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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: 3593
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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#56. To: mehitable (#52)
There's lots of 'neat' memories to bring back. There was some sort of horse salve [sorry, having one of those sometimers moments here] that my parents thought cured most everything on the exterior. The least cut, and out it came. Chapped? Bring it on....... Only thing is........dang, it burned. One time my Dad's beloved hunting dog got its paw sliced open on a broken jar. Out came the salve.............the dog disappeared yowling down the highway; gone for a couple of days! But we survived.....even ol Duke did!
Ah, yes - I still have the one that my Granddad made for me - though, back then, we called them another name. Good catch. Remember clothespinning playing cards on your bike's fork for the neat effect?
My parents were great believers in salves, but I think most of their salves are still around - Vicks Vaporub (God, I hated that but it works) and Musterole. My father was a big Musterole fan. You always knew when he was coming.
"I woke up in the CRAZY HOUSE."
Oh yeah.........the homemade bows and arrows! That was a big deal with my oldest brother, especially. He was patient teaching me and my kid brother how. We used to pretend there were alligators or crocodiles in the irrigation ditch that went around our house and yard area (small ditch for row crop irrigation). We also made our own kites. There was a big old field across the highway from where we lived that we used to go over and run like crazy trying to get them all aloft. Oh.......and did you ever take tin cans and tap them onto the heels of your shoes so that you could make 'clomping' horse hooves sounds playing cowboys and injuns? That was a biggie with us, too. Tin cans were a rare treasure because my Mom CANNED so much!
Cloverine was my parent's biggie.
Our family used vet supplies as much or more than they did human stuff: same product, just a bunch cheaper. I've started buying penicillin from vet supply websites, for whatever that's worth.
Truly, todays' kids haven't a clue as to how good it used to be. Perfect? Hell no--not by a long shot. But we used our minds. I get so upset when I hear kids whine, 'there's nothing to do'--unless there are big bucks to spend, or the latest gidget or gadget. And frazzled/dazed parents scurrrying around trying to give their kids everything they never had!!
Hey, remember when Michael Jackson was a black boy? Now THAT'S old.
"I woke up in the CRAZY HOUSE."
Yep!....and playing 'kick the can.' It was amazing what a little imagination could do with a can. aaahhh the good old days!
Yep...you can still buy tetracycline at almost any pet shop.
Shame on you! LOL My grandpa had a garage and service station and had one of those chest type refrigeration units. The bottles sat on their base. Some units they were in long slots which were open at one end. Put your money in and the slots would open to where you could get a coke. Others, you could get the coke and pay the station attendant....the bottles were just stuffed in the refrigeration case as many as could be stuffed in it. Being the only granddaughter for ll years, I never lacked for a 'sodie pop' as my grandpa called it.
ROTFLMAO! I remember..........I remember! Geeze, I'd totally forgotten about that 'other' name. :) And yes, we used to get old playing cards and use clothespins to put them on the wheels.......that was a neat sound.....a poor man's 'speed machine'!!!!
Oh, yeah............good ol Vicks Rub or Ben Gay. My Gram really, really, really believed in Vicks for everything! Stub your toe- -grab the Vicks! Headache? Grab the Vicks--smell it long enough, you don't remember the headache I think was her rationalizing about it. She was even known to swallow it.
Can people use tetracycline? What would you use it for? I've always thought of it for fish, etc.
"I woke up in the CRAZY HOUSE."
My parents used to do that, but I had to draw the line somewhere.
"I woke up in the CRAZY HOUSE."
I learned about Bag Balm when I had my milk cow. Am a firm believer in that stuff. Most of the time it worked great on cracked 'irrigation' hands. And I know what ya mean about veterinary penicillin. Over at the ranch I had some great vets, as well as a couple of doctor friends. One of the vets told me that he had been through a pharma company that manufactured Combiotic. He told me that they were just as stringent with that penicillin manufacturing as they were with humans. Further, he said there was some that merely 'switched' labels and bottles in the process. I used penicillin on my animals well beyond just giving an injection. I have had animals with an eye condition where I squirted penicillin directly onto the eyeball. I've squirted it directly into wounds or open cuts and sores after cleaning them. I saw a vet do this one time with a c-section on one our our cows and talked to him about it.
Yes...It's gram-negative antibiotic.
You can still see functioning ones at the Mast General stores throughout North Carolina. I don't drink soda anymore, but it is still great to see kids rummaging through them, looking for their favorite brand.
LOL........i never paid attention to these music 'icons' or idiots.
Yep, yep, yep.
I also drew the line........myself and gram wasn't allowed to do it to my kids, though she could make a 'plaster' to put in their chest when they had a cold or were congested.
Au contraire...there are actually KITE STORES here and there around America. Of course, they are those 'prissy' ones...the long, flowing multi-colored tails instead of the tails we made out of old sheets.
I don't drink them either. HOWEVER,if I thought I could get a glass-bottled RC Royal Crown Cola, the real thing, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Well.....I'd probably have to have 2 cause one I'd have to stick some peanuts in the bottle for old times sake! :)
That's great to know, thanks! The medical "professionals" try to keep us from any kind of self care. Don't know how people survived this long without Harvard Medical School.
"I woke up in the CRAZY HOUSE."
Well.............back to reality! Gotta run (drive) to the store (grocery store) and get some dog food else Luv will think I don't love her anymore! Later........
LOL...no wonder those are gone...just like those vending machines where the goodies hung from hooks front to back, so when you put a quarter in; the hooks would rotate forward and drop the item into the drawer below. Screw that...rock the machine back and forth, and goodies would fall like a hail during a thunderstorm into the drawer. Free candy...now we're talking.
One thing that never changes....puppy love!!!
"I woke up in the CRAZY HOUSE."
Yeah...great for picking up girls. Unfortunately; I used baseball cards. I ruined an ass-load of $1000 'rookie cards'.
Still considered a nutrious breakfast in the Southern Appalachians; if served with a moon-pie.
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?!?!"
"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 actually grew up in an old neighborhood in inner city Boston - we still had hitching rings on the street. They were simple iron rings, but they used to fascinate me when I was a kid thinking about the horses that used to be tied up there. We still had horse drawn carts with fruit and vegetable peddlers too, and a real ice box until I was a toddler.
"I woke up in the CRAZY HOUSE."
BWAHHAHAHA!!! I did that too when Dad was stationed in Alabama and Georgia!
"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"
Let this thread never end...
"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"
Only thing is........dang, it burned. "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"
Yes, the simple, and often simple-minded, things that we did and enjoyed back in the day, I fear may be forever lost; except in our memories.
My parents have one of the ice boxes as a phone stand. My mom has been real retentive about having the grandparents record their memories and also of gathering up items from the extended family to preserve. Back at their place they have stuf like an 1890's tredle [sp?] Singer sewing machine and a hand crank phone from the turn of the century. We lost some spectacular stuff when the will was contested at my great grandfathers death (by a distant aunt, he'd outlived 5 of 6 wives so he had some progeny scattered around). Saw an axe made by a 7 generations back father (It had his initials and 1723 burned into the home made handle) go to the witch, and saw my great grandfathers surveying set go to a museum in Elkton. I wanted that set so damn bad...
"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"
Though, for hope, one can always keep the ember kindled by taking time to chat up the neighbors on a warm evening, turn off the TV, find an old reel style mower to cut the grass (or a "Big Wheel" style gas powered one with the cast iron Clinton engine...) "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"
Comments (96 - 232) not displayed.
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#57. To: rowdee (#51)
sling shots, anyone? Especially homemade ones...
#58. To: rowdee (#56)
#59. To: Grumble Jones (#54)
#60. To: mehitable (#58)
My parents were great believers in salves, but I think most of their salves are still around
#61. To: rowdee (#56)
Bag Balm?
#62. To: Grumble Jones (#54)
#63. To: rowdee, all (#62)
#64. To: rowdee (#59)
Oh.......and did you ever take tin cans and tap them onto the heels of your shoes so that you could make 'clomping' horse hooves sounds playing cowboys and injuns
#65. To: lodwick (#61)
I've started buying penicillin from vet supply websites, for whatever that's worth.
#66. To: Grumble Jones (#55)
#67. To: lodwick (#57)
though, back then, we called them another name.
#68. To: mehitable (#58)
#69. To: Grumble Jones (#65)
#70. To: rowdee (#68)
She was even known to swallow it.
#71. To: lodwick (#61)
#72. To: mehitable (#69)
Can people use tetracycline? What would you use it for?
#73. To: rowdee (#53)
Remember the chest-type refrigeration units where GLASS bottles of soda pop, various flavors were sold? And there was a place on the side or front of it where you'd pop the cap off the top.
#74. To: mehitable (#63)
#75. To: Grumble Jones (#64)
#76. To: mehitable (#70)
#77. To: Grumble Jones (#50)
Kites...nobody flies kites anymore.
#78. To: who knows what evil (#73)
#79. To: Grumble Jones (#72)
#80. To: All (#78)
#81. To: Grumble Jones (#55)
We would open the bottle and hold a cup under it...lol...free soda
#82. To: rowdee (#80)
#83. To: lodwick (#57)
Remember clothespinning playing cards on your bike's fork for the neat effect?
#84. To: rowdee (#78)
HOWEVER,if I thought I could get a glass-bottled RC Royal Crown Cola, the real thing, I'd do it in a heartbeat.
#85. To: all (#84)
#86. To: Jethro Tull (#0)
#87. To: Axenolith (#86)
The hitching posts still were used there too!
#88. To: lodwick (#26)
running behind the mosquito-spraying truck sucking up whatever chemicals...
#89. To: Grumble Jones (#47)
Yep....I can remember that unique smell when I opened a bottle of Coke. The cross between the smell of the Coke and the cork lined caps...ahhhh.
#90. To: rowdee (#56)
There was some sort of horse salve [sorry, having one of those sometimers moments here] that my parents thought cured most everything on the exterior. The least cut, and out it came. Chapped? Bring it on.......
#91. To: Axenolith (#89)
Let this thread never end...
#92. To: mehitable (#87)
and a real ice box until I was a toddler.
#93. To: All (#91)
#94. To: Grumble Jones (#93)
Damn - that stuff should cure whatever ails you.
#95. To: lodwick (#91)
Yes, the simple, and often simple-minded, things that we did and enjoyed back in the day, I fear may be forever lost; except in our memories.
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