• Please be sure to read the rules and adhere to them. Some banned members have complained that they are not spammers. But they spammed us. Some even tried to redirect our members to other forums. Duh. Be smart. Read the rules and adhere to them and we will all get along just fine. Cheers. :beer: Link to the rules: https://www.forumsforums.com/threads/forum-rules-info.2974/

Are You Older Than Dirt ?

Bamby

New member
Someone 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. !

'Mom cooked every day and when Dad 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 figured his system could have handled it

Some parents NEVER owned
their own house, wore Levis , set foot on a golf
course, traveled out of the country or had a credit card.
In their later years they had something called a revolving
charge card The card was good only at Sears Roebuck. Or
maybe it was Sears & Roebuck.

Either way, there is no Roebuck anymore. Maybe he died.
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
5. It was, of course, black and white, and the station went
off the air at midnight, after playing the national anthem
and a poem about God; it came back on the air at about 6
a.m. and there was usually a locally produced news and farm
show on, featuring local people.

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 4. It was an old black Dodge.

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 dial, you had to
listen and make sure some people you didn't know
weren'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 --my brother
delivered a newspaper, six days a week. It cost 7 cents a
paper, of which he got to keep 2 cents. He had to get up
at 6AM every morning. On
Saturday, he had to collect the 42 cents from his customers.
His favorite customers were the ones who gave him 50 cents
and told him to keep the change. His 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. There were no movie ratings because all movies
were responsibly produced for everyone to enjoy viewing,
without profanity or violence or most anything offensive.

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 Royal Crown Cola 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..

How many do you remember?

Head lights dimmer switches on the floor.

Ignition switches on the dashboard.

Heaters mounted on the inside of the fire wall.

Real ice boxes.

Pant leg clips for bicycles without chain guards.

Soldering irons you heat on a gas burner.

Using hand signals for cars without turn signals.

Older Than Dirt Quiz

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

Ratings at the bottom.

1. Blackjack chewing gum

2. Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water

3. Candy cigarettes

4. Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles

5. Coffee shops or diners with tableside juke boxes

6 . Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers

7. Party lines on the telephone

8. Newsreels before the movie

9. P.F. Flyers

10. Butch wax

11. TV test patterns that came on at night after the last show and
were there until TV shows started again in the morning.
(there were only 3 channels, if you were fortunate)

12. Peashooters

13. Howdy Doody

14. 45 RPM records

15. S& H greenstamps

16.20 Hi-fi's

17. Metal ice trays with lever

18. Mimeograph paper

19 Blue flashbulb

20. Packard’s

21. Roller skate keys

22. Cork popguns

23. Drive-ins

24. Studebakers

25. Wash tub wringers

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 some of the best parts of
my life.
 

Bobcat

Je Suis Charlie Hebdo
GOLD Site Supporter
For the 'older' folk...

Someone 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. !

'Mom cooked every day and when Dad 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 figured his system could have handled it

Some parents NEVER owned
their own house, wore Levis , set foot on a golf
course, traveled out of the country or had a credit card.
In their later years they had something called a revolving
charge card The card was good only at Sears Roebuck. Or
maybe it was Sears & Roebuck.

Either way, there is no Roebuck anymore. Maybe he died.
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
5. It was, of course, black and white, and the station went
off the air at midnight, after playing the national anthem
and a poem about God; it came back on the air at about 6
a.m. and there was usually a locally produced news and farm
show on, featuring local people.

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 4. It was an old black Dodge.

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 dial, you had to
listen and make sure some people you didn't know
weren'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 --my brother
delivered a newspaper, six days a week. It cost 7 cents a
paper, of which he got to keep 2 cents. He had to get up
at 6AM every morning. On
Saturday, he had to collect the 42 cents from his customers.
His favorite customers were the ones who gave him 50 cents
and told him to keep the change. His 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. There were no movie ratings because all movies
were responsibly produced for everyone to enjoy viewing,
without profanity or violence or most anything offensive.

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 Royal Crown Cola 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..

How many do you remember?

Head lights dimmer switches on the floor.

Ignition switches on the dashboard.

Heaters mounted on the inside of the fire wall.

Real ice boxes.

Pant leg clips for bicycles without chain guards.

Soldering irons you heat on a gas burner.

Using hand signals for cars without turn signals.

Older Than Dirt Quiz

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

Ratings at the bottom.

1. Blackjack chewing gum

2. Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water

3. Candy cigarettes

4. Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles

5. Coffee shops or diners with tableside juke boxes

6 . Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers

7. Party lines on the telephone

8. Newsreels before the movie

9. P.F. Flyers

10. Butch wax

11. TV test patterns that came on at night after the last show and
were there until TV shows started again in the morning.
(there were only 3 channels, if you were fortunate)

12. Peashooters

13. Howdy Doody

14. 45 RPM records

15. S& H greenstamps

16.20 Hi-fi's

17. Metal ice trays with lever

18. Mimeograph paper

19 Blue flashbulb

20. Packard’s

21. Roller skate keys

22. Cork popguns

23. Drive-ins

24. Studebakers

25. Wash tub wringers

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 some of the best parts of
my life.
 

rc2james

New member
Site Supporter
I don’t know if these were on the list but I remember going to school when I was in Kindergarten and bragging that we had an inside toilet. Of course, we only had heat in one room of the house from an old pot bellied stove so for a few very cold winters we still had to use the honey bucket. I recall my dad taking the tubes from our DuMont TV down to the drug store where they had a tester.
 

bczoom

Super Moderator
Staff member
GOLD Site Supporter
I'm surprised there was no mention of the extremely strong (or magical) desks we had in the schools. When the alarm went off and we crawled under them, they would protect us from nuclear blasts.
 

California

Charter Member
Site Supporter
I read the quiz without thinking to enlarge the font (<ctl>+) then scored 100%. What did I win?! Maybe the little submarine that you load with baking soda, and it alternately submerges and surfaces? (A premium in the cereal box, for you youngsters).
 

muleman

Gone But Not Forgotten
GOLD Site Supporter
Remember when they launched the first monkey into space? How about Telstar the first satellite? Roll caps for our toy guns? those nasty wax soda bottles you bit the end off of to get the juice inside. First transistor radios. TV that did not need a V chip for kids to watch. Guess I am older than dirt!
 

Ross 650

Well-known member
Site Supporter
I am truly older than dirt or rocks. The high point of school was when it was warm enough to go bare foot!!! I rember playing marbles and having to learn to make the shooter spin to stay in the circle. I also remember the school desks with the hole for the ink bottle. We didnt have pens. We used a pen staff. It was a wooden stick with a fitting on the bottom for a writing pen point.
 

Bobcat

Je Suis Charlie Hebdo
GOLD Site Supporter
Telstar??? Russia's Sputnik was the first satellite. 1957.


He probably meant the first 'working' satellite. The Telstars were working communications satellites while Sputnik just sort of 'beeped'.
 

California

Charter Member
Site Supporter
Bob, Sputnik was a purposeful satellite, it didn't just 'beep'. Maybe that's all that Americans were told about it. It sent back telemetry data. Something like the first measure of density of the upper atmosphere, unobtainable by any previous means.

I think he has Sputnik confused with the the first televison and phone relay satellite five years later. All that did was make commonplace things work faster.

Ignoring the historic significance of Sputnik shows who's just a kid here. :biggrin: When it went up it destroyed the American self-image that we were first in everything. It was a major cultural upset. Immediately the Cold War and Mutual Assured Destruction took a new and frightening turn. I guess you had to be there. As Zoom mentioned, schoolkids all over the US (world?) cowered under their school desks monthly in a drill for the end of the world. That was already strange times and the unexpected shock of the 'backward' Russians putting up the first satellite was about like discovering that Osama managed 9-11 while living in a cave.

The only thing comparable in recent years was watching the WTC fall; obvious to everyone in the world that a new era had begun.

Bah - kids. :smile:
 

ghautz

Bronze Member
Site Supporter
How about starter switches on the floorboard? Vacuum powered windshield wipers that stopped when you stomped on the gas? Hand chokes and throttles? Bumper jacks? Hand crank for the engine? Spark advance lever behind the steering wheel? Master brake cylinders under the floorboard? 6 volt electrical systems? Left hand threads on the lug bolts on the left side of the car? Studebaker's starter that worked when you pushed in the clutch? Plymouth's (I think it was) automatic transmission that included a clutch so your could shift it manually? 3 speed transmissions as standard equipment on nearly every car?

Maybe I belong in an old folks' home already.
 

pirate_girl

legendary ⚓
GOLD Site Supporter
I remember all but these..

8. Newsreels before the movie

11. TV test patterns that came on at night after the last show and

12. Peashooters

13. Howdy Doody

20. Packard’s


24. Studebakers
 

California

Charter Member
Site Supporter
ThumbnailServer2
 

Trakternut

Active member
My dad had a 1959 Buick Invicta. To start it, you pressed the gas pedal allllllll the way to the floor.

I remember enough of that list to not want to talk about it! :whistling:
 

Ross 650

Well-known member
Site Supporter
Howdy,
well, I can remember more cars that died. How about Kaisers, Fraziers, Henry Js, Allstates, Willis, and DeSotos? I remember those vacuum operated wipers. Going up hill they would stop and on the down hill side they would go fast enough to throw the wiper blades off. We had a 41 Plymouth and the coolest thing about it was the speedometer. At night the dash lite for it was green and when you past 60 mph, it turned red. I also remember Smitty steel pack mufflers that sounded so cool. If you had a flat head Ford you could cut strips off a Prince Albert can and block the heat risers which made those Smittys really talk and pop. Have a goodun!!!
 

thcri

Gone But Not Forgotten
How about "Knock on any *****, hear the sound of quality knock on any *****" Can anyone fill in the asterisk?



murph
 

California

Charter Member
Site Supporter
Ever see a Crosley car? Same mfr as Crosley refrigerators! made about 1947-51. Tiny, smaller than anything else on the road. 750cc, 50 mpg.

sw49_t.jpg


The dad of a neighbor, a California Highway Patrolman, collected them and occasionally took the neighborhood kids for a ride. His only one that ran was yellow like this one. Slow, and the noisiest vehicle interior I ever heard of. Imagine a lawnmower with the governor broken screaming at 3x normal speed. The things were essentially toys.
 

Ross 650

Well-known member
Site Supporter
Howdy,
I sure do remember the Crosleys!! Back in the 50s some folks made little drag rails out of them. Sounded fast but were pretty slow. I remember going to the Fun Club at the local picture show and the main attraction was that Johnny of Phillip Morris fame was going to be there to sign autographs. He showed up in a Crosley Hot Shot. That was the convertible edition of the little car. Have a goodun!!!!
 
Top