Are you old enough to remember when................

[Tupac]

We leave our doors unlocked most of the time, but we have 4 big dogs and a 6foot fence.

[Melvin]

When I was a tot visiting my Grandma, you only had to dial the last four digits to connect a local number. (She lived in the sticks.)

[HawkerMKII]

Aces high use to be fun

[Babalonian]

A sad thought occured to me this weekend at the store...

I remember when an hours minimum wage in this country could buy you at least two loafs of bread.

[greens]

Im old enough to remember when i didtn have to worry about another country blowing us to smitherines!!

[Reschke]

<----39 here but I remember a bunch of that stuff. Simply because living in Alabama (still do and am proud of it) as a kid we were always behind the times a little.

When I started driving gas was $.75 a gallon. For $20 I could take a girl out to dinner, a movie, fill up my car and still had enough to buy a 12 pack of Michelob to drink while hanging out with my buddies at the McDonalds parking lot. AFTER they closed for the night and all us boys were waiting on sun up so we could head to the river at day light for fishing or water skiing.

I remember my how simply life seemed when I was working all summer long to save up enough to buy my first dirt bike...cost me $200 for a used 1982 Honda XL185. I was 14 and the man I bought it from held it on my word that I would pay cash for it in 4 months. He even let me come ride it whenever I wanted to but I had to ride my bicycle 4/5 miles through the national logging trails forest to get to his house just to ride it around for a while. It was his sons and his son died in Army parachute training jump; chute never opened on him from a low level training jump up at Ft. Bragg in 1984. I still have that bike just as way to remember that sometimes bad things happen in peace time just because.

[AAIbyteu]

I remember we had a crank telephone on a party line with 4 other people listening in on every conversation! Bummer.  Ever try to get a date with heavy breathing going on in the background or worse yet...laughing?   

[SIM]

I remember getting off the bus and running to the house, toss the books and grab my Dads 12 gauge Ithaca side by side, vest, and heading to the barn for the dogs. Would spend the evening making a round hunting quail. Then return home for one heck of a chewing for taking his dogs before he could get home to go! Started when I was 10-11.

I remember watching wrestling when BlackJack Muligan was the devil on earth, Rick Flair was a young man, Art and Oley Anderson were the dynamic duo!

I remember shooting the wind-vane on the barn with an old Marlin single shot .22. You know the one with the 4 inch foregrip and an octagon barrel. The neighbors didnt mind so long as it was my familys wind-vane!

I remember when being a Boyscout was something special. Boys Life came in editions 8x12 or so......

I remember when having a police officer(calling one a cop would get you a public lashing!) call your parents was a heck of a lot worse than prison!

How about concrete highways......cathump, cathump, cathump.............and gravel/dirt secondary roads.

Bouncing to the roof in back of the school-bus and thinking it was the best part of school when someone had a split scalp????

I remember having my head thumped in church for sleeping during the pastors sermon.......

I remember being more afraid of meeting my girlfriends Dad than of what the future could hold for her and I. Oh the things I would change!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

How about cock-fights and running like mad when the county deputies showed up on a raid?

Or the smell of smoke coming off the creek when the neighbors were brewing?

[SPKmes]

My mum just sent this via E-mail to me. It came with a few Black and white photo's of time gone by. I decided to just copy and past this and leave the pics out as you all have your memories of people, places and shows of this time


(Under the age of 40? You won't understand this but this is how
we lived, And we are still here to talk about it.)

You could hardly see for all the snow,
Spread the rabbit ears as far as they go.
Pull a chair up to the TV set,?
'Good Night, Johnny.' 'Good Night,Dad.'

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

My Mum used to defrost mince on the counter AND I used to
eat it raw sometimes.
Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown
paper bag, not in ice-pack coolers, but I can't remember
getting sick.
Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the dam
instead of our public pool (talk about boring).
There were no beach closures then either.

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 PE .. and risked permanent injury with a pair of
high top sandshoes 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.

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.
Then there was the milk left in the sun for us to drink each day. Good wasn't it?

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 34 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 castle' on piles of gravel left on vacant
construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mum pulled out the
48 cent bottle of Mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it
didn't sting like iodine did) and then we got our bum smacked.

Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a
10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics,
and then Mum 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 neighbour's house either because if we
did, we got our bum smacked there and then we got smacked
again when we got home.

I recall 'Bluey' Barnes from next door coming over and doing his
tricks on the front porch, just before he fell off. Little did his
Mum know that she could have owned our house. Instead,
she picked him up and clipped his ears for being such a dill.
It was a neighborhood run amok.

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??

LOVE 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.

[RTR]

I remember my mom trying to get me inside to see Armstrong step out on the moon. Three minutes later, nothing happened - so out to play i went.

I remember catching frogs at the crick behind a friends house, coming home with a coffee can packed with green squirming stuff.

I remember The Man From UNCLE... Kuryakin was cool!

I remember before people heard of environmentalism - when lake Erie was dead as a post, and when the Cuyahoga River caught fire. (Well, one of the times, anyway.)

Wacky Packs. Rockem Sockem robots.

LOL!

Kuryakin WAS cool!

I had Rockem Sockem Robots...they were the best!

Verti-Bird.....wish I still had that one!

Hotwheels!

I wanna be 10 again

RTR

[bacon8tr]

Man the memories this thread has brought back. Here's a few more from my youth. When Saturday rolled around it was up at the crack of dawn to mow the "yard", that yard consisted of a pasture and mowing it old school with a push mower. Once chores were done then I could blast off with my buddies, usually this was sometime around noon. My dad had an old Volkswagen beetle and I used to lay on my back on the front passenger floor board. I'd put my legs up on the seat and pretend I was a ball turret gunner.....once a week without fail I'd sit on the back bumper of that old car right after my dad would come home and burn the back of a calf muscle on the tail pipe. Buster Brown shoes and corduroy pants, family camping trips to lake hemit in the pinto station wagon, my mom giving me a quarter to play pac-man at Bob's Big Boy while we waited for our meal.  Dr. Pepper tasted different and better than it does today, flying to Catalina Island in a Cessna with my dad and calling out "bandits" for him and him always sneaking in a stall or a spin just because he knew it was better than any roller coaster ride I'd ever been on. Changing the channel meant getting your rear up off the couch and having to adjust the "rabbit ears". Missing a holiday Charlie Brown cartoon special meant waiting til next year to see it. My mom standing on the back porch hollering "dinner is ready" and racing my dogs back to the house.  I remember the gas shortage, blue chip stamp books and catalog stores(used to get some really cool stuff from there). Tearing up the neighborhood on my mean-green-machine and rolling around the property on our big wheels pretending we were rat patrol. Man I miss those times.    

[68ZooM]

  those were the days, as apposed to the overly techie all seeing society we live in now

[Plawranc]

I remember my Mother....... and I remember the date and time she passed away. Hug your Mom..... you never know.

God do I know that feeling, its only been about 3 months, feels like 3 years.

I was born in 1994.

I remember the 9/11 attacks when I was 5, and complaining why Pokemon wasn't on.

I remember when Pokemon and Yugi Oh were the number one crazes.

I remember Windows 95 being the most bada** operating system around.

I remember 50c/ a litre for petrol

And I remember the VERY FIRST Toy Story.

[MrBill]

Damn good thread!

I remember when RC Cola came in a 12 oz bottle while coke and Pepsi were in 8 oz bottles for the same dime. Add a bag of planters peanuts for a nickel and you had lunch.
I remember the gas wars ... prices would drop into the teens and you got double green stamps and a plate, cup or saucer with each fill up.
I remember a quarter would get me into the movies and buy a bag of popcorn.
I remember swimming in the crik (aka mud slew) that ran behind the farm. If we got in the mood we would catch a dozen big bull frogs and mom would cook frogs legs for dinner.
I remember delivering papers on my bike.
I remember the family sitting around the radio on Sunday night listening to The Shadow, Inter Sanctum, Gunsmoke, (with William Conrad as Matt) Fibber McGee and Molly and Jack Benny.
I remember when every mom in the neighborhood was your mom ... and there was nothing worse than than doing something that got you reported to dad. (or grandma)
I remember when the day started before the sun was up and ended only at full dark.
I remember leather football helmets.
I remember my first full 40 hour paycheck was $38.56.
I remember seeing Buddy Holly, Patsy Cline and Johnny Cash live.
I remember dime a pack smokes on the base ... being short enough to parachute off a dime ... the mixture of pride, hate, fear, pain, smoke, wet, hot, hell in OD and green.
ahhh well ..........

[Hawk55]

Hawk55 I would gladly sit and chat with you sir. !A couple of beers is about all I drink these days,as most the meds I take don't like alcohol!Stories,I have many,but my "shrink" tells me I shouldn't,as it releases the demons!Up her kilt!I will do as I please!If I ever get back east to visit my best Marine Corp buddy in N.C.,I will swing North,and we will have them two beers!

I'd love that Sir!  I own a house in Myrtle Beach SC to get out of the CT cold on occasion, so NC would be a quick trip.  Please give a shout when you make that trip east. I'm sure a couple of Marines could 'tolerate' an ole' Air Force boy for an evening, lol.