Remember When? - Part 2
November 4, 2003
It
didn't seem possible, but the fortieth reunion for the Class
of 1963 of Salem High School in Salem,
New Jersey acutally happened. As promised in the prior story, I have used
OCR scanning to capture the "Remember When" snippets that were part of the
program bulletin. Nothing about WiFi or blogging but I hope some of the patrickWeb
readers are old enough to enjoy reading this. Here
is a sample. Remember when...
All
the girls had ugly gym uniforms?
It
took five minutes for the TV to warm up?
Nearly
everyone's Mom was at home when the kids got home from school?
Nobody
owned a purebred dog?
When
a quarter was a decent allowance?
You'd
reach into a muddy gutter for a penny?
Your
Mom wore nylons that came in two pieces?
(read
more)
Remember When
All
the girls had ugly gym uniforms?
It
took five minutes for the TV to warm up?
Nearly
everyone's Mom was at home when the kids got home from school?
Nobody
owned a purebred dog?
When
a quarter was a decent allowance?
You'd
reach into a muddy gutter for a penny?
Your
Mom wore nylons that came in two pieces?
All
your male teachers wore neckties and female teachers had their hair done every
day and wore high heels?
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?
Laundry
detergent had free glasses, dishes or towels hidden inside the box?
It
was considered a great privilege to be taken out to dinner at a real restaurant
with your parents?
They
threatened to keep kids back a grade if they failed and they did?
When
a 57 Chevy was everyone's dream car...to cruise, peel out, lay rubber or watch
submarine races, and people went steady?
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?
Playing
baseball with no adults to help kids with the rules of the game?
Stuff
from the store came without safety caps and hermetic seals because no one had
yet tried to poison a perfect stranger?
And
with all our progress ........... don't you just wish, just once, you could
slip back in time and savor the slower pace ............ and share it with
the children of today?
When being sent to the principal's office was nothing
compared to the fate that awaited the student at home? Basically we were in
fear for our lives, but it wasn't because of drive-by shootings, drugs, gangs,
etc. Our parents and grandparents were a much bigger threat! But we survived
because their love was greater than the threat.
Who can still remember:
Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, Laurel and Hardy, Howdy Dowdy and the Peanut Gallery, the Lone Ranger, The Shadow Knows, Nellie Bell , Roy and Dale, Trigger and Buttermilk. As well as summers filled with bike rides, baseball games, bowling and visits to the pool, .... and eating Kool-Aid powder with sugar. Didn't that feel good, just to go back and say, "Yeah, I remember that"?
And remember that:
The perfect age is somewhere between old enough to know better and too young to care.
How many of these do you remember?
Candy
cigarettes
Wax
Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside
Soda
pop machines that dispensed glass bottles
Coffee
shops with tableside jukeboxes
Blackjack,
Clove and Teaberry chewing gum
Home
milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers
Party
lines
Newsreels
before the movie
P.F.
Fliers
Telephone
numbers with a word prefix .... (Raymond 4-6Q1)
Peashooters
Howdy
Dowdy
45
RPM records
Green
Stamps
Hi-Fi's
Metal
ice cubes trays with levers
Mimeograph
paper
Beanie
and Cecil
Roller-skate
keys
Cork
pop guns
Drive
In's
Studebnkers
Washtub
wringers
The
Fuller Brush Man
Reel-To-Reel
tape recorders
Tinkertoys
Erector Sets
The Fort Apache Play Set
Lincoln Logs
15 cent McDonald hamburgers
5 cent packs of baseball cards .... with that awful pink slab of bubble gum
Penny candy
35 cent a gallon gasoline
Jiffy Pop popcorn
Do you remember a time when......
Decisions
were made by going "eeny-meeny-miney-moe"?
Mistakes
were corrected by simply exclaiming, "Do Over!"?
"Race
issue" meant arguing about who ran the fastest?
Catching
the fireflies could happily occupy an entire evening?
It
wasn't odd to have two or three "Best Friends"?
The
worst thing you could catch from the opposite sex was "cooties"?
Having
a weapon in school meant being caught with a slingshot?
A
foot of snow was a dream come true?
Saturday
morning cartoons weren't 30-minute commercials for action figures?
"Oly-oly-oxen-free" made
perfect sense?
Spinning
around, getting dizzy, and falling down was cause for giggles?
The
worst embarrassment was being picked last for a team?
War
was a card game?
Baseball
cards in the spokes transformed any bike into a motorcycle?
Taking
drugs meant orange-flavored chewable aspirin?
Water
balloons were the ultimate weapon?
What
a double-dog-dare-ya meant?
If you can remember most or all of these, then you have lived!! (A LONG TIME!)
