Older 'n Dirt
- 14/5/2007 <--Prev : Next-->
Older 'n Dirt!!?
"Hey Dad," one of my kids 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 'at home,'" I explained. "Grandma cooked every day and when
Grandpa 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 kid 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
figured his system could have handled it:?
Some parents NEVER owned their own house, never wore Levis , never set foot on a golf
course, never travelled out of the country or had a credit card.?
My parents never drove me to soccer practice. This was mostly because we never had
heard of soccer. 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 11, but my grandparents
had one before that. It was, of course, black and white, but they bought a piece of
coloured plastic to cover the screen. The top third was blue, like the sky, and the bottom
third was green, like grass. The middle third was red. It was perfect for programs that had
scenes of fire trucks riding across someone's lawn on a sunny day. Some people had a lens
taped to the front of the TV to make the picture look larger.?
I was 13 before I tasted my first pizza, it was called "pizza pie." When I bit into it, I burned
the roof of my mouth and the cheese slid off, swung down, plastered itself against my chin
and burned that, too. It's still the best pizza I ever had.?
I never had a telephone in my room. The only phone in the house was in the living room
and it 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. I delivered a
newspaper, six days a week. It cost 7 cents a paper, of which I got to keep 2 cents. I had
to get up at 4 AM every morning. On Saturday, I had to collect the 42 cents from my
customers. My favourite customers were the ones who gave me 50 cents and told me to
keep the change. My least favourite customers were the ones who seemed to never be
home on collection day.?
Movie stars kissed with their mouths shut. At least, they did in the movies. Touching
someone else's tongue with yours was called French kissing and they didn't do that in
movies. I don't know what they did in French movies. French movies were dirty and we
weren't allowed to see them.?
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?
ANONYMOUS?
