Do You Remember When?

Do You Remember These....
(music by the Statler Brothers)

All the girls had 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?

When a quarter was a decent allowance?

You'd reach into a muddy gutter for a penny?

Your Mom wore nylons that came in two pieces?

All your 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 didn't pay for air ? And you got trading stamps to boot?
(See green stamps further below)

Laundry detergent had free glasses, dishes or towels inside the box?

It was considered a great privilege to be taken out to dinner
at a real restaurant with your parents?

They threatened to keep kids back a grade if they failed ... and they did?

When a 57 Chevy was everyone's dream car...to cruise,
peel out, lay rubber or watch submarine races, and people 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 or family
and saying things like, "That cloud looks like a ... "

and playing baseball with no adults to help kids with the rules of the game?

Stuff from the store came without safety caps and hermetic seals because no one had yet tried to poison a perfect stranger?

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.

Do you still remember Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys,
Laurel and Hardy, Howdy Dowdy and the Peanut Gallery,
The Lone Ranger, The Shadow Knows, Nellie Bell, Roy and Dale, Trigger and Buttermilk.

As well as summers filled with bike rides, baseball games,
Hula Hoops, bowling and visits to the pool, and eating Lik-M-Aid powder. Didn't that feel good, just to go back and say, "Yeah, I remember that"?

How many of these do you remember?

Wax Coca Cola shaped bottles with a tiny drink inside

Pop machines that dispensed glass bottles (for a dime!)

Coffee shops with tableside jukeboxes

Blackjack, Clove and Teaberry chewing gum

Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers

Newsreels before the movie

P.F. Flyers

Telephone numbers with a word prefix...(KLondike 5-6501)
(There were no such things as area codes, and you really "dialed" the number.)

Party lines

45 rpm records

Green Stamps

Hi-Fi's

Metal ice cubes trays with levers

Papers with purple text (with that chemical smell) in school from Mimeograph machines

Beanie and Cecil

Roller skate keys

Drive in movies

Studebakers (and a new one cost less than $1,500 in 1950)

Washtub wringers

The Fuller Brush Man

Reel-To-Reel tape recorders

Tinkertoys

Erector Sets

Lincoln Logs

15 cent McDonald hamburgers

5 cent packs of baseball cards with that awful pink slab of bubble gum

Penny candy

35 cent a gallon gasoline

Jiffy Pop popcorn

Do you remember a time when...

Decisions were made by going "eeny-meeny-miney-moe"?
Mistakes were corrected by simply exclaiming, "Do Over!"?
"Race issue" meant arguing about who ran the fastest?