... I think you'll enjoy this. Whoever wrote it could have been my next door neighbor because it totally described my childhood to a " T " Black and White Black and White (Under age 45? 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.' 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 e.coli. 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 system. 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 said prayers and 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 $99 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 our 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 jerk. It was a neighborhood run a muck. 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! Pass this to someone and remember that life's most simple pleasures are very often the very best !!! Love to all, Hank.....
Oh yes! And "good job" meant you did your chores well, and didn't complain about it--not that you managed to walk downstairs without falling!
I rode "WITHOUT" a seat belt in the back of my dad's pickup truck as he drove down the highway AND I bounced about the backseat of our car WITHOUT a seat belt too.
I remember gun racks in pickup trucks in the school parking lot. With a gun in it. It was not against school rules because the only thing hunted was what was in season according to the Texas Fish and Game Department. A few of those same pickup truck owners did not even lock the doors. I do not remember a single one ever to come up missing from those gun racks. And on Friday and Saturday nights if you were caught by the local Police doing anything that you should not have done,,that same local Policeman told you to either pour it out, or slow it down or he would tell your Dad . And you had ten minutes to get home. You did exactly what he said without question, and said Yes Sir,,because you sure didn`t want your Dad to know you had been acting up !! And that same Policeman would have checked to make sure you were at home and safe !
Oh I remember riding to the cottage in the back of Dad's station wagon ... no seatbelts required. I was the 'remote' to the black and white tv ... had to get up and turn the dial Life before microwaves meant letting your meat defrost on the counter all day. Helping mom bake meant you would eat the raw cookie dough.We had great immune systems! When my older kids were young, the first parent that had a child with chicken pox would invite everyone's kids over to catch it so that we could 'get it over with'. Now days, they vaccinate against chicken pox!
While reading all the replies and reminiscences here, I realized that the parenting we received resulted in great adults! Capable, not afraid of a bit of adversity, and kind and generous. I wish the same for all children.
When my oldest daughter was 4 months old we put her in a makeshift 'bed' between us on the bench seat of our pickup truck and drove from Dallas to Denver...all around Colorado and back home again. At one point she started slipping off the seat, I grabbed her leg and pulled her back up and she was fine. Of course, she might say that was the beginning of her wacky personality. Every small Texas town had a high school parking lot half filled with pickup trucks and each truck had a gun rack in the back window with at least one rifle and maybe a shotgun in it. Mercurochrome, we called it Monkey Blood, and Mom's and Gramma's used in on everything....including swabbing your throat with it when you complained of having a sore throat. You would be surprised how after the first swabbing we all were instantly healed and needed no more treatments....that stuff tasted terrible. My grandmother had a hidden stash of marshmallows as treats after having your throat swabbed....like that made up for it. In high school I dated a boy who flunked gym all three years of high school. He was a nice boy but lazy. We started every school day with a general assembly that included the required prayer (which I hated) , the national anthem and the Texas State Song (and no it is not the Eyes of Texas).
You rang a lot of bells for me there Hank. As kids, 3 or 4 in our gang of 8 to 9 year olds, we would walk the mile into town just to nose around. Then we would wander home in time for tea. No fears about child abductors or pedophiles. And this was in the war years. As for remembered 'meds', what were we given Cod Liver Oil for? I think it came with malt to make it taste better. We also used to get sweets and various foods distributed at school, gifted from America. The dried egg made pretty good scrambled......thanks a lot folks
Ohhhhh yesssss - the "memory" of cod liver oil --- YUCK! Just the threat of having to take that vile stuff kept me in the pink for years and years. I swear I'd of gotten up out of my death bed to avoid having to swallow it.
Vick's Vaporub--my heavens, what child-hater made that! It was bad enough rubbed on your chest when you had a cold, but my mother decided that ramming it up my nose would help clear up sniffles. I'm just glad she didn't make me swallow it to cure a cough. I avoided cod liver oil, simply because there was lots of Vick's available.
Ah, yes. Peanut Butter and Vick's sandwich's. I knew my mother was related to the Marquis De Sade! I rode in the back of pick-ups. Standing up! On the highway! Cut my own switch! I told you she was related to the Marquis. If I got a 'correction' at school, I sure as hell got one when I got home. We didn't get iodine, we got Merthiolate. That stuff stung worse than any yellow jacket could conjure in a fevered dream! Rotary phones, on party lines. Just a few things off the top of the bald pate today.
We suffered all the normal childhood ailments like mumps, measles, chicken pox, whooping cough, and in my opinion our imune system became stronger as a result. We walked to school, mum or dad didn't do the school run.........we didn't have a car.
I had my tonsils removed at 5 yrs of age with the Doctors using ETHER! I can still remember lying there on a cold hard operating slab and the feelings of suffocation as I had to breath that (ahem) stuff to be knocked out. Nightmares to this day. I can also remember the Dentist who had a foot crank drill - I'm not sure exactly what type of drill it was but it definitely was NOT electric. Talk about human torture!
I can remember when everyone over 6 months old was given paragoric for a belly ache. Its an opiate but most everyone had it on hand. They would have put us underneath the jail house for the same thing nowdays !! And then there was Groves Chill Tonic and SSS tonic,, I am telling you,,you have not lived until you tried to swallow that stuff. I will take Vicks anyday over that. We got snuff paste for a wasp sting and coal oil if you stepped on a nail. I have thought about this many times,,back then we didn`t have ADHD,,or kids with gluten or lactose problems and rarely did anyone have a food allergy. Those that did usually grew out of it. Everyone ate peanut butter without problems and no one even cared if the food was prepared in a factory that also used nuts, wheat or anything else. We never read the food labels to see how much sugar or fat it had. We played tackle football, dodge ball and no one got hurt except for the normal bruises and skinned knees. Wonder what happened to todays kids ?
Genetically Modified Organism's, that is what happened! And lets not forget about all the pesticides and preservatives!
