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Nostalgic Stuff

 

Click here to hear the Statler Bros remember the good old days.....

 

 

 

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.


========================================

 

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?


====================================================================
 

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)  

 

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

Here is a link to so cool 50'stuff:  http://biggeekdad.com/2013/01/the-best-of-times/

 


To Those of Us Born 1925 - 1970 :
~~~~~~~~~
TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED THE
1930s, '40s, '50s, '60s and '70s!!
First, we survived being born to mothers who may have smoked and/or drank
while they were pregnant.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't
get tested for diabetes.

Then, after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs
covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, locks on doors or cabinets,
and, when we rode our bikes, we had baseball caps,not helmets, on our heads.

As infants and children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, no
booster seats, no seat belts, no air bags, bald tires and sometimes no
brakes..

Riding in the back of a pick- up truck on a warm day was always a special
treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one
actually died from this.

We ate cupcakes, white bread, real butter, and bacon. We drank Kool-Aid
made with real white sugar. And we weren't overweight. WHY?
Because we were always outside playing...that's why!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day,
as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.
No one was able to reach us all day.
--And, we were OKAY.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps
and then ride them down the hill, only to find out we
forgot the brakes.. After running into the bushes a few times,
we learned to solve the problem..

We did not have Play Stations, Nintendos and X-boxes. There were
no video games, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVDs, no
surround-sound or CDs, no cell phones, no personal computers,
no Internet and no chat rooms.

WE HAD FRIENDS
and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broken bones and teeth,
and there were no lawsuits from those accidents.

We would get spankings with wooden spoons, switches,
ping-pong paddles, or just a bare hand, and no one would call child
services to report abuse.

We ate worms, and mud piesmade from dirt, and
the worms did not live in us forever.

We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks
and tennis balls, and -although we were told it would happen- we did not
put out very many eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or
rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them.

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team.
Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment.
Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of.
They actually sided with the law!

These generations have produced some of the best
risk-takers, problem solvers, and inventors ever.

The past 50 to 85 years have seen an explosion of innovation and new
ideas..

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to
deal with it all.

If YOU are one of those born
between 1925-1970, CONGRATULATIONS!


You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up
as kids before the lawyers and the government regulated so much of our
lives for our own good.

While you are at it, forward it to your kids, so they will know how brave
and lucky their parents were.

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it ?
~~~~~~~
The quote of the month
by
Jay Leno:

" With hurricanes, tornadoes, fires out of control, mud slides,
flooding, severe thunderstorms tearing up the country from one end to
another, and with the threat of bird flu and terrorist attacks, are we sure
this is a good time to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance?"

 

The Green thing

 

Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the much older lady that she should bring her own grocery bags, because plastic bags are not good for the environment.   

 The  woman apologized to the  young girl  and explained, "We didn't have this 'green thing' back in my earlier days."

 The  young clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations."

 The  older lady said that she was right -- our generation didn't have the "green thing" in its day. The older lady went on to explain: 

Back  then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled.

 But we didn't have the "green thing" back in our  day. 

 Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags that we reused for numerous things. Most memorable besides household garbage bags  was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our school books. This was to ensure that public property (the books provided for our use by the school) was  not defaced by our scribbling. Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags. But, too bad we  didn't do the "green thing" back then. 

We  walked up stairs because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office  building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time  we had to go two blocks.

 But  she was right. We didn't have the "green thing" in our day.

 Back  then we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throw -away kind. We  dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 220 volts. Wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days.  Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always  brand-new clothing. 

 But that young lady is right; we didn't have the "green thing" back in our day. 

 Back then we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV  in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief(remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen we blended and  stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we   didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

 But she's right; we didn't have the "green thing" back then.

 We  drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic   bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink   instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor  instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

 But  we didn't have the "green thing" back then.

 Back  then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or  walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service in the family's $45,000 SUV or van, which cost what a whole house did before the "green thing." We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire  bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized   gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in  order to find the nearest burger joint.

 But  isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just  because we didn't have the "green thing" back then?

Please  forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in  conservation from a smart alec young person.

 

We don't like being old in the first place, so it doesn't take much to make me angry .. especially from a tattooed, multiple pierced smartalex who can't make change without the cash register telling them how much.

 

 

agape