Do You Remember?

[Old Mooner]

Marcel, you got me started by posting your rememberances in the other thread. In 1957 (your birth year) I was a "junior" in high school. I graduated in 1958. I think I was the original "Richie" from the TV show "Happy Days."
--I remember Saturday morning movies (serials) when the only air conditioning in town was the movie theater (we called them "picture shows"). It cost 15 cents.
--I remember playing "cowboys and indians" with cap pistols. Now I guess it would be "Cowpersons and native Americans", but without the pistols. Someone might think they were real or a bad influence.
--I remember staying out after dark playing "hide and seek" and chasing "lightening bugs.
--" " when backdoors were all called "screen doors" and were generally left open most of the time and nobody broke in.
-- " " my mother shooting at a "prowler" with a shotgun. Everyone had a gun in the house and were not afraid to use it.
-- " " nickel (5 cents) coca-colas in bottles and coke machines with
handles.
-- " " 15 cent per gallon gasoline and a guy that pumped it for you, checked your tires and cleaned your windshield.
-- " " when families only had one car and daddy usually drove it to work.
-- " " everybody dressed up for Easter.
-- " " everybody went barefooted after Easter.
-- " ' burning my bare feet on the hot asphalt crossing the street during a Texas summer.
I can go on and on, but I will give someone else a chance. This stuff brings a tear to my eye.
Moon

[CanadianScroller]

I remember when I first came to Canada in 1965 I was a ripe 8 year old.
The movies they showed us in England at the immigration center showed dogsled races, igloos and bilingual people.

We arrived in August to very hot weather.
The money was different. I went to the store for my mom, I bought a loaf of bread, carton of milk, package of cigarettes and a chocolate bar and a pop and had change back from my dollar.
Still no dogsled.

We moved to the country where we had crank phones. No telephone wires, the fence was used to transmit the signal, If the gate was open you couldn't make a call. We had fresh maple sap that was boiled down to syrup and apple butter and dried apple chips.
Still no dogsled.

In the winter we had deep deep snow. Each day we went out and stuck a broom handle in the ground till we found the car, we dug it out before we went to school. In 1967 we experienced Centennial an incredible time for all Canadians.
Still no dogsled.

time flew by and I didn't graduate......I got my grade 12 at 32...I was a slow learner I got a great wife and three kids, We had ups and downs. The kids got a licken when they needed it, but each one was different. I remember taking the door of my daughters bedroom for 3 weeks because she slammed it all the time.
Still no dogsled.

The kids grew up, left home, came back and still don't want to leave.
They want to go out for drinks or supper with us and we enjoy their company too.
A pack of cigarettes, carton of milk, loaf of bread, chocolate bar and a pop will cost close to twenty dollars. My party line phone is re invented as a chat room, the cellphone wont work if I am out of range. I am not yet bi lingual.
In two weeks I will be sworn in as a Canadian Citizen, I can't think of anywhere else I would rather live.

No complaints, life has been good. I hope the best years are ahead of me but if they are not that's OK too. I have found some great friends here and these relationships are sure to grow.


Anyone have a dogsled??????

[SharonW0111]

boy Moon you do rember don't you?? now those were the daysI WISH WE COULD GO BACK but rembering the good old days justgives me a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye..I do love these walks down memory lane tho-- and even the bad times makes me appreciate the piece and quiet I so enjoy now. Thank you moon for taking this walk down memory lane with me-- its been a pleasure-but I do have a question -- I notice you aren't that far from me-- do you still see fireflies?? when was the last time we had snow-- that I rember when it was actualsnow and not ice-- been a long time for both here in my corner.. I hope you still get to see the fireflies tho- the folks up north can have my snow.
Sharon

[ozarkhillbilly]

I dont go back as far as you do Mooner I was born in 1960, but I do remember going to the big city (St. Louis) and seeing my first Cardinal baseball game at the old Busch stadium in 1966 and seeing Willy Mays hit a homerun off of Bob Gibson.
I remember learning to hunt and fish with my Dad and grandpa and uncles, many times if we didn't shoot or catch anything we only ate what was grown in the garden. I remember all the women folk in the fall busying themselves in the kitchen canning, does anyone do that anymore?
To help me and my brother be better shots, we were given only 6 bullets each when we went out hunting squirrel or rabbits, and we had to give my Dad a nickel for every bullet that missed its mark and failed to bag the game we were shooting at. Yes, I grew up in the country......and I'm a pretty fair shot.
Hide and seek was the game we played everynight in summer before coming in for the night, and we like to take those fire flies and squeeze thier guts out on our face and make glow in the dark war paint.
Ahh, the good old days.

[ozarkhillbilly]

Thought I'd share an old family photo with you all, it was taken in 1917 in Highgate Missouri, My grandmother is the 1st women on the left, my grandfather is the man in the middle with his arms crossed, my mother hasn't been born yet (1929) but her oldest brother is the baby in the womans arms in front of my grandmother, He was killed in WWII in the Pacific and is now buried in the family plot which is about 400 yards from where this house sits, its been struck by lighting and burned but rebuilt since then and remodeled several times. My great grandma and grandpa are also in this picture. The other men are my grandpa's brother's and wives with their children.
Highate Mo. used to have a poulation of around 400 it had a school a church and a general store with a gas station. The one room school house is gone, the gas station gone also, but the old store is hanging on, the population is now around 160......

[CanadianScroller]

Thats great Bill! It is always satisfying to see some of your roots and talk about them. So many times these things are lost.

[Rainman2014]

Mad Dragon

Mooner, Can You Tell Me Where To Get The Mad Dragon Pattern You Made. I Have Been Looking For It For Quite Some Time Now. Tks, Rain Man

[harrisg]

Mooner, I grew up in Springfield, Il and graduated high school in Chicago in 1959. What's amazing is that even though we were worlds apart in those times, what you wrote was a duplicate of what I lived.

As far as drugs were concerned, you got them from the drug store.

When I was about 10, there was a Polio epidemic. We had to stay inside the house the whole summer. I still remember when my grandfather took me out for a quick ride around the block in his 1950 panel truck. Of course we were breaking the law and that even made it more fun. Freedom for 10 minutes felt awfully good. In retrospect, I sure pity the parents who had a bunch of kids to contend with.

Harris

[B Smith]

Cool Thread
I too remember playing cowboys and indians
going to the picture show with 25 cents, my 2 week allowance ,10c for movie 5c for popcorn 5c for pop 5c left over, sometimes snuck in the back door and had all my allowance to spend
playing a game called tin can alley very much like cricket now
going out at night to catch fireflys ,put them in a jar to see it light up, don`t see them anymore
hunting and fishing with my Dad, building our 16 ft boat that we used for years until it needed replacing then we built another one
spending time in my grandpas woodworking shop making the things little boys make from scraps of wood . All of his power tools were homemade with the exception of the bandsaw, jig saw that worked like todays scrollsaw only with pinned blades, planer made from stuff recycled from work, table saw that was just a mandrel and motor with belts and the top raised and lowered to give you different cutting depths ,shaper blades on the table saw were used to give fancy edges on tables etc which is now done with routers
working with my Dad and grandpa is where I get my interest in working with wood from i`m sure
chewing hard tar as gum
making a go carts from a cylindrical shaped crates from bananas
doors were locked with skeleton keys if you ever did lock them
I remember going to my grandpa and grandmas , they lived right across the street, and asked if I could eat supper at their place. Grandma asked why, and I said that mom was putting tar in the beans{actually was molasses how was I to know}

So many good memories ,thanks for the opportunity to share but a few with you
Smitty

[Dusty Buffalo]

Any of you folks missing fireflies, I can send you all you want. We have hordes of them in the summer at our place. I can honestly say, until I moved to Georgia I had never actually seen one. They didn't have them in Arizona and I don't ever remember them in Wisconsin. Not that they weren't there, but we didn't have them at our house. I think those nasty lake flies ate them all. Those things are big enough to carry off a small child. Nasty little buggers.

I remember playing kick-the-can as a kid. We had the whole neighborhood to hide in and there were always about a dozen kids ready to play once the sun went down.

Sometimes I wish I could be 10 again. The hubby says I'm a 10 year old stuck in a 41 year old body. I just like to play and have fun. I don't see anything wrong with that. Now if I could just do something about getting rid of all the bills, then maybe . . .

[Old Mooner]

Funny how many of our memories are the same no matter where we "grew up" isn't it? Well Ozark, in 1960 when you were born, I was in college at the University of North Texas working on an art degree.
--I, too, remember chewing tar Smitty. I also "smoked" grapevine and corn shucks. Had fights with the corncobs.
--Penny loafers.
--Yes, Sharon, I still see lightening bugs (fireflys) once in a while, but I'm too slow to catch one nowadays. Snow I can do without. I spent 4 years in North Dakota and got my fill.
--Yeah Smitty, my dad used to roust me up at 0430 in the morning to go fishing on Red River. We would stop on the way and get coffee and doughnuts before sun up and I thought I was all grown up sitting in a cafe with all my dad's buddies. They all called me "peckerwood" because I was red-headed like a woodpecker.
--When I was in high school it was a big thing on Saturday night to drive around and around the town "square" where the courthouse stood (still stands). Which reminds me--my mom loved to go "window shopping". All the stores back then stayed open "late" on Saturday night and kept their display windows lit up. When mom got tired of looking and dreaming, we would have to sit in the car and "watch the people go by" for awhile before going home.
--Remember dive-in theaters? We had three outside my home town.
--Hot rods, fender skirts, glass pack mufflers, knobs on the steering wheels, cars with clutches, and James Dean.
Guess I better stop. I have too many memories and not enough space.
Moon

[harrisg]

Did any of you take an old gallon paint can, punch a small hole in the bottom, spit on a piece of carbide like they used in the mines for miner's light, put the lid on, wait a minute or two while the gases built up, hold a match to the hole in the bottom and blow the lid off? That's one of the things we did for the 4th of July.

Harris

[Marcel in Longueuil]

Lived in the city, no miner's lights.

BUT,

Built tennis ball launchers (canons) out of empty food cans and powered with lighter fluid.

I used to blow up little green plastic soldiers in the sandlot, with firecrackers pretending they were land mines and mortars.

Used to buy those blank 22cal. bullets they sold for starter pistols. And since we did not have pistols, we used slingshots to smash them against concrete walls: effective!

Almost poked a neighbour's eye out with throwing darts. had a bunch of them and was pretty good, convinced him to take a stand against the garage wall and threw around him like they do with knives in a circus. Needles to say it was stupid, he ended up with a dart hanging from his eyelid: 40 years later, I still think it's a miracle that I did not make him blind in that eye that day.

Playing cowboys and indians with metal cap pistols and cowboy outfit
Going to the movies in the church basement on Sunday afternoon, price of admission: a can of food for the poor

Using my wooden wagon and waiting in line with other kids to carry groceries from the supermarket to the customer's home for a "tip" (you could follow a stranger home then, well some...DAMHIKT)

Picking up empties at the local baseball park and selling them for .02 each, and making a dollar or two.

Water balloons and girls !!!
Hide and seek and girls !!!
Spin the bottle & girls... Ok girls were important, and still are



Montreal Expo'67 "Man and his World", "La Ronde" amusement park and the Metro (subway) inaugurations
Public transport: the big brown buses: fare .07
Renting Mustang bicycle (Brando handlebars and banana seat): .60/hr (couldn't afford to buy one)

Going to the country in my grandfather's car and learning to swim in a lake, Ok so my uncle threw me off the end of the peer without my life jacket on, but he swears he knew I'd be able to...

Getting my mouth washed with soap for swearing.

"THE" snowstom March 4th 1971: city paralized for 4 days, snowmobiles used as emergency vehicles downtown Montreal. (can't forget that one: it was my birthday)

President Kennedy getting shot, Martin Luther King getting shot, John Lennon getting shot.

Sputnik in orbit
First man in space
Man landing on the moon
Computer punch cards
First digital red LED watches
78-33-45 rpm's
Birth of (mass produced) color tv
Cinemascope
Polaroid Land camera (B/W) with the little wet sponge thing
popcorn with real melted butter
3 for .01 candies
buying cigarettes for my mom: .32/pack of 25

I too could go on...
Marcel

[CanadianScroller]

Times they are a changing

I would like to see what some of the younger members remember.
Times change so fast.

Words change so much too.
There was a time when it was good to be at the beach, wearing thongs, having a gay old time.

A fag was something you smoked. a bud was a friend and a faggot was a bundle of sticks.

There were actually words that you could not hear on television. and even a simple word like fart was one of them.

Long hair music was classical, then it became rock, and now again it is classical.

You could spin a yarn, spin a top but a spin doctor didn't exist.
When something was bad it meant it wasn't good.

It wasn't good to be called geeks, dweebs and nerds.

Some words are so obscure now we have to think about them when we hear them
Some one told me to have a cheery day a while back and it took a moment to register.

Bees knees, that's my bag, groovy, funky, boss, mint, cool, nifty, righteous have all fallen to the wayside and now the big M quoins the phrase "I'm Lovin It"


It is really a wonder we can communicate at all.
I don't even want to get started with Acronyms.
PBJ and KD, BLT.

Well ty and TTYL

[lucky788scroller]

LOL Carl, your FOS sometimes, but I still LMAO reading that! BBL Dale