Remember When?

© 2004 copyright Raymond C. Evans

I don’t know how old you are and I dare not ask you, if you’re a woman, but the memories of my lout-hood go back quite a ways. Children of today would scarcely have a clue of what life was like for us. They’ll never get the full flavor of how we lived, no matter how many times we “old geezers” repeat ourselves. They’ll not get it from some musty old book either, I guess they’ll just have to save up their own memories like we did.

Families today have two or three TV sets in the house and a couple of computers for entertainment. We had a goldfish bowl, it only had one channel but at least it was in color. The color was OK but the thing never had any audio. Those two goldfish therein got pretty lively though, come feeding time.

We had a radio too; we could usually get at least one station on it during the day and at night we could get KGO from San Francisco. The radio was quite an affair, it was called a “Silvertone”, and I think it was the most prized furniture possession that we had. It was a console model and had what I think they called the “Autronic Eye”, if I remember correctly. This was a green thingy about the size of a quarter that was a sort of “pie chart”. This was for tuning in on the station, the smaller you could get the piece of pie, the better the reception was supposed to be. I have my doubts if it ever did anything for the reception at all, but we were deluded into thinking it did, at least by the maker of the radio. Moving that dial back and forth all the time at least kept us entertained and occupied, and distracted us from the static.

We had a phone, the only one in the valley of Larabee, it didn’t ring very often. The kids were forbidden to use it; every call was a toll call so the phone was only used for serious business. The phone didn’t have a dial or number pad as they have today and it certainly didn’t have an automatic re-dialing feature. When the phone did ring, we would almost jump out of our skin from surprise.

We were on a party-line of course, so you had to count the rings to see if the message was for our phone or not. Ringy-ringy---------ringy-ringy----------ringy-ringy,----- “hey that’s for us”. Most times it was just a call for one of our neighbors. If that was the case, one of us kids would either have to run, walk or ride our bike to deliver the message as fast as our skinny little legs could get us there.

Remember when coffee cost a dime? A scoop of ice cream cost a nickel? When they even had stores that were called the dime store, where they said things would cost a dime and they meant it. Remember when you could go to a movie and sit in the “snob section” for sixty cents? And then come out afterwards and eat a hamburger for thirty-five cents and hose it down with a vanilla shake for twenty-five cents or a root beer float for fifteen.

Remember when all the women were getting sticky lips from licking S&H Green Savings Stamps that they could reimburse for goodies at the store? Remember when they put a glass upside down as a prize in the laundry soap, or a bath towel? It took quite a while for the women to figure out that scam, they were just getting less soap in the box that was displaced by the prize. The smaller amount of soap in the box was what was paying for the prizes.

Remember the gas pump, where the gas was measured by pumping it up by hand into a large glass cylinder that held about ten gallons? And then having it drain down to the car’s gas tank by gravity. Remember the cars stalled along side of the road while the owners patched a tire, installed it and pumped it up by hand? Tires were not very good those days. Axles weren’t either. Remember the cars parked along side of the road with a broken axle waiting for the wrecker to come and tow it in? Remember the gas rationing and the thirty-five mile speed limits during the war?

Ah, the sweet, sweet memories of yore!

Remember when you bathed in the kitchen? Remember those trips to the outhouse out back to take care of nature’s needs? Those memories are not my fondest, and you would have to endure it several times a day. I’d almost as soon have a flat tire or a broken axle!

Remember when you went to that one room school and had to fire the big pot-bellied stove with wood or coal for heat? Remember the teacher’s copy machine? Just a pan that she would fill with some kind of gelatin made on the spot. And then she would write on the master page with some kind of indelible ink which she would place on the gelatin and transfer the ink by rolling the paper with a rubber roller. Following this she would roll on a fresh sheet one at a time to make up the pages for the lesson. The first copy was bleeding at the edges with ink but after about six pages it would fade out to a very dim copy. It was sure a lot better than doing them by hand individually though.

Remember when there was a little schoolhouse in every community for the lower grades and everybody walked to school? It was fun, really, there were puddles to wade in, and the ditches along side of the road were full of frogs and tadpoles to play with. If one was lucky, one might see a chipmunk or two.

Remember when you were about four and the only thing you had to worry about was if you could just keep from wetting your pants? Most of us will have to worry about that again when we get to the “check-out” at the local rest home. Be kind to your children, they’ll most likely be the ones that get to choose your rest home!

Remember when a “Deluxe” automobile would cost less than two thousand dollars, and there were armed guards on the railroad bridges because of the war? When you burned wood or coal to heat your house?

Remember when the children were safe outside and just a square block of wood could become a giant bulldozer in the child’s mind? I just about wore my lips down to a nub while making motor noises and pushing those wood blocks around.

Remember when we had to do all the heavy work by hand, before the advent of fork-lifts? We had never heard of “floppy discs”, but we were very familiar with “slipped discs”.

Remember the sound of the huffing and chuffing of those big steam locomotives and that musical sound of their whistles that can only be duplicated by the use of steam? How we would wave at the men in the cab and then in the caboose as the train went thundering by?

Remember when the barking of the neighbor’s dog was so far away that it didn’t bother anyone? Not so today, for some people, they may as well be barking in the living room. This leads some people to curse the neighbors. They should do this politely of course.----- “Old English” works pretty well. Just say, “If ye don’t quiet thou yonder dog, ye may find a load of buckshot in thou breeches”, thouest should be a good neighbor and quietest down thee hound!!!!------ On second thought, it might be better to just wear ear-plugs.

No, I don’t know how old you are, but if you’re my age, your head is chock-full of memories.