When I grew up everyone in town knew everyone (and their business), we rode our bikes to school, and had family brunch every Sunday after church. Our phone was a rotary dial, I would walk with grandpa out to the cemetery, with a single shot .22 and shoot gophers. I learned to drive at 10. Dad made us dig ditches, chop wood, take care of all of the animals and we never had an allowance. Opening day of deer season was treated like any other holiday.

I guess I am ahead of the curve, I am 24. I have amazing parents and spent a lot of time in rural MN where people still have morals and work hard for a days pay. Life is slower and quite frankly a lot better.

There have been some good memories in this thread. Thanks very much . 07/05/41

Old enough to know better, but still too young to resist.

4th. grade in '69 I got a big awakening. Mrs. Brown. Yep she was a Negro (it was ok back then to use that description) and my first time taking instruction from one. Well this is all new to me for sure. I had only ever been around one for any time. He was Mr. James, the janitor at our apts. As good a man as any but this ain't his story.
Mrs. Brown was an awesome teacher and we read such things as Tom Sawyer and Mark Twain. The best one that stuck in my head was her reading aloud Uncle Remus' Br'er Rabbit. She did it in full accent and explained more about the book than we could have learned from any other source.
Fun and educational.
How could I ever forget? How can I ever thank her enough?
Kids these days have no idea and most never will. History lost.

Bless you Mrs Brown.

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Dum vivo cano

I remember my father had one of the first programmable TI calculators and a digital LED watch. BIG DEAL in the 1970's. I remember Pong, and the Atari 2600, followed a few years later by the Commodore64. I had a Whee-lo that I played with a lot, especially while riding in the "back back" seat of our 1977 Pontiac Catalina station wagon with my brother.

Cassette tapes were all the rage, and the Walkman made sure that we could listen in stereo while we moved about. Rainbow vacuum cleaners were supposed to dethrone Kirby as the world's greatest, and there were 88 reasons why Jesus would return in 1988. (And then, 89 reasons for 1989.)

I earned $3.35/hour frying chicken at Lee's Famous Recipe Country Chicken, and thankfully my parents didn't make me pay for gas since the 1977 Oldsmobile 98 Regency I drove in 1986 only got 13 MPG. The Reds were on TV about 25 games per year and the rest of the time I listened to Marty Brennaman and Joe Nuxhall on a Panasonic radio I bought in 1980 for the whopping sum of $20. Took me a long time to save for that radio, but I got my money out of it. It finally died about a year ago. I estimate I used it about 20,000 hours.

Maybe I'm just not old enough yet, but I'm glad to be alive today and I look forward to what the future has. Life just keeps getting better and better as I get older, and I enjoy watching my three small sons play with their toys knowing that they will look back and think "Remember what it was like when we were kids?" And I'll regale them with stories about how we rode on the roof of our station wagon in 108 temps and 96% humidity for FOUR HOURS to get to grandma and grandpa's house. Of course, none of it will be true...

And I'll regale them with stories about how we rode on the roof of our station wagon in 108 temps and 96% humidity for FOUR HOURS to get to grandma and grandpa's house. Of course, none of it will be true...

My grandpa let me ride on the top of a load of saw logs for about 15 miles. That was in the 50s and I was about 12 yrs. old and this story is true. Larry

We had 3 channels, and had to turn a big knob on the TV to change them. The TV only had 12 channels on it. People made fun of Elvis because he was so radical. Men actually put Brylcream and Butchwax on their hair. Cokes were .10 unless you took the bottle with you and then it was .12., and they only came in the 6.5 and 10 ounce bottles. In 1965 my Dad bought a new Mercury Monterey station wagon for $4400, about a dollar a pound. Schlitz was one of the biggest beer companies. Before there was American Motors, they were Rambler. Chrysler made Desotos, Ford made the Edsel and in 1959 Chevrolet only had 2 car lines, the full size and the Corvette. By 1964 they had 5.

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Wayne
Torn & Frayed

I turned 60 last year. I recall when candy bars went from $ .05 to $ .10. That upset a lot of kids. I remember my dad looking for premium gasoline for 32.9 cents per gallon. I recall when comics went up from $ .10 to $ .12. That really upset me in around 1961 when I was 10 years old.

However, it was my first personal exposure to sales tax that has really stuck with me. When I was around 7 years old I set my sights on a plastic model airplane kit for a dollar ninety-eight ($1.98). I saved my pennies, nickels and dimes (quarters were hard to come by then ) and walked into the toy store only to hear about a thing called sales tax. I was crushed. It scarred me for life. To this day, I absolutely HATE to pay sales tax. You'd think I would hate income tax a lot more since it's cost me a heck of lot more over the years, but nope, it's sales tax I simply cannot stand. I go way out of my way to avoid it. It's funny how a little thing like happening in childhood that can have such an effect on a person so many years later.

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1st Signal Brigade, RVN '70

Still have a rotary phone. Actually purchased one of them fancy frost free's 2 years ago. My truck has roll down windows.

Am old enough to remember when shooting pellet rifles in your back yard was legal. Now all ya get is 4 hyper ventilating police officers drawing down on you.

Used to be old enough to know better, but young enough to do it anyway. Now am too old to know any better, and couldn't do it even if i remebered what it was.