Do you remember when life was a lot better?
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….(Temple
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 . . .
Tagged with: 57 chevy • car keys • children of today • decent allowance • dream car • drive by shootings • female teachers • free glasses • gym uniforms • hermetic seals • laundry detergent • male teachers • neckties • parents and grandparents • perfect stranger • rules of the game • safety caps • saying things • submarine races • trading stamps
Filed under: Popcorn Machines
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I am only in my 30’s and already miss the days when things were more relaxed. Pop in glass bottles was sooo good, Saturday mornings were the best, and I had almost forgotten about those little wax bottles! I would get up in the morning and disappear into the woods (when we lived in the country) or on my bicycle all day and nobody ever worried.
Remember when people were polite? When businesses actually cared about their customers? When you could talk to a live person instead of struggling through 30 minutes of menus and holds and transfers and untrained customer service representatives? When teenage girls didn’t have to sleep around to be accepted? When people didn’t fight over Halloween and Christmas?
I do.
Vodka was only $6.00 for a quart.
Yeah, I’ve gotten this in my e-mail, too. I’m old enough to remember almost all of it–but, consider that life was not so great for anyone who wasn’t male, white and Christian. (And, btw, teachers couldn’t afford to get their hair done every day. Because it was a field dominated by women, it paid crap.)
I’m only a teenager so I didn’t experience that era but it sounds like a fun time. What decade/era was it?
And remember, usually when we remember a good time in our past, we only remember the good things. I’m sure there was some bad back then too.
The complexity of our planet points to a deliberate Designer who not only created our universe, but sustains it today.
-You say this as if Earth was created in 10s. The Earth has had billions of years to form. Besides, if you think abou how many planets are in the Universe, our Earth really isn’t that amazing.
If the Earth had been formed without a moon, we would not notice today. We would have adapted. The same goes for all your other arguments. Adaption.
Water… yet no living thing can survive without it.
– Tell that to any archaeabacteria or extremophile.
Yep. Simple adaption answers all of these arguments.
I was born in 1951. I remember. Thank God!
I would like to add to all of that….when as children we needed money, we would walk around the neighborhood offering to do odd jobs such as shoveling snow or raking leaves. Now, I wish I could be so lucky to find a kid to do that. Amen.
What bugs me about "grown up life" is how complicated people make everything. I grew up in the 90’s, a little diffrent than the 50’s. But I liked it when you would run into somebody, start talking about your favorite rock songs, grab a beer and be best friends for life. In adulthood people are afraid their husbands would be jealous, everyone is going to rape, child molest or commit acts of terrorism. There’s concern if these friends mix with these friends. Who has a car, someone drinks or doesn’t. Someone smokes pot or doesn’t. I’m a republican-democrat-hippie-internettarian. Something is a conspiracy to do something to someone so buy this and that will happen.
We’ve all got to face the fact that there is a distinct difference between adulthood and youth. I would not want to go back to youth if i could. I was an idiot! But I want the love and freedom I had back then. I think if we all could go out, once a week and shake hands with a stranger, we’ll all be better off.