We've had similar nostalgia posted, but here's another: I know some of you can relate like I do and some of you will probably laugh. To me, in some respect, those were the days.

Black and White
(Under age 40? You won't understand.)

You could hardly see for all the snow,
Spread the rabbit ears as far as they go.
Pull a chair up to the TV set,
"Good Night, David. Good Night, Chet."

My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs 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 bo ttle 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 $49 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 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 goof. It was a neighborhood run amuck.

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 a nger 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?

Oh, and just out of curiosity, do any of you young ones read one and say, "what are they talking about?" (i.e. without cheating, how many know where "good night David, Good night Chet" comes from and who it refers to?

TIS,
Did you ever make mud pies?

Thanks, TIS.

Yes, I know Good Night, David and Good Night, Chet though I think that was before I was watching the news.

Those are great observations.

I vividly remember Good Night David, Good Night Chet. I'll send you a PM, TIS, with a good Huntley-Brinkley story that is too long and too irrelevant for this thread.

Other childhood memories....

On weekends and after school we would just go "outside and play." This could mean riding bikes, making us games, playing pick-up baseball, basketball or football. We had to be home before dark in time for dinner. There were no play dates, few organized leagues to attend, it was all improvised and for the most part unsupervised.

Teachers were always right, and I don't remember schools getting sued because someone got a bad grade.

In the suburbs you cuold lay in the street.

Saturdays the movies had "kiddie shows" which usually consisted of several cartoons and a double feature.

Mig, I did make mud pies in my day. I think every kid did.

DT, great Huntley/Brinkley story. I knew some here would remember them.

Oh DT, granted losts of cartoons on Saturday, but I also loved Fury and My Friend Flicka. Remember those?



TIS

Btw, If I'm not mistaken the Huntley/Brinkley duo were imitated by comedians as well no??? Didn't one or both of them smoke? And, wasn't it allowed on the air? My, how times have changed.


TIS

We had a BW TV until I was probably 10. Only one of our neighbors had a color TV... My sister and I were totally awe struck looking at a fantasy TV show for children featuring a golden haired vampire/ghost. And after lots of begging/crying to our father, we got a color TV eventually

SVSG,

We NEVER had a color tv either. I remember being at someone's house when color tv was so new. You're right. It looked so awesome seeing everything in color.

Also, same type thing with dishwashers. How cool were they? My mom never had one of those either....except my sister and I of course. No matter where we'd be invited for dinner, everytime the hostess started to clear the table, my mom would say "sit down, my girls will be happy to do it." My sister and I would of course obediently get up and wash the dishes, but say to each other some smart ass remark like "we gotta do ALL these dishes.

My sister got married and seven months later I got married (1970). Within a year or so my parents moved and my dad bought a color tv and my mom had a dishwasher in her house. To this day we still joke with my dad on how he waited til we were gone before buying those two things.

TIS

I had never seen a dishwasher until 3 years ago
No dining table until I was 7-8. We used to sit on the floor and eat.
No refrigerator until I was 8. Washing Machine came when I was 13 I think. Microwave at 22. I traveled in a plane first time when I was 15. Lot of caveman stuff eventhough I was born in 1979. US of course is/was way ahead of the third world.

Were there even colors back then? like was the world colorful?

Hey they even had forks/spoons back then, not to mention indoor plumbing. Why it was nice not to go down to the river and wash my clothes on the nearest huge rock.

Santino, you know that saying about children being seen an not heard??

TIS

SVSG,

Yes, we here in America must be really spoiled. We take much or granted.

TIS

Of course there were colors - dark, very dark and pitch dark.

Yes I have, I heard it, the quickly dismissed it and got back to what I was saying

You see, I learn something everyday

How many of you remember Douglas Edwards with the news as anchor of CBS evening news when it was only a 15 minute broadcast until it expanded to 30 minutes with Walter Chronkite?

How about Alex Dryer and Paul Harvey on the radio news every evening? I used to listen to them as I did my homework.

I had nuns in grade school and christian brothers in high school. I have the wounds to prove it.

How about staying out until the street lights came on? Did ya'll have hucksters - a guy who came around in a truck and sold vegetables?

No but we had a popsicle/icecream truck. That was a big thrill when the popsicle man came.

I do remember when there was 15 minute news cast, but can't say I remember Douglas Edwards. Walter Cronkite for sure, and Paul Harvey we'd listen to on the radio every day at 12:00 p.m.

I don't remember necessarily the Vegetable truck, but I recall my parents talking about it when they lived in an Italian-American area. They said people would sell not only vegetables but fish. Plus, I remember going to an outside market with my mother where they sold these things, including live chickens. Can't get any fresher than that.


TIS

I remember the huckster coming around once a week in the summer. We also had Elmer, the bread man, who drove through the neighborhood three or four times a week. He was an old man, who would hand deliver the bread to your house. Once in a while, we would get to go in the back of the truck if we were going to buy a dessert.

I remember the milkman although I wouldn't see him as he'd drop off the bottle of milk before 6 AM.

We had a coal furnace and radiators throughout the house for heat. After playing all day in the snow, we would place our gloves and hats and boots on the radiators to dry. Anyone else with coal furnaces? Remember how the coal truck would place the chute into the coal bins and you'd watch the anthracite slide.

Ahh nuns in grade school...they'd hit your knucles with a ruler if you didn't know your multiplication tables.

I remember Douglas Edwards... and I remember that most television anchormen smoked on the air, the most blatant being John Cameron Swayze whose show was sponsored by Camel Cigarettes. I believe it was called the Camel Cavalcade of News or something like that. He'd light up right there on the set.

I don't remember peole selling vegetables as described, but I do remember a guy would come through our neighborhood about once every six months with some kind of contraption that sharpened knives.

As for the open air markets....they are back! There's a huge one on Fridays in Copley Square in Boston, and I thnk they may have chickens and other livestock.

Finally, I believe Paul Harvey is STILL ALIVE and on the air.

Nice thread, TIS.

I remember most of the things you guys are posting. I also remember not having an air conditioner until I was almost 18 years old. My brother and I used to sleep out on the fire escape when it was stifling outside. I mean, this was in the '60s, in the Belmont section of the Bronx. There wasn't much to fear back then.

Speaking of stifling heat, remember the oscillating fans that did NOTHING but spread out the warm air?

That fan is in just about every flashback I have of my mother's kitchen when I was growing up. That and her old fashioned stove and Frigidaire. That's what we called it, the Frigidaire, NEVER the refrigerator. Of course my uncles, who were all born about 80 years old, just called it the "ice-box."

And plastic on the furniture! Well, that had it's own thread a few years ago, but it's still a goodie!

Wow! The milkman. I'd forgotten. Milk in a glass bottle. How about those little bottles at school with the paper caps?

Labriola's was on the corner and they had dried fish in baskets outside.

And AC. Only in theaters. I forget if Gimbels had it. And never in cars. Why didn't we melt? Were we just tougher back then? And gloves on the radiator at school.

And Harvey is still on the radio about 10:45 AM CST. What about Alex Dryer?

Yep. I remember when my parents got a couple of used air conditioners. One was placed in the room that I shared with my two brothers. It was only turned on at night and the door had to be closed. My father would make sure it wasn't on high. It made a loud rumbling noise, but I don't remember it keeping me up.

Yeah, and the milkman had other things he delivered... chocolate milk, eggs, & butter for sure, but I think they had other stuff. Also you could get milk that was not homogenized...the cream was on the top and you had to shake the bottle to mix it in, or you could pour off the cream.

And just think what a source of jokes the milkman was...those are al gone now.

Around here you can still buy milk in a glass jar, sure it costs a little more but it's a lot better. Oberweis.

This thread has become quite a trip down Memory Lane. I'm glad some of you are also old enough to remember some of the things we now have as a necessity as being a luxury when we were kids.

Re: Air conditioning - we didn't have an air conditioner until I was about 11 or 12 years old. Before that, my dad used to put a huge fan in the living room window every summer. It was made of steel and had to weigh at least 50 pounds (not anything like today's plastic window fans) and it kept the front end of the apartment bearable even during the hottest days. I really don't remember what it was like falling asleep on those hot muggy nights without a/c but I guess that's no problem when you're 8 or 9 years old.

Likewise, my parents would occasionally take me to the movies on a hot summer night simply because those theaters were one of the few gathering areas that had air conditioning. I remember the first time I went to a theater at night (it was a hot summer evening) and saw a grownup movie - it was a Martin & Lewis comedy (Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were partners in a very successful comedy team then).

Re: Milkman- We had a milk machine (a vending machine that sold quarts of milk in cardboard containers) in the basement of our apartment building so, even though I saw plenty of milkmen in the neighborhood, my family didn't use one. We did, however, have seltzer and chocolate syrup delivered to us every week. The old, heavy seltzer bottles with the spray spigot on top were fun to play with, and making an egg-cream became an adventure.

Re: Television - No cable then. We had 6 or 7 over the air broadcast channels and some would go off the air each night at 11:00 p.m. before coming back on at 6:00 a.m. If you tuned to those channels when they weren't broadcasting you'd probably see a test pattern.

If you went to a movie in the mid 1960's you'd probably have to wait on line, and while waiting you'd get a theater employee asking you to sign a petition that was anti-"pay t.v." (what they called cable then).

There weren't any vcr's then, so if you wanted to watch a movie at home, you'd have to watch what was being broadcast on t.v.

My grandmother had the soda man, which included those bottles of seltzer that made the BEST egg creams!! We had a milk man, but nothing else delivered to the house. When I was playing house and my Raggedy Ann was "bad", her punishment was to be placed in the milk box.

We didn't have any vegetable guys or anything, but my mom did when she was younger. She said that they had a code for the fruit and vegetable guy. My grandmother would send her out to buy bananas, but not if they were too small. However, you couldn't risk insulting the fruit man, so my mother would yell into the house, "Ma! They have Uncle Philly bananas today!" Uncle Phil was my mother's brother and was quite short. To this day, we refer to anything small as being "Uncle Philly".

I do remember the Fuller Brush man. He sold brushes door-to-door, which is an odd thing to sell that way if you think about it. We also had the ice cream trucks - Mr. Softee, Good Humor and Bungalow Bar. I loved the Bungalow Bar truck, mostly because it was looked like a little house on wheels.

I liked the street vendors best. In the summer there was the coconut man, who had chunks of fresh coconut which was kept cool by a little fountain. In the winter there was the chestnut man. No Christmas shopping trip was complete without a visit to the chestnut man.

We finally got a color TV in 1974 as a house-warming gift from my Uncle Bob and Aunt Clara. I remember being amazed that the NBC peacock's tail was all different colors.

I remember the milk man and the coal man. In the winter the birds would peck through the tops of the bottles of milk to get to the cream. I always thought the coal man had the worst job in the world but he seemed to be the happiest man alive. Always cheery and singing, he would pinch my cheek and leave a smear of coal dust there every time!

Channels 2,4,5,7,9 and 11 in New York, right, SC? Plus, channel 13 for Public Television.

Remember the Bowery Boys on channel 5 (WNEW), Abbott and Costello on channel 11 (WPIX), and all the great old black and white movies on channel 9 (WOR)?

And Christmas Day: MARCH OF THE WOODEN SOLDIERS on channel 11!

Wow, there was a Man for everything kinda like greek and roman gods