Are You OLDER THAN DIRT?

Read and see for yourself!

There are three pieces of prose to help you answer this question -- Item C, Item B and Item A, which are presented in reverse succession.

Item C:

 

Item B:

'Someone asked the other day, 'What was your favorite 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 'at home,'' I explained. 'Mom cooked every day and when Dad got home from work, we sat down together at the dining room table, and if I didn't like what she put on my plate I was allowed to sit there until I did like it.'

 

By this time, the kid was laughing so hard I was afraid he was going to suffer serious internal damage, so I didn't tell him the part about how I had to have permission to leave the table. But here are some other things I would have told him about my childhood if I figured his system could have handled it:

 

Some parents NEVER owned their own house, wore jeans , set foot on a golf course, traveled out of the country or had a credit card. In their later years they had something called a revolving charge card. The card was good only at Timothy Eatons. Or maybe it was Simpsons. Either way, there is no Eatons or Simpsons anymore.   Maybe they died.

 

My parents never drove me to soccer practice. This was mostly because we'd never  heard of soccer. I had a bicycle that weighed probably 50 pounds, and only had one speed, (slow). We didn't have a television in our house until I was 10. It was, of course, black and white. 

 

I was 13 before I tasted my first pizza, it was called 'pizza pie.' When I bit into it, I burned the roof of my mouth and the cheese slid off, swung down, plastered itself against my chin and burned that, too. It's still the best pizza I ever had.

 

We didn't have a car until I was 4. It was an old black Dodge.

 

I never had a telephone in my own room. The only phone in the house was in the living room and it was on a party line. Before you could twirl the dial, you had to listen and make sure some people you didn't know weren't already on the party line.

 

Pizzas were not delivered to our home. But milk was.

 

All newspapers were delivered by boys and all boys delivered newspapers. My brother delivered a newspaper, six days a week. It cost 7 cents a paper, of which he got to keep 2 cents. He had to get up at  6 AM every morning. On Saturday, he had to collect the 42 cents from his customers. His favorite customers were the ones who gave him 50 cents and told him to keep the change. His least favorite customers were the ones who seemed to never be home on collection day.

 

Movie stars kissed with their mouths shut. At least, they did in the movies. Touching someone else's tongue with yours was called French kissing and they didn't do that in movies. I don't know what they did in French movies. French movies were dirty and we weren't allowed to see them.

 

If you grew up in a generation before there was fast food, you may want to share some of these memories with your children 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:

My Dad is cleaning out my grandmother's house (she died in December) and he brought me an old Royal Crown Cola 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 a salt shaker or something. I knew it as the bottle that sat on the end of the ironing board to 'sprinkle' clothes with because we didn't have steam irons. Man, I am old.

 

How many do you remember?

Head light dimmer switches on the floor.
Ignition switches on the dashboard.
Heaters mounted on the inside of the fire wall.
Real ice boxes, and ice that was delivered.

Tires had inner tubes and cars had running boards.
Pant leg clips for bicycles without chain guards.
Soldering irons you heated on a gas burner.

Ice skates had blades with hollow tubes in them.
Using hand signals in a car without turn signals.

No in-line skates, but metal roller skates had keys and

could be adjusted to fit big or small feet.

Older Than Dirt Quiz: Count all the ones (below) that you remember and not just the ones you were told about.

 

Ratings at the bottom.

1 Blackjack chewing gum
2. Lucky Elephant boxed popcorn with pink sugar coating and a prize in every box -- Only 5 cents 
3. Candy cigarettes
4. Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles
5. Coffee shops or diners with tableside juke boxes
6. Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard lids, (mom left the money in the empty bottle overnight on the 'front porch veranda' or the 'back stoop') 
7. Party lines
8. Newsreels before the movie
9. Shoe stores had x-ray machines to measure feet.

10. Butch wax
11. TV test patterns that came on at night after the last show and were there until TV shows started again in the morning. (there were only 3 channels) 
12. Peashooters
13. Howdy Doody
14. 45 RPM records (and those little plastic wheel inserts that helped to fit the records on the spindle). 
15. Saturday matinee movies for 10 cents  with cowboys or the 3 stooges
16 sitting around the radio at night listening to Charley McCarthy and Edgar Bergen

17. Metal ice trays with a lever to loosen up the ice
18. carbon paper to make a copy
19 Blue flashbulbs
20. Packards
21. coloring books, and cut-out books

22. Cork popguns
23. Drive-ins
24. Studebakers
25. Wash tub wringers

If you remembered 0-5 = You're still young
If you remembered 6-10 = You are getting older
If you remembered 11-15 = Don't tell your age,
If you remembered 16-25 = You're older than dirt!

I might be older than dirt but those memories are some of the best parts of my life.

Don't forget to tell others about this quiz!!

Especially all your really OLD friends...

 

Item C:

 

OLD PERSON PRIDE

 

 I'm passing this on as I did not want to be the only ‘old person’ receiving it.  Actually, it's not a bad thing to be called, as you will see.

 a.) Old People are easy to spot at sporting events, during the playing of the National Anthem.  Old People remove their caps and stand at attention and sing without embarrassment.  They know the words and believe in them.

 

 b.) Old People remember World War II, Pearl Harbor, Guadalcanal ,Normandy and Hitler. They remember the Atomic Age, the Korean War, The Cold War, the Jet Age and the Moon Landing. They remember the 50 plus Peacekeeping Missions from 1945 to 2005, not to mention Vietnam.

 

 c.) If you bump into an Old Man on the sidewalk he will apologize. If you pass an Old Man on the street, he will nod or tip his cap to a lady.  Old People trust strangers and Old Men are courtly to women.

 

 d.) Old People hold the door for the next person and always, when walking, Old Men make certain the lady is on the inside for protection.

 

 e.) Old People get embarrassed if someone curses in front of women and children and they don't like any filth or dirty language on TV or in movies.

 

 f.) Old People have moral courage and personal integrity.  They seldom brag unless it's about their children or grandchildren.

 g.) It's the Old People who know our great country is protected, not by politicians, but by the young men and women in the military serving their country.

This country needs Old People with their work ethic, sense of responsibility,   pride in their country and decent values.

We need them now more than ever.

Thank God for Old People.

 

 

 

I was taught to respect my elders.  It's just getting harder to find them.