Older Than Dirt

M

MOOSE

Member
This time I actually got something forwarded to me by one of my former co-workers that I thought was kind of good, so I thought I'd pass it on:

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 '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 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 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.


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 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 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 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 flashbulb
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
 
Now the real test----
If you remember where the slogan "A little dab will do ya" came from, ya might be an Old Fart with "Duck Tails"
 
Thanks a lot. I took the quiz and found that I am older than the stuff that comes before it changes to dirt.

A local high school I went to back in the 50's, has the same number of kids going out for football as the present one. School is 4 to 5 times larger.

I remember going to Harvard and Dartmouth football games at Harvard. The stadium was a sell out. Now it is about a third full. Where did the grads and students go?

I remember when a poorer family's house burned to the ground. No welfare. The whols town rebuilt the house. My dad and I re-shingled the front one sunday afternoon. I am now a shingler 2nd class for Habitate for Humanity. Learned it from my dad.

Remember the times before Welfare and Johnson's great society. The local highway departments use to make sure everybody worked. In my town, a station wagon went around and picked up the fellows who felt a little groggy, and took them to work. Everybody worked. If they didn't, a very private Fund financed by a woman who lost her only son in the second-world-war would take care of them. Very quiet.

Now, welfare people fight for political recognition. If they can't get welfare, they qualify for disability. I use to do taxes for a large tax company in the inner city. One day a women came in to do her taxes. She had four Social Security forms, $5,000.00 each, one for each of her kids and one for her. That was $20,000.00 a year. (this was a few years ago.) She said that she didn't think she had to bring them. She was right. She let the cat out of the bag. Reason for the disability payments. Behavioral problems. What ever happened to parenting? Now the kids are better armed than the soldiers in Iraq.

All these are changes that should not be., I think.

Fred
 
Do you remember the rest of the Brillcream commercial, "She'll love to put her fingers through your hair". Don't have any - hair that is!!!!

John
Swee Pea
 
I can recall the saying 'a little dab will do ya' but Joe is the one with the answer "Brill Cream"

Some other things that I can recall is the rotary dial telephone. When my dad died in 2003 he was still using one of those and never did get voice mail or an answering machine.

Don't forget the outhouse with the boards leading to it (iced over in the winter) and yes, there was a Sears catalog in there. My Dad had cut two holes in that little building. The small one was for us kids. I will never forget the spiders.......No running water (hauled in from the well) and no electricity. Also the wood stove.

There's lots of other memories that 'make us older than dirt' but it'd take up a lot of space here so just want to say thanks for sharing the story.

Ruth and Joe
R-Matey
 
You have me laughing now. I was reminded of when I was about 14 or so and my dad came into the bathroom in the dark and grabbed what he thought was the tube of toothpaste and brushed his teeth with, you guessed it. BryleCream.
 
24 out of 25. :wink: Most days I don't feel old. I'm 53... I think I heard that it's the new 51? :crook

Older than dirt? Nah, but I am older than packages of the fortified, nitrogenized, richer, darker, plant-food enriched stuff they sell in the green houses for your plants and flowers.

Best wishes,
Jim B.

PS - Brylcream, a little dab'l do ya,
Brylcream, you'll look so debonair.
Brylcream, a little dab'l do ya,
She'll love to run her fingers through your hair.

I also remember listening to WSL at night (we were poor, the last ones in the neighborhood to have a TV, and it had a 25¢ "meter" on it), and they commercials for "Greasy Kid Stuff." :wink:
 
Not ashamed to admit I can remember all that stuff (DAMNIT!) Ha! Remember the Burna-Shave signs in little segments along the highways? Car batteries under the front passenger seat? Blackout Curtains from WWII? Jack Benny's radio show before TV? Red Car Streetcars in Los Angeles? Ration Stamps (WWII)? Gas Pumps with glass cylinders that measured 5 gallons when pumped full with the hand pump, and then you let the gas flow back down by gravity?

48OdellGasPumps.jpg



Joe.
 
Sea Wolf":kg8sbks0 said:
Remember the Burna-Shave signs in little segments along the highways?
Click to expand...

Yeah, the one I'll always remember was:

NEVER...PASS...ON A...SLOPE...UNLESS YOU HAVE...A PERISCOPE...BURMA SHAVE
 
Like many of you, I remember all this stuff as well. One comment on that Royal Crown Cola. I remember watching Art Linkletter (on a black and white)advertise the stuff and he always ask that doll, coman tali vu zippy! the spelling is surely incorrect but for years i bragged that this was the only French i knew. Last year I learned the meaning of that phrase! Does every one remember Zippy? Mike on Huda Thunkit :smiled
 
Good memories, Guys!

I also remember Randy Repass (owner of West Marine) doing business as "West Coast Ropes" selling New England Rope out of his home's garage in Mountain View (Ca.) in the mid-1960's. We were just out of college, and new to teaching and the sailing scene in the S.F. Bay Area. How quickly forty or even sixty years can slip by! Remember world-class sailors like Paul Cayard, John Bertrand, and John Kostecki running around as kids at the Richmond, San Francisco, and St. Francis Yacht Clubs first sailing El Toros, then FJ's, and on to collegiate sailing and beyond. Have enjoyed a good life to be part of this and to know all our boating friends, both here and there. :star :star :star :star :star

Joe.
 
AstoriaDave":2asgmkin said:
A better choice than Prep H!
Click to expand...

Maybe that's the problem with my hair (or lack thereof). Maybe when I was a youngster I got them mixed up and I used so much that it shrunk back into my head... :shock: :shock: :sad

Oh well, you guys use your hormones for growing hair, I'll use mine elsewhere!! :D :smile :thup :thup

charlie
 
Rural Montana, 1961. 1st grade in a one room school house. Grades 1-8 with outdoor plumbing. Teepe rings and travois tracks out back.
Young teacher drove a Corvair and taught us how to do The Twist.
 
Spring has sprung / Grass has riz / Where last year's / Careless driver iz / Burma Shave

You predate me only with the hand-cranked gas pumps, though I have driven a Model T, but (and this will hurt), remember gasoline PRICE WARS? In Detroit 18 cents for a week or so, down from 29.

For what it's worth, at last I'm on my feet again and yesterday started charging the battery and cleaning six months worth of bird, uh, byproduct off the 16. A light power washer did the lumps and wax easily does what only seemed to be stains.
 
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Unlike most roadside advertising, which requires large billboards, the Burma-Shave signs were a series of small signs made out of boards. Each sign held one part of a poem that advertised Burma-Shave. The signs were placed a small distance apart from each other at the edge of the road, and people riding in cars could read each sign as they drove past. Over time, the signs began to present humorous messages and cautionary rhymes. Each sign was printed in white paint on a red background, colors that everyone associated with Burma-Shave. From four to six signs were posted together to make a rhyme. Although the Odell family originally wrote their own verses, they began holding competitions were ordinary Americans entered proposed rhymes as well.

At their peak, there were approximately seven thousand sets of Burma-Shave signs posted alongside roads in the United States. In the years following World War II, large billboards began replacing the smaller roadside signs. As interstate highways were built across the United States, cars could travel faster than they generally did on smaller roads. It was much easier to read the billboards than it was to read Burma-Shave signs, which were relatively small. The final new Burma-Shave signs were put up in 1963. The Odell family sold their company to Gillette, which eventually became part of Phillip Morris. Today, many Americans think back on the old Burma-Shave signs with a sense of nostalgia, and a handful of signs are displayed in museums. There is even a set of Burma-Shave signs at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. (Courtesy Ohio Historical Society)
 
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