Older 'n Dirt!!

"Hey, dad," one of my kids asked the other day,
"What was your favorite fast food when you were growing up?"

"We didn't have fast food when I was growing up," I informed him. "All the food was slow."

"C'mon, seriously. Where did you eat?"

"It was a place called home," I explained. "Grandma cooked every day and when Grandpa got home from work, we sat down together at the dining- room- table, and if I didn't like what she put on my plate I could sit there until I did."

By this time, the kid was laughing so hard I feared he'd suffer serious internal damage. So I didn't tell him I needed permission to leave the table.

But here are some other things I would have told him about my childhood if I figured his system could have handled it:

Some parents NEVER owned their own house, wore Levis, set foot on a golf course, traveled out of the country or had a credit card. In their later years they had something called a revolving, charge card. The card was good only at Sears Roebuck. Or maybe it was Sears AND Roebuck. Either way, there is no Roebuck anymore. Maybe he died.

My parents never drove me to soccer practice. This was mostly because we never had heard of soccer. I had a bike that weighed probably 50 pounds, and only had one speed, (slow). We didn't have a t.v. in our house until I was 11, but my grandparents had one before that. It was, of course, black & white, but they bought a piece of colored plastic to cover the screen. The top third was blue, like the sky, & the bottom third was green, like grass. The middle third was red. It was perfect for programs that had scenes of fire trucks riding across someone's lawn on a sunny day. Some people had a lens taped to the front of the TV to make the picture look larger.

I was 13 before I tasted my first pizza, it was called "pizza pie." When I bit into it, I burned the roof of my mouth and the cheese slid off, swung down, plastered itself against my chin and burned that, too. It's still the best pizza I ever had.

We didn't have a car until I was 15. Before that, the only car in our family was my grandfather's Ford. He called it a "machine."

I never had a telephone in my room. The only phone in the house was in the living room and it was on a party line. Before you could dial, you had to listen and make sure some people you didn't know weren't already using the line.

Pizzas were not delivered. But milk was.

All newspapers were delivered by boys & all boys. I delivered a newspaper, six days a week. It cost 7 cents a paper. I got 2 cents. I had to get up at 4 AM every morning. On Saturday, I had to collect the 42 cents from my customers. My favorite ones gave me 50 cents & said keep the change. My least favorite customers were the ones who seemed to never be home on collection day.

Movie stars kissed with their mouths shut, in the movies at least. Touching someone else's tongue with yours was called French kissing & they didn't do that in movies. I don't know what they did in French movies. They were dirty & we weren't allowed to see them. You grew up in a generation before there was fast food, you may want to share some of these memories with your children or grandchildren.

Just don't blame me if they bust a gut laughing. Growing up isn't what it used to be, is it?


MEMORIES from a friend


My dad's cleaning out my grandma's house (she died in December) & he brought me an old Royal Crown Cola bottle. In the top was a stopper with a bunch of holes in it. I knew immediately what it was.

My daughter had no idea. She thought it was a salt shaker or something.

I knew it as the bottle that sat on the end of the ironing board to "sprinkle" clothes with because we didn't have steam irons. Man, I am old.

How many do you remember?

Head lights dimmer switches on the floor.

Ignition switches on the dashboard.

Heaters mounted on the inside of the fire wall.

Real ice boxes.

Pant leg clips for bicycles without chain guards.

Soldering irons you heat on a gas burner.

Using hand signals for cars without turn signals.

Older Than Dirt Quiz

Count all the ones you recall, not the ones you were told about.

Ratings at the bottom.

1. Blackjack chewing gum

2. Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water

3. Candy cigarettes

4. Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles

5. Coffee shops or diners with tableside juke boxes

6 . Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers

7. Party lines

8. Newsreels before the movie

9. P.F. Flyers

10. Butch wax

11. Telephone numbers with a word prefix (OLive-6933)

12. Peashooters

13. Howdy Doody

14. 45 RPM records

15. S &H Green Stamps

16. Hi-fi's

17. Metal ice trays with lever

18. Mimeograph paper

19. Blue flash-bulbs.

20. Packards

21. Roller skate keys

22. Cork popguns

23. Drive-ins

24. Studebakers

25. Wash tub wringers

If you remembered 0 - 5 = You're still young

If you remembered 6 - 10 = You are getting older

If you remembered 11 - 15 = Don't tell your age,

If you remembered 16 - 25 = You're older than dirt!

I may be older than dirt but those memories are the best part of my life.

Don't forget to pass this along!!

Especially to all your really OLD friends....



"Senility Prayer"...God grant me...



The senility to forget the people I never liked,

The good fortune to run into the ones that I do.

And the eyesight to tell the difference.