For the over 40 crowd

[angelwing]

Black and White
(Under age 40? You won't understand.)

You could hardly see for all the snow,
Spread the rabbit ears as far as they go.

"Good Night, David. Good Night, Chet."
Depending on the channel you tuned,
You got Rob and Laura - or Ward and June.
It felt so good. It felt so right.
Life looked better in black and white.

I Love Lucy, The Real McCoys, Dennis the Menace, the Cleaver boys, Rawhide, Gunsmoke, Wagon Train,
Superman, Jimmy and Lois Lane.
Father Knows Best, Patty Duke,
Rin Tin Tin and Lassie too,
Donna Reed on Thursday night! --
Life looked better in black and white.


I want to go back to black and white.
Everything always turned right.
Simple people, simple lives.
Good guys always won the fights.
Now nothing is the way it seems,
In living color on the TV screen.
Too many murders, too many fights,
I want to go back to black and white.


In God they trusted, alone in bed they slept,
A promise made was a promise kept.
They never cussed or broke their vows.
They'd never make the network now.
But if I could, I'd rather be
In a TV town in '53.
It felt so good. It felt so right.
Life looked better in black and white.



Another Goody
For The Oldtimers

My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning.

My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat it raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in ice pack coolers, but I can't remember getting ecoli.

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then.

The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA sys tem.

We all took gym, not PE... and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now..

Flunking gym was not an option...even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym.

Speaking of school, we all sang the national anthem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention.

We must have had horribly damaged psyches. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself.

I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations.

Oh yeah... and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!

We played 'king of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of Mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it didn't sting like iodine did) and then we got our butt spanked.

Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.

We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either because if we did, we got our butt spanked there and then we got butt spanked again when we got home.

I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop, just before he fell off. Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house. Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof. It was a neighborhood run amuck.

To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that?

We needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes? We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac! How did we ever survive?

LOVE TO ALL OF US WHO SHARED THIS ERA, AND TO ALL WHO DIDN'T- SORRY FOR WHAT YOU MISSED. I WOULDN'T TRADE IT FOR ANYTHING

[x-y-no]

I resemble that remark!

[Aslkahuna]

Something missing from the TV one-Uncle Miltie and Sid Caesar. The mound of gravel for us was in a County Quarry. Of course, I'm old enough to remember NO TV!

Steve

[LaPlaceFF]

Well, I'm 39!!!!

[angelwing]

And holding?

[azsnowman]

Sad, TRULY SAD....I remember EVERY ONE of those!!! Yeah....I drank outta water hoses, got my butt whipped more times than I care to remember!

[azskyman]

And Red Buttons was someone you watched, not something you wore!

[Miss Mary]

I remember them all too!

How about.....

Kick the Can.

Sleeping outside in Summer, on chaiselounges you dragged from your parents' patio (not fancy deck, with built in seating) to your friends' yard? We slept out under the stars many nights. Why? Because it was hot baby, none of us had A/C!!! If anyone did, it was usually ONE window unit and you know where that baby was placed - in the parents' bedroom window!

Building Tree Houses and then spending hours out there, wanting to make your bedroom in one of them. Seriously.

Scouring your parents' garage or neighbors' garages, or deserted lots, for glass returnable soda bottles. At 2 cents each they added up (because penny candy was really 1 cent each!).

Making your own toys, out of cardboard. That's right, I enjoyed making my own Barbie furniture out of empty food boxes, taped shut and covered in construction paper. Seriously!

Your entire family, sitting around the old Muntz (in our case) TV, dinky screen size, rabbit ears and all. Everyone glued to it, one show, for everyone.

Playing 45's on your record player! And in my case, writing your name and phone number ~proudly, I might add~ on every single or album you owned.

Ah heck, I have plenty more but this ole brain of mine is now in reminisce mode........thanks for a great topic!

Mary

[angelwing]

Tin can phones, used to play with them, I have yet to see any kid nowadays do that!

I used to have a ton of 45's!!!! And a portable stero (Motorola that had detachable speakers) that played 16, 33 1/3, 45 & 78! I shoulda kept it! And my brother used to play his reel to reel tape recorder..he taped a lot of the songs off the radio, then I used to do it.

We never had AC in the beginning, we used to sleep on the living room floor with the windows open, then it was the late 70's my parents got a window unit they put in the living room window and we used to drag our mattresses downstairs to sleep, but stopped that after a while; with my dad getting up at 3AM to go to work he would step on us and since he was 95% deaf the noise he would make, you didnt hear it that bad upstairs but we all woke up, but that AC was great!

[weathermom]

I remember them all too!

How about.....

Kick the Can. (and hide and seek with the whole neighborhood, having to search the whole neighborhood for the other kids)

Sleeping outside in Summer, on chaiselounges you dragged from your parents' patio (not fancy deck, with built in seating) to your friends' yard? We slept out under the stars many nights. Why? Because it was hot baby, none of us had A/C!!! If anyone did, it was usually ONE window unit and you know where that baby was placed - in the parents' bedroom window! (And pool hopping the neighbors pools while everyone thought you were sleeping!)

Building Tree Houses and then spending hours out there, wanting to make your bedroom in one of them. Seriously.

Scouring your parents' garage or neighbors' garages, or deserted lots, for glass returnable soda bottles. At 2 cents each they added up (because penny candy was really 1 cent each!). (I don't go back as far as 2 cent deposits, but I do remember collecting/returning nickel bottles when I needed gas money)

Making your own toys, out of cardboard. That's right, I enjoyed making my own Barbie furniture out of empty food boxes, taped shut and covered in construction paper. Seriously! ( We used to use the little plastic insert from the top of a soda cap as plates for our barbies, and these tiny bunches of white flowers off of my Mom's bush out front as bouquets)

Your entire family, sitting around the old Muntz (in our case) TV, dinky screen size, rabbit ears and all. Everyone glued to it, one show, for everyone. (and we would prepare a special snack before the show started)

Playing 45's on your record player! And in my case, writing your name and phone number ~proudly, I might add~ on every single or album you owned. (my brother and his friends would take the ones they considered too "girly" and use them as frisbees and send them off into the woods on me!)

Ah heck, I have plenty more but this ole brain of mine is now in reminisce mode........thanks for a great topic!

Mary

[breeze]

(*breeze is nodding her head...)

Yep, yep, yep and yep!!

We went swimming in the creek (crick for you northerners - ) to cool off - that fan blowing
in the kitchen window just didn't do the trick on very hot days!

We built teepees out of Daddy's bean poles and tarps, and, had our own Reservation.

I remember my brother bringing home the BRAND NEW Beatles singles, and
playing them on the NEW plastic green and white "record player".

Drinkin' out of water hoses? Yep. Gettin' my butt whipped? Oooooh, trust me -
more times than you'll ever know, and, less times that was needed!!

~Annette~