Remember When?

[Claire]

This is fun to do once in awhile. Today I found myself balling up some aluminum foil and throwing it away. My mother, when I was young, would always wipe and re-use "tin foil". She also would turn plastic bags that bread and such came in inside out, wipe them, and hang them on the line and re-use them (baggies were not invented, or maybe just not available at our military assignments) What do you remember from your youth that nowadays would be unheard of?

 

[licia]

I don't remember this but was told about it by my mom and dad. When I was a baby, my dad had a job at a place where he had to take his lunch with him. My mom always used Merita bread and she would sometimes reuse the wrapper to hold dad's lunch. One day he was in a hurry and grabbed what he thought was his lunch and took off to work only to find when he opened it that it was several slices of bread with nothing inside. Rather than feel ridiculous in front of his work buddies, he ate the bread two slices at the time. He said it took a quart of milk to get it all down. He insisted mom use waxed paper for his lunch after that.

 

[buckytom]

with all due respect, claire, please don't "ball up aluminum foil and throw it away". aluminum is almost completely recyclable without any degradation. put it in your recycling container with other aluminum waste like cans.

sorry to get up on a soapbox, but it takes almost no extra effort to seperate recyclables from other waste.

anywho, back on topic: my siblings and i used to joke that you could tell the age of, and how many snacks that dad had gotten out of a hunk of cheddar cheese by how many layers of plastic, aluminum foil, and rubber bands were wrapped around the remaining piece.
nowadays, you're supposed to let cheese breathe properly inside a container. he was probably only causing it to mold up more quickly.

on a more serious note, i also remember dad using the engine oil removed during an oil change to kill the weeds that grew on a small easement next to our yard. i later learned that small strip of land was directly over a shallow aquifer.

i remember eating raw ground beef and hot dogs, raw eggs blended into chocolate milk, and even drinking the blood, er, intracellular fluids from steaks as a kid. i guess my norwegian mom had a lot of faith that the food she brought home was fresh, or at least kept at temps more suited to a fjord.

 

[Wyogal]

Kids were told to go outside and play... come in for supper.
Milkman would deliver milk to our fridge, and if we were gone, he'd come in (of course the doors weren't locked) see what we needed, go back out to the truck and bring back the order, and put it in the fridge.
Mom would get her hair done once a week, would wrap it in toilet paper to sleep on it. Would last a couple of days.
Making "nectar" (not kool aid) in a big jar with wax paper under the lid to take out to the men working in the fields, along with bologna sandwiches.

 

[Andy M.]

We all walked to school because there were no busses.
In the summer, we went out to play in the morning and were expected home for dinner. If you were late for dinner, you had trouble sitting down for a while.
Milk was delivered to the door.
Breakfast was often a glass of milk with sugar and cinnamon and a raw egg beaten into it with a fork. It was best drunk as quickly as possible.
Mom sent me tot he corner store to buy a loaf of Wonder bread for $.20
Our apartment had a coal furnace and dad had to clean out the ashes and stoke the fire every day.
Garbage (food waste) was dumped into a garbage pail recessed into the ground and collected once a week separately from trash.

 

[getoutamykitchen]

We walked to and from school every day also. The whole neighborhood was friend's. We all played together outside until dinner time, after dinner it was back outside for more playtime. When it turned dark we played hide-n-seek until we had to be home by 9pm. Our game of hide-n-seek covered everyones yard. The hiding possibilities were endless.
We drank water or milk and once in a while were allowed Kool-Aid, but soda was a luxury we weren't allowed.
No TV during dinner, everyone sat at the dining room table or you didn't eat.
Oh and as far as TV's, there was one in the house. It was in the livingroom where everyone sat together and watched the same program. Nobody had TV's in there bedroom's to lull them to sleep at night.

Ah, those were the days!

 

[Kathleen]

We not only walked to school, but we walked home at lunch and walked back again! Girls could not wear pants unless it was 15 degrees below Fahrenheit, and then they must wear them beneath their dresses. Milk was served daily if you were in second grade and below. Cookies were brought daily by the students' mothers...and mothers would apologize for store-bought cookies even though all of us loved Oreos.

Mom cooked every night except Dad's payday - which was once per month. We went to McDonald's on that night. (Going to McDonald's WAS considered the "Happy Meal".) McDonalds was a drive-in where you walked to the window. Hamburgers were 15 cents, fries were 10 cents, and sodas were 10 cents. My parents allowed me to get a milkshake which cost a whopping 20 cents! And Speedee was the mascot! Not Ronald.

We knew the names of the little store on the corner and they had one of the best butchers in town. We would get sodas in bottles from their meat locker, which was cold to the point of ice shards forming in the drink. We would take the wagon and look for bottles to turn in for money.

A good practical joke was planting corn in someone's flower bed.

Summer meant playing outside, and whiling away time with lemonade while breaking beans. The screen door was never latched. And, since my dad WAS the milkman, summer meant watching for Dad's milk truck because we could always get an ice cream from him!

Then...Ronald replaced Speedee and the world changed overnight!

~Kathleen

 

[Uncle Bob]

School, being about 20 miles away was a little to far for a First grader..I rode a bus....My allowance was 10 cents a day at a local store..They put it on the books...Stepfather paid later....Cold drinks were a nickel...Could buy TWO chocolate ice cream bars for a dime!!!! ~~Mode of transportation was a horse...later a Schwinn bicycle ~~. Left home in the morning, returned home whenever. My Mother never worried about my safety. She knew I was on the farm somewhere and somebody would watch me, feed me if I was hungry and liberally apply a keen switch to my boo-hiney if needed!! Worst spanking I ever got...I rode in on my horse after dark one night...ran in the house to eat super....went to bed. Next morning at daylight, before I woke up my step father was pounding my behind with a Razor strap..I had left my horse tied up all night long at the back gate...I must have ridden 10,000 miles on a Case tractor sitting between the legs of Virgil "Sugar Man" White...He called me "baby boy"...He was a tractor driver, ran the press at the Gin, and saw after the cattle...He could pick up a bale of cotton...walk about six steps and put it down...Laugh really loud, and say...Whatcha think about dat baby boy???...

 

[bethzaring]

licking S&H green stamps and pasting them in the books

 

[Uncle Bob]

19 cents a gallon gas...A friend had a VW Bug....$1.00 worth of gas, and we could ride all night long over a three county area.........

 

[MSC]

Re going out to play and not coming home till dinner time and going out to play after dark...
Try that now and the parents will be prosecuted for child abuse and most likely tossed in the slammer...
Where do I find that time machine to take me back!

 

[PrincessFiona60]

Playing Red Light, Green Light in the side yard, working the dairy farm in the summer, riding my bike EVERYWHERE, catching fireflies and putting them in jars for a night light. Flying kites with my Dad.

We were just into the years when parents started being more aware of where their kids were and we only traveled in packs to walk to the store 6 blocks away. My Mom stood at the window the entire time we were gone to wait for us coming back.

And Policemen were our friends, we knew their names and they knew ours.

 

[KYmomma]

My fondest childhood memories were those that I spent "working" on our family farm. Terribly hot summers meant sifting through rotten and bug-ridden tomato patches, and yielded the biggest and best 'maters with witch we'd make and can our family vegetable and tomato juices. I remember how the cool soil felt between my fingertips while digging up potatoes. I never knew when there would be potatoes or bugs. Scared the crap out of me everytime. Shucking corn piled so high it blocked sun; churning homemade icecream; paying hide and seek on the farm, and almost always getting locked in the grain silo; my cousin thinking it was cool to dip coffee grounds: HA!

We were poor and we were the only kids in school that didn't have a mom.