# Bring Back any Memories



## silviffer (May 17, 2006)

Bring back any memories?

Someone asked the other day, 'What was your favourite '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 'home,'' I explained. !
'Mum 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 lad 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'd figured his system could have handled it:

Some parents NEVER owned their own house, wore jeans, set foot on a golf course, travelled out of the country or had a credit card.

My parents never drove me to school. 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, and the station went off the air at 10 pm, after playing the national anthem and epilogue; it came back on the air at about 6 a.m. and there was usually a locally produced news and farm show on, featuring local people...

I never had a telephone in my room. The only phone was on a party line. Before you could dial, you had to listen and make sure some people you didn't know weren't already using the 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, seven days a week. He had to get up at 6AM every morning.

Film stars kissed with their mouths shut. At least, they did in the films. There were no movie ratings because all movies were responsibly produced for everyone to enjoy viewing, without profanity or violence or almost anything offensive.

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 Lowcocks Lemonade 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? 
Headlight dip-switches on the floor of the car.
Ignition switches on the dashboard.
Trouser leg clips for bicycles without chain guards. 
Soldering irons you heated on a gas burner.
Using hand signals for cars without turn indicators. 
> 
Older Than Dirt Quiz:
Count all the ones that you remember, not the ones you were told about.
Ratings at the bottom.

1. Sweet cigarettes
2. Coffee shops with juke boxes 
3. Home milk delivery in glass bottles 
4. Party lines on the telephone
5. Newsreels before the movie 
6. 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 2 channels [if you were fortunate])
7. Peashooters 
8. 33 rpm records
9. 45 RPM records
10. Hi-fi's
11. Metal ice trays with levers
12. Blue flashbulb
13. Cork popguns 
14. Wash tub wringers

If you remembered 0-3 = You're still young
If you remembered 3-6 = You are getting older
If you remembered 7-10 = Don't tell your age
If you remembered 11-14 = You're positively ancient!

I must be 'positively ancient' but those memories are some of the best parts of my life.

Don't forget to pass this along!!

(PS. I used a large type face so you could read it easily)


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## teemyob (Nov 22, 2005)

*Ancient*

I am 46 years old, scored 13.

So I am ancient.

LOL

Results

1. Sweet cigarettes - Yes
2. Coffee shops with juke boxes - Yes and it is still there to this day! 
3. Home milk delivery in glass bottles - Used to work for the Milkman
4. Party lines on the telephone - Did not have a phone, but our neighbours did and they had a partyline
5. Newsreels before the movie - Yep
6. 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 2 channels [if you were fortunate]) Yep
7. Peashooters - Had one
8. 33 rpm records - Still have them *
9. 45 RPM records - And these *
10. Hi-fi's - Neighbours had one
11. Metal ice trays with levers - We had a TV before a really cool (lol) GAS Fridge
12. Blue flashbulb - No 
13. Cork popguns - Yep
14. Wash tub wringers - Yep

* We lived near a tip. When I was 8, brought home on my bogey a beautiful veneered Gramophone player with unused pack of huge needles and a stack of 78's that were in perfect condition. Mum made me take them all back but let me keep one 78 to play on my sisters Decca Record player.

I broke the record on her player.

It was Singing In the Rain - Gene Kelly

Gutted.

TM


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## bigbazza (Mar 6, 2008)

What about 78RPM Records 8O & the corrogated washing board. 8O 
THat makes my score 16 :?


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## silviffer (May 17, 2006)

Wicked story Teemyob. Mums were like that!!


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## Stanner (Aug 17, 2006)

*Re: Ancient*



teemyob said:


> 4. Party lines on the telephone - Did not have a phone, but our neighbours did and they had a partyline


Our neighbours waited 5 years to get a party line and when they finally got it found out that it was shared with a 24hour Mini-cab office. :roll:


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## silviffer (May 17, 2006)

Ha ha. Nice one Stanner!!


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## teemyob (Nov 22, 2005)

*Re: Ancient*



Stanner said:


> teemyob said:
> 
> 
> > 4. Party lines on the telephone - Did not have a phone, but our neighbours did and they had a partyline
> ...


When I was about 2twenty something. My Company shared a Radio Comms System with

A skip hire company
A Taxi Company
and a Funeral Directors

What a laugh that was. And it did not take a Genius to work out the Funeral Directors code.

TM


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## Pudsey_Bear (Sep 25, 2008)

Must be bloody old not to have had fast food as a young un, I remember going to Wimpy bars in the 60's


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## teemyob (Nov 22, 2005)

*Wimpey*



Kev_n_Liz said:


> Must be bloody old not to have had fast food as a young un, I remember going to Wimpy bars in the 60's


Were they the Burger Chain that had knifes and forks?

TM


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## Stanner (Aug 17, 2006)

*Re: Wimpey*



teemyob said:


> Kev_n_Liz said:
> 
> 
> > Must be bloody old not to have had fast food as a young un, I remember going to Wimpy bars in the 60's
> ...


They still are.

There is a Wimpy Bar in Peterborough.

http://maps.google.com/maps/place?c...ed=0CBYQ-QswAA&sa=X&ei=m_f7TJO2GI-VjAeb9qXNAw


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## Pudsey_Bear (Sep 25, 2008)

Also Bradford, Leeds and Wakefield, and many more


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## ardgour (Mar 22, 2008)

What about the phone boxes where you had to put in 4 old pennies and press button 'B' when they answered - some of us weren't rich enough to have a phone, or a fridge. 
We had the milk bottle stood in a bucket of cold water with a damp cloth draped over the top in summer. In winter the milk froze on the doorstep and lifted the foil top off, or the birds got there first and pecked the top but nobody worried about whether it was still safe to drink - we just fought over who got the rest of the frozen lump of cream.
My kids can't believe there was a time when fitted carpets were a luxury item that you had to save for years to afford, now it is trendy to have polished floorboards, then it was just necessity!

(I scored full marks but I am still a long way from my pension)

Chris


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## eddied (May 9, 2005)

*Old stuff*

 well I got full marks. I can even remember Italian POW's with the yellow patch on their backs (co-belligerants I think they had become!)digging up the potatoes on the farms. Can remember being snowed in for 6 weeks and not being able to get to school during the 1947 blizzards. The sprinkling that you're all moaning about now is nothing compared to that.
If 60 is the new forty, is seventy the new 30??
saluti,
eddied


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## Marrabone (Apr 8, 2010)

We had fish and chip shops, that's fast food surely?


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