Do You Remember When?

All the girls had ugly gym uniforms?

It took five minutes for the TV to warm up?

You would play in the park for hours?

Poodle skirts were the newest fad?

Nearly everyone’s Mom was at home when the kids

got home from school?

Nobody owned a purebred dog?

When a quarter was a decent allowance?

You’d reach into a mud puddle for a penny?

Your Mom wore nylons that came in two pieces?

All your male teachers wore neckties and female teachers had

their hair done every day and wore high heels?

You got your windshield cleaned, oil checked, and gas pumped without asking, all for free, every time?

You didn’t have to pay for air and you got trading stamps

to boot? Laundry detergent had free glasses, dishes or towels hidden inside the box? It was considered a great privilege to be taken out to dinner at a real restaurant with your parents?

When a 57 Chevy was everyone’s dream car…to cruise,

peel out, lay rubber or watch the submarine races, and

people actually went steady? No one ever asked where the car keys were because they were always in the car, in the ignition, and the doors were never locked?

Lying on your back in the grass with your friends

and saying things like, “That cloud looks like a…”

And playing baseball with no adults around to help kids with the rules of the game?

Stuff from the store came without safety caps and hermetic seals because no one tried to poison a perfect stranger? And with all our progress, don’t you wish, just once, you could slip back in time and savor the slower pace, and share it with your kids today?

When being sent to the principal’s office was nothing

compared to the fate that awaited the student at home?

they were in fear for their lives, but it wasn’t because

of drive-by shootings, drugs, gangs, etc.

Their parents and grandparents were a much bigger threat! but they survived because their love was greater than the threat

Do you remember?

Nancy Drew, Abbott & Costello, The Hardy Boys, Laurel and Hardy, Howdy Doody

The Three Stooges, The Lone Ranger, The Shadow Knows,

Nellie Belle, Roy and Dale, Trigger and Buttermilk, Sky King, Annette,

The “original” Mickey Mouse Club, Felix the Cat, and The Cisco Kid

Kukla Fran and Ollie

Or How About

Rocky & Bullwinkle, Kukla Fran and Ollie, Spin & Marty, The sound of a real push lawnmower on a Saturday morning, the slam of a wooden screen door, hopscotch, doubledutch, jacks, wax red lips and black wax mustaches, lemonade stands, green light red light,

Saddle shoes and a slinky.

As well as summers filled with bike rides, baseball games, Hula Hoops, bowling and visits to the pool, picnics and eating Kool-Aid powder with sugar. Doesn’t if feel good just to say, ”Yeah I remember that”?

Remember that the perfect age is somewhere between old enough to know better and too young to care?

How many of these do you remember?

Hutch's burgers & fries (Hamilton), Candy cigarettes, Cracker Jacks, 5 cent comic books, wax coke shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside, black balls, soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles, coffee shops with tableside jukeboxes, Double Bubble, Beemans and Blackjack gum, home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers, 3D glasses, newsreels before the movie and P.F. Flyers running shoes

telephone numbers with a word prefix ie. (Raymond 4-601) Party lines, and dials too!

"Wait!! I'm not finished yet!"

	Peashooters, The C.N.E. 45 RPM records, green stamps Hi-Fi’s, slingshots, Cowboys and Indians, space cadets, metal ice cube trays with levers, Beanie and Cecil, roller skate keys, cork pop guns, A & W drive Ins, Studebakers, Lionel electric trains and Yo Yo’s

Washtub wringers, the Fuller Brush Man, Reel to Reel tape recorders, Tinkertoys, Erector sets, Fort Apache Play Sets, Lincoln logs and 15 cent hamburgers 5 cent packs of baseball cards with that pink slab of bubble gum, Penny candy.

35 cent a gallon gasoline and Jiffy Pop popcorn, yummy

Do you remember a time when

Decisions were made by going “eeny-meeny-miney-moe”?

Mistakes were corrected by yelling “Do Over!” Catching fireflies could happily occupy an entire night? It wasn’t odd to have two or three “Best Friends”? Having a weapon in school was a peashooter? And a foot of snow was a dream come true?

Saturday morning cartoons weren’t 30 minute commercials For action figures and “Oly-oly-oxen-free” made perfect sense? The worst embarrassment was being picked last for the team? War was a card game? And baseball cards in the spokes turned your bike into a motorcycle? Taking drugs meant orange-flavored chewable aspirins? Water balloons was the ultimate weapon?

If you can remember most or all of these,

Then you have really lived!!!!!

Tell a friend, someone who may need

a break from their “grown-up” life...go ahead

I double dog-dare-ya

(These memories came across my e-mail and I just had to show you)