Skip to main content

The way life was .... Memories

Someone asked the other day, 'What was your favourite '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 'home,'' I explained. !
'Mum cooked every day and when Dad 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 lad 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'd figured his system could have handled it:

Some parents NEVER owned their own house, wore jeans, set foot on a golf course, travelled out of the country or had a credit card.

My parents never drove me to school... 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 10.
It was, of course, black and white, and the station went off the air at 10 PM, after playing the national anthem and epilogue; it came back on the air at about 6 am. And there was usually a locally produced news and farm show on, featuring local people...

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, seven days a week.
He had to get up at 6 every morning.

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

If you grew up in a generation before there was fast food, you may want to share some of these memories with your children or grandchildren. Just don't blame me if they bust a gut laughing.

Growing up isn't what it used to be, is it?

MEMORIES from a friend:
My Dad is cleaning out my grandmother's house (she died in December) and he brought me an old lemonade 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 with because we didn't have steam irons. Man, I am old.

How many do you remember?
Headlight dip-switches on the floor of the car.
Ignition switches on the dashboard.
Trouser leg clips for bicycles without chain guards.
Soldering irons you heated on a gas burner.
Using hand signals for cars without turn indicators.

Older Than Dirt Quiz:
Count all the ones that you remember, not the ones you were told about. Ratings at the bottom

1. Sweet cigarettes Phantom brand.
2. Tamrind and jagerry mix sweets.
3. Home milk delivery in glass bottles
4. Party lines on the telephone
5. Newsreels before the movie
6. 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 2 channels [if you were fortunate])
7. Peashooters
8. 33 rpm records
9. 45 RPM records
10. Hand rotated ice cream machines.
11. Metal ice trays with levers
12. Blue flashbulb
13. Cork popguns
14. Wash tub wringers

If you remembered 0-3 = You're still young
If you remembered 3-6 = You are getting older
If you remembered 7-10 = Don't tell your age
If you remembered 11-14 = You're positively ancient!

I must be 'positively ancient' but those memories are some of the best parts of my life.

Don't forget to pass this along!
Especially to all you’re really OLD friends....I just did!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

MORE photos of cricketers in Kenya added

More cricket photos added! Asians v Europeans, v Tanganyika, v Uganda, v East Africa, Rhodesia, etc some names missing! Photo Gallery of Kenya Cricket 23 photos: CM Gracias, Blaise d'Cunha Johnny Lobo! Ramanbhai Patel, Mehboob Ali, Basharat Hassan and hundreds others.  

Pinto: Blood on Western and Kenyan hands

  BOOK REVIEW   Pinto: Blood on Western and Kenyan hands   Review by Cyprian Fernandes     Pio Gama Pinto, Kenya’s Unsung Martyr 1927-1965 Edited by Shiraz Durrani [Vita Books, Kenya, 2018, 392 pp.   Pbk, £30, ISBN 978-9966-1890-0-4; distributed worldwide by African Books Collective, www.africanbookscollective.com ]   Less than two years after independence from the British, on 24 February 1965, the Kenyan nationalist Pio Gama Pinto was gunned down in the driveway of his Nairobi home.   His young daughter watched helplessly in the back seat of the family car.   Pinto, a Member of Parliament at the time, was Kenya’s first political martyr.   One man was wrongly accused of his death, served several years in prison and was later released and compensated.   Since then no one has been charged with the murder.   Now the long-awaited book on Pio Gama Pinto is finally here, launched in Nairobi on 16 October 2018....

A message from Mervyn Maciel from his Hospital Bed

Morning my dear friends. Want to write to each one of you but I am exhausted! Thanks for everything. You have done much for me. Being discharged today after three long weeks. Have to live with pain for the rest of my life! Home at last, thanks to all of your prayers and kind wishes! From Mzee Mervyn Maciel to all of you. Morning Skip. Please don’t think I am or have been ignoring you – quite the opposite hard to spill it out with diminishing gufu (strength). Wish they could establish what is causing the chronic bleeding in my brain region. I want to sing again and write so much however gufu na shindwa mimi (lack strength is hampering me. Please thank everyone for their prayers and for enriching my life. I was the dunce in the family: My brothers Rev Joseph SJ and the late Wilfrid are my heroes. I owe them so much, also my darling Elsie and each of my loving children, including Conrad who suffered so much during his short life. Our faith kept us going during those painful days in Marsab...