Guess I'm older than dirt! I got all but 2.

If there is something older than dirt I belong in that category. I remember those things and many more.

For instance we didn't have our first television until after our third child was born!!

Also, there was less talk about and more actual living of real family life.

I'm in the older than dirt category. In fact, I could have written your post. We had to be excused from the table, too!

That was good==still laughing over the first one about sitting down to dinner. How true!!! One of my rules and still is, you have to try (small bite), or 5 peas/beans etc before you say you don't like it. I did this with my GK's too and even 2 of my GGK's..Yes I do remember all except the blue flash bulb. But at 82, I probably forget more that I should .like what did I eat yesterday, but I do remember what I did many years ago> LOL
Marie

OTD here too. I still have a little plastic 'rose' on a cork that fits a pop bottle for sprinkling the laundry.

My grandmother thought the steam iron was a gift from the gods. When she arrived in NYC as a girl the only work she could get was in a laundry, where she ironed with heavy *irons* that were heated on a stove.

You do remember, though, that there were 33 1/3 records before 45's, right? We had an album of "Oklahoma" that must have had eight sides -- to be played on a Victrola, of course.

Anyone else own an Irish Mail? How about a scooter? Heavy, metal, clamp-on roller skates?

Older than dirt here too! I remember everything that has been mentioned except Irish Mail.
Does anyone remember plastic curtains?

Older than dirt here too. I knew about the sprinkler. Our tv was also black and white and the screen was 6x6 or smaller It was in a huge cabinet.. We would have to tell the neighbor kids who were the bad guys. They didn't know. My roller skates had a key and they were put on your shoes. I too had a scooter. We played outside in the summer and winter,, we had story book dolls. Paper dolls. those were the days. My mom cooked every meal and we all sat at the kitchen table. We had a phone on each floor of the house, No air conditioning we opened the windows. I had to shovel coal into the furnace in the winter. We walked to the grocery store. The doctor came to the house. My mom did have a car. We walked to elementary school and rode the city transit bus to junior high and high school.
Mary

first, I didn't make the post up. My buddy Mel, mailed that to me.

I grew up on the fourth floor, the oldest of the girls. Our "outhouse" was down stairs, outside.

we had running cold water in the kitchen.

we bathed in the big galvanized steel tub my dad hauled upstairs on Saturdays.

When I was 9, we moved in to our own house. Flush toilets on two floors.

We got a TV two years later. Yes, black and white.

We walked to school.

My mother cooked lunch and we had sandwiches for the evening meal.

I think I ate out less than 10 times during my growing up years.

My mother never drove, but she does ride a bicycle.

Lots of the stuff in that post I know, or remember. The parts I don't remember are, because I grew up in Germany.

:)

Moni

Yep, I'm older than dirt...I remember them all. DH remembered all but one--how could he not remember those great little wax coke bottles with the sugar water???

Amongst the older than dirt group!

older than dirt...

I'm so proud to be in such good 'older than dirt' company. I do remember them all.... and more. How about air ports... I remember standing in the fields at SF Air Port, watching (and once taking off in) those small DC3 airliners. I think there was only one landing strip. And travel by train across this vast country, not to forget oceans or travel by ocean liners. We've come a long way....someone said.

Another "older than dirt". Anyone remember transistor radios?

We had the first tv in the neighborhood. All of our neighbors would come to our house to watch it. No electric organs....I had an old pump organ.

Remember most of them and we had a Studebaker...
Loved paper dolls...do kids even play with them now?
Probably not because they're on some kind of pad or
phone. Older than dirt...but still above ground..so far.

I am older than dirt. I remembered all of those. I learned to drive with a Model A Ford. It did not have a heater and sometimes in the winter, one had to resort to the crank to get it started. Its light switch was a knob in the center of the steering wheel. You rotated the knob to turn the light on; first click was low beams and the second click was high beams. However, those light were pretty dim compared to modern lights. The reflector inside the lamp housing had lost its shiny plating many moons ago; The owner polished the brass shell as best as he could.

We walked 2 miles to a country grade school. There was no bus.

There was no newspaper delivered to your door. The average house density was 4 living units per mile. The newspaper arrived by the rural mail carrier to your mail box. For those lucky few who lived on the mail route, their newspaper arrived in a mailbox in front of their house by the road. Our mail box was 1.25 miles from the house. We tried to pick up mail at least once per week.

Electricity did not arrive to our homes until 1947.

There was no indoor plumbing.

There were 'privies' (outhouses).

Fast food were rabbits that the dogs tried to catch.

Houses were heated by stoves in the rooms. In winter, the house got cold after everyone went to bed. The first person up the next morning stoked the stove fire back to life.

Winter beds had comforters.

You switched underwear to long johns after the first freeze.

Shoe soles were nailed on. When a shoe soles wore down, the shoe nails would begin to punch the bottom of your feet. A little more wear could be gotten by re-setting the nails on a shoe last. (I've got the old shoe anvil and a set of lasts my parents had.)

Kids got a new pair of shoes in fall at the begining of the school year. By spring, those shoes were quite shabby. Take a look at old grade school pictures and look at the shoes. Most will badly worn. Typically, the school picture was taken in
April.

Everyone wore overshoes in winter.

The school year was only 8 months long with no snow days.

Before a kid got through 8 grades, he would have had measles, mumps, whooping cough, and maybe chicken pox.

Yes, kids still play with paperdolls, only better now. Because you print out the doll who stays the same, but an artist makes outfits for her.

I'm so glad we've gotten rid of some diseases and slowed down the progress of others.

I do remember many of those, but I'm not older than dirt.

Here is a link that might be useful: Liana's paperdoll blog

Whoo hoo, I remember a lot of these. I remember my sister and I sitting at the kitchen table. We always sat in the back right in front of the radiator. When my mother had liver we use to sneak it behind the radiator when she wasn't looking. lol. to this day I've never eaten liver. Bet there's still some pieces hidden there. lol

Plastic curtains? I can't place those, but I do remember some housewives left the plastic on their lamp shades and put plastic covers over their upholstery. These may have been the same women who always seemed to have rollers in their hair. Whatever big event they were always ready for never seemed to happen.

The Irish Mail was a toy car. You sat in it with your legs out in front of you and propelled it by a handle, push-pull, push-pull. I don't know why it was "Irish". It was similar to the two-man pump flatbed car used by railroad crews.

I like Jem's 'fast food for dogs': Rabbits.

Wringer washing machines

Typewriters with real ribbon and the manual swing arm return

rotary phones and yes, explaining to my kids about party lines

TV with tubes and oh remember having to adjust the rabbit ears?

My MIL who is 86, just cleaned out the old family home that she has been in for 50 years and she still had these things in the basement. My 20-something kids were laughing in amazement at this stuff and other things.

I'm not telling you my age. LOL

Some of things, like the drive-in theaters, I knew about but never went to one because we just didn't have the money for that kind of thing. And fast food? - that was a quick peanut butter and jam sandwich for lunch.

My favourite memory is the roller-skate key. I loved my 4-wheel metal roller skates with the key on a string hanging over my neck swinging away as I skated down the street.

This post was edited by blfenton on Tue, Oct 28, 14 at 13:49

Thanks rob, for mentioning that paper dolls are still played with, and that the kids can design clothes on the computer and print them out..so much fun with imagination when you play with paper dolls

I love to play with them still! Makes me fell young? Yea, that's it!

I also remember my mom and her sisters stretching sheer curtains on a frame after they were washed. I grew up in the 40's in the city. so we did have a bathroom.
Mary

OhMyGosh..... no wonder the KT is such a 'familiar' and comfy place. We're all (nearly) older than dirt.

Thanks for the 'sentimental journey' remembering all those things... and then some. "Stretching" curtains, ironing sheets on the mangle the list goes on. Ironing.... now THAT"S a thing of the past, almost.

Getting polio shots at school...my husband contracted polio a year before the shots were available...he was 4, I got the shot in school the next year, at 5.

Older than dirt too...and I'm only 52. ) :

Shots! Do you remember those huge metal GUNS they used to give kids shots with?! They were scary.

Oh my..so many things I have not thought about for many moons...but remember everything mentioned. I am older than dirt also and it sounds like there are a lot of us oldies, but goodies!

Oh, such great memories! I guess I'm officially old since all those things are remembered fondly.

transistor radios
plastic curtains
Coming home for supper cutting through all the yards and smelling everyone else's supper cooking. No air conditioning then, the windows were all open.

My favourite memory is the roller-skate key. I loved my 4-wheel metal roller skates with the key on a string hanging over my neck swinging away as I skated down the street. OH!! I could feel it hitting my chest and the wind in my hair when I read that. And the bump where the big tree had lifted the sidewalk and I had to do a quick step to get over it.

Oh! I didn't know I was OTD, but maybe I am.

Of course I remember plastic curtains. How about home perms? My mother gave me Toni perms, using the metal strip you peeled off a fresh can of coffee to wrap around each curl. I remember the smell and the tight curls you got. How about pincurls, with bobby pins crossed over them?

White anklets? bobby sox? Corn cobs and Sears Roebuck catalogs in the outhouse?

Here's some newer things - Nehru jackets worn with a shiny medallion. Pleather skirts were the rage when I was in junior high. Midi, mini, and maxi skirts. Tie dye. Poor boy sweaters.

Anyone remember the Toni home permanents?

How about the curling iron that you placed over the kerosene lamp?

Does anyone remember 'granny rags'?

How about saddle shoes? YUK!

How about stuffing of bras?

How about the summer porch and the wringer washer?

Do you remember when going to a movie theater cost 10 cents?

I have enjoyed this trip back in time - thanks, Moni! I'm in the 'older than dirt' group, back when dirt WAS dirt!

Also older than ... and glad to be above rather than under the ... dirt.

Anyone remember 78 mm. ... no, that was r.p.m. ... records? And the needle being on a circular disk that one lifted off of the record and put up, over and back to be held in place above the arm that swung back and forth over the record but didn't move up or down?

Our "Party line" phone was a big brown wooden box on the wall with a metal thing like a tulip sticking out of the front into which you talked, and a line with a black tube on the end that hung on a yoke sticking out of the side of the phone, that lifted when you took the receiver off to listen, which connected the phone to the line, by making the contacts with the large batteries inside.

If you wanted to call some other person on your line, after listening to see whether the line was busy, you turned a crank on the right side to make the double bells on the front of the phone ring, in a code of short and long rings, which rang in everyone else's phone on the line, and the ones whose code it was answered ... sometimes others did, as well (almost always remaining silent while doing so).

If you wanted to call someone on another party line, you pushed a black button on the left side of the phone and turned the aforementioned crank on the right side, which silenced all of the bells on your line and sent a signal to the operator on the central switchboard and she connected you to the other line and pushed a button or turned a crank to ring the code of the person to whom you wanted to talk.

ole joyfuelled ... who liked eating at the dining room table ... in the large kitchen