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Title: Gotta Be Over 40 to Understand
Source:
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URL Source: http://email
Published: Jun 9, 2006
Author: unkonwn
Post Date: 2006-06-09 13:05:30 by Jethro Tull
Keywords: None
Views: 3112
Comments: 232
Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't get food poisoning. My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat a bite raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper, in a brown paper bag, not in icepack coolers, but I can't remember anybody getting e.coli. Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then. 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 gym, not PE... and risked permanent injury with a pair of hightop Ked's (only worn in gym) 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.... Flunking gym was not an option... even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything, and she could even give you an aspirin for a headache or fever. I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself. 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 hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mom 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 butt spanked! Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom 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 neighbor's house either, because if we did, we got our butt spanked there, and then we got butt spanked again when we got home. I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop, just before he fell off. Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house. Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof. 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?
Poster Comment: 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
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#1. To: Jethro Tull (#0)
Yes to all! Nitre' and Paragoric cured everything....hmmm.....no wonder it's off the market. We walked or rode our bicycles. We didn't need a mini-van to get us two blocks down the street. You could go to the corner store and get a real "Ring Ding." not those puny things with the waxy chocalate they sell now.
I'll second that! What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything, and she could even give you an aspirin for a headache or fever. This particular "change" in our super expensive public schools really irritates me. I remember the dismay I felt, as a parent, when I realized the "school nurse" I was talking to was a volunteer parent, w/o any medical education whatsoever. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. – James Madison
Mom sent me to the pharmacy with a note to buy paragoric. Gee, if I only knew, I'd have kept that note and hit every pharmacy for miles!
I went through all that and the paregoric too. No wonder I'm a delusional paranoid conspiracy theorist. ;)
"I woke up in the CRAZY HOUSE."
LOL, Grumble..........was that before or after Cod Liver Oil was the be all/end all? Gawd, I can remember that being the required morning ritual right after brushing ones teeth!
I remember walking with two other girls 3 miles to school each day. Even the day I graduated high school, I got to walk a little later than usual. Had to be there by 10 am for final instructions for the afternoon ceremonies out on the bleachers. Then walked home. At the appropriate time, rode with parents back to school to don the cap and gown and do the pomp and circumstance thang. I was grateful I didn't have to walk 6 miles or ride the 6 miles on a horse like my Dad did!
Cod liver oil actually is fantastic stuff. Very healthy. What I used to hate was........prune juice. My family being mainly Scottish and English, we didn't have much idea of what fruits and vegetables were other than peas and carrots and grapes if we were feeling really exotic, thus necessitating the dreaded....prune juice.
"I woke up in the CRAZY HOUSE."
We also did various jumps and stunts with our bikes off such piles. No bike helmets or padding required. I musta left a couple of pounds of skin behind on those gravel piles. I was not aware that I shouldn't have survived... Our school playground had monkey bars. I understand that isn't allowed anymore; too dangerous. Doesn't matter anyway, many schools have just plain outlawed recess or even worse, "organized" it. Can't have them younguns thinkin' for themselves, not even for a minute! We also played a game we called "blackman" (why it was called that I don't know). It was basically a gauntlet type game that had the kids in the middle trying to tackle (sans 40 pounds of protective equipment) the other kids running the gauntlet. We played "smear the queer"; I bet that would go over like a fart in a spacesuit nowadays!
GREAT EMAIL! Thanks for sharing.
The mind once expanded by a new idea never returns to its' original size
And wash it down with a sugar laced Coke :)
nor would i! we have great memories of a culture that is now extinct.
Me too on the conspiracy theory. How else to explain these enormous changes to America we've witnessed (g)
You just gave my bouts of melancholy validity.
Y/W, Itisa1mosttoolate.
In an illustrated lunchbox.
Been there too, robin. Our "school nurse" was a stay at home Mom who wanted something to do.
LOL. These were prime targets for the soon to be juvenile delinquents, so we never carried them. The sandwich was jammed in our front pocket.
and i rode my bike without some gay helmet, too. but, i'm not yet 40.
'We shall no longer hang on to the tails of public opinion, or to a non-existent authority, on matters utterly unknown and strange. We shall gradually become experts ourselves in the mastery of the knowledge of the future.' ~ Wilhelm Reich
It might have been when penny candy when to a nickel. I think it hardened me somehow.
"I woke up in the CRAZY HOUSE."
hey, and i was on the handlebars of boyfriend's bikes many a time...try that nowadays!
Helmets? We didn't have them even for football. Or was that helmets with no face masks? Maybe we had single bar face masks??? Yeah...that's it.
But those nickle bars were huge! And nobody was fat !!!!
You'd go back-to-school shopping for pencil holders and notebooks and stuff, but the most colorful thing was the new lunchboxes and what TV shows they were embossed with. They were metal with a rounded lid to hold the thermos. My elementary school was peaceful, no problems with lunchboxes or anything else.
we spent lots of time on the "sand dunes" at local construction sites and our swimming took place at the creek "in the woods." no one had built in swimming pools and few families in our suburban neighborhood had the money to belong to private clubs with pools back then.
JT went to catholic school. :P
FannerFifty cap pistols, RedRyder BB rifles, pellet guns, .22 rifles, shotguns, driver license at 14, Nehi grape soda, nickel hamburgers, three black & white TV channels (if you were lucky), running behind the mosquito-spraying truck sucking up whatever chemicals, never locking your house or car - good times.
LOL! They must've had all the tough anti-lunchbox kids.
I went to Catholic school too. The nuns were great. They were so tough and burly. I liked them because I was skinny when I was small and they were always feeding me. I used to follow them around like a little bird.
"I woke up in the CRAZY HOUSE."
mosquito spraying trucks?
I know, that caught my eye too :) We used to hunt for dead bodies in the alleys. Ah, childhood memories!
"I woke up in the CRAZY HOUSE."
Between 1959 and 1965 my world consisted of Sam’s candy store on Flatbush Ave.
Most of my waking hours were spent in there either buying candy, learning how
to play pinball (2 games a quarter, 5 balls a game!) or scouring the tin can
that was nailed to the wall underneath the bottle opener for bottle caps so I
can fill them with melted wax for a game of "skelzs." When I wasn't buying
candy, "spaldines" or "pimple balls" I was usually found at the soda fountain
spinning on the chrome and naugahyde stool impatiently waiting for one of
Sam's famous eggcreams. They were the best. A shot of syrup, a dollop of milk,
and a steady stream of seltzer. While all that was going on, I would usually
get my forearms dirty and sticky from the counter (the pattern in the counter
camouflaged the stains really well). Sam was the master of eggcreams. The foam
would rise to the rim of the glass and NEVER overflow (some eggcream
aficionados will argue that the sloppy overflowing kind are the best). For 15
cents I got a show, a treat and a little bit of attitude from Sam (especially
if you asked for water or extra syrup) who had about three teeth in his mouth
and wore a black merchant marine wool cap—even in the summers.
During the summer months our town had trucks driving around at night fogging the 'hoods for mosquitoes using DDT...
Nowadays you'd have Sam's gay grandson peddling grande mocha lattechinos in Starbucks.....
"I woke up in the CRAZY HOUSE."
The boys got the treat of having Marist Brothers after the 4th grade. Talk about a walk into hell. Egad...
We had the Jesuits. I remember one in particular who used to like to wrestle with the boys. Took about 30 years before they brought him up on charges. I always wondered why he never paid much attention to the girls.
"I woke up in the CRAZY HOUSE."
Really. Sam's had no coffee, Just candy, soda, eggcreams and heavily buttered English muffins. I always thought the place made him rich, but I later learned he was taking the neighhood book....
Yep, they left a wake of misery for sure. Who they didn't blow, they beat. Does this explain my survivors syndrome?
We had places like that too. THere was one where the neighborhood kids used to stop in after school, and another one my father used to take me too. His bookie was at that one. He'd get me a couple of comic books and talk to the bookie. Ocassionally some pro wrestlers would come in as well. The bookie was an ex-wrestler.
"I woke up in the CRAZY HOUSE."
great story! eggcreams? i've never heard of them. have you ever tried to make one yourself?
Well, if you were a typical Catholic school boy, it does. If the nuns weren't beating on you, the fathers were going for the other end ;)
"I woke up in the CRAZY HOUSE."
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#2. To: Jethro Tull (#0)
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
#3. To: Grumble Jones (#1)
#4. To: Jethro Tull (#0)
#5. To: Grumble Jones (#1)
Nitre' and Paragoric cured everything....
#6. To: Grumble Jones (#1)
We walked or rode our bicycles. We didn't need a mini-van to get us two blocks down the street.
#7. To: rowdee (#5)
#8. To: Jethro Tull (#0)
We played 'king of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites
#9. To: Jethro Tull (#0)
#10. To: Grumble Jones (#1)
You could go to the corner store and get a real "Ring Ding."
#11. To: Jethro Tull (#0)
I WOULDN'T TRADE IT FOR ANYTHING
#12. To: mehitable (#4)
#13. To: christine (#11)
we have great memories of a culture that is now extinct.
#14. To: Itisa1mosttoolate (#9)
#15. To: Jethro Tull (#0)
Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper, in a brown paper bag
I've already said too much.
#16. To: robin (#2)
I remember the dismay I felt, as a parent, when I realized the "school nurse" I was talking to was a volunteer parent, w/o any medical education whatsoever.
#17. To: MUDDOG (#15)
lunchbox
#18. To: Jethro Tull (#0)
#19. To: Jethro Tull (#12)
#20. To: gengis gandhi (#18)
#21. To: gengis gandhi (#18)
#22. To: mehitable (#19)
#23. To: Jethro Tull (#17)
I've already said too much.
#24. To: alpowolf (#8)
#25. To: MUDDOG (#23)
#26. To: Jethro Tull. boomers here (#17)
#27. To: christine (#25)
I've already said too much.
#28. To: christine (#25)
#29. To: lodwick (#26)
running behind the mosquito-spraying truck sucking up whatever chemicals,
#30. To: christine (#29)
#31. To: lodwick (#26)
#32. To: christine (#29)
#33. To: Jethro Tull (#31)
#34. To: mehitable (#28)
#35. To: Jethro Tull (#34)
#36. To: mehitable (#33)
#37. To: mehitable (#35)
Took about 30 years before they brought him up on charges
#38. To: Jethro Tull (#36)
#39. To: Jethro Tull (#31)
#40. To: Jethro Tull (#37)
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