REMEMBER....

When the worst thing you could do at school was smoke in the bathrooms, flunk a test or chew gum. And the banquets were in the cafeteria

and we danced to a juke box later, and all the girls wore fluffy pastel gowns and the boys wore suits for the first time and we were allowed to stay out till 12 p.m.

The 'hang out' was Mel's drive-in, with it's hamburgers and huge black/white sundaes.


When a '57 Chevy was everyone's dream car. . . to cruise, peel out, lay rubber and watch drag races, and people went steady and girls wore a class ring with an inch of wrapped dental floss or yarn coated with pastel frost nail polish so it would fit her finger. (or on a chain around her neck)

And no one ever asked where the car keys were 'cause they were always in the car, in the ignition, and the doors were never locked. And you got in big trouble if you accidentally locked the doors at home, since no one ever had a key.


ELVIS ... "King of Rock"

Remember lying on your back on the grass with your friends and saying things like "That cloud looks like a..."

And playing baseball with no adults to help kids with the rules of the game. Back then, baseball was not a psychological group learning experience-it was a game.

Remember when stuff from the store came without safety caps and hermetic seals 'cause no one had yet tried to poison a perfect stranger.



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?   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 the 80's and 90's...

So send this on to someone who can still remember Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, Laurel & Hardy, Howdy Doody and The Peanut Gallery, The Lone Ranger, The Shadow Knows, Nellie Belle, Roy and Dale, Trigger and Buttermilk as well as the sound of a real mower on Saturday morning, and summers filled with bike rides, playing in cowboy land, baseball games, bowling, Hula Hoops, and visits to the pool...and eating Kool-Aid powder with sugar.

When being sent to the principal's office was nothing compared to the fate that awaited a misbehaving 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 all survived because their love was greater than the threat.

Didn't that feel good, just to go back and say,

Yeah, I remember that!  


    And was it really that long ago?







  Now 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

Bobby socks and poodle skirts

Boys with 'ducktail' hair cuts

Blackjack, Clove and Teaberry chewing gum.

Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers

Newsreels before the movie

P.F. Fliers  

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

Party lines  

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 ins

Studebakers

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

Candy dots on paper

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?




If you can remember most or all of these, then you have lived!!!!!!!








TV in the 50's Black and White?? (Under age 40? You won't understand.)

It took five minutes for the TV warm up?

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, David. Good Night, Chet."

Depending on the channel you tuned, You got Rob and Laura - or Ward and June. It felt so good. It felt so right,

Life looked better in black and white. I Love Lucy, The Real McCoys, Dennis the Menace, the Cleaver boys, Rawhide, Gunsmoke, Wagon Train, Lone Ranger, Superman, Jimmy and Lois Lane. Father Knows Best, Patty Duke, Rin Tin Tin and Lassie too, Donna Reed on Thursday night,

Life looked better in black and white. I wanna go back to black and white,

Everything always turned out right.

Simple people, simple lives, Good guys always won the fights.

Now nothing is the way it seems, In living color on the TV screen.

Too many murders, too many fights,

I wanna go back to black and white.

In God they trusted, alone in bed, they slept, A promise made was a promise kept.

They never cussed or broke their vows,

They'd never make the network now.

But if I could, I'd rather be In a TV town in '53.

It felt so good. It felt so right. Life looked better in black and white.

I'd trade all the channels on the satellite, If I could just turn back the clock tonight. To when everybody knew wrong from right, Life was better in black and white!


Originated from E-mail...

Pass this to someone (over age 40,of course), and brighten their day by helping them to remember that life's most simple pleasures are very often the best!




Charlie Phillips,

Do not regret growing older. It is a privilege denied to many.
 


MORE MEMORIES from the 50's







STORIES ETC...     STONE ACRES