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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: 3453
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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#137. To: Dakmar (#135)
LOLOL.
Wow!!! What a neat pic. Nice gene pool you got going (g)
awwww..that's so neat.
St Thomas Aquinas, Brooklyn, NY
I'm putting together one of them old- timey mini bikes that used to be $129 in the Montgomey Wards catalog. Probably considered a WMD now.
Nice looking old building, JT>............is it still there, or has it given way to 'progress'?
TAlking about building from kits............ Did you know you could buy house kits from Sears back a good many years ago? The folks who bought my ranch had (quite a while ago) bought a ranch in Oregon that the home had been built from one such kit. IIRC, it was something like 900 sq. ft., and they raised their 3 kids there!
Is that limp or imp?
That's still there Dee. My HS, a short distance away, was a victim of cultural diversity the year after I graduated in '67.
Sheesh, who can afford to heat a 900 sq. ft. house nowadays? ;)
What's next...one of those Sears catalog houses?
um..you tell me :P
Is that um or hum?
See #147.
That strikes another memory chord. Family reunion time... Pickled eggs, pan fried chicken, barbeque, home brewed wines and liquor (actually, "likker" from the side of the family that it came from!), and PIE CASES! Aunt Nettie would bring up a case with an ornately decorated door that held about 5 or 6 pies. In that case resided heaven. Rhubarb, wild blueberry, wild cherry, peach, mincemeat, and other pies. The highlight of the days eatin' along with some ice cream churned right then and there. And the sitting around in the front yard of the cabin as the sun set, the rumble of thunder in the distance with attendant heat lightning, and setting off some fireworks ('cause it happens around the 4th), and watching the fireflies come out, and hearing the whiporwil [sp?] (Whip-poor-will) chirp out it's lone call and the horned owl hoot... Yea, we really move up in the world when we give up the local modest job and strike out for far away lands and riches...
"To wield onself -- to use oneself as a tool in one's own hand -- and so to make or break that which no one else can build or ruin -- THAT is the greatest pleasure known to man! To one who has felt the chisel in his hand and set free the angel prisoned in the marble block, or to one who has felt sword in hand and set homeless the soul that a moment before lived in the body of his mortal enemy -- to those both come alike the taste of that rare food spread only for demons or for gods." -- Gordon R. Dickson, "Soldier Ask Not"
I remember Dee. More than a few still standing in PA. IIRC, the total cost was in the area of $500 or so.
I was seriously thinking about hitting swap meets or ebay to find a servicable Schwinn Manta Ray. That was the dragster style bike built on frame designed for 24" wheels. I had a new cheapie bicycle for a while, scared the hell out of me riding it, not enough castor. They'd sell a million of them easy if they brought back the Orange Crate
Quit bogarting that peace, Herbert!
One evening, there was a knock at the door. My dad opened the door. There was a basket of food with a small turkey sitting on the top with a Happy Thanksgiving card from the school harvest basket! To this day, none of us can figure out 'how' they knew times were rough. Coulda been observant teachers....or Gods angels looking out for us. Beautiful. Same here.
That's a beauty! I had a 16" Schwinn, the smallest bike on the block. I painted it coral pink with silver flames, but it had only normal handlebars.
No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. – James Madison
Oh for those family picnics and family reunions. Back in *hmmm, er, cough cough* 1952, we all met in OK at my dad's parents place for a family reunion. Once all the sets of families were there (Dad had 9 bros and sisters) were there, we planned a day to go to Lake Texhoma to fish and play in the water. Once we made it back to one of the aunts and uncles places, we had the big back yard--and I mean big--chow down. We had something like 5 ice cream freezers going, and the chicken house had to have been denuded, and the tater patch done likewise!! Whew! We ate til it ouched, and then in no time at all, it was time for that home made ice cream. I remember strawberry and peach and chocklate and vanilla--don't recall the other one. The farm ladies sure knew how to make a breakfast. Biscuits to kill for! I do remember asking if my Mom could make the milk gravy because she was the BEST at that!
When I built my house in 1980, the total cost was about $14,000. I had to hire contractors to help me with the foundation and the roof, explaining the high cost. The sticker price of the new 1980 Chevy Z28 I bought was well under $8,000. Don't remember exactly what I paid for it.
I hope you, unlike many of my friends, were smart enough to paint outside.
Quit bogarting that peace, Herbert!
I believe it was 'mobility', that wondrous thing, that did just about the most damage in breaking down families. Not the immediate family, but all the closeness of extended families like aunts and uncles, or cousins, great aunts, etc. I know for myself that I was never close to the OK and TX relatives, my Dad's side, as I was with my Mom's, who had all moved to California. And that's a shame. Two years ago I got to spend time with one of my TX aunts, and geeze how I wish we'd always lived closer. She's a dear, dear person.
Looking back - what a poor trade-off it is. Is it possible to go back?
I may be off on this, when I was seven, I believe i was brought to the lake as they made it into a damm. Would have been bout '64. I may getting this confused with a big dam in OK. At the pan termination of Arkansas,Oklahoma.
Hey guys.......I was never in on it, but do y'all remember outhouses being turned over or set out in the middle of the road at Halloween time? Harmless enough, unless of course someone happened to be sitting in it when the prank was pulled. Compare that to not even having Halloween because of the freak perverts and/or idiots that put poison or razor blades or some other horrid thing into the treat bags of little kids.
Couldn't prove it by me. I just know when we made the trip back there and that it was Texhoma.
This 89,000 acre lake on the Red River is shared by Texas and Oklahoma. It is widely recognized as a top fishing lake, and is one of the most popular recreation destinations in the Southwest. Lake Texoma was built by the Corps of Engineers in the 1940's, and was stocked with black bass and crappie along with the native white bass in the Red and Washita Rivers. The lake area includes two wildlife refuges, two state parks, fifty four U.S. Army Corps of Engineers-managed parks, twenty-six resorts, hundreds of campgrounds and a variety of excellent golf courses. Power boating, power sailing, personal watercraft, water skiers and wind surfers all consider the lake an excellent place to have fun. Lake Texoma has become a huge sailing center based on the lake's size, depth and miles of sailing shoreline.
Oh, ya, my first job, back in 1985 or so, cigs were 90 cents a pack and plenty of the locals sent their kids down with a note to buy ciggies.
No, I'm from Iowa. I only work in outer space.
Pretty much, that's an urban legend, and I've been hearing that since I was a kid (70s).
No, I'm from Iowa. I only work in outer space.
Lodwick, why are you so nice?
You can never go home again, be it that "home" is a geographic locale or a state of mind. Truth be told, the "old days" probably sucked just as much as nowadays, it's just selective memory that makes them seem better. I remember hating Reagan back in the 80s, and my mom saying that if George Bush (H.W.) ever became president, she'd ship me out of the country because he was ex-head of the CIA. Now "W" makes his daddy look like a genius. Hey, waddaya know? Times really ARE getting worse!
No, I'm from Iowa. I only work in outer space.
Looking great!
Diamonds In The Mine Lyrics By Leonard Cohen Quit bogarting that peace, Herbert!
Started laughing over this........geeze, loddy........did they even do golf back then? Power sailing? Personal watercraft? Wind surfing? From what I remember, it was a BIG body of water........I remember my Grandma sitting on a rock and sort of leaning to the side on an outstretched arm and a scorpion nearly got her! It seemed like there was a little cactus plant that one of the cousins (one of the twins boys) got into. I know us three weren't allowed any deeper than our thighs in the water! Everyone else could have swam across the dang thing and my Mom would not have let us go over our thighs. LOL....
Honestly? God told me (actually, all of us) that it would go better for me (us) to do it this way. A kind answer, turneth away wrath. That, to me is a very flattering question, and one of which I'm not deserving...I just want to be a good participant on this forum - respecting all members here.
We have a large mass. You can really lose yourself in them at times. You wish there was some sort of quantum tunneling device so that, if not to change, you could merely go back and be a bystander through it again. I was going through some of the "time portal" stuff when I was about 19 down at their place. I found a reel to reel tape player and some reels. I plugged it in and started it, and out comes my mothers voice. She's talking to my Dad, who's at that time flying helicopters in Vietnam in 1968. She's filling him in on the "wife stuff" (all the guys wives lived in the same area on base and were really tight, kinda like you see in the astronaughts wives in Apollo 13 for reference). She comments that I'm out in the driveway playing "stones and gravels" with the dog, our dachshund named Littlebit. My Dad gave the dog to my Mom as a Christmas present about 6 months before I was born. Me and that dog were thick as thieves and at the time I was listening to this, it was in the twilight of it's life. It wasn't but a few weeks later that she was put to sleep, near 20 years old. Serendipity? 20 years later, I still think about that dog. We have this trippy, nay, I should say kinda haunting, picture on the wall in our downstairs bathroom of a rural road, bordered by huge trees, shrouded by light fog and backlit. I always get this feeling that when my time comes to walk that path to the "light" and the Lord's reckoning, that it's going to be on that path, and the dog is going to be bolting and barking wildly down the road in it's dachshundy way to greet me. "Hey, where the heck have you been?!?! I've got a slobbery tennis ball with your name on it!" :-) It is kind of unusual to be my age and still have all of my known relatives living. The ones I knew that have died (4 great grandparents and a great great grandparent) were so ridiculously old it just seemed to me that, to them, it was right that they were headed off, hopefully, to be with something more familiar. The grandparents are such an insane wealth of information and arcanity. We talk about the bottles, and penny candy, but my grandparents talk about outhouses, and getting water from a spring, and using horses as the primary means of transport (Mom's side), and maybe having sulfa drugs. Hell, Mom's Mother lost 3 or 4 family members to the 1918 flu! And the most incredible, is a photo I have got to get digitized. I'll have to post it. It's the one with me, Mother, Grandfather, Great Grandfather, and Great Great Grandfather with the latter holding me. That Great great was born in 1862. I would give some years of life to have known what he thought of the state of the nation and the road we've come down. Hell, he went from a time when the country was in pitched battle with muskets and horse drawn breechless cannon over the course we'd take, to just barely missing his same homeland place some of it's citizens on the damn MOON! Hell, to close, I can only say that, the next time you see an old timer, ask them what it was like...
"To wield onself -- to use oneself as a tool in one's own hand -- and so to make or break that which no one else can build or ruin -- THAT is the greatest pleasure known to man! To one who has felt the chisel in his hand and set free the angel prisoned in the marble block, or to one who has felt sword in hand and set homeless the soul that a moment before lived in the body of his mortal enemy -- to those both come alike the taste of that rare food spread only for demons or for gods." -- Gordon R. Dickson, "Soldier Ask Not"
I hope I can Learn from your noble example. Yours Truely, Tom the 007
Probably so, but damn, it does seem simpler back then. What a difference fifty years makes. :-)
It was dumb, but fun at the time: My Dad used to keep me and my brother from fighting in the back of the car (where we spent a lot of time), with either short boxing style jabs or brutal acceleration to pin us back in our seats.
Quit bogarting that peace, Herbert!
Comments (178 - 232) not displayed.
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#138. To: Axenolith (#133)
#139. To: Axenolith (#133)
#140. To: christine, mehitable, Catholic school survivors (#39)
#141. To: Dakmar (#132)
between being stumbled over or being kicked.
#142. To: Jethro Tull (#140)
#143. To: Esso (#141)
#144. To: Jethro Tull (#140)
#145. To: christine (#144)
#146. To: rowdee (#142)
#147. To: rowdee (#143)
between being stumbled over or being kicked.
#148. To: Esso (#141)
I'm putting together one of them old- timey mini bikes that used to be $129 in the Montgomey Wards catalog.
#149. To: Jethro Tull (#145)
#150. To: christine (#149)
#151. To: Jethro Tull (#148)
between being stumbled over or being kicked.
#152. To: rowdee (#134)
We never lived high on the hog, but my Mom could cook a pigs ear and you'd think you were eating filet mignon!
#153. To: rowdee, Esso (#143)
#154. To: Esso (#141)
#155. To: rowdee (#134)
I look back on so many of those growing up years now and see that we were dirt poor many of those years. But we never knew it! I can remember one year at the annual canned good drive at our elementary school Mom insisting we each take a can of food to the school harvest basket. There weren't many choices--a can of this soup or a can of that veggie--but we did our part to help the poorer among us have a nice Thanksgiving dinner.
#156. To: Dakmar (#154)
#157. To: Axenolith (#152)
#158. To: Jethro Tull (#153)
IIRC, the total cost was in the area of $500 or so.
between being stumbled over or being kicked.
#159. To: robin (#156)
#160. To: Axenolith (#152)
#161. To: Axenolith (#152)
Yea, we really move up in the world when we give up the local modest job and strike out for far away lands and riches...
#162. To: rowdee (#157)
we planned a day to go to Lake Texhoma to fish and play
#163. To: lodwick. Axenolith. Jethro Tull, Grumble Jones (#155)
#164. To: tom007 (#162)
#165. To: tom007 (#162)
#166. To: rowdee (#129)
Cigarettes, for sure......
#167. To: rowdee (#163)
Compare that to not even having Halloween because of the freak perverts and/or idiots that put poison or razor blades or some other horrid thing into the treat bags of little kids.
#168. To: lodwick (#165)
#169. To: lodwick (#161)
Is it possible to go back?
#170. To: Axenolith (#133)
Grandparents on Pop's side at the POW Ball in 1947...
#171. To: rowdee (#163)
Ah, there is no comfort in the covens of the witch,
some very clever doctor went and sterilized the bitch,
and the only man of energy, yes the revolution's pride,
he trained a hundred women just to kill an unborn child.
And there are no letters in the mailbox,
oh no, there are no, no grapes upon your vine,
and there are, there are no chocolates in your boxes anymore,
and there are no diamonds in your mine.
#172. To: lodwick (#165)
The lake area includes two wildlife refuges, two state parks, fifty four U.S. Army Corps of Engineers-managed parks, twenty-six resorts, hundreds of campgrounds and a variety of excellent golf courses. Power boating, power sailing, personal watercraft, water skiers and wind surfers all consider the lake an excellent place to have fun. Lake Texoma has become a huge sailing center based on the lake's size, depth and miles of sailing shoreline.
#173. To: tom007 (#168)
Lodwick, why are you so nice?
#174. To: rowdee (#136)
#175. To: lodwick (#173)
That, to me is a very flattering question, and one of which I'm not deserving...I just want to be a good participant on this forum - respecting all members here.
#176. To: Indrid Cold (#169)
Truth be told, the "old days" probably sucked just as much as nowadays, it's just selective memory that makes them seem better.
#177. To: lodwick (#176)
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