The Good Old Days {Insp}

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The inspirational piece "The Rainbow Bridge," which
was sent out on 02/20/05, is written by Paul C. Dahm,
© 5/9/1981.

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"The Good Old Days"

"Hey Dad," one kid 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. "Grandma cooked every
day and when Grandpa got home from work, we 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, wore Levis,
set foot on a golf course, 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 AND 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.

Bicycles weighed probably 50 pounds, and only had one
speed, (slow). We didn't have a television in our house until
I was 11, but my grandparents had one before that. It was,
of course, black and white, but they bought a piece of colored
plastic to cover the screen. The top third was blue, like the
sky, and the bottom third was green, like grass. The middle
third was red. It was perfect for programs that had scenes
of fire trucks riding across someone's lawn on a sunny day.
Some people had a lens taped to the front of the TV to make
the picture look larger.

I was 13 before I tasted my first pizza. It was called "pizza pie."
When I bit into it, I burned the roof of my mouth and the
cheese slid off, swung down, plastered itself against my
chin and burned that, too. It's still the best pizza I ever had.

We didn't have a car until I was 15. Before that, the only car in
our family was my grandfather's Ford. He called it a "machine."
I never had a telephone in my room. The only phone in the
house was in the living room. Before you could dial, you had
to listen and make sure some people you didn't know weren't
already using the line (called a Party Line).

Pizzas were not delivered to our home. But milk was. All
newspapers were delivered by boys and all boys delivered
newspapers. I delivered a newspaper, six days a week. It
cost 7 cents a paper, of which I got to keep 2 cents. I had to
get up at 4:00 am every morning. On Saturday, I had to collect
the 42 cents from my customers. My favorite customers were
the ones who gave me 50 cents and told me to keep the
change. My 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. I don't know what they did in French movies.
French movies were dirty and we weren't allowed to see them.

If you grew up in a generation before there was fast food, you
may want to share some of these memories with the young
ones. Just don't blame me if they bust a gut laughing.
Growing up isn't what it used to be, is it?
Received on Sun Mar 6 02:27:25 2005