I just thought you might enjoy this:
I hope it brings a smile to you face! It did for me!!!
DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN…?
All the girls had ugly gym uniforms?
It took five minutes for the TV warm up?
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?
Your Mom wore nylons that came in two pieces?
All your male teachers wore neckties and female teachers had
their hair done every day and wore high heels?
You got your windshield cleaned, oil checked, and gas pumped,
without asking, all for free, every time?
And you didn’t pay for air? And, you got trading stamps to boot?
Laundry detergent had free glasses, dishes or towels hidden
inside the box?
It was considered a great privilege to be taken out to dinner
at a real restaurant with your parents?
They threatened to keep kids back a grade if they failed. . ..and
they did?
When a 57 Chevy was everyone’s dream car…to cruise,
peel out, lay rubber or watch submarine races, and people went
steady?
No one ever asked where the car keys were
because they were always in the car,
in the ignition, and the doors were never locked?
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?
Stuff from the store came without safety caps and hermetic seals
because no one had yet tried to poison a perfect stranger?
And with all our progress, don’t you just wish, just once,
you could slip back in time and savor the slower pace,
and share it with the children of today?
When being sent to the principal’s office was nothing
compared to the fate that awaited the student at home?
Basically we were in fear for our lives,
but it wasn’t because of drive-by shootings, drugs, gangs, etc.
Our parents and grandparents were a much bigger threat!
But we survived because their love was greater than the threat.
Send this on to someone who can still remember
Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, Laurel and Hardy,
Howdy Dowdy and the Peanut Gallery,
the Lone Ranger, The Shadow Knows,
Nellie Bell, Roy and Dale, Trigger and Buttermilk.
As well as summers filled with bike rides, baseball games,
Hula Hoops, bowling and visits to the pool,
and eating Kool-Aid powder with sugar.
Didn’t that feel good, just to go back and say, "Yeah, I remember
that"?
Do you remember what a double dog dare is, read on.
And remember that the perfect age is somewhere between
How many of these do you remember?
Candy cigarettes
Wax Coke-shaped bottles with coloured sugar water inside
Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles
Coffee shops with tableside jukeboxes
Blackjack, Clove and Teaberry chewing gum
Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers
Newsreels before the movie
P.F. Fliers
Telephone numbers with a word prefix….(Raymond 4-601).
Party lines
Peashooters
Howdy Dowdy
45 RPM records
Green Stamps
Hi-Fi’s
Metal ice cubes trays with levers
Mimeograph paper
Beanie and Cecil
Roller-skate keys
Cork pop guns
Drive ins
Studebakers
Washtub wringers
The Fuller Brush Man
Reel-To-Reel tape recorders
Tinkertoys
Erector Sets
The Fort Apache Play Set
Lincoln Logs
15 cent McDonald hamburgers
5 cent packs of baseball cards -
with that awful pink slab of bubble gum
Penny candy
35 cent a gallon gasoline
Jiffy Pop popcorn
Do you remember a time when…
Decisions were made by going "eeny-meeny-miney-moe"?
Mistakes were corrected by simply exclaiming, "Do Over!"?
"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?
"Oly-oly-oxen-free" made perfect sense?
Spinning around, getting dizzy, and falling down was cause for
giggles?
The worst embarrassment was being picked last for a team?
War was a card game?
Baseball cards in the spokes transformed any bike into a
motorcycle?
Taking drugs meant orange-flavored chewable aspirin?
Water balloons were the ultimate weapon?
If you can remember most or all of these, then you have
lived [B]A LONG TIME[/B]!!!!!!!
Pass this on to anyone who may need a break from
their "grown-up" life
Well, Milestone, you’ve managed to make me feel like a real fuddy-duddy. That was a great list you compiled. I’m not normally a subscriber to the theory that "things were better then". In fact, I would claim that they were MUCH worse. But there’s still some nostalgia in 35-cent gasoline and the Lone Ranger.
- PW
who really thinks things have gotten better despite glitches
[quote author=Milestone link=board=omni;num=1056475245;start=0#0 date=06/24/03 at 13:20:45]I . . .
You’d reach into a muddy gutter for a penny?
I still do that! That pays the sales tax on 15 cents! And when you have children in college . . .
. . .
And with all our progress, don’t you just wish, just once,
you could slip back in time and savor the slower pace,
and share it with the children of today?
Do you remember a time when…
Decisions were made by going "eeny-meeny-miney-moe"?
. . .
"Race issue" meant arguing about who ran the fastest?
. . .
My mother taught me to say "Catch a bear by the toe.." for the second line of "Eenny-meeny- . . ." but most of my peers used the N-word instead. Race may not have been an every-day "issue" for White children, but don’t for a moment think it wasn’t an "issue" at all.
And let us not forget "Put your potatoes in!. One potato, two potato, three potato four, . . . "
"Oly-oly-oxen-free" made perfect sense?
. . .
For those new to the Agora, we’ve discussed this at length in the Ready, set, go! thread.
If you can remember most or all of these, then you have
lived [B]A LONG TIME[/B]!!!!!!!
. . .
My mother taught me to say "Catch a bear by the toe.." for the second line of "Eenny-meeny- . . ." but most of my peers used the N-word instead. Race may not have been an every-day "issue" for White children, but don’t for a moment think it wasn’t an "issue" at all.
We always used tiger rather than bear. WHile I admit I’ve heard the n-word version a time or two, I always thought it a corruption and not the norm.
A couple of months back though, I read about a white politician being reamed for using the racially charged "eenny meeny " in public. My immediate reaction was to think "How are you supposed to know?" Personally, I never would have imagined that this childhood rhyme would offend anyone.
Wow, until just now I’d never heard of the aforementioned version of ‘eeny meeny’... we always used ‘tiger’.
Anyway, reading over the list, I couldn’t help but notice that a number of these supposedly bygones joys are just as existant today, and that a number of others were seriously glossing over some very real concerns. Oh well, still provides that warm fuzzy feeling, I guess.
~Silver
Whose grandfather loved Blackjack chewing gum very much, because he had a dozen siblings who didn’t, so he never had to share. :)
To me, as a kid growing up in England in the 50s, the best marmalade was Robertson’s. It’s still made. But back then, their branding was a golliwog. There was a paper one in each jar of preserves. If you collected a sufficient number (who can remember how many?), you could send them to the manufacturer and get an enamel one!
Was it racist? Sure. Did the six-year-old boy collecting paper golliwogs back then think about that? Not at all. And what on earth was the attraction of an enamel golliwog anyway? There lies the mystery. To aspire to something that’s as useless as a hologram. Robertson finally dumped the Golly in 2001.
[quote author=Palewriter link=board=omni;num=1056475245;start=0#9 date=08/17/03 at 00:05:07]Was it racist? Sure.
From the AHD:
rac·ism
n.
1. The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.
2. Discrimination or prejudice based on race.
How on earth could the depiction of one of the favourite contemporary doll-types be interpreted at that time as falling into such a definition? If Robertson’s held racist views at the time and regarded black-skinned people (surely not dolls?) as inferior, why would they choose to characterise their products with this image?
As a small child, like so many others, I had a favourite toy. In my case it just happened to be a Golly. Was my choice an indication of racist tendencies? I don’t think so. Surely the opposite view could be taken, to value the Golly could indicate that its colour was either preferable or immaterial. In fact, I don’t recall believing that there was any direct relationship between toys and the "real" world. Real cars and trains didn’t have big keys in their sides for winding them up, real houses weren’t built with wooden blocks that could be knocked down by spiteful siblings, real castles were never built of wet sand, I could go on.
The world of the fifties and sixties recalled in the first post was most certainly not a golden era for all but from this distance, it appears simpler and had fewer linguistic traps than today.
If Robertson’s held racist views at the time and regarded black-skinned people (surely not dolls?) as inferior, why would they choose to characterise their products with this image?
Surely the point here is that black people (with the possible exception of the ones who were armed and dangerous) were regarded at the time as being entertaining, cute, childlike, objects of fun, etc. Inferior? Absolutely.
Why did Robertson’s choose a gollywog as their logo instead of a dangerous spear-throwing warrior from the Zulu wars? Why were minstrel shows popular well into the Sixties but not Mau-Mau or Black Panther shows? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not criticising Robertson’s decision in 1890 to take the golliwog as a logo, any more than I’m critical of Claude Debussey for writing his whimsical "Gollywog’s Cakewalk" or Agatha Christie for titling a novel "Ten Little [insert N-word here]. It was another time.
I am, however, a little surprised that the Robertson company kept the golly logo until 2001. Particularly since "wog" has been the epithet of choice for racists in Britain for quite some time. It just seems a trifle insensitive.
Of course I’m not accusing little kids who had gollies of being racists anymore than my having a teddy was a slur against bears. However, I believe it did color (forgive the pun) their outlook on life somewhat. When we played cowboys and indians, who back then wanted to be the indian?
Yes, it was a simpler time. For some of us, at least. Far less open, though, which may be why we can still view it through a rose-colored rearview mirror.
[quote author=KatyBr link=board=omni;num=1056475245;start=0#12 date=08/17/03 at 14:06:30]a Teddy…was never ever considered rascist by anyone’s standards, that I know of.
Yes, but did you ever think to ask the bears themselves?
[quote author=Silver Han link=board=omni;num=1056475245;start=0#13 date=08/17/03 at 14:17:08]
Yes, but did you ever think to ask the bears themselves?
Silver, back in TR’s day, you shot first and asked questions afterwards. Particularly in the case of bears.
Katy, I really WAS being sarcastic. My teddy loved me dearly but I still managed to pull his eye off. :)
And as for the Agatha Christie novel:
"Book: First published as ‘Ten Little N-s’ by William Collins Sons & Co. in London in 1939, and as ‘And Then There Were None’ by Dodd, Mead & Co. in New York in 1940.
Stage: Adapted in 1943 by the author, who decided the stage demanded a more romantic ending. Titled ‘Ten Little N-s’ in the UK, it opened in London at St. James Theatre on November 17, 1943, and, retitled ‘Ten Little Indians’ in the US, it opened at Broadhurst Theatre in New York City on June 27, 1944.
Film: The first feature film version was produced in the US by Twentieth Century Fox, and released in 1945 as ‘And Then There Were None’. In 1965, Seven Arts Films in England moved the setting to a remote mountain top castle in the Austrian Alps and released the film as ‘Ten Little Indians’. Avco-Embassy, Inc., produced a third film version in 1975, titled ‘Ten Little Indians’, with the setting in a remote hotel in the Iranian desert. In 1989 in the fourth film, titled ‘Ten Little Indians’, Breton Films moved the locale to an African safari. The film adaptations all retained the ending of the play, rather than the original of the novel.
TV: BBC produced a television version of the stage adaptation, which aired as a live drama on August 20, 1949, as ‘Ten Little N-s’."
the suprisingly instant visual I got of you in a Teddy was too hilarious to not comment on
No no. I wasn’t IN the teddy. He was my companion. At the ripe old age of about four, I abandoned him for tougher stuff. Capguns, lead soldiers, wooden swords. That sort of thing. Never quite been the same since. :)
- PW
who owns a picture taken in 1953 of himself in a cowboy outfit, lined up with his three best friends, one of whom is proudly holding a full-size Union Jack….gosh how a half century just whizzes by
[quote author=Palewriter link=board=omni;num=1056475245;start=15#16 date=08/17/03 at 23:49:25]
No no. I wasn’t IN the teddy. He was my companion. . . .
I gather that she, being of the female persuasion, was thinking of a different kind of teddy, which has now replaced the stuffed bear as the first definition. I DON’T want to imagine that image . . . :P
(As in definition 5 of