Remembering When...

All the girls had ugly gym uniforms?  But they were sooo comfy
unless you had to pee.

Remember when gym class was NEVER co-ed?

It took five minutes for the TV warm up? 
Remember the little dot staring, staring, staring...

Nearly everyone's Mom was at home when the kids got home from school?

Nobody owned a purebred dog?


When a quarter was a decent allowance?

You'd reach into a muddy gutter for a penny?

What is the cheapest first class postage you remember? 
I definitely remember 9 cents and I *think* I remember 7 cents

Nylons that came in two pieces and if you wore stockings
you also wore a garter belt or girdle? 

How about *ow* sanitary belts and "blue roses?"

Do you remember when male teachers wore neckties and female teachers had
their hair done every day and wore high heels?

Remember when lots of women wore wigs?)



Do you remember when you got your windshield cleaned,
oil checked, and gas pumped without asking, all for free, every time?
When you didn't pay for air for your tires and, you got trading stamps to boot?

35 cent a gallon gasoline
Myy mom and I could drive all day on $2 of gas and we were avid collectors of Green Stamps and Top Value Stamps.

Do you remember when laundry detergent had free glasses,
dishes or towels hidden inside the box?  Crystal Wedding Oatmeal, anyone?

Remember when it was considered a special occasion to be taken out to dinner
at a real restaurant with your parents?  For us, Burger Chef was a great privilege!

How about when they threatened to keep kids back a grade if they failed. . .and they did?
Long before "no child left behind" was the very real and present danger of "failing."



Do you remember when a 57 Chevy was everyone's dream car...to cruise,
peel out, lay rubber or watch submarine races?

Do you remember when people "went steady" and exchanged
engraved ID bracelets?  Remember being "pinned?"

...winding yarn around the back of your boyfriend's gigantic
class ring so that it wouldn't fall off?

When you didn't have to think about where the car keys were
because they were always in the car, in the ignition
and the doors were never locked?

Remember when passing time was lying on your back in the grass with your friends
and saying things like, "That cloud looks like a ..."

and playing baseball with no adults to help kids with the rules of the game?
Softball with trees and cardboard boxes for bases?
Remember the "pickle" who was the stunt batter?

Stuff from the store came without safety caps and hermetic seals
because no one had yet tried to poison a perfect stranger?

When being sent to the principal's office was nothing
compared to the fate that awaited the student at home?


Remember summers filled with bike rides, baseball games,
Hula Hoops, bowling, visits to the pool
and eating Kool-Aid powder with sugar.

Candy cigarettes, wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside,
penny candy, 5 cent Butterfinger, Clark and Baby Ruth candy bars?

Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles with bottle tops
you had to pry off with a bottle opener built into the machine?

Big coolers in corner grocery stores where you just reach
right in and pull out your bottled soft drinks?

Remember bringing your "empties" to the store
for a "bottle deposit?"

Pull tabs on canned soda that came all the way off
and something about kidney dialysis?

Coffee shops with tableside jukeboxes

Blackjack, Clove and Teaberry chewing gum (agh)

Hard Dentine?

Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers

A "French letter"

Newsreels before the movie

P.F. Fliers

Red ball jets?

Telephone numbers with a word prefix....(Raymond 4-601).
Party lines?  A busy signal?  A bell for a ringer?
Having to rent your phone?  A dial?


Peashooters

Howdy Dowdy

Captain Kangaroo, Romper Room?
 
45 RPM records with those little yellow center pieces?
Stacking records and putting the arm across?
Hi-Fi's?
How about the super hard 78RPM records?
Giant console stereos that took up a whole
wall and had a phonograph, tape player and AM/FM radio?

Sock hops?

Metal ice cubes trays with levers that NEVER produced anything
but ice slivers and froze to your hands?

Remember when cereal prizes were things like submarines
and frogmen with a reservoir you filled with baking powder
to make them dive?

Mimeograph paper and that wonderful smell!

Beanie and Cecil
"Hey, Beanie Boy!"

Roller-skate keys
Cork pop guns
Clackers!

Drive in movies and restaurants?

Studebakers


Wringer washtubs
 
The Fuller Brush Man
"Ding Dong, Avon Calling" 
The Tydebol Man
The Glad Man
Mr Clean
The Ajax White Knight
"Cleans like a white tornado!"
Madge soaking nails in Palmolive?

When Rob and Laura Petrie and
Ricky and Lucy Ricardo had separate twin beds?

Breck girls?

How about Gibson Girls?

Shirley Temple curls?

The Red Skelton Show?

Ipana toothpaste?

The appetite suppressant called "Aids"
that were chewy and you ate them with a hot beverage?

When "exercise equipment" meant a vibrating
belt that wrapped around your butt and jiggled away the fat?

How about the sauna machines?

An aspirin put in a Coke-a-cola?

Or when cigarette commercials were on TV,
like the one for Doral with the legs coming
out of the giant, dancing pack?

Black Underwood typewriters?

Reel-To-Reel tape recorders

Tinkertoys
Erector Sets
The Fort Apache Play Set
Lincoln Logs
When Barbie had cat eyes?

15 cent McDonald hamburgers

"McDonalds is your
kind of place, hamburgers in
your face, french fries between
your toes, dill pickles up your
nose and what about those
groovy shakes? They come
from polluted lakes, McDonalds
is your kiiinnnd of plaaaace."

When the McDonald's sign measured its
number of burgers sold in the thousands
instead of in the millions?


5 cent packs of baseball cards -
with that awful pink slab of bubble gum

Jiffy Pop Popcorn

Do you remember a time when...

Decisions were made by going "eeny-meeny-miney-moe"
or "Bubble gum, bubble gum in a dish..."

Mistakes were corrected by simply exclaiming, "Do Over!"?

A "race issue" meant arguing about who ran the fastest?

Catching the fireflies could happily occupy an entire evening?

It wasn't odd to have two or three "Best Friends"?

The worst thing you could catch from the opposite sex was "cooties"?

Having a weapon in school meant being caught with a slingshot?

A foot of snow was a dream come true?

Saturday morning cartoons weren't 30-minute commercials for action figures
and were only on Saturday morning?

"Smile, you're on Candid Camera?"

Remember when "Oly-oly-oxen-free" made perfect sense and
spinning around, getting dizzy, and falling down was cause for giggles?

When War was a card game?

Baseball cards in the spokes transformed any bike into a motorcycle?

Remember drag flags and riding with no helmets?

When taking drugs meant orange-flavored chewable aspirin?

When water balloons were the ultimate weapon?

I love looking back fondly on the memories of things from the past that are just not around any more, but I have to say, I enjoy forward progress.  Regardless of the time in which we live, now or then, there are very definite benefits and detriments.

In the military, there was a saying, "The two best bases in the military are the one you just left and the one you're going to."

We do tend to glamorize the past, allowing time and nostalgia to gild the way things really were and remember the good parts while glossing over the bad.  I don't meet many people who are happy where they are, today, content with what has been created in their life.   I don't meet many people who are happy where they are, today, content with what has been created in their life.   

It is so easy to mire ourselves in the past, grieving for what used to be and fearing what is to come.  But isn't that a sad way to live?  How lovely to live in the now, accepting the challenges and lessons that life presents to us graciously and eagerly awaiting the miracles and blessings that are to come.   

To me, the best way to honor the life that we have been given and to acknowledge the gift that it is would be to experience it to the fullest, making it all it can be and not wasting a single moment of it

Life is what we make of it and every second carries within it the two words that are absolutely pregnant with all possibilities:  "until now."