The past, presented in living colour

     

     "Each generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new."  

  

— Henry David Thoreau     

     Someone has said, "You can't create the future by clinging to the past." 

  
     But, often, by remembering the past, we have a greater  appreciation for the present. We keep our past when we share it with old friends alike. They're the only ones who don't get bored when you talk about the olden days. 
     
     To occasionally go back in memory to those earlier decades, we once more become totally amazed with the changes that have evolved, many positive, yet, others not so.    
     
     Perhaps if our today's youth were more aware of how the youth of yesteryears lived, there might be more appreciation shown for their easier modern way of living. 

     Who can remember when...?  

1. It took five minutes for the T.V. to warm up, and it had very few channels.  

2. When nearly everyone's mom was at home when the kids returned from school. 

3. Your mom wore nylons that came in two pieces. 

4. Nobody owned a purebred dog. 

5. All the male teachers wore neck ties and the female teachers had their hair perfectly coiffured each day, and some even wore high heels. 

6. You got your windshield cleaned, oil checked and gas pumped without asking — and all for free — and you didn't pay for air.  

7. When a '57 Chevy was everyone's dream car... to cruise, peel out and lay rubber. 

8. They threatened to keep kids back a grade if they failed... and they did. 

9. When being sent to the principal's office was nothing compared to the fate that awaited the student at home. Our parents and grandparents were a much bigger threat! But, we survived because their love was greater than the threat. 

10. "Race issue" meant arguing about who ran the fastest. 

11. Having a weapon in school meant being caught with a slingshot. 

12. The worst embarrassment was being picked last for the team. 

13. War was a card game. 

14. Baseball cards in the spokes transformed any bike into a motorcycle. 

15. Taking drugs meant orange-flavoured chewable aspirin.    

"And that is why, now is better than then?" 

     

     How many of these do you remember...?  

     Candy cigarettes, wax coke-shaped bottles with coloured sugar water inside, soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles, coffee shops with table-side jukeboxes or, a nickelodeon where a nickel would play your favourite tune, metal ice cube trays,  ditto machines and mimeograph paper, wash tub wringers,  cork pop-guns, Tinker Toys, Lincoln Logs, 5-cent packs of baseball cards with that awful pink slab of bubble gum, penny candy and The Fuller Brush Man.     

     I'm curious to know how many readers would admit that many of these ring-a-bell in their memory.   

     "Often, not until we were all grown up, did we realize just how rich we were."

— beulah