The Reunion.......
A group of 40 year old buddies discuss and discuss where they should meet for dinner. Finally it is agreed upon that they should meet at the Ocean View restaurant because the waitress's there are good looking.
10 years later, at 50 years of age, the group once again discuss and discuss where they should meet for dinner. Finally it is agreed that they should meet at the Ocean View restaurant because the food there is very good and the wine selection is good also.
10 years later at 60 years of age, the group once again discuss and discuss where they should meet for dinner. Finally it is agreed that they should meet at the Ocean View restaurant because they can eat there in peace and quiet and the restaurant had a beautiful view of the ocean.
10 years later, at 70 years of age, the group once again discuss and discuss where they should meet for dinner. Finally it is agreed that they should meet at the Ocean View restaurant because the restaurant is wheel chair accessible and they even have an elevator.
10 years later, at 80 years of age, the group once again discuss and discuss where they should meet for dinner. Finally it is agreed that they should meet at the Ocean View restaurant because they have never been there before.
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HEY,WASN'T THIS US ?
A little house with three bedrooms,
one bathroom and one car on the street.
A mower that you had to push
to make the grass look neat.
In the kitchen on the wall
we only had one phone,
And no need for recording things,
someone was always home.
We only had a living room
where we would congregate,
unless it was at mealtime
in the kitchen where we ate.
We had no need for family rooms
or extra rooms to dine.
When meeting as a family
those two rooms would work out fine.
We only had one TV set
and channels maybe two,
But always there was one of them
with something worth the view.
For snacks we had potato chips
that tasted like a chip.
And if you wanted flavor
there was Lipton's onion dip.
Store-bought snacks were rare because
my mother liked to cook
and nothing can compare to snacks
in Betty Crocker's book.
Weekends were for family trips
or staying home to play.
We all did things together --
even go to church to pray.
When we did our weekend trips
depending on the weather,
no one stayed at home because
we liked to be together.
Sometimes we would separate
to do things on our own,
but we knew where the others were
without our own cell phone.
Then there were the movies
with your favorite movie star,
and nothing can compare
to watching movies in your car.
Then there were the picnics
at the peak of summer season,
pack a lunch and find some trees
and never need a reason.
Get a baseball game together
with all the friends you know,
have real action playing ball --
and no game video.
Remember when the doctor
used to be the family friend,
and didn't need insurance
or a lawyer to defend?
The way that he took care of you
or what he had to do,
because he took an oath and strived
to do the best for you.
Remember going to the store
and shopping casually,
and when you went to pay for it
you used your own money?
Nothing that you had to swipe
or punch in some amount,
and remember when the cashier person
had to really count?
The milkman used to go
from door to door,
And it was just a few cents more
than going to the store.
There was a time when mailed letters
came right to your door,
without a lot of junk mail ads
sent out by every store.
The mailman knew each house by name
and knew where it was sent;
there were not loads of mail addressed
to "present occupant."
There was a time when just one glance
was all that it would take,
and you would know the kind of car,
the model and the make.
They didn't look like turtles
trying to squeeze out every mile;
they were streamlined, white walls, fins
and really had some style.
One time the music that you played
whenever you would jive,
was from a vinyl, big-holed record
called a forty-five..
The record player had a post
to keep them all in line
and then the records would drop down
and play one at a time.
Oh sure, we had our problems then,
just like we do today
and always we were striving,
trying for a better way.
Oh, the simple life we lived
still seems like so much fun,
how can you explain a game,
just kick the can and run?
And why would boys put baseball cards
between bicycle spokes
and for a nickel, red machines
had little bottled Cokes?
This life seemed so much easier
and slower in some ways.
I love the new technology
but I sure do miss those days.
So time moves on and so do we
and nothing stays the same,
but I sure love to reminisce
and walk down memory lane.
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Looking back, it’s hard to believe that we have lived as long as we have…..
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. She used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat it raw sometimes too, but I can’t remember getting E-coli.
We had no childproof lids on the medicine bottles, locks on doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets. We played with toy guns, cowboys and Indians, army, cops and robbers, and used our fingers to simulate guns when the toy ones or my BB gun was not available.
Some students weren’t as smart as others or didn’t work hard so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade. Now the teacher is “bad” if a child does not perform. Our generation produced some of the greatest risk-takers and problem solvers. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.
Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the “cut” instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), the term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in 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 slower kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym. Oh yes, we didn’t have fat kids, either. We spent too much time outside playing and running.
Every year, someone taught the whole school a lesson by running in the halls with leather soles on linoleum tile and hitting the wet spot. How much better off would we be today if we only knew we could have sued the school system? Speaking of school, we all said prayers and the pledge and stayed in detention after school and caught all sorts of negative attention for the next two weeks. We must have had horribly damaged psyches. I don’t understand it. Schools didn’t offer 14 year-olds an abortion or condoms (we wouldn’t have known what either was anyway) but they did give us a couple of aspirin and cough syrup if we started getting the sniffles. 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, PlayStation, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital cable stations. I must be repressing that memory as I try to rationalize through the denial of the dangers could have befallen us as we trekked off each day about a mile down the road to some guy’s vacant lot, built forts out of branches and pieces of plywood, made trails and fought over who got to be the Lone Ranger. What was that property owner thinking, letting us play on that lot? He should have been locked up for not putting up a fence around the property, complete with a self-closing gate and infra-red intruder alarm.
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 the vacant construction sites and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48 cent bottle of mercurochrome and then we got our butt spanked. Now it’s a trip to the emergency room, followed by 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 and then we got our butt spanked again when we got home. Mom invited the door-to-door Fuller Brush salesman inside for coffee, kids choked down the dust from the gravel driveway while playing with Tonka trucks (remember why Tonka trucks were made tough…it wasn’t so they could take the rough Berber carpet in the family room), and Dad drove a car with leaded gas. And we never had seat belts then.
Summers were spent behind the push lawnmowers and I didn’t even know that mowers came with motors until I was 13 and we got one without an automatic blade-stop or an auto-drive. How sick were my parents?
Of course my parents weren’t the only psychos. I recall Tony Zucha 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 goofball. 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 notice that the entire country wasn’t’ taking Prozac.
And the final straw. The county home for down on their luck families out on Hwy 101, where I lived for 4 months in 1954, is now a bed and breakfast.
How did we survive?
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1963 Most Popular TV shows:
1. Beverly Hillbillies (CBS)
2. Bonanza (NBC)
3. The Dick Van Dyke Show (CBS)
4. Petticoat Junction (CBS)
5. The Andy Griffith Show (CBS)
6. The Lucy Show (CBS)
7. Candid Camera (CBS)
8. The Ed Sullivan Show (CBS)
9. The Danny Thomas Show (CBS)
10. My Favorite Martian (CBS)
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1960s Top Ten Dance Songs:
|
1. The Twist - Chubby Checker
2. Build Me Up Buttercup - Foundations
3. Sugar Pie Honey Bunch - Four Tops
4. This Old Heart Of Mine - Isley Brothers
5. More Today Than Yesterday - Spiral Staircase
6. Heatwave - Martha and the Vandellas
7. Ain't Too Proud To Beg - Temptations
8. The Loco-Motion - Little Eva
9. Jimmy Mack - Martha and the Vandellas
10. Sweet Soul Music - Arthur Conley |
