I remember all of these, you?

[WuzzFuzz]

Did you by any chance have a blacksmith in your town? I would then concede that you are reeeally older than dirt!

My dad was a blacksmith.

He taught me how to weld, and to this day, I can still forge weld...Don't have a forge, so sometimes I've had to use my BBQ and have the burner up high...Hopefully I've got a full tank of gas so I can do want I want to do.

In the shop there was a tank of acetylene, and there was two other tanks one, for the carbide, and the other for water to make the acetylene. Dad taught me how to gas weld with those torches. I liked playing with the carbide in those coal miners lights, the miners would wear on their hats. Or make carbide cannons.

The anvils, there was a hand cranked drill press. In the steel rod rack, various sizes of steel rods..I remember beside the forge, all of the different tools he needed to do what ever forging work. I can remember seeing the forge, but I can't remember what kind of bellows it was. The wood work bench, with the wood drawers underneath. The bench was well used.
On one end of the bench, leaning up against the wall was a lever action rifle...I have no idea what make or model, but to me it was big, and I always wanted to handle it, but didn't dare.

It was called the Alexis Blacksmith Shop.

Oh my...brings back memories....Me, a little kid and of course a kid has short legs..My dad taking long strides when he walked, and me trying to keep up with him as we walked to the shop. Sometimes my dog Blackie tagging along.

One of the posters above mentioned the old wringer washing machine and tub. I remember ours was the Maytag. It only had the one cylinder kick start engine, not the two cylinder. Mom had a old well worn "wash stick" to get the hot clothes out of the washing machine, up to the wringer, then over to the rinse water, thru the wringer again, then into the clothes basket. The old clothes pin bag, to hold the clothes pins, and she hung up the clothes, and a pole out there with two nails in the top. The pole was used to put the two nails between the clothes line, to help prop up the sagging clothes line, with the heavy wet clothes. Stiff as a board in the winter.

My dad and I going down to a creek fishing, using cane poles....Down where we'd go were two old steam engines that were used for sawing logs. Only saw them in use one time when we went there.

Our old car..Dad liked Pontiacs...He always, well the times I can remember, buying re-capped tires for it. The Standard Oil gas station with the red and silver gas pumps..Red was regular..Silver was eythel Silver Crown, and Gold Crown. The large white light globe, and the red globe on top of the pumps, that would light up at night.. The pumps you would turn the handle on the side of the pump to re-set it amount. Then watch the numbers "slowly" add up.


And I remember listening to a radio show..."I remember Mama". A radio show about a family of Norwegians who migrated to the U.S.

Yes, you could say I'm old, and still remember some of the old ways and things. Older than dirt???? I don't know, but I sure played a lot in it.

Lets not forget taking the family pictures with the old 110 film Brownie box camera.

WuzzFuzz

 

[WuzzFuzz]

Do you remember taking a knife, or something with a sharp edge and digging out the cork of a bottle cap. Then take the cork and go from the inside of your shirt, and take the bottle cap on the outside of the shirt. Press the cork back into the bottle cap and you'd have a button?

For you farm kids. Remember when we put up corn in the corn cribs, whole corn on the cob...The cribs had slats so the corn would dry? The hand sheller leather gloves with the hook on them for shelling corn off the cob? Sometimes walking across the field and finding a Indian arrow head? That was a REAL find.

In the summer time, sneaking into the wood ice box, and chipping off a piece of ice to suck on? Ice boxes came before refrigerators, ours was on the back porch. It didn't have a drip pan underneath. We just let it drip out. Drip pans were for those ice boxes that were kept inside the house. My one grandfather was one that still delivered blocks of ice

The toy trains were wind up. My sister making her dolls out of Holly Hock flowers. (It would take too much here to explain how they were made) Or my sisters cutting out the women's fashions, from the catalog, making "paper dolls clothes". Making your self a glow in the dark ring by rubbing a fire fly on your finger..I guess you could say...remember when we made our fun, not buy it.

Remember using and spending Indian head pennies, and Buffalo head nickles? Sometimes a Liberty head dime would show up, but we spent it anyway and not collecting it. It was just another dime at that time.

Ok, time for some of you other Old Codgers to add too, and let us know you're so old, Father Time was still a kid.

WuzzFuzz

 

[smokindog]

I'm afraid I knew them all and I'd just have to copy and paste your essay

Someone asked the other day, 'What was your favorite 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. 'Mom cooked every day and when Dad 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.

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, wore Levis , set foot on a golf course, traveled out of the country or had a credit card.

My parents never drove me to school. 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 15. It was, of course, black and white, and the station went off the air at 11, after playing the national anthem and a poem about God. It came back on the air at about 6 a.m. and there was usually a locally produced news and farm show on, featuring local people...

I never had a telephone in my room. The only phone 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 --my brother delivered a newspaper, six days a week. He had to get up at 5 A.M.every morning.

Movie stars kissed with their mouths shut. At least, they did in the movies. There were no movie ratings because all movies were responsibly produced for everyone to enjoy viewing, without profanity or violence or most anything offensive.

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?

MEMORIES:

My Dad is cleaning out my grandmother's house (she died in December) and he brought me an old Royal Crown Cola bottle. In the bottle top was a stopper with a bunch of holes in it.. I knew immediately what it was, but my daughter had no idea. She thought they had tried to make it a salt shaker or something. I knew it as the bottle that sat on the end of the ironing board to 'sprinkle' clothes with because we didn't have steam irons. Man, I am old.

How many do you remember?
Head lights dimmer switches on the floor.
Ignition switches on the dashboard.
Pant leg clips for bicycles without chain guards.
Soldering irons you heat on a gas burner.
Using hand signals for cars without turn signals..

Older Than Dirt Quiz :
Count all the ones that you remember, NOT the ones you were told about
Ratings at the bottom.

1. Candy cigarettes
2. Coffee shops with tableside juke boxes
3. Home milk delivery in glass bottles
4. Party lines on the telephones
5. Newsreels before the movie
6. TV test patterns that came on after the last show and were there until shows started again in the morning. (There were only 3 channels !!
7. Peashooters
8. Howdy Doody
9. 45 RPM records
10. Hi-fi records
11. Metal ice trays with lever
12. Blue flashbulb
13. Cork popguns
14. Studebakers
15. Wash tub wringers
<>
If you remembered 0-3 = You're still young
If you remembered 3-6 = You are getting older
If you remembered 7-10 = Don't tell your age, &
If you remembered 11-15 = You're older than dirt!!! THAT'S ME !!!

I might be older than dirt but those memories are some of the best parts of my life.. Don't forget to pass this along!!
Especially to all your really OLD friends

 

[ordy]

I remember all the things mentioned so far. I grew up in the city so my experience was a little different. The 'ice man' making deliveries wearing the thick leather shoulder pad and carrying the gigantic tongs, rag pickers, guys pushing carts with whet stones on them who would sharpen your knives, banking the coal furnace at night and shaking/hauling the ashes out in the morning before restoking the furnace. The closest thing we had to fast food was Howard Johnson's automat.

 

[Donn]

Milk delivery in a horse drawn wagon. The CONELRAD Alert system. Skywriters. Steam locomotives in regular rail service. Trolley busses and streetcars. The medical condition that struck fear into my heart, polio.

 

[smokindog]

WOW, I forgot all about the pit toilets and pump water along 75. THANKS!!!

I'm 55 and grew up in a factory town in Ohio with Amish farm country around it. Milk, eggs and butter were delivered by wagon (Amish fellow), potato chips and pretzels were home delivered weekly in big cans by delivery truck. The brand new interstate(I-75) had pit toilets and hand pumped water in the rest areas. 3 channels on the TV, we got the second or third color TV in the neighborhood when I was in grade school. Neighbors came over to see it! No central air, no rock and roll radio stations until I was 10 (the devil's music you know). The bus had electric power with antennas going to overhead wires. And I was able to ride my Schwinn to a store when I was 10 and buy my first firearm(my parents told me okay) and ride home with it(very carefully). I still have that shotgun.

 

[wittmeba]

I must be really up there...I remember them all and a few more.

We had a piece of tinted film that we put over the B&W TV to simulate color.

And the TV screen was not a rectangle. It had a flat top and bottom and round on each end.

Helm's Bakery Deliveries of bread and donuts in the yellow station wagons (So. Cal San Fernando Valley)

Wax lips & mustaches and Wax Coke bottles filled with flavored water

Imperial YoYo's

Hula hoops

Roller Skate keys

Tin foil on TV Rabbit Ears

Putting pennies on train tracks to get them flattened out to wear on a chain around your neck

LP 78 records

Wooden guns made from a piece of 1X4 with a wooden broom handle for the barrel - (and we didn't go to jail for playing with them)

Go carts with lawn mower motors - you had to wind a rope around a special pulley to start

High beam light switch was a round button on the floor

Tokens to ride the Flying Red Horse at Mobil Gas Stations

The illuminated Indian Head hood ornament on dad's Pontiac

Lots of great memories...

 

[joeintexas]

I remember all of those. The few times we ate out we went to a drive in called George and Johns on main street. Man did they make a great hamburger and fries! It wasn't exactly fast food either, they cooked it after you ordered it, no microwave stuff back then. The first fast food place I remember was Mcdonalds and the burgers were 15 cents and taste like cardboard with ketchup.

 

[blujax01]

I remember 13 of 15 and our town had fast food - a Burger Chef and a BBF - as well as local malt shops with car hops. On roller skates. Next street down from the drive-in theatre. (That had a merry-go-round, swings and monkey bars to play on until the 'skeeters came out at dusk!)

And those in dash 8 tracks ran better with a matchbook shoved underneath the cartridge to keep the heads lined up!

And I'm so old I named it "dirt"!

 

[BigCityChief]

I guess I'm older than dirt.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[mac2]

The OP and similar threads here remind me of when I read a page or two of "Sixguns" by Elmer Keith, written in 1955 (I think).

Back in the "good old days" (when Keith was a young man before say, 1920), young men used to break horses. Now, (1955), they drive flash cars, whistling at girls. Of course, things were better in Keith's day...

Sound familiar?

 

[Salty RI]

I miss the car hop's, you would pull in and put your lights on and a good looking girl on roller skates would come and take your order, they would bring it out on a tray that hooked on your window, when you were done you would put on your parking lights and they would pick up the tray. They went out when places like McDonalds and Burger Chef showed up, they were faster and cheaper. The first fast food place we had here was Carol's, I don't know if they were a big chain, they had a lot of stores in this area.

 

[Brian41]

I knew them all even the soldering iron. One of my first memories is grabbing the wrong end of one my Dad was using and getting burned.
We had 4 TV channels though as we could get Windsor, Ontario too and watch hockey games through the static.
A place called Golden Point had fifteen cent burgers too long before McDonalds came to town. I remember driving 20 miles when I was 18 just to eat at the new McDonalds that opened.

 

[bobelk99]

I miss the car hop's, you would pull in and put your lights on and a good looking girl on roller skates would come and take your order, they would bring it out on a tray that hooked on your window, when you were done you would put on your parking lights and they would pick up the tray. They went out when places like McDonalds and Burger Chef showed up, they were faster and cheaper. The first fast food place we had here was Carol's, I don't know if they were a big chain, they had a lot of stores in this area.

We still have the skating carhops in our area. Chain is Sonic.

 

[bricker]

Man, you guys are really old.

 

[the ringo kid]

For us it was the Banquet tv dinners. )

 

[the ringo kid]

We were the first people in our area to get a TV after school all my friends would come over to the house and we would sit there and watch the test pattern, I'm supprised nobody mentioned the air raid siren's, our telephone when you picked it up the operator would say number please, fast food was the icecream truck, we also had a guy who rode around in a truck selling waffels and donuts nice and hot, boy were they good, there was the rag man who rode around in a horse drawn cart buying rags and newspapers, the man who used to go around sharpening lawn mower blades, kinves and anything else that needed sharpening, we still get milk delivered in glass bottles, it always nice and cold.

I remember the Air Raid sirens too. There was one located directly across the street from where our garage sat. It only sounded at noon on weekdays.

 

[the ringo kid]

15/15 Do you mean they don't make ice trays with levers anymore?

I recently found one made of colored aluminum which was in an antique shop. They wanted $50 for it and was breaking up most of a set including a pitcher, a few glasses and a few other things. I really wanted the ice ray and the pitcher--but was NOT going to shell out $100 for the pair.

 

[the ringo kid]

I remember when McDonalds came to town. The first fast food restaurant I ever heard of, though there were a few hamburger joints around. Their sign said "over 1,000,000 served"!

I remember when they wormed their way into Kingsville. That place was packed solid for about three months. We did have Whataburger and Burger Chef--which was where we continued to frequent. It was at least a year before we stopped by to try McDs--and wondered why we ever stopped there? I also remember when Burger King came to town, they and Whataburger were my two favorite hang-outs. Burger Chef left town sometime in the 70s.

 

[the ringo kid]

I miss the car hop's, you would pull in and put your lights on and a good looking girl on roller skates would come and take your order, they would bring it out on a tray that hooked on your window, when you were done you would put on your parking lights and they would pick up the tray. They went out when places like McDonalds and Burger Chef showed up, they were faster and cheaper. The first fast food place we had here was Carol's, I don't know if they were a big chain, they had a lot of stores in this area.

They stopped giving trays at Sonics around here because people kept stealing the trays. My Sister and at least two brothers stole a tray. On the tail end of the tray thing--you had to ask for one to be left--and I did--because I wanted to keep with "tradition" and steal a tray of my own.

I returned the tray later that day because I felt guilty for taking it..