I really do love all the new gizmos and perks that we have nowadays and are available in a flash or at the flick of a finger. What I really enjoy is that we can now flip through the T.V. 24 hours a day and watch anything we want because there are sets all over the house, we can chat with the kids face-to-face across the world, and we can do just about anything on line.
Just a few personal examples of the new modern age mania to easy living … around our house we actually now have a rocking chair that has six relax positions, rumbles, and even heats up and massages our tired aching bodies. In this age even I can cook dinner or make popcorn in that fancy new micro-wave, and our bathrooms are rigged with a timer so that I don’t get yelled at for leaving the fan on.
How’s this for some great nostalgia?
Then again, even though we are now surrounded by all sorts of quick fixes, facts, and fancy new things, as seniors we always find it a lot of fun to compare, and then look back and see how it was done way back when we were growing up. I am sure that quite a few of us can still recall how it was all done in those days, and that somehow we still managed to survive and have lots of family fun together along the way.
Can you remember when?
It took three minutes for the T.V. to warm up, the picture was black and white and the test pattern came on 10:00 p.m. and stayed on the screen until next morning?
Nobody owned a purebred dog, and most of our pets were called the ‘Heinz 27 variety’ as they were allowed to wander free throughout the neighbourhood and beyond? And believe it or not our moms wore nylons that came in two pieces! I will never forget that our home milk delivery was in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers, and all over town there were soda pop machines, coffee shops with table-side nickel jukeboxes and all sorts of strange chewing gum?
A quarter was made of real silver and it was a decent weekly allowance, payable only after chores were done and was often stored away in our piggy banks to save for a special day or treat? In those days we would reach into a muddy gutter to fetch a penny, because it was made with real copper, and it may have been a 1943 penny, which was really rare?
While we were getting gas at the friendly local garage we also got our windshield cleaned and oil checked all for free, we didn’t have to pay for air, and we even got some trading stamps thrown in? *Only once in a while our parents took us to a movie at the Capital or Empress Theatre in Ponoka and it was really neat because they showed newsreels and cartoons before the feature and a big bag of popcorn and a coke was only 25 cents?
Our mother’s big box of laundry detergent also contained free glasses, dishes, or towels hidden inside, and stuff that came from the local store came without safety caps and hermetic seals because no one had ever tried to poison a perfect stranger yet, and mom stored them way up on the shelf so the baby couldn’t grab them?
We played baseball all together, and the adults helped the kids to learn the rules of the game and how to play fair. It was considered a great privilege to be taken out to dinner at a real restaurant with your parents, and 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?
Being sent to the principal’s office was nothing compared to the fate that awaited the student at home, and in those days they threatened to keep kids back a grade if they failed … and they did.
Summer holidays were filled with bike rides, Hula hoops, visits to the pool and sitting around eating Kool-Aid powder with sugar, snacking on cracker jacks, and smoking candy cigarettes. How great it was lying in the grass with your friends and saying things like, “that cloud looks like a train, or an angel, or whatever else is great.”
We always found lots of time to relax and have some fun then. Those were the days when people went steady, and when a 57 Chevy was everyone’s dream car and it was a real treat to cruise, peel out, lay rubber, or watch submarine races, as long as the town cop didn’t catch us?
I am sharing this with all of you today because it ends with a Double Dog Dare to pass it on. Please send this to someone who can still remember Howdy Dowdy and the Peanut Gallery, the Lone Ranger, The Shadow knows, and galloped along with Roy Rogers/Dale/ Trigger and Buttermilk.
Always live each day to the fullest and remember that the perfect age is somewhere between old enough to know better and too young to care.
Have a great week, all of you.