For those born in the 60's or earlier

[justamom]

DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN...?

All the girls had ugly gym uniforms?

It took five minutes for the TV 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?

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?

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
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?

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.

Send this on to someone who can still remember
Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, Laurel and Hardy,
Howdy Doody and the Peanut Gallery,
the Lone Ranger, The Shadow ,
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 Kool-Aid powder with sugar.
Didn't that feel good, just to go back and say, "Yeah, I remember that"?

I am sharing this with you today
because it ended with a double dog dare to pass it on.
To remember what a double dog dare is, read on.
And remember that the perfect age is somewhere between
old enough to know better and too young to care.

How many of these 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
Newsreels before the movie
P.F. Fliers
Telephone numbers with a word prefix....(Raymond 4-601).
Party lines
Peashooters
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
Reel-To-Reel tape recorders
Tinkertoys
Erector Sets
The Fort Apache Play Set
Lincoln Logs
15 cent McDonald hamburgers
5 cent packs of baseball cards -
with that awful pink slab of bubble gum
Penny candy
15 cents 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?
Catching the fireflies could happily occupy an entire evening?
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 weren't 30-minute commercials for action figures?
Spinning around, getting dizzy, and falling down was cause for giggles?
The worst embarrassment was being picked last for a team?
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 lived!!!!!!!

[AlphaSigOU]

Gawd, justamom... you're putting me in the era when dinosaurs once roamed the earth! I can remember most of these things from my misspent youth! (Mind you, I'm already approaching the "first anniversary of my 39th birthday!")

Lessee... I still own a couple of 1969 NY Mets World Champions beer mugs that were gas station giveaways, a copy of We Came In Peace, a Gulf gas station giveaway book commemorating the moon landing. How's about Space Food Sticks and Tang? And when Frosted Flakes were Sugar Frosted Flakes? (And Sugar Smacks, Super Sugar Crisp, Sugar Pops, etc...)

And not to forget:

Cable TV was once considered a luxury - and the channel selector was connected by a cable! Waiting until the cable company finally wired up your neighborhood - it wasn't until my senior year of high school over 20 years ago that my mother relented and got cable TV for the house!

VHS videotape players that once cost over $700 - now you can buy one on sale for $25!

My late grandpa's collection of Broadway show tunes on reel-to-reel tapes. Is it any wonder why my favorite music is movie and theatrical soundtracks?

When MTV lived up to its motto "all music, all the time". Now it's a pale shadow of what it once was.

[Peaches-n-Cream]

My neighborhood didn't get cable until 1990. I was deprived!

[DeltAlum]

Well, I remember every single thing.

Growing up, our phone number was JEfferson 3040. Then, when they needed more numbers, it became AMherst 3-3040.

For my first car, I had a heck of a time deciding between a 57 Chevy and a 58 Austin Healy Sprite. The sports car won out. And when I bought it, besides having the windshield washed and the oil checked, I asked for $2.00 worth of "high test," and it wouldn't fit in the nearly empty tank. It was only 21 cents a gallon, and the Sprite only had a 6 gallon tank.

PS I can't imagine that JAM knows about submarine races...

[Taualumna]

I've read about prefixes before numbers in older novels and seen them in movies and books. How exactly did it work?

[AlphaSigOU]

Originally posted by Taualumna
I've read about prefixes before numbers in older novels and seen them in movies and books. How exactly did it work?

In American (and probably Canadian) telephones you'll notice the alphabet grouped in three letter groups. The first two letters are actually a mnemonic for the telephone exchange, such as 'Butterfield 8'.

BUtterfield 8
BU8 = 288-(last four digits of the individual phone number)

PEnnsylvania 6-5000 - (the phone number for the New York Stadler Hilton, also a Glenn Miller Big Band tune)
PE6 = 736-5000

Descriptive telephone exchanges fell into disuse in the 1960s when area codes were first introduced.

More info: http://www.ourwebhome.com/TENP/TENproject.html

BTW, my mom's old phone number in Elmhurst, Queens - before she married my dad: DEfender 5-5582 (335-5582)

[Tom Earp]

Thanks justamom! Flash back city!

OMG hell when you got your butt beat by the teacher, I was not a bad boy, but boy was I mischevious as hell!

I like people who come into my smoke shop, Well, I remember when Cigarettes were so much a pack! Da well, how much money did you have then!

.05 for a fountain Coke, da lucky to have .05 to pay for it!

Guess all is relative! Oh, Gasoline was a lot cheaper also and nobody had SUVs or Mini Vans either! Pick ups were for those that had to work!

DA, I had a Bugeye with a Toyaota Engine in it but when I was a little older! First School, always had roomies from Iowa, they had cars, city guys didnt!

[honeychile]

I honestly can't remember those 5¢ Cokes, but I can remember when they were a quarter. Now, a Coke has twice the Coke in it, twice the calories, and costs three times the price!

[queequek]

Whoa ... and I thought I had a rough decade ...

[AlphaSigOU]

Back in the days when I was in the military, taking advantage of tax-free (but rationed) cigarettes and liquor (beer and wine were not rationed) you could buy a carton of weeds at the commissary for just shy of $4.00 (limit four cartons every two weeks) and about 3-1/2 liters of booze for less than $20.00.

[carnation]

Thank you so much, JAM!

(Thinking of the days when every girl played the piano and had a poodle)

[DeltAlum]

Originally posted by carnation
Thank you so much, JAM!

(Thinking of the days when every girl played the piano and had a poodle)

Poodle skirt.

[carnation]

No, a poodle! EVERYBODY had poodles!

[tinydancer]

OH YEAH, I remember all those things. How about those days when you could get 50 cents worth of gas (and not have to pump your own gas) and drive around for days!!
Or leaving the door open for the milkman to come right on in and put the milk in the ice box.

And my phone number was JEfferson 45972!! Jefferson, Glendale, Market, Walnut, Edison, Pershing, Atlas, Axminster, Terminal - those were the Fort Worth exchanges.

[carnation]

Houston had a lot of Spanish-themed exchanges like MIssion and OLive.

And those gym outfits were horrible--a major reason I joined the dance team, so I wouldn't have to wear one!

I can remember when Girl Scout cookies were 50 cents a box....