[Yogi]

The Days of Black & 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.
..................

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 O Canada, 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.


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 bottle of mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it didn't sting like iodine did) and then we got our butt spanked.



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 our 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 anger 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?

LOVE TO ALL OF US WHO SHARED THIS ERA. AND TO ALL WHO DIDN'T, SORRY FOR WHAT YOU MISSED.
I WOULDN'T TRADE IT FOR ANYTHING!

Pass this to someone and remember that life's most simple pleasures are very often the best.

[Choban]

Nice post Yogi.
Just a note though. I'm 32 and remember those times.

[martin14]

nice find Yogi.

[Patish]

Damn !
I didn't grow up in Canada but all this stuff like from my childhood

[Alta_redneck]

Patish Patish:

Damn !
I didn't grow up in Canada but all this stuff like from my childhood

You guys sang O Canada every morning. Cool.

[Patish]

Alta_redneck Alta_redneck:

Patish Patish:

Damn !
I didn't grow up in Canada but all this stuff like from my childhood

You guys sang O Canada every morning. Cool.

Nope
It been O USSR.

[BartSimpson]

My little bit of nostalgia was this past weekend. Mrs. Bart and I enjoyed three days in Monterey and on the way there we stopped to see my childhood home in San Jose. Other than the brick walkways and the mailbox my dad put in when my mom and dad bought the place in 1960 everything was different. But it was nice to see.

We then drove past Millard McCollam elementary school (The Home of the Tigers!) and I got to see the playground where I had some great times as a kid. Except that all the good playground toys were gone and replaced by plastic crap. We used to have metal slides, some bitchin' swings, and a really big merry-go-round and all of the stuff is gone because, of course, it isn't safe and it isn't 'accessible' to gimpy kids. Imagine, because some kids can't use a swing, a slide, or a merry-go-round they have to remove them so NONE of the kids can use them. What crap.

Oh, yeah, the tether-ball poles are all gone because kids occasional got beaned by the ball.

We then went by James Lick High School where, at the ripe old age of 10, I rode my Schwinn Stingray off the gym and into the pool. It didn't occur to me at the time that I might have missed the water and hit the concrete, all I was concerned about was having a thrill.

One of the things we saw, too, was a tennis-ball sized dent in a metal fence at the elementary school where we'd aimed an M-80 'cannon' - which was a pipe with a lit M-80 in it and then we stuffed a tennis ball in the pipe and aimed it and let fly.

That was back in the day when the cops drove by and saw you lighting off M-80's and other than telling you not to toss them at the neighbor's cat they left you alone. Oh, yeah, you could walk around the neighborhood with a BB gun or a single-shot .22 and no one cared.

Good times.

[Alta_redneck]

Patish Patish:

Alta_redneck Alta_redneck:

Patish Patish:

Damn !
I didn't grow up in Canada but all this stuff like from my childhood

You guys sang O Canada every morning. Cool.

Nope
It been O USSR.

[Patish]

I remember that feeling when you get out from merry-go-round (we call it carousel) and try go straight.

[Yogi]

Patish Patish:

I remember that feeling when you get out from merry-go-round (we call it carousel) and try go straight.

I've been 'trying to go straight' all my life! (not to be confused withbeing/acting straigt!

[Patish]

Yogi Yogi:

I've been 'trying to go straight' all my life! (not to be confused withbeing/acting straigt!

Life is fight with oneself.

[Strutz]

Here's a similar one that I have always kept in my archives:


TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED the 1930's 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's!!

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us.
They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes.
Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paints.
We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.
As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.
Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.
We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.
We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.
We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.
No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.
We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.
We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!
We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.
We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.
We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.
We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them!
Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!
This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!
The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.
We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!
And YOU are one of them! CONGRATULATIONS!
You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good. And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.
Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?!