I remember all of them plus margarine came in a plastic bag and you had to break a little packet with dye in it and squish the bag until the margarine was yellow. That was my job. Vique.

I'm 59 today and remember allllllll of those. Thanks for reminding me I'm old. LOL!!

Great list.

Linda

ahhhhhhhhhhhh, yes indeedie!

Still do this

Lying on your back in the grass with your friends and saying things like, 'that cloud looks like a... '?

Yes,yes,yes,I remember evereything. I'm closer to 60 than I'd like.

Oh, I don't remember any of those. Not a single one. Ok...so I am fibbing slightly! LOL

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LindyLuWho!

All the girls had ugly gym uniforms? -- Yes and mine was a faded gold looking thing
It took five minutes for the TV to warm up? -- yes

Nearly everyone's Mom was at home when the kids got home from school? -- yes

Nobody owned a purebred dog? -- n/a

When a quarter was a decent allowance? -- yes

You'd reach into a muddy gutter for a penny? -- no

Your Mom wore nylons that came in two pieces? --yes and I wore then also!

All your male teachers wore neckties and female teachers had their hair done every day and wore high heels? --n/a

You got your windshield cleaned, oil checked, and gas pumped, without asking, all for free, every time? And you didn't pay for air? And, you got trading stamps to boot? -- I wish they still did that especially on a rainy day like today

Laundry detergent had free glasses, dishes or towels hidden inside the box? -- n/a

It was considered a great privilege to be taken out to dinner at a real restaurant with your parents? -- n/a

They threatened to keep kids back a grade if they failed. And they did it! --yes

When a 57 Chevy was everyone's dream car...to cruise, peel out, lay rubber or watch submarine races, and people went steady? -- I remember and I would love to have a 57 chevy these days!

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? --yes

Lying on your back in the grass with your friends and saying things like, 'that cloud looks like a... '? -- yes

Playing baseball with no adults to help kids with the rules of the game? --n/a

Stuff from the store came without safety caps and hermetic seals because no one had yet tried to poison a perfect stranger? --Yes, I always think about this when I go and open something sealed and with a bunch of cotton shoveled in the container

When being sent to the principal's office was nothing compared to the fate that awaited the student at home? --so true

Candy cigarettes --yes

Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside -- yes

Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles --yes

Coffee shops with table side jukeboxes -- yes, someplaces still have them like a diners

Blackjack, clove and teaberry chewing gum --no

Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers --I remember milk being delivered but not the cardboard
News reels before the movie --yes

P.F. Fliers --of course

Telephone numbers with a word prefix - (Raymond 4-601). --yes

Party lines --yes

Peashooters --no

Howdy Dowdy --alittle bit

Hi-Fi's & 45 RPM records --Yes

78 RPM records --Yes

Green stamps --Yes

Mimeograph paper --Yes and their smell :-)

The Fort Apache play set. --no

Decisions were made by going 'eeny-meeny-miney-moe'? --yes

Mistakes were corrected by simply exclaiming, 'Do Over!'? --yes

'Race issue' meant arguing about who ran the fastest? --yes

Catching fireflies could happily occupy an entire evening? --yes

It wasn't odd to have two or three 'best friends'? --yes

The worst thing you could catch from the opposite sex was 'cooties'? --yes

Having a weapon in school meant being caught with a slingshot? --yes
Saturday morning cartoons weren't 30-minute commercials for action figures? --yes

'Oly-oly-oxen-free' made perfect sense? --yes

Spinning around, getting dizzy, and falling down was cause for giggles? --yes

The worst embarrassment was being picked last for a team? --n/a

War was a card game? --yes

Baseball cards in the spokes transformed any bike into a motorcycle? I remember donig it with my bike

Taking drugs meant orange - flavored chewable aspirin? --yes

Water balloons were the ultimate weapon? --yes
Deb

Yes, unfortunately I do remember them all. Sigh. I still look at clouds and see shapes, though now I lay on a lounge chair. LOL
Clare

I remember lot's of those and in spite of them making me feel old I do love remembering them! Such great times!

I remember them all.

i remember phone numbers in the tiny town where my sister lived that were only three numbers.
Thanks for the walk down memory lane.
I graduated from high school in 1957.

great list great memories I think my kids would even remember some of them

Uummmmmm I don't remember all of those. (Liar, liar, pants on fire). Just the ugly gym uniforms.
Leslie\ducking and running out of here.

I remember ALL of them as well,except our gym uniforms weren't bad.We wore white blouses with navy shorts,white socks and either navy or white sneakers.

We didn't have running water,so i also remember the bar of soap put into this mesh type box thing with a long handle and you sloshed it around in the dishpan to get soapsuds.

What about wringer washers,rinse water with blueing,and pulley clotheslines?? GR8 Memories,thanks.
Kathi

This was fun. I'm happy I was around to know most of them first hand. It just reminds me of how many years have passed since I was born! Felt good to back to those times though.

Gosh, I'd give anything to take my kids & Gk's back to the good ole days! I really don't think they'll ever know true fun & happiness!

Donna (^_^)

How about when someone whispered "It's snowing down south"... Which necessitated an embarrassing run into the closest Ladies Room.

All of them, especially the gym uniforms, white blouse with black bloomers, not shorts, but bloomers with elastic in the legs, didn't want anyone to see any underpants!!

I'm 84 and remember all but 'oly-oly=oxen-free'. Can someone tell me what that was. I'm never too old to learn.

Most of all I remember getting objects in products. I remember about Dolly Paton saying " You can't buy 'em you can only buy them in boxes of Breeze". LOL! (Towels)

Boy did this bring back memories. My mother saved all of her Better Homes and Gardens from 19-- onward. When she died I got all the issues from 1948, the year I was born.

Here's some goodies that were advertised that I don't see anymore.

Thor convertible dishwasher/washing machine. Club Aluminum cookware, Bon Ami, Easy washer/spin dryer (she had one of those for a short time) Delsey Toilet Tissue, Swift'ning, Fluffo, Hamilton and Bendix Washers and Dryers, Crosley GAS refrigerator, Zenith and RCA combination TV, radio and record players. There are a whole lot more, but those are the ones that pop out at me the most.

Anyone else remember cloths being hung out even in the winter? They be frozen stiff and brought in to thaw out by the hot air register. Did anyone else have a coal furnace? One of our chores was to make sure the fire was stoked up first thing in the morning. We'd make a mad dash downstairs so we could warm up as the hot air didn't always make it upstairs.

I remember them all as well. And Secsteve, I did grow up with a coal furnace and well remember stoking the fire and removing and hauling ashes out to the corner for the ash man to pick up! The borough then used them on the streets!

I still use Bon Ami, so that product is still around. And I remember watching my grandma wash the clothes in her wringer washer with the bluing in a side tub.

Thanks for this post.A great one.I remember alot of them and I am not all that OLD.LOL.I will be 47 "I think> a week from today.I was born in 1962.I may be 46,or 48.I never can get this right.But I wish we could still get those freebees in washing powders.I always loved it when mom would ask me to get the new box of washing powders out and mom always bought grocs on a Thursday.I could not wait to come home from school and ask if I could go ahead and open the new box even though there was some left in the old box just to see the new dish towel.Man didn't they smell so good.Again I wish we could still get them.Also I remember laying out in the grass watching the airplanes go over,looking at the clouds.I always pray for whoever was in the airplane safety.I do not know why but even today if we hear one even lying in bed at nite time I asked for safety over them.Maybe odd,but I try teaching Ashley this.I live not far from a small airport,and we do hear many.Just my thought.Thanks again for this post.I could write a story over this post.Truly love this.Headed to the groc store,same as mom did on thurs.

WOW...I remember every one of those and I am so happy to say that I lived in those times. I often feel as though I am a fish out of water in this day and age, but I wouldn't trade my life for anything.
Thanks for the memories!!!!

I remember ALOT of those - thanks for posting!

I remember all of this in the OP & several in the others mentioned. If I didn't directly particpate (cards in spokes, for example), I knew someone who did. The technology we have today is great, but it's lacking, too. Most of my g'kids are clueless as how to entertain themselves without a handheld game in their hand! I think it's sad. This post brought back good things. Thanks for shsaring.

What about you didn't go to the dentist unless you had a tooth ache and by then it was just about too late? I was having this conversation the other day. My mother never wore slacks until she taught first grade and they took a field trip to a farm and were going on a hay ride. We took vacations and took our petticoats w/ us, much to my daddy's dismay b/c they were starched and were BIG. Had the hall phone w/ a short cord so there wasn't much privacy and certainly no answering machine. It's a wonder we ever had a date! Then lived in a dorm w/ one phone on the floor that often went unanswered. Yep! And we call it the good old days.

Ahh, the good old days. LOLOL I remember all of those and more. We had a coal furnace until I was 12 years old and I remember my Dad cooking steak on it when the power went out. I still have pieces of slag beside my house.

I would still pick up a penny out of a muddy gutter.

Anne

tioga -- 'Oly-oly-oxen-free' is what is called out at the end of a game of Hide & Seek, to call in any unfound players. One summer afternoon I hid so well (in the hollow of a cottonwood tree), and the game went on so long, that I fell asleep. My pals got tired waiting for me to come in 'free' and went home to dinner before I woke up and wondered if the game was over and I'd won!

Kids today would be amazed at single-sex dorms in college. Do you remember when "Man on the floor!" was cried from floor to floor in advance of the maintenance guy?

Remember sleeping on the porch in the summer heat -- before A/C? My mother said she and my father once dragged a mattress onto the tile floor in the foyer to sleep in the slight breeze that came through the house from the open front door to the open back door. (Who locked a house then unless you were going away on vacation?)

I didn't fully appreciate the 'decompression' afforded me by walking home from school for lunch, and back again afterwards. (We had an hour for lunch in those days.) I often walked the half mile alone, although usually with a neighbor friend. No 'boogeyman' worries then; wonder if they aren't wildly inflated now. Of course then there were housewives at home in the houses all along our route.

I remember it all. I also remember (when I was really young) the ice man bringing a big cube of ice on his shoulder to put in our "ice box".

Also, March was kite flying month. We would fly those kites for hours and hours until the string would break and the kite would float away...of course we tried to run with it and then find it where it landed.

I also played mumbly-peg with one of the guys scout knife. Yes, our mothers would let us play with a knife!

We also had Jacks tournaments during the summer months, along with hop-scotch going on all summer long. Every now and then we'd drag the Monopoly game out and play for hours and hours.

The kids of today sure have missed out on what it was like to be a kid, with not a worry in the world but having to be home before the street lights went on.

Such good memories...

Susan

I spent the first 4 years of school in a 1-room school, that housed grades 1-8. We walked to school and back, a couple miles along a 2-lane highway.

On Arbor day, in the fall, the teacher would let us out for the afternoon and we would rake all the fallen leaves and make piles and jump in them. Back then they were burned.

She'd also let us out on a nice winter day and we'd have snowball fights and make snow forts.

We played outside for recess and lunch, Red Rover, Red Rover, let _____ come over. And we'd have to break the chain of hands to stay on their team. Skipping rope Double Dutch style.

Getting all excited when we got a new metal lunch pail and new pencils and books for Christmas. The nice pretty square lunch pails (I'm female).

Oh gee, Do I ever love your list. What wonderful memories.. How many remember the outdoor theaters? We had one just around the corner and all the kids in the neighborhood would take their bedroll and pilow over for the movie. We would lay on the front row hump and put the speaker on the ground beside our heads.. We would wait until most of the traffic was gone and walk home..

Susie

Ooops, I meant to say getting new lunch pails and pencils for the first day of school!!! Gee, why would I want a lunch pail for Christmas? LOL

I remember most of those.

I was made to go to bed at what seemed a VERY early time, and when the first drive-in theatre in our area opened, the traffic was slow, and long-lasting past my bedroom window. I really wanted to go to the movies, like those folks, but we simply had no extra money. I mean NONE. My parents rented the leaky old farmhouse from my Grandfather for $25 a month, and it was all they could manage. Mom had a wringer washer, and a wood cookstove, and we had a real icebox instead of a refrigerator. Things got better, later.

I remember every one of them and think they were the best of times and I would go back in time in a heartbeat.

What lovely nostalgic stories!

My memories of a cold winter morning were of the rattling coming up the big old round furnace pipes as Dad shook the ashes out of the grates and put some more wood blocks on the coals to start the fire going ... the heat came more quickly if he'd bought some coal in the fall and put some on the fire at night, for there'd be more coals left. We cut our own wood from trees that were dieing in our woodlot.

Then Dad went to the barn to milk the cows and feed them - as we got older, we had to go out to help, mainly feeding the cattle. We fed the work horses and the beef cattle and pigs (we didn't call them "swine") in another barn after breakfast - but went to school on school days.

Eight kids in one-room elementary school, separate doors for "Boys" and "Girls", with toilets over a tank in the separated basement. We'd line up by the "Boys" entrance door from cloakroom and march around to our desks as the teacher played, "English Country Gardens" on the piano. The big kids helped the littler ones with their work, part of the time.

Once a bit of a distant neighbour came into the little general store in the village when I was there, about 4 years old, I think and Dad was in a side romm getting something, and when he saw me is reported to have said, "No need to ask who you are - Dick Baker will never be dead as long as you're around!".

Dad died 23 years ago ... and there was 28 years difference in our ages.

When he was in his 80s, he'd drive 2,000 miles alone every year from the Prairies down here to London to visit old friends ... in 3 days. We used to say that he was crazy ... but agreed that when they're 80 or so, you may as well save your breath to cool your porridge as tell them what they should do.

Did I say that?

Brother said that he was too tight to spring for more than two nights in a motel on the road ... and when I asked what was the difference - he'd spend about three weeks in a motel when he was down here, brother replied, "Oh, yeah - but he gets a weekly rate from them!".

Did someone say something about apples not falling far from trees?

Have yourselves a great spring weekend, everyone.

ole joyful