Stroll with me.... close your eyes.... and go back... before the Internet... before bombings, aids, herpes before semiautomatics and crack... before SEGA or Super Nintendo ... way back! I'm talking about sitting on the curb, sitting on the stoop...about hide-and-go-seek; Simon Says and red-light-green-light. Lunch boxes with a thermos ... chocolate milk, going home for lunch, penny candy from the store, hopscotch, butterscotch, skates with keys, jacks and Cracker Jacks, hula hoops and sunflower seeds, wax lips and mustaches, Mary Jane's, saddle shoes and Coke bottles with the names of cities on the bottom.

Remember --
When it took five minutes for the TV to warm up.
When nearly everyone's Mom was at home when the kids arrived home from school.
When nobody owned a purebred dog.
When a quarter was a decent allowance.
When you'd reach into a muddy gutter for a penny.
When your Mom wore nylons that came in two pieces.
When all of your male teachers wore neckties and female teachers had their hair done everyday and wore high heels.
Running through the sprinkler, circle pins, bobby pins, Mickey Mouse Club, Rocky & Bullwinkle, Kookla, Fran & Ollie, Spin & Marty...Dick Clark's American Bandstand ... all in black and white and your Mom made you turn it off when a storm came.
When around the corner seemed far away, and going downtown seemed like going somewhere.
Climbing trees, making forts, backyard shows, lemonade stands, cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, staring at clouds, jumping on the bed, pillow fights,ribbon candy, angel hair on the Christmas tree, Jackie Gleason, white gloves, walking to the movie theater, running till you were out of breath, laughing so hard that your stomach hurt...remember that?
Not stepping on a crack or you'd break your mother's back ... paper-chains at Christmas, silhouettes of Lincoln and Washington, the smells of school, of paste and Evening in Paris.
What about the girl who dotted her i's with hearts? (that was before that stupid smiley face)!
The Stroll, popcorn balls and sock hops?
Remember when there were just two types of sneakers for girls and boys - Keds and PF Flyers, and the only time you wore them at school was for gym. And the girls had those ugly gym uniforms.
When you got your windshield cleaned, oil checked, and gas pumped, without asking -- all for free -- every time! And, you didn't pay for air either, and you got trading stamps to boot!
When laundry detergent had free glasses, dishes or towels hidden inside the box.
When it was considered a great privilege to be taken out to dinner at a real restaurant with your parents.
When the worst thing you could do at school was flunk a test or chew gum.And the prom was in the gym or the lunchroom and you danced to a real orchestra.
When they threatened to keep kids back a grade if they failed -- and did!
When being sent to the principal's office was nothing compared to the fate that awaited the student at home. Basically, we were in fear for our lives, but it wasn't because of drive-by shootings, drugs, gangs, etc. Our parents and grandparents were a much bigger threat! But we survived because their love was so much greater than the threat.
Remember when a '57 Chevy was everyone's dream car -- used to cruise, peel out, lay rubber, scratch off or watch the submarine races?
When people went steady; and girls wore a class ring with an inch of wrapped Band-Aids, dental floss, or yarn coated with pastel-frost nail polish so it would fit their finger.
When no one ever asked where the car keys were because they were always in the car, in the ignition, and the car and house doors were never locked!
Remember lying on your back on the grass with your friends and saying things like "That cloud looks like a..." And playing baseball with no adults needed to enforce the rules of the game.
Remember when stuff from the store came without safety caps and hermetic seals, because no one had yet tried to poison a perfect stranger.

And, with all our progress, don't you just wish, that just once, you could slip back in time and savor the slower pace...and share it with the children of today? So send this on to someone who can still remember Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, Laurel and Hardy, Howdy Dowdy and The Peanut Gallery, The Lone Ranger and Tonto, The Shadow Knows, Nellie Belle, Roy and Dale, Trigger and Buttermilk... As well as the sound of a real mower on Saturday morning, and summers filled with bike rides, baseball games, bowling, visits to the pool ... and eating Kool-Aid powder with sugar from the palm of your hand. There, didn't that feel good? Just to lean back and say: "Yeah...I remember......."

Of course in those "good old days" Mom had a wringer washer and doing laundry was a two day job, one to wash and dry, one to iron and everything HAD to be ironed. Cooking a meal took at least an hour because nothing was boxed, prepackaged or microwavable. It took forever to get anywhere because "highways" were two lane and someone was always going 35 or 40. There really wasn't a choice as to what to watch on tv because only one of the three available channels came in without "snow".
It's good to reminisce but I like a lot of the things we have now, I just have to remind myself to slow down once in awhile.

Thanks for the memories...

:D Thank you for the wonderful memories :D

I can remember when...(Living on the farm) going into town just to the grocery store meant putting on good clothes and make up LOL. What about when visiting relatives on the weekend or holidays when everyone dressed up? Including men wearing hats (and not baseball caps)? Imagine that as kids we didn't have to be entertained as todays kids do :( How sad for todays generation :( And we actually lived thru all these things :D :D

:thumbup: :thumbup:

Damn I feel old now! :lol:

I am only 43 but remember almost all of those things so clearly!!


I remember trying to reach something while on the phone and have to stretch and hope you didn't drop the phone or pull the cord out. :oops:

We used to go around and ask for Coke/Pepsi bottles so we kids could take them to the store and get the money back. Then we went to the drug store and bought candy. It was a good walk to the store and Mom never seemed to worry. And we did it without having a cell phone!!! :shock: :lol:

What about going to the library and looking up something in the card catalog? My DD's look at me like I have 2 heads when I tell them how I had to look up things.

And the Britannica Encyclopedia was where we went for information. Do they even make them anymore?

I'd forgotten about phones!!! We had 10 or 12 houses on our party line! Every home had a different series of long and short rings.

One of my earliest memories is catching fireflies in the backyard while my dad and his friends listened to a baseball game on the radio. It was dark and all you could see was the glow from their cigarettes. I must have been about 4 yrs old. The jar for the fireflies was glass with holes poked in the lid so they could "breathe". Nowadays, dad would be in trouble for smoking and letting a little kid have a glass jar.

When laundry detergent had free glasses, dishes or towels hidden inside the box.

I remember these especially! moms would hang theirs out to dry to show off who had the prettiest ones.

I remember mom, grandma and the other ladies in church letting each other know what colors of towels or what glasses they still needed to complete their set and they would trade off after church. On the top shelf of my china cupboard, way in the back sits a bright red plastic glass with Beautina Purina's picture embossed in white. It came out of one of grandpa's sacks of feed. He and Grandma babysat my two younger brothers, a cousin and me. The boys had green and blue, Laura had yellow and I got the red one.