DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN ? Take a stroll with me and go back, before the Internet... before semi-automatics and crack' before SEGA or Super Nintendo. Way back! I'm talking about sitting on the curb, sitting on the step, about hide and go seek, Simon Says, Red light - Green light. Lunch Boxes with a thermos. Chocolate milk, going home for lunch, penny candy from the store, hopscotch, butterscotch, skates with keys, Jacks, Hula Hoops and sunflower seeds, wax lips and mustaches, Mary Janes, saddle shoes and Coke bottles with the names of cities on the bottom. Running through the sprinkler, circle pins, bobby pins, Mickey Mouse Club, Rocky & Bullwinkle, Kookla, Fran & Ollie, Spin & Marty, all in black & white. When around the corner seemed far away, and going downtown seemed like going somewhere. Climbing trees, making forts, backyard shows, lemonade stands, Cops and Robbers, Cowboys and Indians, staring at clouds, jumping on the bed, pillow fights, ribbon candy, angel hair on the Christmas tree, Jackie Gleason, white gloves, walking to the movie theater, running till you were out of breath, laughing so hard that your stomach hurt. Remember that? Not stepping on a crack or you'll break our mother's back, paper chains at Christmas, silhouettes of Lincoln and Washington the smell of paste in school and evening in Paris. What about the girl who dotted her i's" with hearts?  The Stroll, popcorn balls, & sock hops. Remember when: There were two types of sneakers for girls and boys (Keds & PF Flyer) and the only time you wore them at school was for "gym." And the girls had those ugly gym uniforms. When it took five minutes for the TV to warm up. When nearly everyone's Mom was at home when the kids got home from school. When nobody owned a purebred dog. When a quarter was a decent allowance, when you'd reach into a muddy gutter for a penny. When your Mom wore nylons that came in two pieces. When all of your male teachers wore neckties and female teachers had their hair done, everyday and wore high heels. When 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! When laundry detergent had free glasses, dishes or towels hidden inside the box. When it was considered a great privilege to be taken out to dinner at a real restaurant with your parents. When they threatened to keep kids back a grade if they failed -- and did! When the worst thing you could do at school was smoke in the bathrooms, flunk a test or chew gum. And the prom was in the auditorium and you danced to an orchestra. When a '57 Chevy was everyone's dream car. . . To cruise, peel out, lay rubber or watch submarine races, and people went steady and girls wore a class ring with an inch of wrapped bandaids, dental floss or yarn coated with pastel frost nail polish so it would fit her finger.  And 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. Remember lying on your back on 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. Remember when 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. So send this on to someone who can still remember Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, Laurel & Hardy,  Howdy Doody and The Peanut Gallery, The Lone Ranger, The Shadow Knows, Nellie Belle, Roy and Dale, Trigger and Buttermilk as well as the sound of a reel mower on Saturday morning, and summers filled with bike rides, baseball games, bowling and visits to the pool hall.. and eating Kool-Aid powder with sugar. Didn't that feel good, just to go back and say, "Yeah, I remember that....". If you don't remember, you missed some good memories....                     Internet author unknown…..

IT WAS GOOD Were you a kid in the Fifties or earlier? Everybody makes fun of our childhood! Comedians joke. Grandkids snicker. Twenty-something's shudder and say "Eeeew!" But was our childhood really all that bad? Judge for yourself: In 1953 The US population was less than 150 million... Yet you knew more people then, and knew them better... And that was good. The average annual salary was under $3,000... Yet our parents could put some of it away for a rainy day and still live a decent life... And that was good A loaf of bread cost about 15 cents... But it was safe for a five-year-old to skate to the store and buy one... And that was good. Prime-Time meant I Love Lucy, Ozzie and Harriet, Gunsmoke and Lassie... So nobody ever heard of ratings or filters... And that was good. We didn't have air-conditioning... So the windows stayed up and half a dozen mothers ran outside when you fell off your bike... And that was good. Your teacher was either Miss Matthews or Mrs. Logan or Mr. Adkins... But not Ms Becky or Mr. Dan... And that was good. The only hazardous material you knew about... Was a patch of grassburrs around the light pole at the corner... And that was good. You loved to climb into a fresh bed... Because sheets were dried on the clothesline... And that was good. People generally lived in the same hometown with their relatives.. So "child care" meant grandparents or aunts and uncles... And that was good. Parents were respected and their rules were law.... Children did not talk back..... and that was good. TV was in black-and-white... But all outdoors was in glorious color....And that was certainly good. Your Dad knew how to adjust everybody's carburetor... And the Dad next door knew how to adjust all the TV knobs.. And that was very good. Your grandma grew snap beans in the back yard... And chickens behind the garage... And that was definitely good. And just when you were about to do something really bad... Chances were you'd run into your Dad's high school coach... Or the nosy old lady from up the street... Or your little sister's piano teacher... Or somebody from Church.... ALL of whom knew your parents' phone number... And YOUR first name... And even THAT was good! ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ REMEMBER... Send this on to someone who can still remember Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, Laurel & Hardy, Abbott & Costello, Sky King, Little Lulu comics, Brenda Starr, Howdy Doody and The Peanut Gallery, The Lone Ranger, The Shadow Knows Nellie Belle, Roy and Dale, Trigger and Buttermilk as well as the sound of a real mower on Saturday morning, and summers filled with bike rides, playing cowboy, playing hide and seek and kick-the-can and Simon Says, baseball games, amateur shows at the local theater before the Saturday matinee, bowling and visits to the pool...and eating Kool-Aid powder with sugar, and wax lips and bubblegum cigars Didn't that feel good, just to go back and say, Yeah, I remember that! And was it really that long ago? Author  Unkown

May 2005 From an email......... I WAS SITTING IN THE WAITING ROOM FOR MY FIRST APPOINTMENT WITH A NEW  DENTIST. I NOTICED HIS DDS DIPLOMA, WHICH BORE HIS FULL NAME. SUDDENLY, I REMEMBERED A TALL, HANDSOME, DARK-HAIRED BOY WITH THE SAME NAME HAD BEEN IN MY HIGH SCHOOL CLASS SOME 40-ODD YEARS AGO. COULD HE BE THE SAME GUY THAT I HAD A SECRET CRUSH ON, WAY BACK THEN??  UPON SEEING HIM, HOWEVER, I QUICKLY DISCARDED ANY SUCH THOUGHT. THIS BALDING, GRAY-HAIRED MAN WITH THE DEEPLY LINED FACE WAS WAY TOO OLD TO HAVE BEEN MY CLASSMATE. HMMM...OR COULD HE??? AFTER HE EXAMINED MY TEETH, I ASKED HIM IF HE HAD ATTENDED MORGAN PARK HIGH SCHOOL. "YES. YES, I DID. I'M A MUSTANG," HE GLEAMED WITH PRIDE. "WHEN DID YOU GRADUATE?" I ASKED. HE ANSWERED, "IN 1963. WHY DO YOU ASK?" "YOU WERE IN MY CLASS!" I EXCLAIMED. HE LOOKED AT ME CLOSELY.THEN, THAT UGLY, OLD, WRINKLED SOB ASKED, "WHAT DID YOU TEACH?" "What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." Ralph Waldo Emerson

Do you remember? "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 'at 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 was allowed to sit there until I did like it." By this time, the kid was laughing so hard I was afraid he was going to suffer serious internal damage, so I didn't tell him the part about how I had to have 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 bicycle that weighed probably 50 pounds, and only had one speed, slow. We didn't have a television in our house until I was 11, but my grandparents had one before that. It was, of course, black and white, but they bought a piece of colored plastic to cover the screen. The top third was blue, like the sky, and 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 ate. 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 to our home. But milk was. All newspapers were delivered by boys, and all boys delivered newspapers. I delivered a newspaper six days a week. It cost 7 cents a paper, of which I got to keep 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 customers were the ones who gave me 50 cents and told me to 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. At least, they did in the movies. Touching someone else's tongue with yours was called French kissing, and they didn't do that in movies. I don't know what they did in French movies. French movies were dirty, and we weren't allowed to see them. If 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 is cleaning out my grandmother's house (she died in December), and he brought me an old Royal Crown Cola bottle. In the bottle top was a stopper with a bunch of holes in it. I knew immediately what it was, but my daughter had no idea. She thought they had tried to make it a salt shaker or something. I knew it as the bottle that sat on the end of the ironing board to "sprinkle" clothes with water because we didn't have steam irons. Man, I am old! How many do you remember? Head light 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 heated on a gas burner. Using hand signals for cars without turn signals. Older Than Dirt Quiz: Count all the ones that you remember, 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 jukeboxes 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 levers 18. Mimeograph paper 19 Blue flashbulbs 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 might 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." Have a great week! !!!!!

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