Do you remember when life was simple, and there was very little stress at the end of the day?
All the girls wore ugly gym uniforms.
It took five minutes for the TV to warm up.
Nearly everyone’s mom was at home when the kids got home from school.
Nobody owned a purebred dog.
A quarter was a decent allowance.
You’d reach into a muddy gutter for a penny.
Women wore nylons that came in two pieces.
Nearly all 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 did not 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.
Educators threatened to keep kids back a grade if they failed…and they did.
When a ‘57 Chevy was everyone’s dream car to cruise around the drive-in and kids 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…”
Playing sandlot baseball and not having fathers interpret the rules.
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…would it not be nice if you could slip back in time and savor the slower pace and share it with the children of today.
Being sent to the principal’s office was nothing compared to the fate that awaited students at home. Basically, we were in fear for our lives, but it was not because of drive-by shootings, drugs, gangs. Our parents and grandparents were a much bigger threat. But we survived because their love was greater than the threat.
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How many of these items 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.
Phone party lines.
Newsreels before the movie.
Telephone numbers with a word prefix…Raymond 4-601.
Pea-shooters. Howdy Doody. 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.
Tinker Toys, Erector sets, Lincoln Logs.
The 15 cent McDonald hamburgers and 5 cent packs of baseball cards with the pink slab of bubble gum.
Penny candy, 35 cent a gallon gasoline, and Jiffy Pop popcorn.
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Do you remember a time when…
Mistakes were corrected by simply exclaiming, “Do Over!”
Race issue meant arguing about who ran the fastest?
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 were not 30-minute commercials for action figures.
Spinning around, getting dizzy, and falling was cause for giggles?
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 really lived.
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Top of the morning!
