Black and white

[OKLAHOMAN]

Black and White (Under age 40? You won't understand.)
You could hardly see for all the snow,

Spread the rabbit ears as far as they go.
Pull a chair up to the TV set,
'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.

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 $49 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 goof. It was a neighborhood run amuck.




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!

 

[Dalecamino]

Ain't it the truth?

 

[glenspens]

Been there, Done that and thanks for the walk back in time.....

 

[raar25]

Been there done that and now I am as screwed up and disfunctional because of it! But I do remember being bored out of my mind with 4 TV channels in black and white and nothing to do all summer accept an occasional game of stick ball.

 

[plantman]

You forgot the part about having to walk the mile and a half to school, uphill both ways. Now the grand kids want to go to the park 3 blocks away and want a ride. My son told them to take their bikes. The reply was "you know that there are child molesters out there don't you !! Nothing beats "The Good Old Days" Jim S

 

[OKLAHOMAN]

Ahh! Stick ball, living in NYC from 1 until 12 before moving back to Tampa , played many games of stick ball, had to run when the cops came to stop us.
With only a broom handle, a rubber ball, a bunch of guys, and a street, you can engage in a full scale, bona fide, serious, respectable game similar in feel to classic baseball. And talk about a field. Who can beat manhole covers for bases, cars and walls for foul lines, roofs for bleachers, and the fire escapes--the mezzanine.

 

[Kenny Durrant]

Those were the days. I think our dads knew each other. Mine would take me to school the first day and introduce himself to the teacher and give her his phone number. He would then tell her if I acted up to beat me then call him and he would beat me. The only time a spanking would be brought up is when mom or dad was asking if you wanted one. Oh and she would have to call after 6pm because there was no caller id, message machine, or cell phones.

 

[elkhorn]

If you were a NY boy, then you also remember "stoop ball", same rubber Spalding ball,and using the edge of a step to hit it out to the street.

And drinking water out of a rubber hose - and we didn't get sick.

 

[OKLAHOMAN]

If you were a NY boy, then you also remember "stoop ball", same rubber Spalding ball,and using the edge of a step to hit it out to the street.

And drinking water out of a rubber hose - and we didn't get sick.

You bet I do and also cork ball, when the ball was a wine bottle cork wrapped with electrical tape and fast pitched underhand.
We kept our selves busy all day long and played in the streets, didn't need Mom or Dad to oversee us and then tell us you'll get them next time the Umpire was wrong.

 

[Band Saw Box]

Oh yes, I remember it well. My dad use to fix raw hamburger with onions on a soda cracker I never got sick. I picked up some Hogan's Heroes DVD at BJ's in Season One. the program starts CBS presents this program in color. Roy thanks for the stroll down memory lane.

 

[1080Wayne]

60 years from now our grandchildren will look back on their childhood with the same nostalgia and concern over what their grandchildren have missed . It may be good for our sanity that we cannot foresee all of the changes to come , although I sure would like to prevent some of the current trends from coming to fruition .

 

[Rich L]

But do you remember Yancy Derringer?

 

[sbell111]

I'm old enough to remember those things in the OP's post, but as a Dad, I recognize that many of the old ways that we pine for were not better (and that's not just because I got a broken wrist playing king of the hill on the pile of gravel that the OP referenced).

 

[tim self]

Yep, not as old as some here but still remember our first TV. Reynolds got rich selling foil I believe just for the TVs. And picking our own switch, better get a good one!