*SAY YOU SAW IT IN THE MESSENGER*
Just a Quick Note from…..Rita Allen
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Join me in a trip down memory lane Do You Remember When... All the girls had ugly gym uniforms? It took
five minutes for the TV to warm up? Nearly everyone’s Mom was at home when the kids got home from school? Nobody
owned a purebred dog? When a quarter was a decent allowance? You’d reach into a muddy gutter for a penny? Your
Mom wore nylons that came in two pieces? All your male teachers wore neckties and female teachers had their hair done every
day and wore high heels? You got your windshield cleaned, oil checked and gas pumped without asking, all for free, every
time? And you didn’t pay for air? And, you got trading stamps to boot? Laundry detergent had free glasses, dishes
or towels hidden inside the box? It was considered a great privilege to be taken out to dinner at a real restaurant with
your parents? They threatened to keep kids back a great if they failed...and they did? When a ‘57 Chevy was everyone’s
dream car...to cruise, peel out, lay rubber or watch submarine races and people went steady? No one ever asked where the
car keys were because they were always in the car, in the ignition and the doors were never locked? Lying on your back
in the grass with your friends and saying things like, “That cloud looks like a...” and playing baseball with
no adults to help kids with the rules of the game? Stuff from the store came without safety caps and hermetic seals because
no one had yet tried to poison a perfect stranger? When being sent to the principal’s office was nothing compared
to the fate that awaited the student at home? Basically we were in fear for our lives, but it wasn’t because of drive-by
shootings, drugs, gangs, etc. Our parents and grandparents were a much bigger threat! But we survived because their
love was greater than the threat. Can you still remember... Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, Laurel and Hardy, Howdy
Doody and the Peanut Gallery, the Lone Ranger, The Shadow Knows, Nellie Bell, Roy and Dale, Trigger and Buttermilk Summers
filled with bike rides, baseball games, Hula Hoops, bowling and visits to the pool, and eating Kool-Aid powder with
sugar. Candy cigarettes, wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside, soda pop machines that dispensed
glass bottles, coffee shops with tableside jukeboxes Blackjack, Clove and Teaberry chewing gum Home milk delivery
in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers Newsreels before the movie - P.F. Fliers Telephone numbers with a word prefix...(Raymond
4-601) Party lines - Peashooters - Howdy Dowdy - 45 RPM records Green Stamps - Hi-Fi’s - Metal ice cube trays
with levers Mimeograph paper - Beanie and Cecil - Roller-skate keys Corkpop guns - Drive-ins - Studebakers - Washtub
wringers The Fuller Brush Man - Reel-to-Reel tape recorders Tinkertoys - Erector Sets - The Fort Apache Play Set Lincoln
Logs - 15 cent McDonald hamburgers 5 cent packs of baseball cards - with that awful pink slab of bubble gum Penny candy
- 35 cent a gallon gasoline - Jiffy Pop popcorn Decisions were made by going “eeny-meeny-miney-moe” Mistakes
were corrected by simply exclaiming, “Do Over!” Catching the fireflies could happily occupy an entire evening? It
wasn’t odd to have two or three “Best Friends” The worst thing you could catch from the opposite sex
was “cooties” Having a weapon in school meant being caught with a slingshot? A foot of snow was a dream
come true? Saturday morning cartoons weren’t 30-minute commercials for action figures? “Oly-oly-oxen-free”
made perfect sense? Spinning around, getting dizzy and falling down was cause for giggles? The worst embarrassment was
being picked last for a team? War was a card game? Baseball cards in the spokes transformed any bike into a motorcycle? Taking
drugs meant orange-flavored chewable aspirin? Water balloons were the ultimate weapon? Pass this on to anyone who may
need a break from their “grown-up life” I double dog dare ya! Author Unknown
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