Geezerdom

Those of us entering Geezerdom will appreciate this. For those who are not, just look at what you missed.

"Hey Dad," my son 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. 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. I had a bicycle that weighed probably 50 pounds, and only had one speed, (slow). We didn't have a television in our house at all until dad brought home one with a 7” screen. Some neighbors 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. There was no cable. All TVs had “rabbit ears”.

I never had a telephone in my room. The only phone in the house was in the living room and it was on a party line. Before you could dial, you had to listen and make sure some people you didn't know weren't already

using the line. Shoe stores had x-ray machines that showed your feet inside the shoe. I’m surprised I don’t have 18 toes today.

Pizzas were not delivered to our home. But milk was. All newspapers were delivered by boys, and all boys delivered newspapers. I delivered newspapers, six days a week for 50 cents a day—less than a penny per paper.. I got an extra 50 cents a week if no one complained about missing papers or broken windows. On Sundays I hawked more papers at a busy intersection sort of like cold beer at Wrigley Field.

Movie stars kissed with their mouths shut. At least, they did in the movies. Touching someone else's tongue with yours was called French kissing and they didn't do that in movies. I don't know what they did in French movies. French movies were dirty and we weren't allowed to see them.

How many memories like this do you have? Pop bottles with special stoppers with holes for sprinkling water on clothes before there were steam irons. Head light dimmer switches on the floor. Ignition switches on the dashboard. Heaters mounted on the inside of the fire wall. Six volt electrical systems. Real ice-boxes. Pant leg clips for bicycles without chain guards. Soldering irons you heat on a gas burner. Using hand signals for cars without turn signals. Calculators with hand cranks.

My first Army paycheck was $92 per month before deductions. And those were the good old days.