What ever happen to these times?

[gdn443]

[#ff0000]AND HOW MANY OF US CAN NOW SAY:[/#ff0000]
[#ff0000]"BEEN THERE DONE THAT" & PROUD THAT I DID.[/#ff0000]My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning.
My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat it raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in icepack coolers, but I can't remember getting e. coli.
Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then.
The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.
We all took gym, not PE... and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors.
I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now.
Flunking gym was not an option... even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym.
Speaking of school, we all said prayers and sang the national anthem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention.
We must have had horribly damaged psyches. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.
I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself.
I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations.
Oh yeah ... and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!
We played 'king of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of Mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it didn't sting like iodine did)
and then we got our butt spanked. Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a
10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.
We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either because if we did, we got our butt spanked there and then we got butt spanked again when we got home.
I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop, just before he fell off. Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house. Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof.
It was a neighborhood run amuck.
To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that? We needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes? We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac!
How did we ever survive?
LOVE TO ALL OF US WHO SHARED THIS ERA,
AND TO ALL WHO DIDN'T- SORRY FOR WHAT YOU MISSED.
I WOULDN'T TRADE IT FOR ANYTHING,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ANYTHING
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[davetclown]

ya I remember them daze...

It sure sounds rough from todays standards, but it wasnt all that bad eather, the corner store had benches and a rocking chair on the front poarch where you could sit and drink your soda with out having to pay the 2 penny bottol deposit. emagine a whole bottle of your favorite brand of sodie for a dime!!! on top of which a 5-6 year old kid could walk the contry mile to the corner store and back with out wories of being kidnaped by straingers. (or not so straingers which ever the case might be)

if you were 8 it was your responcibility of taking care of the younger kids in the family and the garden and the farm animals wich included sloppin little sister and cookin dinner for the hogs[]

you were also handed a 22 rifle and tought to respect it and you had already shot your dads 12 gage shot gun at a squril or rabbit.

back then we had 2 foot of snow before they called a no school day and we had plenty of rabbit hunting and plenty of ice fishing to do on a no school day.

camping trips, we took in the back yard some half mile from the house, kept the fire going to keep the skeeters off of peter's birth mark. the scariest thing out there was the stories of gost of midnight riders, racoons cyotes wild dogs and feild mice that might crawl in your blanket, (what tent and what sleepin bag?) if it rained and many times it did we headed back to the house where the doors were always unlocked day or night....

and how about them scrapes and scratches we got, sure we took a licken but in the school yard we showed them off like trophies....

I take it you too were from the cabage patch days, (no not the cabage patch dolly days, the days when children were found in the cabage patch)

kids today are so humilated when we show up at their functions, like first dates, being dropped of at high school in a rusted beater, or getting a cell phone call in the middle of a date... they dont know what humiliation is, I bet you can attest to not only would you get a licken for back talk - if you gave the back talk in public you would get your britches dropped right there in isle 7 right next to the pole beans and fruit and vegitables in plain veiw of every one, Whats more it wasnt a shock to any one - it was a common accurance on any given saturday, if you didnt get it you knew for sure some one else was. Indecent exposure? nah, we already saw each other at the swimmin hole in our birthday suits, (skinny dippin is what the city kids did - we didnt have swimmin trunks and half the time our swim was our bath) ya that right girls and boys all together from the same neighborhood at the same time. there was no shame no false pride. Just plain clean living... No bodys mind was floating in the gutter, if it were we got it knocked out of us right fast, I swear I never saw a few of them back hands a commin...LOL

Granted there are some things from the olden daze I wouldnt care to relive, but there are others I would not traid for all Ipods - nintendos - tv channels - rebocks - paid comunity bath houses.

remember a large pizza? a large was 30 inches in diameter, and they had one size larger than that!!! no it did not get there in 30 minutes or less but when it did the toppings was so thick you couldnt pick it up with your hand... (there was no such thing as deap dish pizza)

remember your white castles? they were made from 100% lean beaf and not a frozen patty concoction. and ya got a sack of 12 for a dollar!

ya I can remember, 5 dollars was a party for 8 at the house, 10 was a night out on the town and that included dinner and a double feature movie for a family of 5 with popcorn and candy and an icecream cone after the movie. of corse 100 dollars would buy you a deasent car to run, and you wouldnt be afraid to take it across contry, not like todays piles of rust where you have to worie about driving across town. (and thats a new one)

[#bf0000]ya I been there and done that and proud of almost all of it....[/#bf0000]
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[gdn443]

I had almost forgotten how you couldn't wait to be 12, so you could start to hunt. Pop teaching on the old 22 and then gave you his single shot 12ga to shoot at a stump. Fell on my butt. Trapped muskrats for a dollor and no one looked strange at you, because other kids did it too. Took care of your own garden when you where 12 and felt proud to do it. And like you said, if you acted up you waited for pop to come home and you got the belt.[ now it's child abuse] But SOME HOW we didn't grow up not respecting peaple. Kids today think we lived in hard times but we didn't know it or cared. Maybe if they had days with out their toys they would appreciate what they had instead of whining.
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[davetclown]

maybe we should have a "quality day" for our kids, lock up the trunk with all thier stuff in it and tell them to go play. start it when they are young.

I bet you can remember playing army after dark with a stick for a gun (upgraded modified game of hide in seak for those of the younger years) sure beat kick the can after dark (down graded verison of socker again for those of the younger years)

I can remember the freedom the kids dont enjoy today, then we got our chores done and we got the respect of governing our own lives, we just let the folks know where we were going and when we would be back. and if our folks wanted us they would come and get us, no phones or beepers or pagers. (the closest thing to a pager was an old tire rim hanging from a tree that struck with a tire iron. You could hear that thing ring for a country mile, now you coulnt hear it across the streat with all the plain and auto traffic.

we had to go fishing at least one day a week, we had a freezer but never dreamed of sticking a fish in it or a chicken for that matter. Chicken and dumplins for dinner ment I had an extra chore for the day. and to think of them big soft dumplins floatin in a pool of chicken broth and a chunck of chicken smothered in black pepper made the chore of ringing a chickens neck and pluckin almost tolerable.

come sunday there would always be a ruckus in the hen house in july cause they knew it was going to be finger licken good day.... the Correnells' cicken was mighty fine, but nothin could beat momma's or gram's southern fryed chicken biscuts and gravey corn bread green beans boiled potatos, (if ya wanted them mashed you was given a fork) man we may have had days when there wasnt much on the table but come summer time eatin high on the hog wasnt just a sayin, we went out and butchered us a hog and smoked the whole hog. yep yep yep we did do sum mighty fine eatin... and there was always enuff cooked for an army when we had it and we apreciated it too...

I can remember gram's old farm house. I still to this day smell the coffee from the old perkulater she pluged in at 5 oclock every morning. ya only needed one small cup of her coffee and you was wired for the day... the smell alone was the alarm clock at her house. I can remember laying under the 3 inch hand sewn quilt waitin to hear sum rustling in the house in the morning so I could get up out of bead, I did not want to miss one minute of what was going on at gram's house.

breakfast at her house was the big meal of the day. lunch was left overs from breakfast, sausage bacon a slice of gravey in a biscut, no there was no biscut sandwiches at mcdonalds back then. tho' they are mighty taisty I would traid all them for one of grams biscut sandwiches for lunch, now mind ya we had to put it together, every thing was sittin on the table under a cloth from morn to noon and like you said no one got sick, no such thing as food poisining execpt botulism from a poorly cured can of sumthing.

that never happened at our house or gram's house and to tell the truth I never saw a case but it was always talked about when it came time to can beans and corn and tomatos and fish and beats. we would can up a storm almost every other week in the summer. you would think with all that cookin going on no one would want to eat a thing but man alive all that cookin just made ya hungry. besides cannin beans we would have a 3 gallon pot of beans boiling with taters and a chunck of smoked pork topped off with a table spoon or two of bacon grease. mmmm mmmmmmm good...

I could not tell you the countless hours we sat and snapped beans, I would spend hours and hours in the feild picking beans, bushels and bushels with no end in site. the following week end would be the tomatos then the corn and so on...

I can remember folks comming over to help snap beans with us, no not for money but for beans.... yep folks would work for a pile of bean back then. the story of the little red hen had real litteral meaning back then. now when a kid is fresh out of highschool he wants a job that pays 12 dollars an hour and it is to say he needs it too, the cost of livin has gone through my roof and left a great big ole gapin hole in it....
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[lonehunter]

YOU GUYS GOTTA ADMIT , WE HAD US A GREAT TIME GROWING UP .
WE DID ALL THE SAME THINGS . I LISTENED TO THE TIGERS ON THE POCKET A.M. RADIO , RODE MY BIKE ALL OVER CREATION , FISHED DOWN AT THE CREEK OR RIVER , HELPED PICK THE FIELDS WITH GRAMS AND GRAMPS .
AND IF WE WERE GOOD ALL WEEK, WE GOT US A ICECREAM DOWN THE HIGHWAY ON SATURDAY NIGHT . SUNDAYS WE HAD TO SIT ON THE COUCH AND LISTEN TO THE PREACHER IF WE WAS RUNNING TOO LATE TO MAKE A RESPECTIBLE ENTRANCE AT THE CHURCH .
SURE COULDN'T TELL MUCH DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DAD'S BELT OR GRANDPA'S BELT , BOTH STUNG LIKE A SWARM OF BEES .
WE KNEW EVERYONE IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD AND THEY KNEW US , NOBODY RIPPED OFF ANYBODY , YA ' DIDN'T POKE FUN OF ANYONE EITHER WITHOUT TASTING SOME LEATHER .
IF YA HAD A PROBLEM WITH ANOTHER KID WHOPPING ON YOU, DAD MADE SURE YA SETTELED IT , BY TAKING BEATING AFTER BEATING TILL YOU GAVE THE KID ONE IN RETURN , THEN YA' HAD TO SHAKE HIS HAND TO SHOW IT WAS ALL SETTELED AND OVER WITH .
GOSH I MISS THOSE DAYS .
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[lonehunter]

OH YEA , ONE MORE THING .
IVORY BATH SOAP SURE TASTED BETTER THAN THAT TRANSLUCENT BROWN SOAP THAT MOM KEPT IN THE LAUNDRY ROOM []. I'M PRETTY SURE THE BROWN BAR WAS THE DOG'S BATH SOAP .
I HAD THE CLEANEST TEATH IN TOWN . MOM SAID "GOSH DARN IT" WAS SLANG FOR ANOTHER PHRASE AND WAS JUST AS BAD TO SAY , IT WAS MY FAVORATE THING TO POP OUT OF MY MOUTH WHENEVER I HAD TO HAVE MY YOUNGER BROTHERS TAG ALONG WITH ME WEARING SHORTS AND RIDING THERE TRYCICLES . HECK I WAS A BIG BOY , I WORE PANTS AND HAD A TWO WHEELER , DARN NEAR BEING A MAN AT 7 [].
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[davetclown]

Well being a soap conisuer my self I can tell you with more than reasonable amount of confidance that the translucent soap was murph's oil brand bar soap.[]

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I realy miss being able to see the stars at night, if I want to see them now, I have to drive an hour to find them.

any one remember the call of the night? crickets would chirp till the dew set in and not every night burgler alarms police sirens fire engins or ambulances that fill the night air now. nights now remind me of the old WWII movies with air raids and gun fire.

not that we did not have gun fire in the middle of the night when we was youngens, when we herd a shot it was cause something was in the hen house and a round of bird shot was all that was needed to run it off or the ocational .22caliber round was fired by our gun man for the night when we were running our blue ticks and walkers.

now days if your dog farts the neighbors are having a catniption fit, I can only emagine how they would handle coon hounds howling half the night.

how about drive in movies. sneeking in by way of the trunk of your buddies car. or paying to see a double feature for only 3-4 bucks and get to see the first one again after the second one finished.

any one Remember the endles summer days when all we had time for was walking the swamps and ponds looking for a frog leg dinner?

yep I remember tiger base ball and strosh beer, mark the bird fidrich and you knew the game was over when they put hernandaz on the pitures mound.

cant say I ever remember a winning lions season. I guess that shows to go ya that the more things change the more they stay the same....
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