Older Than Dirt…

Sometimes you receive something that is so catchy, you want to share it. For example, in this article, the young man said to his mother: “What was your favorite fast food when you were growing up?”

Her answer was: “We didn’t have fast food when I was growing up. All the food was slow. We ate at a place called home. Grandma cooked every day and when Grandpa got home from work, we sat down together at the dining room table. If I didn’t like what she put on my plate I was allowed to sit there until I did like it. I had to have permission to leave the table.”

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. Growing up isn’t what it used to be.

Some parents NEVER set foot on a golf course, never traveled out of the country, or had a credit card.

Some kids had a bicycle—only one in their lifetime—and it only had one speed.

There were no televisions in the house for years and when they came in style, the picture was black and white.
The first pizza available was called pizza pie. When you took a bite, it burned the roof of your mouth and the cheese slid off. Pizzas were not delivered to homes, but milk was.

All newspapers were delivered by boys and all boys delivered newspapers. It cost 7 cents a paper. They had to get up at 4 a.m. every morning and on Saturday, they had to collect the 42 cents from each customer. Their least favorite customers were the ones who were never home on collection day.

The old Royal Crown Cola bottle had a top with a stopper with a bunch of holes in it. It was the typical bottle that sat on the end of the ironing board to sprinkle clothes because there were no steam irons.

How many of these
do you remember?
• Blackjack chewing gum
• Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water
• Candy cigarettes
• Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles
• Coffee shops or diners with table side juke boxes
• Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers
• Party lines
• Newsreels before the movie
• P.F. Flyers
• Butch wax
• Telephone numbers with a word prefix (OLive-6933)
• Peashooters
• Howdy Doody
• 45 RPM records
• S&H Green Stamps
• Hi-fi
• Metal ice trays with lever
• Mimeograph paper
• Blue flashbulb
• Packards
• Roller skate keys
• Cork popguns
• Drive-ins
• Studebakers
• Washing machines with wringers; and washtubs for rinsing

This has been circulating online for years and we have no idea how it came to be but, at our ages, we recognize some of the items listed above. We may be older than dirt but these carry some of our fondest memories of childhood.

Kitty Maiden is a staff writer for Seniors Today.