For all the Ancients

Subject: For all the Ancients
From: ard mhacha
Date: 27 Aug 01 - 01:49 PM

Some of you may have seen this or it may have been in the Mudcat before I arrived, anyway I think its clever. We are Suvivors. [For those born before 1940]. We were born before Television, before Penicillin, Polio shots,Frozen food,Plastic,Contact lenses,Videos,Frizbees and the Pill. We were born before Radar,Credit Cards, Split Atoms, Laser Beams, and Ball Point Pens,before Diswashers, Tumble Driers, Electric Blankets, Air Conditioners, Drip Dry Clothes, And before man walked on the Moon. We got Married first and then lived together. We thought Fast Foods were what you eat in Lent. A "Big Mac" was an oversized Raincoat and "Crumpet" we had for Tea. We exsisted before House Husbands, Computer Dating, Dual Careers, and when a "meaningful relationship" meant getting on with cousins, and when "Sheltered Accomodation" was where you waited for a Bus. We were before Day Care Centres, Group Homes and Diposables Nappies. We never heard of ,FM Radio,Tape Decks,Electric Type writers,Artifical Hearts, Word Processors, Youghort and Young Men wearing Earrings. For us "time sharing" meant togetherness, a Chip was a piece of Wood or a Fried Potato, Hardware meant Nuts and Bolts and Software wasn`t a word before 1940,"Made in Japan" meant Junk, the term "making out" was how you did in Exams,"Stud" was something that fastened a Collar to a Shirt and" going all the way" meant staying on a Double-Decker to the Bus Depot. Pizzas, McDonalds and instant Coffee were unheard off. In our day Cigarette smoking was "fashionable","Grass" was mown, "Coke" was kept in a Coalhouse, a "Joint" was a piece of Meat you had on a Sunday, and "Pot" was something you cooked in, "Rock Music" was Grannys Lullaby. "Eldarado" was an Ice-Cream, a "Gay" was the life and soul of the party and nothing more, while "Aids" just meant beauty treatment or help for someone in trouble. We who were born before 1940, must be a hardy bunch when you think of the way in which the World has changed and the adjustments we have had to make.. ------Slan Ard Mhacha.

Subject: Lyr Add: SILLY SLANG SONG (Eric Bogle)
From: GUEST,PeteBoom (at work)
Date: 27 Aug 01 - 02:21 PM

I KNEW this song was posted in DT... a great one that you may be able to appreciate, Ard Mhacha...

SILLY SLANG SONG
(Eric Bogle)

Do you remember the day when if you said that you were gay
It meant with joy, you could sing and shout?
When a fairy was enchanting and dressing up and camping
Was something you did with the Scouts?
That innocent age when an urgent case of aids
Was powdered milk we sent to the Sahara.
A fruit was something nice to eat, a poof was something for your feet
And a queen was an old tart in a tiara.

Chorus: Ah, look what we've done to the old Mother Tongue
It's a crime, the way we've misused it.
It's been totally tiswoggled, tronged and longed and gollywobbled
And we've strangled, frangled, mangled and abused it.

Ah, those halcyon times when a bong meant a chime
And a buzz was a noise insecticidal
A joint meant something between bones and getting really stoned
Only happened to bad people in the Bible.
When if you had a bad trip it meant you fell and broke your hip.
Cold turkey just meant Christmas at Aunt Dottie's.
Coke was something that you burned, smack was something that you earned
From your mumsy-wumsy when you had been naughty.

The years have gone, I'm afraid, when only eggs got laid,
And only the rhinosaurus got horny.
Only kangaroos jumped and only camels humped
Getting stuffed meant a little taxidermy.
Swnging was for trapeezes or Tarzan's chimpanzeses
Tossing off was something Scotsmen did with cabers.
Now it means something quite obscene while a heavy ugly scene
Is any movie starring Arnold Schwartzenegger. ^^^

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 27 Aug 01 - 03:40 PM

When a keyboard was something on an accordion. I wasn't allowed to take typing in school because I was in the academic program. Now keyboards have survived and I still don't know how to use one.

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Amos
Date: 27 Aug 01 - 03:44 PM

I don't predate the war but one of my earliest memories is playing catch with my brother with a plastic envelope full of whitish lard-like substance and a dollop of orangey food-dye -- you had to squeeze it up a lot to distribute the coloring in it so it would take on a butter-like color, which was what this product -- newly named "margarine" was supposed to replace.

Can't say I cared for it, but the mixing process was a heap of fun.

A

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: iamjohnne
Date: 27 Aug 01 - 11:47 PM

Well, I dont remember mixing the margarine, but I do remember having to walk down the path to the "little house" when I would visit my grandmother in North Carolina. It was a two seater. Somehow, I never was able to use it when in tandem with someone else.

Johnne "goin where the weather suits my clothes"

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Amergin
Date: 28 Aug 01 - 12:01 AM

I thought this was going to be a thread dedicated to Spaw and Katdarling....

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: CarolC
Date: 28 Aug 01 - 12:06 AM

What does 'crumpet' mean these days, other than something you have for tea?

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Aug 01 - 12:08 AM

I heard it was a floozy in a sailor's tavern.

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Amergin
Date: 28 Aug 01 - 12:09 AM

no i think that is strumpet....

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Sourdough
Date: 28 Aug 01 - 12:32 AM

No, a strumpet is somethng played in a marching band.

Sourdough

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: ard mhacha
Date: 28 Aug 01 - 05:50 AM

Poor oul Yanks, Crumpet, in pure Limey, "I `ad a luvely bitta Crumpet last night, she was a go`er" Getting there. Slan Ard Mhacha.

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: RangerSteve
Date: 28 Aug 01 - 07:15 PM

AM radio. No FM. Tubes in the radio and TV that had to be replaced regularly. Vertical and horizontal knobs on the TV. (in the introduction to "The Outer Limits" there's a line about controlling the vertical and horizontal - I wonder how many people these days know what that means). A few years back I saw an old espisode of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" where the story hinged on someones phone being on a party line. How many people remember them? (no, not one of those 1-900 HOT BABES things).

No remote controls. You actually had to get up and walk across the room to change channels, volume, and all the various things that could go wrong with a TV.

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From:
Date: 28 Aug 01 - 07:36 PM

I was taught use a sliderule at school, and I use a mechanical do dah for addition and subtraction where you slide a stilus along slots - I can use an abacus too. It is so reasuring that they don't require batteries and so will never fade out on me.

when I was very young - about five years old - I used to go out with my father to houses where he drilled a hole in the side of the TV so they could get the second TV channel - the one with adverts, not BBC - by turning a switch on the little box he wired up through the hole.

Anne

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Kim C
Date: 28 Aug 01 - 07:38 PM

I was born before MTV and e-mail...

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Gareth
Date: 28 Aug 01 - 07:47 PM

Now a session in basic economics.

Its called the Mars Bar index (US of A Hershey Bar)

Consider how long it took you to earn the price of a Mars Bar in say 1950 ( Yes I know sweet rationing was still in force in the UK)- Then translate the cost of a Pint of beer ( or whatever) into the equivalent in Mars Bars. Then compare it with any subsequent date. That gives you the equivalent relative cost as related to earnings.

What frightens me is that when I first started work in 1970 my employers Sedgwick Collins & Co ( Now Marsh Mac Uk) were one of the first Lloyds Brokers to Use a Computer. It was housed in a sepperate building and had a Working Memory of 16K repeat 16K

Th first home computer I bought was an Amstrad 464 with the bolt on disk drive, memory 32K and it fitted on to a desk. Using MS/DOS. (Its up there in the loft)

My present Number Cruncher is a COMPAQ Pressario - 4 Gigga Disc, upgreded to 96Mb Mem - and this is now obselecent. At two years Old !!

I am forced to consider upgrading same just to run some of the Software I need for my political activities. Ie min of 128Mb Ram and a 20 gigga Disc, cost say 500 mars bars, and I earn roughly 20 mars bars an hour.

Frightening isn't it ??

Catters - just remember when those middle class twits say how difficult it is to get good servants these days - It poeple like us that would have been the servants.

Gareth

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Aug 01 - 04:04 PM

I can still remember going into the sweetshop with my (old) penny, and being told I couldn't buy a sweet because I needed 'coupons' Never has my flabber been so gasted!

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Jim Krause
Date: 30 Aug 01 - 03:57 PM

Gee Gareth, when I was a kid, we used to score pop bottles from the nieghbor's garbage, and from ditches, take 'em home, clean 'em off and redeem them for about a nickel a piece. I don't know what the US$ conversion rate is, but you could buy a Butterfinger candy bar for a nickel in 1963 where I lived. At that rate, you could get a pretty good bellyache on all that candy for just a few pop bottles.

Let's see, at $0.05 per bottle, that would take about 22000 pop bottles to buy the Gateway computer I use at home. This would be about 2.9333 bottles of pop per week per person in my old hometown. That isn't an unlikely figure, if you don't consider the rate of breakage.

Well, this was a fun little exersize. Not sure of the point I made. None I guess.
Jim

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Chicken Charlie
Date: 30 Aug 01 - 04:16 PM

Right. Along with nickle candy bars went the time when you bought a dollar's worth of gas--because in your '49 Ford custom that would actually move the gauge up the dial--and the kid at the station washed your windshield and checked the air in your tires while it was pumping.

Bus tokens. Crystal sets (primitive radios). "Church key" as slang for a pre-poptop beer or soda can opener. Pocket protectors. The huge demo slide rules that hung over the blackboards in the chem and physics labs so the profs could work a problem and everybody could see it. Telephone party lines; not totally gone perhaps, but not nearly as common. My grandmother's hairdo, a "Marcel wave." Really 1930's chic. Women's hats. A car style called a "coupe" which meant it only had two doors.

And a word from the Black part of the integrated neighborhood I grew up in that I've never heard anywhere else: "reet." Meant stylish, with-it.

CC

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: RangerSteve
Date: 31 Aug 01 - 12:35 PM

Twenty-five cent haircuts. Twenty Five cents for a movie, and a double feature at that. And they didn't clear the theater out after the show was over, you could stay in the theater all day.

Oh, yeah, there were cartoons, 5 at least, before the double feature.

There was only one screen per theater, but every town had one. And the movies changed weekly.

This was in the late 50's - early 60's.

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: GUEST
Date: 31 Aug 01 - 03:29 PM

'reet' is a common Yorkshire word; still means fine, OK, cool

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 31 Aug 01 - 04:26 PM

My father had an eighteen foot motorboat from sometime in the 1910's, with a one cylinder, four horse power engine which ran at about 200 rpm. It made a put-put-put sound while the boat traveled at a breathtaking 5-6 knots. I had some great times in that boat.

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Ferrara
Date: 31 Aug 01 - 05:07 PM

My uncle's farm was the treasure house for me. It did have an outhouse (one-seater), a real smoke house for smoking hams and bacon, a corn crib and corn shelling machine (we turned a crank, cobs came out the end and hard corn I think came out of a spout in the side but it's vague....) In the early years they also used a mechanical cream separator (another crank), an iron pump to get water from the well, and oil lamps. By the time I was maybe five or six a lot of that stuff was history because electricity and running water had come to Davidsonville.

But I got to watch (and "help" with) all the stages of tobacco farming. I have never smoked, but I've never found anything pleasanter than being in a tobacco barn while the tobacco is drying. The fragrance was marvelous.

Also -- they had a family of Baltimore Orioles nesting in the weeping willow tree every year. Baltimore Orioles are scarce these days too.

Rita

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Gloredhel
Date: 31 Aug 01 - 05:24 PM

I'm not ancient, but because my dad is, I grew up watching black and white movies and helping him restore the '51 Studebaker Champion that he still hasn't finished. My first crush was the guy who played Zorro in the t.v. series. (Of course, I saw it re-runs, he's probably dead now.)

I saw a list of items a while back that said, "If you remember 1-10, you're over the hill. If you remember 1-15, you're old. If you remember 1-20, you're as old as dirt." I don't remember all of them, but item #18 was a rollerskate key and #19 was an ice box. I recognized everything on the list, so I guess I'm old as dirt.

By the way, my dad will be glad to hear that he's not the only living person who knows what a slide rule is!

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Bill D
Date: 31 Aug 01 - 06:24 PM

ahhh...lying on the rug beside the radio (with the little green 'tuning' eye) and listening to The Lone Ranger and Jack Benny. Having ether for anesthetic to have your tonsils out. Being outraged when the cost of popsicles and ice cream bars from the Good Humor truck went up from 6¢ to 7¢(but saving all the flat sticks to weave into fans). Watching my mother cry when a railroad engineer told her about the death of FDR...and not 'quite' understanding...buying hamburger to feed the cat, because it was *cheap*....

and yes, I mixed the color packets into the margarine!...and we had Log Cabin Syrup in the TIN shgaped like a log cabin! (wonder what one of those is worth today!)......who remembers prying the corks out of pop bottle caps and re-assembling then on white tee-shirts? My brother & I collected hunderds of those, and I had a shirt with maybe 30 bottle caps clanking on it!

Wooden Tinker-Toys that you could build ANYTHING out of,,,*grin*....

bicycles with NO gear shifters, you just peddled hard! (Mostly Schwinn)(and playing cards clothes pinned to the frame so they extended into the spokes to make a noise intended to sound like a motorcycle)....

cast-iron toys..(cars, boats, soldiers) that you bought at the 5-10¢ store...for 5-10 cents!

and music!...hearing "Atchison, Topeka & the Santa Fe" and "Goodnight Irene" (Andrews sisters?...lordy, how I hated that version)) played over the speaker at the swimming pool...hearing "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" and "Sioux City Sue" and "Home on the Range" sung by the like of Gene Autry regularly!....(while my mother was sighing to Hoagy Carmichael's "Stardust")

movies..."Prince of Foxes" and Westerns and Disney classics,,( I attended the World premier of "Song of the South" (New Orleans, 1946 or early 1947), and heard "Bibbity-Bobbity-Boo" and watched Br'er Rabbit get flung in the briar patch before ANY of you!..*grin*.

and prizes in cereal boxes...and prizes you had to send OFF for with cereal box-tops(always to Battle Creek, Mich.!).....

and...and....so DAMNED much more...some I'd like to have back...some of which is best forgotten.

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Gareth
Date: 31 Aug 01 - 06:40 PM

A sign of growing old.

Visiting York Railway museam (UK) and seeing locomotives which were brand new (and you were pleased to spot them), now "stuffed and mounted" as exhibits - (Merchent Navy Class & D8000 ????)

Gareth - recalling his anorak days !!

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Mudlark
Date: 31 Aug 01 - 06:53 PM

Crone memories...Movietone News, along with those 25 cent dbl features plus cartoons, my prized Capt. Midnight decoder ring, ads for "spring shoes" on the backs of comics, showing kids able to leap over backyard fences while wearing them, milk that came delivered to to the house in bottles,...the cardboard top of which would be lifted right up off the bottle when cold weather separated and froze the cream, that very necessary implement, the ice pick, needed to hack off pieces of block ice so as to fit it to the icebox, and for drinks, lemonade made with real lemons, saving stuff like lard, tin cans (flattened) and gum wrapper tinfoil for the war effort, passing rare and valuable bubble gum from mouth to mouth (I can't believe I DID that!), falling in love with Hopalong AND Topper, seen on an 8'in TV screen in a console as big as a fridge........a lot of water over the dam and under the bridge since then!

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Sep 01 - 03:29 AM

schoolboys wearing short pants and the rite-of-passage that putting on long trousers for the first time was. The inevitable ribbing from neighbors and the secret pride of hearing kindly older friends and relations say,'you are a man now'.

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Ebbie
Date: 01 Sep 01 - 10:51 PM

Fluoroscoping feet in the shoe store (!), and in the movie theatre, not only did they have cartoons, they also ran newsreels. I seem to remember that ended in the mid-50s.

Ebbie

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Peg
Date: 01 Sep 01 - 11:07 PM

I remember my parents saying they would quit smoking when cigarettes went over a dollar a pack! (of course they did not)

Penny candy: sigh. There was a ovely little "variety store" in our neighborhood; we spent many a summer day walking down the street with our coins to get little brown paper bags filled with gum, chocolate, fruity treats, sourballs, trading cards and stickers that came with their own stick of pink bubble gum with a very special powdery taste (why don't trading cards come with this gum anymore?)

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: AliUK
Date: 01 Sep 01 - 11:49 PM

I wa sborn in '65 but i remember taking the back off the telly when I was about 6 and wiggling out the tubes ( much to my father's chagrin when he got home from work and wanted to watch the news). Dickie Davis on World of sport and saturday afternoons watching the wrestling with Jakie Pallo, Mick McManus and Giant Haystacks. Getting the first issue of 200AD. My first "home computer"was a Sinclair ZX80. And my second was a TX something or other, where you loaded programmes with a tape recorder, and if the volume wasn't just right you had to start over again, which was a bugger because it took 5 minutes anyway. Riding up and down the street on my brand new chopper bike and seeing the first episode of Grange Hill.

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: iamjohnne
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 12:43 AM

Playing outside until after dark in the summertime and catching fireflies in a jar. Watching Captain Kangaroo in the mornings before school. One of my biggest disapointments was when the Wizard of OZ came on TV for the first time and my Mom told me that when Dorothy got to Oz everything was in color. We had a black and white TV so nothing changed. I dont think I trusted my mom's opinion much after that. I remember when coke machines were six cents. I had to put in a penny and a nickle to get a six ounce coke.

Johnne goin where the weather suits my clothes

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Lin in Kansas
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 01:08 AM

Anyone else remember Red Ryder? And what was the name of his Indian sidekick--?

Getting cardboard dividers in your shredded wheat that told you how to build a tee-pee, or gave you bits of "Western history," child-style version of course.

Davy Crockett--I treasured that coonskin cap and never quite forgave my brother Joe for "accidentally" ripping the tail off it.

Reading "Thunderhead" and "My Friend Flicka" 10 times each--my name's STILL on the library card in the back of those books in my tiny hometown library. Along with all the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and Zane Grey they had.

Helping my mom wash windshields and pump gas in our family's Gulf service station for the big Jack Cooper transport trucks. I fell in love at 7 yrs. old with "Irish," one of their drivers, who had the most beautiful prematurely white hair, combed in a gorgeous duck's ass. He'd be about 80 now...

Helping my brothers tear car engines apart at Hank's Garage, across the street, and spending hours washing car parts in gasoline.

Losing a hard-earned nickel betting on the World Series when I was 8. Don't recall who was playing that year, but we kids were serious about "our" teams. Only time I ever bet on a sporting event, and the reason I'm no gambler now!

May have been just childhood fantasy, but life sure seemed simpler then.

Lin

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 01:43 AM

Great Thread!

Football was played in the mud, and sometimes it was so muddy that most of the scrimmage lines were completely gone by halftime, and padding was scanty. Is there any sandlot baseball anymore? How many people carry their household water into the house? Wool clothing was the good stuff. Foodlines. Trench warfare. Death in child birth, celibacy as the main birth control. Doctors had to make house calls, and dentists were scary. If you didn't make a part for your car in your tool shed, you didn't drive it. Sparkplugs were 'High tech'. You cut trees into logs with hand saws, and you needed to sharpen them often. Housework was hard physical labor. Land was affordable, drought was deadly. Noone really knew what the moon was, and it was special. There was frontier. Alcoholism was the norm. Sexual abuse was kept quiet. Movies were accompanied by a live pianist, and recordings were scarce. Sheet music ruled the world. Air quality in and around towns was too often chokingly bad, and most of the heat went up the chimneys. Chimney sweeps were common, chimney fires claimed many a house. People died of simple infections, as antibiotics were few. Family feuds were often conducted with guns, and were often multigenerational. The "Kingdome" wasn't built yet. Opium derivatives were considered medicinal. Dirt roads were common, and many were graveled, and oiled regularly. What about pesticides? The Earth was something noone had ever actually seen as a little planet, and I don't think ANYONE ever imagined nuclear extinction, or the loss of species that might someday be important to science. Mood drugs, Violent anti global protesters, Styrofoam, horseless towns...

I guess what I'm trying to say, is that it wasn't always a peachy-keen situation, but, we COULD learn a lot about what "quality of life" means, by recalling the romance of it all... ttr

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Metchosin
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 03:27 AM

Lin it was...."Little Beaver....how could you forget that....
Yeah Captaaaaiiiin Midnight and My Friend Flicka!
Chewable Red Wax Lips
Flavour Straws
Fireball Bubble Gum
Foil Milk Caps for decorating bicycle spokes
Kilroy Was Here
Calypso
Daisy Air Rifles
Sputnik
Double Dutch
Sen-Sen and Thrills
Drapes and winklepeckers
Hula Hoops
Mad Magazine
What me worry?

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Metchosin
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 03:31 AM

Gee I was so excited I forgot the "L" in "Little"

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Lin in Kansas
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 12:38 PM

Metchosin--YEAH, Little Beaver! That was it! (CRS again...)

How about "Classic Comics," Shakespear, Dumas, et al. in pictures. About half my knowledge of the classic novels comes from them. And they sure made book reports easy. (Hey, do kids still have to do book reports?)

I'd forgotten flavor straws. If your tongue wasn't purple, you weren't livin'. Yum.

Cap guns still around?

Lin

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Bill D
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 12:54 PM

Red Ryder's claim to fame was wearing his guns backward and cross-drawing!...even as a kid I thought that was stupid!,,,in the Sat. morning movie series, it would open with a giant book opening and Red & Little Beaver popping out and firing bow & guns at some imaginary bad guys!....

(Oh..I used to LOVE to floroscope my feet and watch all the bones wriggling!....wonder why they stopped that...*grin*)

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Metchosin
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 01:43 PM

Lin I had forgotten Classic Comics they were great! my first introduction to Jules Verne.

It was wonderful growing up in a time when no one was pathologically worried about you and left to your own devices you constructed rafts, dug tunnels, slew thousands, ocassionally came home with a few minor head wounds, had perpetulal scabs on your knees and your imagination soared.

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Metchosin
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 01:51 PM

oh I forgot a significant interior design statement! Pepto-bismal coloured furniture sprayed from something you attatched to the back of the vacuum cleaner.

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Lin in Kansas
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 02:27 PM

Bill D, you mean you never practised that backward cross-draw? With your twin pearl-handled Roy Rogers cap pistols? (or was it Gene Autry?)

Agh, yes--bubble-gum pink, avocado green, Harvest Yellow--the hot decorating colors, frequently used with dead black--just gorgeous.

And Dad was proud of his new car, and the whole neighborhood came to take a look at it. Uh-huh, and you could even tell the Fords from the Chevys from the Chryslers, too.

Lin

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Metchosin
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 02:43 PM

Yeah the fifties was a time when, as an opener, it was considered socially acceptable upon first meeting someone, to ask, "What do you drive?"

I can remember feeling ashamed because my parents still had a Model A when everyone else in the neighbourhood had "modern" cars with rounded fenders.

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Greycap
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 02:53 PM

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be, 1942- born vintage memories include really horrible raincoats that did not keep the rain or cold out, My first flat-top guitar - a Levin Goliath sunburst- £27-2-6d My son being born - 1965 Other stuff.....

Subject: ADD: Dorset, My Dorset
From: wildlone
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 03:14 PM

This sums it all up for me

DORSET, MY DORSET
(Bonny Sartin/O'Meara)

Many years have rolled away since I was a child,
But I recall those happy days when we were free and wild.
With miles of meadows, fields and woods to wander in at will,
There were trees to climb and fish to catch down at the water mill.

Chorus.
Dorset, my Dorset, I sing this song lest I forget
How good it was when I was young and growing in Dorset.

We topped the larder up with food,nature would provide;
At weekends we would all turn out and scour the countryside.
There were hazels in the hedgerows,brown trout in the brook,
And strawberries in the woodland glades if you knew where to look.

Chorus

At harvest time we stooked the corn,helped to build the stack,
Then scrumped for apples from his trees when the farmer turned his back.
The gamekeeper he was fair game for those with the poachers touch,
We trapped his birds and rabbits too,and thanked him very much.

Chorus

The youngster of today I know,holds wonder in his hand,
Machines and modern miracles that we don't understand.
As I look back I know for sure that things were bound to change,
But I feel somtimes they're battery bred and we were all free range.
Recorded on:
Cassete Dorset,my Dorset-YETC 3012
CD Dorset,my Dorset-YETCD 3012

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Metchosin
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 03:49 PM

oh geez, lump and tear time wildlone, battery bred, ain't it the truth..... thank you.

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Troll
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 05:01 PM

I was born in 1940. The electric and phone lines stopped at my Grandfathers house. He and his neighbors donated the right-of-way and set the poles and the REA hooked them up. Anyone higher up the mountain than him used kerosine lamps or candles.
I can remember during the war how he woudl ride his horse off into the night to deliver a phone message about someones son or husband in the service. He had to go on horsebace because you couldn't get a car up some of those roads in the daytime, never mind in the dark.
My uncle ran a general store using kerosine lamps. You pumped the number of gallons of gasoline you wanted (IF you had the requisite cupons) up into the reservior by hand to measure it ond then let gravity drain it into the cars tank.
Yeah, I remember those days all right. Sugar Daddys and Hadacol and Nehi Grape and Grand Old Opry on Saturday night.

troll

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Bill D
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 06:56 PM

Bakelite...need I say more?(ever burn some?)

(Lin...I practiced that cross-draw..that's why I decided it was stupid..*clank*...*thump*)

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Gloredhel
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 10:00 PM

In case you were wondering, hula-hoops and double-dutch jump-rope are still big on the playground (or were eight years ago) and I saw a cap gun at the store the other day.... After watching "Top Hat" this afternoon for about the tenth time, I renewed my conclusion that I was born in the wrong half of that century. I want to remember what you all remember!

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: ard mhacha
Date: 03 Sep 01 - 04:34 PM

I harvested potatoes, [we called it Tattie hoking in the north of Ireland] fifty two years ago and it was my first and last, with an old horse employed in digging out the spuds. This was tolerable work, but, the following year the Farmer had a Tractor and how we longed for that old horse, the spuds fairly flew out of the ground. We were too young to realise that we had passed from the age of rural tranquilty to the early stages of industrail farming. Slan Ard Mhacha.

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: GUEST,Marilyn June
Date: 10 Nov 06 - 07:50 PM

I think that Little Beaver was played by Robert Blake (actor and Suspected wife murderer) Correct me if I'm wrong.

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Peace
Date: 10 Nov 06 - 08:19 PM

Jerry (sp?) Mathers was 'the Beaver'.

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: GUEST,Marilyn June
Date: 10 Nov 06 - 08:28 PM

Not Beaver Cleaver---Little Beaver from Red Ryder.

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: catspaw49
Date: 10 Nov 06 - 08:29 PM

Yep Marilyn....Indeed it was Robert Blake who was also one of the Little Rascals. And Peace is also right, just a different Beaver. Well, ya' just can't get too much Beaver can ya'?

Spaw

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Gurney
Date: 10 Nov 06 - 09:04 PM

Like Ard Mhacha, I was born before the pill, and I've wondered!!!

When I was a kid, you weren't cheeky to grown-ups, because they would hit you, and they were often ex-servicemen and women, or in my home town, colliers, and tough, if not especially rough. If you went home and complained that the teacher had caned you, your Dad would belt you for misbehaviour.

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Peace
Date: 10 Nov 06 - 10:57 PM

My apologies, Marilyn.

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Peace
Date: 10 Nov 06 - 11:04 PM

One of Canada's symbols.

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: GUEST,Andy
Date: 11 Nov 06 - 05:29 AM

What about the Saturday afternoon kids' matinees at the local cinema in the forties and fifties? Watching Tom Mix and the like and then going into the local fields and woods, emulating such heroes in make believe games of 'cowboys and Indians'.(Yes, thats what we we called native Americans then!)These shows were referred to as the 'tanner rush' cos it cost you a tanner (sixpence) to get in and there was a veritable stampede of kids when the doors opened. We also saw Flash Gordon films which had really naff special effects, but in those days we thought them marvellous. I also recall that then, rainforest was known as 'jungle' and there were films with some white hunter character called 'Jungle Jim'. Anyone fondly remember such events and was the Flash Gordon character played by someone called Buster Crabbe?

Ee by gum, nostalgia's not what it used to be!

Regards
Andy

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 11 Nov 06 - 05:13 PM

I'm not without numerous nostalgic recollections; but must object (mildly) to an "attitude" that's much too common.

From the first post:

We who were born before 1940, must be a hardy bunch when you think of the way in which the World has changed and the adjustments we have had to make..

It's not that the world has changed, its that we changed it. It was "our generation" that produced all those things we didn't have when we started out. (Some of which are, admittedly, mixed blessings.)

Now what's the next couple of wimp-ass whiney generations of spoiled brats gonna do? (Besides trying to tell us we're obsolete?)

- (Just like we told grandpa?)

John

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 11 Nov 06 - 05:50 PM

Ranger Steve, apropos of the five-cent movie:

I was born in 1930, and in the mid 30s in Rochester, Minnesota one of the movie theaters, on Friday night, would have double features, for ten cents.

Now at that time, when I was maybe nine or ten, my allowance was--five cents for the week. My brother, five years older, got ten!

With my five cents, I could go to the movies every other week, which meant that on the off weeks I'd miss the current installment of the serial--Captain Midnight, the invisible man, and the like. But I had to live with asking my brother to tell me what happened in the serial that week.

Then, DISASTER! They raised the price of the movie from ten to eleven cents! I couldn't go to the movie even every other week any more! But my brother was a real gentleman. He told my mother, "I'm delivering papers, and I sometimes get to usher at the civic auditorium, so I don't need my allowance of ten cents. Give it to Dave, instead."

Paradise! I could go to the movie EVERY WEEK, and saving up the odd four cents, I could even buy a candy bar now and then!

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: GUEST,Marilyn
Date: 12 Nov 06 - 12:47 PM

No apologies necessary. I am Canadian and those little animals are all over our lakes and rivers. Last summer one was making it's way across the expressway stopping traffic.

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Peace
Date: 12 Nov 06 - 12:49 PM

They aren't too bright as a rule, but they do taste delicious.

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Ferrara
Date: 12 Nov 06 - 08:07 PM

Well I'm way too young for this thread, having been born in November 1941 :-)

A couple of quibbles.

We never heard of ... Young Men wearing Earrings. My uncle Dick had been a bosun's mate in the Navy. He said most of the guys gave up wearing a single earring the first time they saw what an advantage they gave your opponent in a fight. Not a new idea, young men wearing earrings.

And "going all the way" already meant "going all the way" by 1950 at least.

For the rest, yeah, I remember lots of these things. I think we only got 2 cents each for returnable bottles. And I remember the first non-returnable ones. "No Deposit, No Return."

Who mentioned wax lips? Oh I do remember them, and candy cigarettes, and the little wax bottles with colored sweet liquid in them.

And the Saturday movie serials. My favorite was "Superman Vs Atom Man," but I remember Flash Gordon (can still see Ming on his throne), Tarzan serials, and all the cowboy movies. Tom Mix and Hopalong Cassidy and Ken Maynard. Our favorites though were Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. Gene Autry was second. (Bill and I have agreed to disagree on this since neither of us can go back and re-educate the other's childhood self.) And we went early and saw all the features over again. We never tried to get to the movies for the beginning of the picture, we would catch up with what happened at the beginning during the next showing.

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 12 Nov 06 - 10:49 PM

Dave O - thank you for the tale

Oh, Sweet Brother of Mine

Sincerely, Gargoyle

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Nov 06 - 10:52 PM

Bill - you are "normal" for the rest of the young angst world ...wore his guns backward and cross-drawing meant that was dislexic, and just like the rest of us.

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 13 Nov 06 - 02:30 AM

An "explanation" offered by my local newspaper, probably sometime arond the mid 40s(?), for the "cross-draw" was that the frame rate of movie cameras will miss a barely competent "fast draw" completely, and that some cowboys, possibly "Red"?, started using the cross-draw to slow things down for the cameras - because they dropped their pistols too often when they tried to do it slowly enough for the cameras.

Note: I had my doubts about this theory when I read it in the Wichita Eagle; but the elders assured me I could believe anything if I read it in the newspaper. That it appeared after I started reading something beyond the "funnies" (~age 4, 1943?) and before I figured out that "elders could lie" (maybe age 9, 1948? - I was gullible) gives a possible time range for when I saw it - maybe.

The real question is whether it was Red Ryder who was the one described, although the explanation would work even if the article talked up another star. Was there an earlier cross-draw exemplar that anyone remembers?

And does anyone else remember the 2 or 3 movies in which Roy Rogers was a "member of the outlaw gang" before he made it as "the good guy." I recall fragments of one, but don't remember the name of the movie (memorable as they all were). The one I recall was a re-run after Roy was somewhat known, and I recall my dad's description that Roy's "face stuck out in the gang like a baby's butt in a whorehouse." I was old enough then to wonder how my daddy knew what happens in a ... (oh well).

John

Subject: RE: For all the Ancients
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 13 Nov 06 - 04:21 AM

Red Ryder and little Beaver were only available in England in comics, or novels. In one I remember he got a horrific beating from a scoundrel called Ace Hanlon, who tied him up first.

Buck Jones was also was also a star of these comics. They were slightly more substantial and exciting and expensive thanEnglish comics - more like a graphic novel really.

England copied these with one about a fighter ace called Battler Britten.

Roy Rogers was also a bit of shadowy figure for most of us. By that time (the fifties) his films weren't around but he was in lots of books. Roy Rogers annuals and a novel I remember called Ghost of the Mystery rancho. The villainous ghost turned out to be the blind man who wasn't really blind.

There was a villainous very violent horse wrangler called Bronc Alamar who first appeared strangling the chinese cook with his own pigtail, but Roy sorted him out. However it wasn't much a respite because the ghost hanged the cook, a couple of chapters later.

No wonder I ended up nuts.