Are You Old?

This from Jerry Fitz:

Someone asked the other day, “What was your favorite fast food when you were growing up?”

“We didn't have fast food when I was growing up,” I informed him. “All the food was slow.”

“C'mon, seriously, where did you eat?”

“It was a place called `at home,’'' I explained.

“Mom cooked every day and when Dad got home from work, we all sat down together at the dining room table, and if I didn't like what she put on my plate, I was allowed to sit there until I did like it.”

By this time, the kid was laughing so hard I was afraid he was going to suffer serious internal damage, so I didn't tell him the part about how I had to have permission to leave the table.

But here are some other things I would have told him about my childhood if I figured his system could have handled it.

Some parents NEVER owned their own house, never wore Levi’s, never set foot on a golf course, never traveled out of the country or had a credit card.

In their later years, they had something called a revolving charge card. The card was good only at Sears Roebuck. Or maybe it was Sears & Roebuck. Either way, there is no Roebuck anymore. Maybe he died.

My parents never drove me to soccer practice. This was mostly because we never had heard of soccer.

I had a bicycle that weighed probably 50 pounds, and only had one speed, (slow). We didn't have a television in our house until I was 11.

It was, of course, black and white and the station went off the air at midnight, after playing the national anthem and a poem about God. It came back on the air at about 6 a.m. And there was usually a locally produced news and farm show on, featuring local people.

I never had a telephone in my room. The only phone in the house was in the living room and it was on a party line. Before you could dial, you had to listen and make sure some people you didn't know weren't already using the line.

I was 19 before I tasted my first pizza, it was called 'pizza pie.' Pizzas were not delivered to our home. But milk was.

All newspapers were delivered by boys and all boys delivered newspapers. My brother delivered a newspaper six days a week. It cost 7 cents a paper, of which he got to keep 2 cents. He had to get up at 6 a.m. every morning.

On Saturday, he had to collect the 42 cents from his customers. His favorite customers were the ones who gave him 50 cents and told him to keep the change. His least favorite customers were the ones who seemed to never be home on collection day.

Movie stars kissed with their mouths shut. At least, they did in the movies. There were no movie ratings because all movies were responsibly produced for everyone to enjoy viewing, without profanity or violence or most anything offensive.

My Dad was cleaning out my grandmother's house. She died in December and he brought me an old Royal Crown Cola bottle. In the bottle top was a stopper with a bunch of holes in it. I knew immediately what it was, but my daughter had no idea. She thought they had tried to make it a salt shaker or something. I knew it as the bottle that sat on the end of the ironing board to 'sprinkle' clothes because we didn't have steam irons.

How many do you remember?

· Headlight dimmer switches on the floor.

· Ignition switches on the dashboard.

· Heaters mounted on the inside of the firewall.

· Real ice boxes.

· Pant leg clips for bicycles without chain guards.

· Soldering irons you heat on a gas burner.

· Using hand signals for cars without turn signals.

Older Than Dirt Quiz

Count all the ones that you remember not the ones you were told about. Ratings at the bottom.

1. Blackjack chewing gum

2. Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside

3. Candy cigarettes

4. Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles

5. Coffeeshops or diners with tableside jukeboxes

6. Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers

7. Party lines on the telephone

8. Newsreels before the movie

9. P.F. Flyers

10. Butch wax (that was our hair product)

11. TV test patterns that came on at night after the last show and were there until TV shows started again in the morning. There were only 3 channels... if you were fortunate

12. Peashooters

13. Howdy Doody

14. 45 RPM records

15. S&H green stamps

16. Hi-fi's

17. Metal ice trays with lever

18. Mimeograph paper

19. Blue flashbulbs

20. Packards

21. Roller skate keys

22. Cork popguns

23. Drive-ins

24. Studebakers

25. Wash tub wringers

If you remembered 0-5 = You're still young

If you remembered 6-10 = You are getting older

If you remembered 11-15 = Don't tell your age,

If you remembered 16-25 = You' re older than dirt!