Now I’m really feeling nostalgic! I received an email from a very dear friend this morning. He and his wife live in England and we often forward amusing emails to each other after we receive them.

Following my post yesterday, “Recycle, Reuse and Repair”, which found me lamenting to the tune of “whatever happened to the good old days when broken items could be repaired?” this email now has me thinking even more about “whatever happened to the time when…?”

Take a walk along memory lane yourself! Here is the email I received, along with a few interjections from me. 🙂

The email begins ~

“Someone asked the other day, “What was your favourite ‘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 ‘home’,” I explained. “Mum cooked every day and when Dad got home from work, we sat 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.”

(Once every blue moon, my Mum would buy me a treat of hot chips, wrapped up in newspaper. But they weren’t fast; I waited forever for them to cook!)

“By this time, the lad 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.”

(I remember this very well; I had to ask, ‘please may I leave the table’, without interrupting any adult conversation!)

“But here are some other things I would have told him about my childhood if I’d figured his system could handle it:

Some parents never owned their own homes, wore jeans, set foot on a golf course, travelled out of the country or had a credit card.”

(Credit cards weren’t even invented! When you wanted to buy something, you saved up to pay for it!)

“My parents never drove me to school. I had a bicycle that weighed probably 50 pounds, and only one speed, (slow).

We didn’t have a television in our house until I was ten. It was, of course, black and white, and the station went off air at 10pm, after playing the national anthem and epilogue; it came back on air at about 6am. And there was usually a locally produced news and farm show on, featuring local people…”

(Oh yes, I remember the black and white TV days; my kids think it’s hilarious that TV’s weren’t in colour!)

“I never had a telephone in my room. The only phone 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.”

(We didn’t have a phone in the house at all!)

“Pizzas were not delivered to our home…but milk was.”

(I had my first taste of pizza at age seventeen…boy oh boy, did I ever lead a sheltered life!)

“All newspapers were delivered by boys and all boys delivered newspapers…my brother delivered a newspaper, seven days a week. He had to get up at 6am every morning.

Film stars kissed with their mouths shut. At least, they did in the films. There were no movie ratings because all movies were responsibly produced for everyone to enjoy viewing, without profanity or violence or almost anything offensive.”

(Those were the days!)

“If you grew up in a generation before there was fast food, you may want to share some of these memories with your children or grandchildren. Just don’t blame me if they bust a gut laughing.

Growing up isn’t what it used to be, is it?”

The email continues, asking do you remember the following ~

• Bottles with holes punched into the lids, for sprinkling water onto clothes before ironing them, because we didn’t have steam irons. (My Mum had one!)
• Using hand signals for cars without turn indicators. (Yes!)
• Sweet cigarettes. (Thinking he’s talking about lollies, and yes, I remember them).
• Coffee shops with juke boxes. (They had one in the café next to where I worked at age 16!)
• Home milk delivery in glass bottles. (The magpies (birds) liked to peck the silver foil lids off them, and the bottles were recycled!)
• Newsreels before the movie. (Hmmm…Can’t say as I do).
• TV test patterns that came on at night after the last show and were there until TV shows started again in the morning (there were only two channels, if you were fortunate). (Oh yes, this I do remember!).
• Peashooters. (They were a boy thing…I remember boys having them confiscated at school!)
• 33rpm records. (Still have some!)
• 45 rpm records. (Yep, still have some 45’s too!)
• 78rpm records. (Yes! My parents had a few! Wonder whatever happened to them?)
• Hi-fi. (My parents had one; lasted for years!)
• Wash tub wringers. (Funny…Mum had one and always told me not to stand too close, in case my hair got caught in it!)

Yes, I know…now I’ve ‘dated’ myself something shocking, and you have probably done the same thing! But would you have it any other way? We lived in an age when the world was younger and much more innocent. Those days cannot, and will not, ever be replaced…and we were lucky enough to have lived them! 🙂

The technology in the world advanced suddenly and with such a great volume of speed that at times it left our heads in a spin. Our children missed out on our ‘good old days’.

I wonder what stories will be told by our own children, when they tell their grandchildren stories of their own ‘good old days”?  😉