A young lad asked me the other day, 'What was your favourite '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 home,'' I explained.
'Mum cooked every day and when Dad got home from work, we sat down together at the table to eat dinner. If I didn't like what was on my plate, I was allowed to sit there until I did like it.'
I didn't tell him the part about how I had to have permission to leave the table.
Here are some other things I would have told him about my childhood, but I’d figured he couldn’t handle it:
For example . . . . .
1. Some parents NEVER owned their own house, wore jeans, set foot on a golf course, travelled out of the state let alone country, or had a credit card.
2. My parents never drove me to school. We walked or rode a bicycle [you were really lucky to have one) that weighed probably 50 pounds, and only had one speed - slow.
3. We didn't have a television in our house until I was 10.
It was, of course black and white, and the stations went off the air at 10 PM, after playing the National Anthem and Epilogue. Transmission commenced at around 6:00 am with a locally produced news or farm show, featuring local people.
4. Pizzas were not around, and when introduced they were not ‘home’ delivered. But milk was.
5. Newspapers were delivered by young boys earning a few bob a week – a bob was the equivalent of 10 cents. My brother delivered newspapers, six days a week at 6:00 every morning.
6. Film stars kissed with their mouths shut and parents slept in ‘Single’ beds - at least they did in the films. There were no movie ratings because all movies were responsibly produced for everyone to enjoy viewing, without sex, profanity, violence or almost anything offensive.
If you grew up in a generation before there was fast food, you may want to share some of these memories with your children and / 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:
1. My Dad is cleaning out my grandmother's house (she died recently) and he brought me an old lemonade 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 into a salt shaker or something.
I knew it as the bottle that sat on the end of the ironing board to 'sprinkle' clothes with water because we didn't have steam irons. Man, I am old.
How many do you remember?
2. Headlight dip-switches on the floor of the car
3. Ignition switches on the dashboard.
4. Trouser leg clips for bicycles without chain guards.
5. Soldering irons you heated on a gas burner.
6. Using hand signals predating indicators.
Older Than Dirt Quiz:
Count all the ones that you remember NOT the ones you were told about. Ratings at the bottom.
1. Sweet [lollies] cigarettes
2. Coffee shops with juke boxes
3. Home milk delivery in glass bottles
4. Party lines on the telephone
5. Newsreels before the movie
6. The Sun; The Argus; The Herald; Newsday
7. TV test patterns that came on at night after the last show and were there until TV shows started again in the morning.
8. Originally there were only 3 TV channels [Channel 0 later 10 was the fourth)
But some people were lucky to receive 2 channels – lots of ‘snowing, ghosting, etc
9. Peashooters
10. 78 rpm - 16 1/3 rpm records - 33 rpm records - 45 rpm records
11. The introduction of vinyl and the LP [Long Play]records
12. Hi-fi's
13. Metal ice trays with levers
14. Blue flashbulb
15. Cork popguns
16. Wash tub wringers
17. Ice chests – and ice being delivered from a horse drawn cart later replaced by a little truck
18. School children being allowed to go home for lunch or the local shopping strip for chips & potato cakes or a hamburger wrapped in last weeks newspaper.
If you remembered -
0 - 5 You're still young
6 -10 You are getting older
11- 15 Don't tell your age
16 -18 You're positively ancient!
I must be 'positively ancient' but those memories are some of the best of my life.
PS. I used a large type face so you could read it easily
"Gone to Gowing's" and "went mad and the police shot her", two things my Nan would say when I asked where Mum was.
