one year. It was the kind with the planets molded into it. I understand they're worth a lot of money now. Had one of the first Hula Hoops too. Could actually make it work in those days.



I remember when Oklahoma was a dry state...no liquor stores at all. My brother was in high school then. He could buy all the booze he wanted...bootleggers didn't check ID's.



I remember when I lived in Dallas there was a laundromat down the street from my house. It had a sign in the window that said, WHITES ONLY In my naivety I thought that meant that you could only wash sheets and towels in there. I guess the good old days weren't that good for everybody.



Harpo

 

[Greg Meyer]

Harpo,



On a long "nostalgia" thread... I brought up a few things we would all like to forget... You mentioned one... white and colored restrooms in the parks... same with drinking fountains and schools... Signs at the city swimming pool "No Coloreds Allowed" and I remember a reference to a City Ordinance on that sign...!!! Not so great was the summer polio scare every year... we were very lucky in that we had a summer "home", a cabin on the banks of the Mississippi River... we moved into it every year at Memorial Day and moved out at Labor Day... Used it most weekends all the rest of the year... Boy was it great having that cabin/house later when I started dating... quiet...private... etc..... That's a memory I do like to think about... :wub:

 

[Bill Wright]

I miss the records on the cereal boxes, YAY PATRIGE FAMILY

 

[Bruce Freeman]

Born in 1960 I remember lots of things listed here good and bad. I have 100 stories to tell but only one or two are fit for this site.



BF

 

[William H. (Bill) Barham]

WoW..Thanks Tex.. Reading all of that has made me very happy, and also very sad at the same time..

We had electricity but didn't have a TV until I was about seven years old. My Dad must have hit the number because one evening he brought home a new black & white TV. I think it was a Zenith and the pictures was very small while the console was very big. He also had brand new pajamas, slippers and robes for my younger brother and me so we had to take a bath (no shower in the house) and then got to put on our new duds. My Mom made my brother and I kind of a bed on the living room floor and we got to lay there and watch TV. I'll never forget that.

I used to go to my Uncles farm quite often to help out. Uncle Ike was a hard and stubborn man. I saw him lop a finger off one time with a hatchet. Blood was flowing everywhere. He went into the barn to the fire, stoked it up, pulled an iron out of it and placed it where his finger had been and cauterized it. They had an outhouse where they lived. When Uncle Ike died we told Aunt Mary that she could now modernize a little and have an inside bathroom, Well, she thought we were nuts. A bathroom IN YOUR HOUSE??? No Way!!!! She never did have one either. That was her way. Uncle Ike also laughed and made fun of me when I threw up at the first hog butchering I ever saw. I always though he was mean but when all of the work was done and he would light up his cigar to relax, he would always want me sitting on his knee or right next to him. He would also work on some wood toy forever but would then give it to one of us when he was done.

I miss my Mom and Dad. I miss how trusting everyone was. I also remember the racial things but where I grew up they were mostly ignored. I played industrial league baseball on a team where I was the only white for a year. That's where I learned about racism. Otherwise I worked on the area farms and on the water and cut tobacco with almost all black guys. That crap was never brought up. We were in the country and didn't see the signs that were on these establishments by law. The places I went to for a burger or a milkshake had those signs but they were ignored, even when the police were around. Before I could drive, the black guys I cut tobacco with would drive me to those places so we could get something to eat. Now, the town of Annapolis was only five miles away but there were a lot of places in one certain area that had signs that said No Whites.. I didn't understand that for a long time. When I played ball it was all explained to me.

I could go on forever about this kind of thing but it's too long already and I'm getting morose.



Uncle Billy

 

[Texas Transplant]

Of all the one's up there, the one that struck the biggest 'cord' with me was getting a cool drink of water from the hose (or cupping your hand and drinking from the faucet - before or after the dog did).



And for us guy's, one that is certainly missing:



Playing War! Always better with bb guns.



Tex

 

[Greg Meyer]

"Always better with bb guns." wasn't everything?

 

[Texas Transplant]

Yes, unless you had access to a 'pellet rifle'!



Tex

 

[Randy Walls]

I remember when my neighbor got the first three speed bike in the neighborhood. Said he could ride faster than all of us. As I remember he never did beat me on my Stingray with the banana seat and he always had a stick stuck in the shifter mechanism to keep it in the right gear!



The fun old days!



Randy!