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From an email I received today:

Some thoughts about the "Good Old Days".

Black and White television:
You could hardly see for all the snow, spread the rabbit ears as far as they would go.
Pull a chair up to the TV set, "Good Night, David. Good Night, Chet."

My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning.

My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat it raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in icepack coolers, but I can't remember getting e.coli.

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then.

The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.

We all took gym, not PE.. and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now.

Flunking gym was not an option... even for stupid K*ds!
I guess PE must be much harder than gym.

Speaking of school, we all said prayers and sang the national anthem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention.

We must have had horribly damaged psyches. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself.

I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations.

Oh yeah... and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!

We played 'king of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of Mercurochrome (K*ds liked it better because it didn't sting like iodine did) and then we got our butt spanked.

Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.

We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either because if we did, we got our butt spanked there and then we got butt spanked again when we got home.

I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and tricks on the front stoop, just before he fell off.
Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house.
Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof.
It was a neighborhood run amuck.

To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that?

We needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes? We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac! How did we ever survive?

ALL THE BEST TO ALL OF US WHO SHARED THIS ERA, AND TO ALL WHO DIDN'T- SORRY FOR WHAT YOU MISSED.
I WOULDN'T TRADE IT FOR ANYTHING

"Oh yeah... and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed! "

I remember that if you got just a little hurt it was Bactine, if it was really serious, then it was Mercuricrom

Wow, mecuricrom, I haven't heard that one in 30 years and I'm not even 40 yet. Lol. That was the orange stuff you'd rub over a cut before band-aiding it? You'd expect the awful sting but it never came.

How about the aluminium foil on the rabbit ears.

We stood on a house in Huntington Beach, CA with a coat hanger and aluminum foil attached to a broom stick to get the snowflakes mentioned, and first Stuperbowl.

Thanks for the memories Witling, I guess I really am an "old fart".

Health & happiness to all:

Steve - Santas Bro

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It's not the size of the wand that put the rabbit in the hat, it's the magic in it!!!

Wit

You are bringing back WAY too many memories and I am only 49.....SCARY I remember too many of those

Lucky you young'in Try no TV, no superbowl just the radio with the Green Hornet, the Shadow, Amos & Andy, George & Gracie etc.

Thanks for the memories Wit.

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Pura Vida
Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four
essential food groups:
alcohol, caffeine, sugar and fat.
Alex Levine

Damn, I'm only 43 and can remember all of this. Anyone recall the paddle? I'd get it at school and then the belt at home. No such thing as HRS since the cop bringing you home will watch your beating and thank your parents. If you skipped school, there was Saturday school for make up. I sure do miss the good old days.

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"You can only keep a secret between two people if the other one is dead." Ben Franklin

I should sue my mom for using merthiolate for cuts and it stung like hell. She thought if it hurt it had to be killing those germs.

I also miss the Saturday morning tv line up in the 50's, Rin Tin Tin, Lone Ranger, Fury, Son of Fury, Sky King and a few others.

We K*ds built fires for cooking in the woods, built 'forts' , carried pocket knives and played with real bows and arrows and real bb guns. However our dirty talk about girls was a bit less refined than discussions on this board

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Providing humanitarian assistance to self employed chicas, one cash grant at a time.

double post

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Providing humanitarian assistance to self employed chicas, one cash grant at a time.

Damn. This whole thread is making me feel old!

... what about running around, being hyper, throwing rocks (or snowballs), climbing trees, being mischevious, etc... We were "normal" K*ds. Now ? They call it a "syndrome", and they give the K*ds all kinds of meds to suppress them and calm them down. Shit... I used to get a back-hand to the head, or a boot in the ass, and it always calmed me down!

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You ALWAYS have an option ....... "NEXT" !!!

What a trip down memory lane Wit!The good old days were pretty good but i'm making some good memories right now as well.It's great that we were born in the jet age!

What a great post!

I wonder what inspired you to do it?

Could it be you tire of rules so absurd all I do is scratch my head?

I am not sure how my K*D survives now. If you do anything wrong today it is a felony. I would have been in jail when I was 14.

Like the time the cop pulled us over when we were 16. And I quote " Ok boys I am going to walk back to my car and run your license and registration. I want all the beer cans under the seat by the time I get back!"

Plenty more incidents that were considered mischeif then. Not that I approve of drinking and driving but today my life would have been ruined. I turned out ok and certainly pay more than my fair share of taxes. Which i think in todays world seems to be the only standard the gov't measures us by.

We used to ride around on bikes without a helmet and kneepads.

We built forts in the woods using hachets, hammers and nails. My friend nearly cut my ear off when I fell down and the blade hit my ear.

I remember putting a roof on the house when I was only eight. I worked with someone nowadays who won't let his K*D mow the lawn because thirteen isn't old enough.

We used to know all our neighbors.

I do not know how we survived our childhoods with the level of freedom we had. We played with matches and only started one minor forest fire. I cut my foot with a hatchet. We played 'paintball' with bb guns and goggles. (God, that hurt.) We dug a cave into the side of a dirt bank and it collapsed one night during a rainstorm (glad we were not in it.) I made a parachute out of a sheet and jumped off the roof and somehow did not get injured. We climbed clifflike dirt banks and somehow did not fall. I stuck a knife in an electric socket when I was 6 to see what was inside (the jolt melted the tip of the blade.) The good old days

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Providing humanitarian assistance to self employed chicas, one cash grant at a time.

OH the wonderful early 70's........As soon as we were old enough to drive, off we went car full of teenagers off to the concert 50-70 miles away with the bag of wacky tobaccy... Just a have fun from the folks and dont be drinking and driving. Not a worry that we would not return safely as we always did. On more than one occasion all that was necessary was a phone call home, I am spending the night at ____'s house, see you in the morning....This was never a problem

When we screwed up, as MG said above it as dealt with swiftly by the back of a hand or a belt (this would probably land the folks in jail today)...

Yes El Viejo, they were good times.... Jumping off roofs, climbing trees 50 feet up and scaring the shit out of the Mom.... Like you I also knew all of my neighbors and the poarents were all friends growing up. What happened to those days My neighborhood is pretty quiet, I know my immediate neighbors quite well, some I could do without, others I trust to watch my home when I am away...I sometimes miss the old times...