Black and White TV...

[moose 57]

 Black and White TV

 

... I think you'll enjoy this. Whoever wrote it could have been my next door neighbor because it totally described my childhood to a 'T.'

 

Black and White 

Black and White

(Under age 45? You won't understand.)

 

You could hardly see for all the snow,

 

Spread the rabbit ears as far as they go.

 

 

'Good Night, David.

 

Good Night, Chet.'

 

My Mom used to cut chicken, chop egg and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning.

 

My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter and I used to eat it raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in ice pack coolers, but I can't remember 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 high top 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.

 

Speaking of school, we all said prayers and sang the national anthem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention.

 

We must have had horribly damaged psyches. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.

 

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself.

 

I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations.

 

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 $99 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 our 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 jerk. It was a neighborhood run a muck.

 

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?

 

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!

[SgtFuryUSCZ]

***///

We could ride our bikes anywhere...  play everywhere...

we didn't get hauled off by CPS and our parents didn't end up in jail for child neglect/endangerment.

 

.

[umbertino]

Nice 'n'sweet...A li'l teardrop coming down....

[Jim1cor13]

My god, I genuinely miss those days when so few were paranoid and kids could actually

be KIDS. No one was drugged at school because they were told they had "ADHD" or some other

abbreviated con game "illness". We all had attention problems but somehow it turned out OK.

 

Those days are long gone, but really nice to remember them.

 

Thanks Moose!

Edited April 13, 2016 by Jim1cor13

[Jaxinjersey]

Yep... the simple, common sense, Golden Rule days!  Now I know why I enjoy watching the Andy Griffith Show!    

[Jim1cor13]

Andy Griffith, great show Jax. Loved that as a kid and still do now. I am still that same kid

inside, trapped in an older body!

[nstoolman1]

Ran around without shoes.

Ran the neighborhood with my 6 sisters and brothers and the only thing we had to do 

was be back for dinner,,,,,,,,,Or you didn't eat.

If my dad heard anything from the neighbors that wasn't good.....We couldn't sit for week. 

And nobody went to jail after that either. 

 

Good times 

Edited April 14, 2016 by nstoolman1

[nannab]

It seems like yesterday. Nobody made fun of what other kids

were or were not wearing. We all traded hand me downs. Great times!

[Texstorm]

Thanks for the blast from the past Moose ! My daddy has always love me and when I was growing up and did wrong, he would subsequently correct my misguided shortcomings. That's how you learn right from wrong ! I deserved every  A.. Kicking I ever got and then some and one then day I just woke up. It's a whole lot easier to do the right thing and the consequences are not as severe. God blessed those of us who were fortunate enough to have a mother and father who really cared. 

[Shabibilicious]

Play outside until the street lights come on......Catch-a-fly in the street.....Punt, pass and kick, in the street......whole neighborhoods ablaze with the sweet stench of burning leaves......chase the mosquito fog truck on our Huffys.....shovel snow for money.....mow lawns for money.....paper routes for money......cardboard box sledding......monkey ears over your ball cap when batting.....Chuck Taylors.....home made go carts and friends did the pushing.....etc. etc.

GO RV, then BV

[chess]

LISTENING to the Lone Ranger and The Cisco Kid, while sitting down in front of a tall wooden radio.

Sky King and the secret decoder ring. Nabisco Shredded Wheat Apache ingenuity cards.

Saturday afternoon "playing guns" outside with our cowboy guns.

Making great forts out of discarded construction stuff.

[Shabibilicious]

Our Motto:  If you ain't bleeding....you ain't trying.

GO RV, then BV

[tankdude]

Building jumps for our bikes out of stuff found in the garage

Playing baseball in the abandoned lot across the road

Yelling "Mom, going to Tim's" as I got on the bike on a Saturday afternoon

Bike "Wheelie" contests to see who could go the farthest

 

[Texstorm]

I can remember all those things as well.....we never had a locked door at home. I was the oldest and my dog Taffy was my back up. No older kids ever messed with me because my dog would take them down. I can remember watching "Loyd Bridges" in Sea Hunt....black and white,  listening to "Snoopy vers the Red Barron" ....Building rafts to float down Buffalo Bayou just to see where it went. Riding horses off a 10' bluff into a cool creek when we got hot just because it was fun " not smart". Looking back I was wild as hell and it was a lot of fun but I probably wouldn't have made it these days. What my folks didn't know then was probably for the best. 

[BJinMontreal]

Thanks for all the great memories ...

yeah those were the days for sure!!!  Get up early, stay out late and Mom didn't care where we were unless we were late for dinner or supper - and a phone call from Jimmy's mom was enough to let Mom know I wouldn't be home for one of those meals cuz me and Jimmy were busy creating havok in his neighbourhood!!!

Ground hockey in the street (banned these days), home-made bike jumps, playing war games with our Johnny 7 guns running roughshod over everybody's property ... jumping fences, climbing trees and playing on the train tracks ... yeah, I'm pretty sure that one involves a serious reprimand, if not jail time these days!!

[George Hayduke]

4 hours ago, Shabibilicious said:

Play outside until the street lights come on......Catch-a-fly in the street.....Punt, pass and kick, in the street......whole neighborhoods ablaze with the sweet stench of burning leaves......chase the mosquito fog truck on our Huffys.....shovel snow for money.....mow lawns for money.....paper routes for money......cardboard box sledding......monkey ears over your ball cap when batting.....Chuck Taylors.....home made go carts and friends did the pushing.....etc. etc.

GO RV, then BV

Smile   - Don't forget pulling the Radioflyer door to door and asking for 'pop' bottles to be refunded down at the corner mom&pop.  75 cents bought a lot of comic books, candy and more 'Pop' back then.

[George Hayduke]

2 hours ago, Shabibilicious said:

Our Motto:  If you ain't bleeding....you ain't trying.

GO RV, then BV

"If you didn't cause something, you didn't have nothing..."  1957 North Long Beach Hedda Street crew 

[chess]

WHEN the "real" Coca Cola burned the crap outta your mouth and sinuses!!!!..........................

[Muleslayer]

Direct rip off "courtesy" kinda sorta dog 53!

 

Edited April 15, 2016 by Muleslayer
Wisecrack

[SgtFuryUSCZ]

***///    Nice Banana seat, MULE !     Playboy handlebars were groovy! 

RIDE IT LIKE YA STOLE IT, DUDE !  

 

,

[Xtaxguy]

Nine years old and OK to take two buses and the El to the Loop to Christmas shop at the Marshall Field mother ship, all alone of course.  Saved up $5, got it all done.  Around 1949 a Saturday and 25 cents got us two movies, 3 serials (Flash Gordon, Tom Mix, etc.), a newsreel, and FIVE cartoons, plus, of course, a small popcorn and soda!

A year later became fully free in western San Fernando valley.  Rode entire Red Car system to explore the region, got first "racing (3 speed JC Higgins) bike and rode hundreds of miles all over the hills.  Watched movies being shot and soon there were rocket motors being tested in the western hills at dusk.  Probably did at least 3 things every day that would now land a kid, and/or his parents, in court, but nobody else ever got hurt or had property damaged.  Schools were fairly peaceful, and mostly self policed.  If you broke an official rule, you got one or more swats from the VP; but if you broke the kids' code of behavior (written nowhere, of course) it would go somewhat worse for you, but that was very rare.  

Our parents all had grown up in the Depression and almost all dads were WWII vets.  The message to us from them and from 99% of our environment was to do our chores, do the right thing, have fun and stay out of trouble.  We hardly knew and didn't care what our peers' ethnicity was except that it could lead to a whole new fabulous menu of goodies.  We were, I guess, a mixed bag brought together by the rapid aerospace boom.  The discovery of TexMex, Cajun, Hawaiian, Samoan, Japanese, Armenian, and kosher foods was a great addition to my Chicago ethnic suburb menus from all over Europe.  And I met many immigrant grandparents who would show us how to cook those goodies, and who were sometimes willing to tell their history and why they were so happy to have made it to America.

They were indeed the good old days, back before the power junkies decided they had to "help" us. 

[learning all i can]

Swung on grapevines/smoked grapevine until lips would pucker.  Rode horses miles from home and swamn in the cows pond (cow poop and all).  Never sick and scratches and scrapes never infected.

Went hunting for quail, fox and deer on others land and never ask for permission.  Now, to do such a thing, we would be the one hunted or shot.

Always outside, the only tv we watched was Bonanza, the rifleman and Stoney Burke (wanted to grow up and marry Stoney).   And when the yankees were Iin the world series, we always put our outside activities to rest to see Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris.

Hugh meal on Sunday afternoon then sat a front porch to watch and wave at the few cars that passed by whether we knew them or not.  Our son and his family live only 15 miles away but are always to busy with other activities.  Too far to come to our house but will drive 100s of miles to see Titans play or whatever the grandkids want to go do.  Time has become so fast....As I look and remember my days, I feel the ease and the care free life my brother and I grew up in.  There was no money spent to entertain us.  We found our entertainment in good 'ole mother nature......God's creation.     Seems my son and his family have to spend  big bucks to entertain and satisfy their niche.   I'm just not sure they are satisfied.

Thank you for sending me back down memory lane.  certainly things to ponder and only hope my grandson will experience a few of these moments when he has "TIME" to come over, of course that's only if he doesn't bring his  ipad, tablet and smart phone.....sorry if I sound like I'm complaining, guess old age is setting in

barb

[umbertino]

Grazie All for the real interesting and intriguing  testimonials... Real life stuff...Always the best

[chess]

15 cent Saturday movies featuring "Lash LaRue" Western weekly serials!!!.......................

Edited April 15, 2016 by chess
insertion of word

[chess]

......whatabout 'Flash Gordon' weekly movie serials.......'Merciless Ming'..................booooooooo!!!!!