As The End To Another Summer Approaches...

oldman

oldman

Well-known Member
Location
PA
I think back about what it was like to be a child again when I see the kids heading back to school. I think about my late Grandmas and Grandpas teasing me about going back to school. I think about how much fun summers were and the few problems that I had, like hitting Mom or Dad up for a nickel to go buy a twin popsicle with my friends and have it drip all over my hands that would become sticky. I think about all the games we played in the summer and waiting for the snowball or ice cream truck to come by and having a dime in my pocket to run to the truck to buy one or the other. I think about going to the town carnival and the county fair. I think about my vacation to Ohio to visit all my relatives on my Mom's side. I think about these and so many more things and I just wish that I had one more chance at one more summer like that as a child.

Am I losing it or what?
 

Me too, oldman. Miss going without shoes and at the end of the day, my feet were black as dirt. Miss the steam engines going by the house and always got a wave from engineer. Miss the old theaters when I could spent most all day watches movies. Admission was 14 cents at Smalleys and 16 cents at Colonia.
Miss climbing all over parked train cars by the house. Miss my clubhouse on the little building behind the garage. Had my treasurers hidden there. Miss our pear, apple and grape trees and vines. On and on. They were fun times for the most part.
 
Pappy, you sure had to pay a lot to see movies. It only cost me 9 cents. When it went up to 11 cents, I was dismayed because I only got 15 cents a week for my allowance, and that didn't leave a nickel for a candy bar or some popcorn. My grandfather was a painting contractor and my dad and uncles all worked for him. One summer they were painting at the theatre, and I got to go to the movies every afternoon for free. Free! The one movie that I remember all these years later is "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court".

Summers were a lot of work when I was a kid, but at least it could be done in the morning, leaving afternoons free to go swimming. During the school year, small jobs that needed to be done were done after school and the big stuff saved for Saturday.

In summer, my older brother chopped the wood, pitched it through the basement window, and I stacked it. Had to hurry to get it chopped when the weather was dry. We also had to hoe and weed the garden...a BIG garden...and feed the chickens and ducks and gather eggs. We had a wringer washer that I used to do the laundry and two galvanized tubs for rinse water. It wasn't hard to fill the washer with cold water, but hot water was heated in a copper boiler on the stove. It took both my brother and me to hoist that thing off the stove and pour the water into the washer tub. After that, he was free to go because, after all, doing the laundry wasn't work boys were expected to do.

Then there was the ironing. Nope. Not so old that we had flat irons to heat on the stove, thank heaven. We had an electric iron. As soon as the clothes were off the line, the things that needed starch were dunked in starch that had been cooked on the stove. Ugh. Next morning was when the ironing got done.

Holy cow...I remember playing kick the can and tag and baseball and going swimming but wonder how we found the time! I had to be home in the afternoon in time to pick whatever vegetable was going to be eaten for dinner and cooking dinner.

Sundays were the best. The. Best. That's when we went to my grandparents' cottage and spent the entire live long day. It was heaven. Cousins, aunts and uncles and fishing, swimming, picking berries for Gramma to make into pies for dinner. Sometimes we got lucky and got to spend a whole weekend there or even a whole week. Gramma would give us lard buckets that she'd saved and send us out right after breakfast to pick berries. There was lots of work to do at the cottage, too, but it was work that we thought was fun, maybe because there were so many of us to do it.

Breakfast at the cottage was even fun...we got up early and fished from the dock to catch our breakfast!

Neither we nor any of our friends ever got into any kind of mischief; we were too busy:D
 

Last night, my wife and I wanted to watch a movie and rather than pull something up off of Netflix or Roku, we decided to look into our library of old DVD's and my wife asked how about watching "Back To The Future?" OK, sure. I'll probably fall asleep anyway. There is a scene when Marty goes back in time and first enters Hill Valley, I think was the name of the town. Anyway, the part where the car pulls into the "filling station" as we called it back in the day and 4 guys come rushing out to wash the windows, check the air in the tires, check the oil and of course, put gas in the tank.

If anyone reads this post, how many people remember that many guys checking out your Dad's or Grandpa's car? I remember two at the most. One guy filled the tank and one guy did everything else, but mostly one guy did it all. I also remember getting S&H Green Stamps to paste in a book and then turn the books in for gifts or cash. Sometimes, I remember getting glasses and other goodies. Atlantic used to give a red ball to stick on your antenna.

WOW! Did that take me back.

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Yes, I remember all that stuff. My uncle owned several Mobil gas stations in Buffalo and Los Angeles.
When his kids(my cousins) were old enough, he had them working in the stations; filling tanks, cleaning windshields etc.
Things have sure changed since then!
 
I remember two men would come out. One would pump the gas, the other would clean the windshield. I wish they still did. Pump gas, that is. That's one thing I hate​ doing.
 
The photo of S&H green stamps sure brings back memories.
Saved and saved green stamps for a pretty bedspread (50 yrs. ago) and still have it to this day, can't seem to part with it!
Have been very lucky to find a petrol station where an attendant puts gas in the tank!
In spite of detailed instructions by daughters have never been able to do this myself.
 
Shirley said:
I remember two men would come out. One would pump the gas, the other would clean the windshield. I wish they still did. Pump gas, that is. That's one thing I hate​ doing.
Click to expand...

They still do it in many European countries...Spain, Italy, Greece etc, although not so much in the cities but definitely in the smaller towns and villages..
 
Great picture Pappy.:)

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I was shocked when I was in Nova Scotia. They still put gas in your tank and clean your windows, but a lot of them don't have a rest room.
I prefer a bathroom over their pumping gas.
 
Enjoyed reading all your posts on 'pumping gas' back in the day. Filling up with petrol [as we call it here] never sounds as good somehow.However, until I was about 30, all petrol stations here had an attendant [only one person] who came out and you told him how much petrol you wanted.Those were the days. Self service for the benefit of the customer? No, for the benefit of the company!
 
There is a village in Scotland, near Mum and Dad's, where you still drive over the bell wire, and a little man or woman comes out to fill your car for you.
this was only a year ago...
 
You guys!!! Im getting all rambly & nostalgic now. Janessa, I lived in Pgh for 25 years, raised the kids there, and we went to Kennywood in the summers, and later they went with friends when they were big grown up teenagers. Remember getting the gas pumped, oil checked and windows cleaned! Every time I get gas now I'm grumbling to myself and thinking, I'm 77 years old and doing this???? Visited Nova Scotia a few times back when I was a Easterner, and thought it was heaven on earth. My kids high chairs and lots of stuff were obtained with S&H stamps. Did all the outdoor roaming, rode bikes everywhere, out into ''the country'' outside of Albany, all built up now. One soda shop had air conditioning, and my friends and I would go there and get rootbeer floats, nurse them as long as possible to stay in the cool air. The new school clothes were always too hot and uncomfortable to wear right away.
 
Vivjen said:
There is a village in Scotland, near Mum and Dad's, where you still drive over the bell wire, and a little man or woman comes out to fill your car for you.
this was only a year ago...
Click to expand...


I forgot about the bell chord. I haven't heard one of those in years.
 
I remember that bell wire thing! I also HATE pumping gas. Dunno why, exactly, I just hate it.

I also remember that wringer washer and trying to get things to go through without getting little fingers scrunched, and all that starching and ironing. My mother always ironed on Tuesdays -- Monday was washing, and Wednesday was shopping at the grocery that gave double green stamps on Wednesdays.

I remember in the summertime all the moms hollering out the door for kids to come on in because it was time for supper. Back in those days we went out and played pretty much wherever we wanted, as long as we were in hollering distance. Nobody worried about predators grabbing kiddos off the streets, etc. Back then, everybody kind of looked after all the neighborhood kids and if somebody else's mother saw you doing something you weren't supposed to you could bet your mom would hear about it. Or if you banged up your knee, some other mom was sure to come out with mercurchrome (remember that?) and fix you right up. Probably get you sued nowdays.

Remember party lines and "stories" on the radio?
 
I miss my best pals Suzie and Mary.. and how we ran wild all summer.. riding bikes.. climbing up on tractors and sitting in the buckets of Bulldozers when they finally decided to put streets in our town. I miss how we would filch potatoes and tin foil and butter from our Moms.. and go down to the railroad tracks to dig a hole and roast them.. Had to run like the devil when a train approached.. the men on the Kaboose would jump off to chase you off the property. Miss taking swim lessons at the local YWCA.. Miss our tiny back yard blow up pools.. where no lessons were required. Miss Lightening Bugs and Skeeter bites in the dusk... Street lights on? Better get home.. Tired as heck and filthy dirty.
 
Party lines! When we came back Stateside after the War, we were on a 12-party line. 12! Every time the phone rang, we had to stop and listen to see if it was our ring. If we wanted to talk to a neighbor all we did was tell the operator "J" or "M" or whatever "on this line, please".

And stories: The Green Hornet, Bobby Benson and the BRB Riders, The Shadow...Fulton Lewis, Jr. on the news.
 
Oh how I wish the kids of today had the wonderful summers I had growing up.Dozens of friends on the street where I lived. Playing outside all day and into the night. Parents sitting outside watching us have fun. Getting wet under the fireplug,riding bikes,playing jailbreak without a care in the world. Families all living in the same area,vacationing at the beach with a lot of my cousins. Going on rides on the boardwalk. Those were the days my friend,I wished they'd never end.:)
 
It's sad really. Parents hover like helicopters... kids are watched and monitored. Not like us.. My dad used to say.. GO OUT... Blow the cobwebs out from between your ears.. AND we did... We ran from morning til dark.
 
I remember the smell of my Grandmother's laundry hanging out to dry on the the clotheline on a warm summer's day. On Sundays, I used to swim all day at my family's summer lakefront camp. There was a float out there with a diving board and all the kids would race to it and dive and dive. There were boats of all kinds and we'd go fishing and water skiing. Then the women would prepare some huge wonderful meal and we kids would stuff ourselves and play night games outside like hide and seek, in the woods, while the adults played cards in the camp. There was no tv up at the lake but nobody cared because we had such fun. There was no such thing as the internet or social media. Boys would meet up with girls and ask for dates and go to parties or for long walks. Remember "spin the bottle" a party game played by boys and girls who wanted a kiss? That was so cute and so naive compared to these days.

I'm glad I grew up when I did. It was great fun. It relieves so much tension to be physically active all day long doing things you really enjoy.
 

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