Growing Up in the '50s and '60s

Remember when it took three minutes for the TV to warm up?

Nobody owned a purebred dog? A quarter was a decent allowance? You'd reach into a muddy gutter for a penny?

Your Mom wore nylons that had two pieces?

You got your windshield cleaned, oil checked, and gas pumped, without asking, all for free, every time? And you didn't pay for air? And, you got trading stamps to boot?

Laundry detergent had free drinking glasses, dishes or towels hidden inside the box?

It was considered a great privilege to be taken out to dinner at a real restaurant with your parents?

They threatened to keep kids back a grade if they failed...and then they did it?

When a '57 Chevy was everyone's dream car...to cruise, peel out, lay rubber or watch submarine races, and people went steady?

No one ever asked where the car keys were because they were always in the car, in the ignition, and the doors were never locked?

Lying on your back in the grass with your friends and saying things like, 'That cloud looks like a...'?

Playing baseball with no adults to help kids with the rules of the game?

Stuff from the store came without safety caps and hermetic seals because no one had yet tried to poison a perfect stranger?

And with all our progress, don't you just wish, just once, you could slip back in time and savor the slower pace, and share it with the children of today?

Basically, we were in fear for our lives, but it wasn't because of drive-by shootings, drugs, gangs, etc. Our parents and grandparents were a much bigger threat! But we survived because their love was greater than the threat.

...And then there were summers filled with bike rides, Hula Hoops, and visits to the pool, and eating Kool-Aid powder with sugar.

Didn't that feel good, just to go back and say, 'Yeah, I remember that'?

Remember that "perfect age" is somewhere between old enough to know better and too young to care.

Remember Howdy Doody and The Peanut Gallery, the Lone Ranger, The Shadow Knows, Nellie Bell, Roy and Dale, Trigger and Buttermilk ... Sky King ... Zorro ... Bat Masterson ... Wyatt Earp ... Gunsmoke ... Bonanza ... and the Ed Sullivan Show?

Remember the Tonight Show with Jack Paar, if you were allowed to stay up late?

Candy cigarettes, wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside?

Remember when soda pop machines dispensed glass bottles? Coffee shops and diners with table-side jukebox controls?

Blackjack, Clove and Teaberry chewing gum? Sen-sen?

Remember home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers?

Telephone numbers with a word prefix, like Yukon 2-6021? And party lines?

Peashooters ... rubberband pistols?

Hi-Fi's and 45 RPM records?

Remember 78 RPM records?

S&H Green Stamps?

Mimeograph paper? And the smell of ditto fluid?

The Fort Apache Play Set ... Lincoln Logs ... Tinker Toys ... and if your parents had a little more money, Erector Sets?

Do you remember when decisions were made by going 'eeny-meeny-miney-moe'? Mistakes were corrected by simply exclaiming, 'Do Over!'? And 'race issues' meant arguing about who ran the fastest?

Remember when catching fireflies could happily occupy an entire evening?

It wasn't odd to have two or three 'Best Friends'?

Having a weapon in school meant being caught with a slingshot?

When Saturday morning cartoons weren't 30-minute commercials for action figures?

When 'oly-oly-oxen-free' made perfect sense?

Spinning around, getting dizzy, and falling down was cause for giggles?

The worst embarrassment was being picked last for a team?

When 'War' was just a card game?

Baseball cards in the spokes transformed any bike into a motorcycle?

Taking drugs meant orange-flavored chewable aspirin?

When water balloons were the ultimate weapon?


If you can remember most or all of these, then you have lived, my friend. And it makes me sad to know that there are generations of young people out there who never knew such innocent times.