Older than Dirt

[Caryl]

This was sent to me by the FNZAS Patron, John Eastwood. I have seen it before but thought some of you might not.

'Hey Dad,' one of my kids 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. 'Grandma cooked every day and when Grandpa 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. But here are some other things I would have told him about my childhood if I thought his system could have handled it.

Some parents NEVER owned their own house, wore jeans, set foot on a golf course, travelled out of the country or had a credit card. In their later

years they had something called a store card. The card was good only at Farmers (now Myers).

My parents never drove me to soccer practice. This was mostly because we never had heard of soccer. 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 11, but my grandparents had one before that. It was, of course, black and white, but they bought a piece of colored plastic to cover the screen. The top third was blue, like the sky, and the bottom third was green, like grass. The middle third was red. It was perfect for programs that had scenes of fire trucks riding across someone's lawn on a sunny day Some people had a lens taped to the front of the TV to make the picture look larger.

I was 13 before I tasted my first pizza, it was called 'pizza pie.' When I bit into it, I burned the roof of my mouth and the cheese slid off, swung

down, plastered itself against my chin and burned that, too. It's still the best pizza I ever had.

We didn't have a car until I was 15. Before that, the only car in our family was my grandfather's Ford. He called it a 'machine.'

I never had a telephone in my room. The only phone in the house was in the living room and it was on a party line. Before you could use it, you had to listen and make sure someone else wasn'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. I delivered a newspaper, six days a week. It cost 7 cents a paper, of which I got to keep 2 cents. I had to get up at 4 AM every morning. On Saturday, I had to collect the 42 cents from my customers. My favorite customers were the ones who gave me 50 cents and told me to keep the change. My least favorite customers were the ones who seemed to never be home on collection day.

Movie stars kissed with their mouths shut. At least, they did in the movies. Touching someone else's tongue with yours was called French kissing and they didn't do that in movies. I don't know what they did in French movies. French movies were dirty and we weren't allowed to see them.

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 from a friend:

My Dad is cleaning out my grandmother's house (she died in December) and he brought me an old tomato sauce 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.

Older Than Dirt Quiz:

How many do you remember?

Count all the ones that you remember not the ones you were told about.

Ratings at the bottom.

1. Choo Choo bar

2. Drive ins

3. Candy cigarettes

4. Soft drink machines that dispensed glass bottles

5. Coffee shops or milk bars with juke boxes

6. Home milk delivery in glass bottles with foil stoppers

7. Party telephone lines

8. Newsreels before the movie

9. Packards

10. Blue flash bulbs.

11. Telephone numbers with 2 letters and 4 numbers.

12. Peashooters

13. Wash tub wringer

14. 78 RPM records

15. Metal ice trays with lever

16. Studebakers

17. Cracker night

18. Using hand signals for cars without turn signals

19. Bread delivered by horse and cart

20. Head lights with dimmer switches on the floor

21. Ignition switches on the dashboard

22. Heaters mounted on the inside of the wall

23. Real ice boxes

24. Pant-leg clips for bicycles without chain guards

25. Soldering irons you heat on a gas burner

If you remembered 0 - 5 = You're still young

If you remembered 6 - 10 = You are getting older

If you remembered 11 - 15 = Don't tell your age,

If you remembered 16 - 25 = You're older than dirt!

I might be older than dirt but those memories are still good.

Don't forget to pass this along!!

Especially to all your really OLD friends.

[whetu]

When I was growing up our phone number was 2050S. Our neighbour's (Mrs McIvor) was 2050M. When the phone rang, the ringing was in morse code to match the letter in your phone number. All the phones in the neighbourhood would ring, but you only answered your code.

Unless, of course, Mrs McIvor was away on holiday, in which case we would answer the phone when it rang with the 'M' code and politely tell the caller Mrs McIvor was away and would be back next week. (Mrs McIvor would also leave her back door unlocked for the week so we could let ourselves in after school to feed her cat.)

If you wanted to make a phone call you would pick up the phone and listen to see if the line was busy. If one of the neighbours was using the phone already they would say "working!" and you would apologise and quickly hang up.

If the line was free, an operator would come on and say "number please" and you would tell her (always her) the number you wanted. "2012D please." She would connect you and say "through now". If you were calling another exchange, you would have to give the name of the exchange as well as the number. "Houhora 515 please."

The telephone was an important household tool, not a toy. Children were rarely allowed to make calls and we certainly didn't just call our friends for a chat! There was also a definite protocol around the use of the phone - a whole other language and etiquette. Also you would only make calls after about 9pm in a real emergency, because the phone would ring in 10 other households in the district. If you had a late night call, the following day the other kids on the school bus would ask you about it - Who was it? Is your grandmother ok? (Then they would have to report the answers to their mother when they got home from school.)

I think I'm older than dirt. :lol:

[whetu]

Some interesting things there, Caryl - although very American! Also some of them only applied in cities - in the country or in small towns of course we didn't have milk delivered. We had to walk to the local store with our empty milk bottles in a wire holder, then walk back with the full ones. Boy did those wire handles dig into little hands!

Older Than Dirt Quiz:

How many do you remember?

3. Candy cigarettes - yes!

4. Soft drink machines that dispensed glass bottles - Machines?! wow, you had to be from the big smoke to get soft drinks from a machine.

6. Home milk delivery in glass bottles with foil stoppers - yes to the bottles with foil, no to the delivery

7. Party telephone lines - yes. My parents had one until about 10 years ago (the last on NZ's main islands, I believe)

8. Newsreels before the movie - Movies?! Only for city kids :roll:

11. Telephone numbers with 2 letters and 4 numbers - I remember phone numbers with three numbers only. My parents' was 515

13. Wash tub wringer - my mother still uses one

14. 78 RPM records - yes!

18. Using hand signals for cars without turn signals - yes!

24. Pant-leg clips for bicycles without chain guards - You can still get bike clips. This doesn't make you old, just fashionable.

[alanmin4304]

What about milk bottles with cardboard tops and before that the milkey coming around and giving so many ladles into your container, and cream that floated to the top of the bottle and real cream that you could stand a spoon up in. All heavily subsidised and cheap as chips

[Caryl]

In Hokitika we would take a container to the milk treatment station and they would fill it up with really thick, spoon stand up in it, cream! YUM. Modern cream is not the same

I remember...

3. Candy cigarettes

4. Soft drink machines that dispensed glass bottles (could never afford to buy a drink though)

5. Coffee shops or milk bars with juke boxes

6. Home milk delivery in glass bottles with foil stoppers (except we actually had a cow and made our own milk, cream and butter when I was a child)

7. Party telephone lines (we had 5 on our line. Us kids NEVER touched it!)

Husband remembers when the Motueka grocers had the phone number 1 and PO Box 1 :lol:

12. Peashooters (I had 2 older brothers. They also set fore to ants with magnifying glasses :roll: )

13. Wash tub wringer (we had one of these until I was about 14. Be wary when leaning over the wringer! :-? )

14. 78 RPM records (still got a lot of these, plus a gramophone on which to play them)

15. Metal ice trays with lever (still got one of these too)

18. Using hand signals for cars without turn signals

20. Head lights with dimmer switches on the floor

21. Ignition switches on the dashboard

24. Pant-leg clips for bicycles without chain guards (I use these today except they are plastic, not metal like the ones I used as a child)

25. Soldering irons you heat on a gas burner (Grant has one of these)

Chips aren't that cheap these days either Alan

[Alienara]

Omg i could only remember 2/25 of everything there.... you guys are definitely older than dirt... i remember hearing of those things from my parents and even my grandparents used to tell me of those things...

This is gonna be a lil different as I hail from another country, but my mom used to tell me about how they could survive on 20c a day, my grandad still has a RPM(?) player in his house and it WORKS!!! When I was a kid, my grandma would take me to a chinese coffee shop where she would have a coffee with her mates and poured some onto the saucer for me to drink. the coffee isn't the same as those that we get from starbucks nowadays, it's not fancy but it was strong. Basically it was black coffee, no milk or sugar with hot water. I remember the days when putting a person on the phone on hold meant placing the reciever on a box that played music and when mobile phones were basically bricks that were used as weapons to ward off potential thieves. I remembered the day when the first cyber cafe was opened and prior to that we had shops that had video consels that we paid some money in order to play any game we wanted.

[Caryl]

You aren't very old then are you? :lol:

When I was 16 I had a little step through Nifty 50 scooter. It cost 50c to fill it with petrol. :roll:

[Alienara]

lol no... only facing my quarter century crisis while trying to get married at the same time...

[livingart]

taking out the american bits, i am still older than dirt

i am dust

[alanmin4304]

When I was 16 I had a step over push bike with only one gear.

[humvee]

I remember 5 and a half

You can still get candy cigarettes if you look hard enough - I don't think they taste anywhere near as good as I remember them when I was a kid.

We had a little milk truck that used to deliver to our gate - remember using stupid little tokens in exchange and cute guys with no shirts hanging off the back of the truck in the summer

Our telephone number had 5 numbers - does that count? Hubby's used to have 3 numbers and he's only a year older than me No letters though.

Our landrover has the dimmer on the floor, and ignition on the dash - its a 1960-70 something dinosaur years old

And had friends who used the pant-leg clips to keep their pants out of the chain when I was in college (only 4 years ago)

[Rob]

Apparently I only qualify as 'getting older' - though I do remember the old party line phone. As Caryl said, we kids never touched it, I remember 'our ring' used to be short-long-short and I was never sure as a kid how long you had to crank the handle on the side to qualify as a 'long' - what would happen if I cranked the handle too long to be a short, but to short to be a long - was there someone out there that had a short-medium-short ring?? I also remember that there were a couple of batteries (big 1.5V dry cells??) connected to the phone.

[alanmin4304]

And that phone today would probably be worth megabucks but in no doubt got chucked out.

[Zev]

We used to have our milk delivered by horse and cart -does that make me old or what?

[Caryl]

Probably both :lol:

[phoenix44]

gosh. i only know of the cigarette sweet / lollies, and drive ins!

[Caryl]

Grant says he remembers when the night cart did the rounds!!! :lol:

His grandmother used to make their soap and pour it into wooden moulds she sat on the concrete in the backyard. You never walked on that bit of concrete when it rained! :lol:

...and the batteries in the old phones were number 6 Everready.

PS. For you youngin's, the night cart was the man who did the rounds emptying the outdoor toilets (no indoor like namby pamby loos of today!)

[jim r]

We used to get into the cinema using empty pop bottles as payment to watch the likes of Muffin the mule.

[Alienara]

OMG are you guys like zombies that have come back from the dead to haunt us? LOL almost everything i'm hearing here is so otherworldly!!!! zev has the milk delivered by horse and cart!?!??!?! HOW OLD ARE YOU MAN!??!?!?! i just find this extremely amazing as the only time that i can imagine a horse and cart is in one of those medieval novels that i read...

[alanmin4304]

My father in law used to have to milk the cows then deliver milk in a horse and cart all over Christchurch before he went to school. Those were the days.

[Billaney]

We used to have a Rag & Bone man come around with his horse and cart and give you a gold fish IF you gave him something he could sell

[phoenix44]

zev has the milk delivered by horse and cart!?!??!?! HOW OLD ARE YOU MAN!??!?!?!

Zev is not a MAN!

take that back before you feel the wrath of the pointy stick :lol:

[whetu]

Grant says he remembers when the night cart did the rounds!!! :lol:

His grandmother used to make their soap and pour it into wooden moulds she sat on the concrete in the backyard. You never walked on that bit of concrete when it rained! :lol:

...and the batteries in the old phones were number 6 Everready.

PS. For you youngin's, the night cart was the man who did the rounds emptying the outdoor toilets (no indoor like namby pamby loos of today!)

I still make my own soap, but I use muffin pans as moulds.

Speaking of muffins, does anyone remember the days before they were 2 feet tall and weighed a tonne each? We seem to have come to accept super-sized food as normal. *sounds like a grumpy old woman*

Come to think of it, they weren't even called muffins. They were cupcakes. Muffins were those things you toasted in a toaster that had a little door on each side and you had to turn the toast over manually to cook the other side...

[whetu]

gosh. i only know of the cigarette sweet / lollies, and drive ins!

I went to my first ever drive-in movie in 2004! In a town called Lubbock in West Texas. In a Chevvy pickup truck. Talk about culture shock!

[alanmin4304]

We had the night cart (truck not horse and cart) where I worked until the late 70s.