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Title: Gotta Be Over 40 to Understand
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Published: Jun 9, 2006
Author: unkonwn
Post Date: 2006-06-09 13:05:30 by Jethro Tull
Keywords: None
Views: 3219
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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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 113.
#86. To: Jethro Tull (#0)
If you're a rats ass over 40, or lived away from urban areas, you could find coinage circulating from all the way back to the 1800's, because the composition was consistent. Since you were young and oblivious at the time though, you might spend the buffalo and V nickels, the Indian Cents, and the Barber and Mercury dimes on penny candy and $0.15-0.25 comics :-) Not only did "Co' Cola" (Coke) and other sodas come in super thick bottles that often showed the wear on the high points of being refilled dozens of times, but you could get a whole nickel or dime for them at the supermarket and the deposit wasn't a government mandate, it was because the company wanted them back for re-use. At the general store I worked at while a young teen, old people would ask me to put their purchases in a "poke", and were surprised when I pulled out a paper bag knowing the phrase. The hitching posts still were used there too! Grandparents (and I am blessed with having all of mine still) possessed doorways to alternative universes called "The Atttic" or "The Shop" or "Garage" where gadgets, tools and clothing existed from times so far back people didn't use the stuff anymore (which often puzzles said grandparents too). Parts got washed in gasoline. On farms and in the country, that gasoline frequently also ran air cooled 4 stroke engines made of cast iron which were majorly heavy, but never seemed to wear out and if they started using oil you could replaces the rings or pistons after having honed out the cylinder with a cut coffee can wrapped with emory cloth attached to a drill. If you spun a crank bearing, even on cars, you could drop the oil pan, pull the rod end cap and push the upper part off the crank, polish the surface and put new babbit bearings in and be on your way. Even I got to work at a gas station where you weren't charged more for full service, and the full service included windshield and window cleaning, fluid check, and tire pressure check. Fresca was made with real sugar, and Grandma always had those big returnable bottles of it on hot summer days. I-66 did not exist to connect to I-81 in the Shenandoah valley. In order to go to the grandparents cabin in the mountains you had to take a circuitous route over two sets of mountains on State Route 29 and 211. While the specific place will mean little to most, the connection resulted in the decline and dissappearance of a host of Mom and Pop restaurants, highway stands and curio shops. There was always something odd, new or noteworthy about that route. Afterwards it just became a ribbon of concrete and interstate traffic with the only thought being "can I do this any faster than the last time" whereas before if it took you 4.5 hours your only thought was "That was THAT long?!?!"
Funny how we thought nothing of buying Coke in those chipped up used bottles. I
can personally attest to the indestructibility of them. As hard as we tried,
they’d rarely shatter. But if they did, the chunks became little land minds
capable of blowing out any size car tire.
and we didn't have no cell phones with GPS Big Brother tracking either, just 2cans and a string.
. Oh yeah...........you, too!!!!
#114. To: rowdee (#113)
me too(late) you row(dee) aka me Tarzan you jane
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#98. To: Axenolith (#86)
Not only did "Co' Cola" (Coke) and other sodas come in super
thick bottles that often showed the wear on the high points of being refilled
dozens of times, but you could get a whole nickel or dime for them at the
supermarket and the deposit wasn't a government mandate, it was because the
company wanted them back for re-use.
#102. To: Jethro Tull (#98)
#113. To: Itisa1mosttoolate (#102)
just 2cans and a string.
Replies to Comment # 113.
End Trace Mode for Comment # 113.