When I was really little we had one telephone. It was a rotary dial. There was no answering machine and no one would dare to not answer it, because if you missed it, they might not call back and you would never know who it was or if they were having an emergency. Also, long distance calls cost a bundle so we would rarely make long distance calls, and when we did, we kept them short.
We rarely went to a fast food restaurant, and if we did, it was kind of a special event, like when we were coming home from the beach, it was never used out of convenience, because we ate at home, around the dinner table, every single night. We rarely went out to eat at nicer restaurants either, because it was just too expensive, but when we did, it was quite the treat. My brother and I never begged to go to the fast food places. Our parents would have never put up with whining children. The only time we ever went out for pizza was on my birthday and we always went to Shakey’s Pizza Parlor. To this day, I’ve never had pizza delivered.
Unless it was raining, we didn’t play inside the house very often, although we did play barbies and play with coloring books inside, but most of the time we were sent outside to play. Right before it got dark, when it was time for dinner, the Dads were sent outside to whistle for their kids to come home and eat dinner. Each Dad had a distinctive whistle. We rode bikes, played cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, hide and go seek, four square, jump rope, driveway basketball, house, played on swings, made mud pies, drew with chalk on the sidewalk, roamed around the canyon and made forts. If we started to whine that we were bored, we would be told to go outside and play. We didn’t play on Computers. There was no such thing as video games, although we did enjoy the occasional trip to the penny arcade where you could play such games as Ski Ball or Pinball
The only time we watched cartoons was on Saturday mornings. There weren’t any cartoons on the air at any other time, except on Sunday mornings, my brother and I did watch the claymation Christian children’s show called Davey and Goliath and another Christian themed show called Jot
I never set foot inside a “walk-in” theater until I was about 5 years old, before and after that age we mostly went to the drive-in theater, or picture show as we called it, with our parents and our dog. We would get into our PJ’s when it was still broad daylight, around 5 PM on a summer night, then we’d pile into the station wagon and head to Thrifties Drug Store to pick out some candy before heading to one of the many drive-in theaters in town.
I liked Dots, my brother liked Tootsie Rolls, Mom liked Sugar Babies and Dad liked Hershey Bars. My Mom always had one of those little Fold Up Cups in which she would dole out the grape or black cherry flavored Shasta
If you caused problems at school you would be immediately reprimanded by the teacher, sent to the principal if it was something serious, and your parents would be notified, then you would be suitably punished by your parents too. Teachers didn’t put up with disruptions in classrooms and parents didn’t act like their children were God’s gift to humanity. There were certain, clear expectations of behavior, unlike today where anything goes, and half the kids are medicated.
If you caused problems at someone else’s home, your parents expected to be told what you’d done wrong and the host parents could punish you on the spot, you’d most likely be sent home, and then your parents would give you a suitable punishment when you got home. Nobody thought they’re kid was God’s gift to humanity.
We had school clothes and play clothes. No kid would have dared to wear a pair of shorts and a tank top or flip flops, which we called thongs, to school. They would have been sent home to change.
It was rare to see an obese person, and even rarer to see an obese child.
Children’s birthday parties included inviting 8 or 10 neighborhood kids over to your house where you would enjoy cake, ice cream and punch. We would play pin the tail on the donkey, and drop clothes pins into a milk bottle, and the game where you would be blindfolded and you’d be given a large spoon in which you had to scoop up cotton balls off the carpet and put them into a bowl. Then everyone would sing happy birthday and the birthday child would open presents. This took about 2 hours and then everyone was sent home with a small mesh party favor bag filled with peanuts and M&M’s or Jordan almonds and a formal goodbye from the birthday child. There were no theme trips, limousine rides, hundreds of guests, photo booths, bounce houses, or private behind the scenes tours of anything. If Grandma was lucky, she might get a polaroid photo of the event. There was no posting of thousands of pictures of the little tyke on Facebook.
It was very rare to be allowed to drink soda. We drank milk at breakfast, lunch and dinner, although we were allowed to drink High C and at birthday parties we had either Kool Aid or Hawaiian Punch. Regarding the milk, we were occasionally allowed to add Nestle’s Quick or Ovaltine
People didn’t go to Starbucks, because they didn’t have coffee specialty shops like that (except maybe in Seattle). You got coffee (and food) at coffee shops, and you drank Sanka and Postum or Instant Coffee or coffee made in a Percolator. There were no Kuerig machines.
In the summertime, kids weren’t sent to specialty camps, such as pitching camp, computer camp, or cheer camp. Some kids went to summer camp, but most of my friends simply played around the neighborhood and sometimes partook of the free arts and crafts days, or movie days that they had at the local elementary school.
The closest anyone ever got to sushi, which was unheard of, was the fish sticks served for lunch at school, or fish and chips at H Salt Fish and Chips. The only Japanese food I was acquainted with was Sukiyaki
There were no rollerblades, we had Roller Skates with metal wheels that caught in the cracks of the sidewalk.
We would have been mortified, as teenagers, to have worn an outfit that showed our Bra Straps and this is the only kind of Thongs we wore, and we didn’t call them flip flops.
We thought that if you studied hard, worked hard, and were a good and honest person, that the American Dream was possible. I don’t believe that any more.
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