Old stuff that wouldn’t pass muster today...

I very much enjoyed being a free range child, but I'm selfishly glad not to have children free-ranging all over, if they still did that I'd be the grumpy old people whose yard had to be avoided. :)
 

oldiebutgoody said:
Maude Adams as Gibson girl ~ my all time fave ideal beauty:



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Novelist Richard Matheson (originally from Brooklyn, like me) fell so in love with her pictures that he was inspired to write the book that became the movie Somewhere In Time - the only romance movie in history that has as many if not more male fans than female fans.
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Thank you for this. I just ordered the book from my library (will probably watch the movie afterward). While reading, I'll picture the lovely Maude Adams in the female role.
 
debodun said:
I always wondered why a game like 'jacks' was ever marketed. Those metal spiky thing could inflct real damage if swallowed or thrown in a face or eye.

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When I was a kid, those were girls toys. It never dawned on us to swallow one or throw them near someone's face.

My brother would put his Dinky cars in the road and let tanks and trucks roll over them for fun. We lived on Air Force bases.
 
Alligatorob said:
I agree!

However it just seemed to be the way things were back then. Wish I could say I was outraged at the time, but that wouldn't be honest, guess I was neutral, going along for the ride.

The Civil Right things started to kick in before I became an adult. Integrating our schools began when I was in the 7th grade, a very slow and halting process. At first we got just a few of the highest class, best educated black kids and no teachers. Then when we got more they tried segregating us by classroom, the campus was integrated but not the individual classes. Brown v Board of Education came along before my memory, but it took a long time to get enforced in a lot of the South... Glad that era is over!
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Our schools in Alabama were integrated when I was in 7th or 8th grade. The DOE didn't have schools on bases beyond 6th grade.

So my best friend and I were locked in the classroom during the 20-minute morning break because the teacher was afraid the black boys would get us. Or stab us. The USAF was integrated, and I had no idea how bad things were in the civilian world until then. To me, kids were kids, no matter what their race.

The students segregated themselves in the classrooms. There were 2-3 empty rows. I remember not knowing where to sit, at first. Then I sat in at a desk in the empty rows. I hated that school with a passion, because of the situation. It was so awful to witness. And that teacher should have been drawn and quartered. No matter what I said, he wouldn't budge from his position.
 
hollydolly said:
Unfortunately that became a 'thing' in some of the cities here, a few years ago among the young women ..just about the same time as grown women were going shopping in their pyjamas


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It may still be a thing in some parts of the country..I rarely go to those areas of the cities and towns where these people tend to be
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All the way through my young adulthood, people smoked and/or wore curlers at the grocery store. Many had drinks with them, too. And a lot of the women, who didn't wear curlers, wore tennis whites.
 
Mr. Ed said:
The 1970s were a special time in America. We celebrated our 200th year of independence, we had disco, and we protested the Vietnam War. But with 200 years of independence, one would think that a person living in America was free to live their life the way they see fit.
Not so.
There were things we did in the ‘70s that we could never do today. Now, I’m not talking about murder or tax evasion or even a Brady Bunch reboot... nothing that drastic. I’m talking about things done privately... inside the family.

There are five things that you could do in the ‘70s that you could never, ever get away with today because they are so despicable, at least to “p.c.” police, they would have you arrested and Child Protective Services would take your children away... probably.
1. Drinking from the garden hose. There is a study going around the Internet by the Ecology Center which says basically that drinking from the water hose is bad for your health. The study says that water from the hose contains “lead” and “levels of BPA at 20 times higher than those of safe drinking water levels.” I think we always suspected that it wasn’t a healthy option from the start.
When we drank from the water hose, we didn’t worry about BPAs and lead, this was the last thing we thought about as kids when we were out playing. We just wanted a quick drink. It wasn’t as if we were drinking gallons of water from the hose. Besides, kids didn’t look at statistics and findings when they were outside playing and thirsty. They lived on the edge.

They played hard and lived hard.
Children today? Not so edgy. Not so hard.
2. Playing outside unattended. There is a mother in Florida who faces up to five years in jail for letting her 7-year old son go to the park to play unattended, you can read about it here. The offense? Child neglect.
The same for a Maryland couple who let their kids play unattended in their own neighborhood. You can read about it here also. The CPS actually picked up the kids and took them away.
What is this world coming to?
When I was growing up we played outside unattended on the weekends and just about every day during the summer. The only rules were we had to have our homework finished and we had to stay within “shouting distance” When the street lights came on, we had to be in.
Parents, and society in general are so enamored with child-proofing the world that they can’t see how they are actually ruining childhood.
3. Sitting on your father’s lap while he is driving. One of my greatest memories growing up was sitting on my father’s lap pretending to drive while he was driving. If you were caught driving with your child sitting on your lap today, you would be taken to jail and have the book thrown at you. CPS would take your children, and your driver’s license would be revoked for life.

Now, I’m not saying this is the safest way to drive with children, but I don’t recall growing up hearing about any children being injured. I am also pretty sure that no father took their children out on the express way driving at high speeds with them sitting on their laps... it was a neighborhood thing.
4. Children buying cigarettes for their parents. Children buying cigarettes for their parents was more of a way to save time. The parent would drop the child off at the door of a convenience store and circle the parking lot. By the time the parent made it around, the child was outside waiting to be picked up. It was a lot quicker than driving around trying to find a spot (if you were lucky), park, walk into the store, buy the cigarettes, and then leave.
The clerk usually recognized the child who came in to buy the cigarettes. He knew the parent was waiting outside.
We did this and it never led me to smoking... peer pressure and television did that.
5. Spanking. Most people today equate spanking with child abuse or beatings. It couldn’t be further from the truth.
Now, there are many examples of parents who abuse their children in the name of discipline. Those who are against spankings usually point to these as examples of spankings gone wrong. I was spanked when I was growing up, along with my brothers and we grew up to be law-abiding, tax-paying citizens.
Our spankings didn’t lead us to abusing or neglecting our children. Spankings weren’t done every day. If a spanking was carried out correctly, then only the threat of a spanking would be enough to make the child think twice. There was a hierarchy when it came to spankings; the mother threatened to tell the father and the father carried out the task. The only upside was you got to choose between a belt or a switch... OK, so not much of an upside.
The difference between the ‘70s and today is vast. There are many, many things that you cannot do today that you could get away with in the ‘70s.
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We never got spanked, bought cigarettes, or sat on our anyone's lap while they were driving. My parents had seatbelts installed in their cars when they were not standard.

OTOH, my parents didn't have to spank us. My mom was German and German mothers are obeyed instantly. When I had kids, I thought they would obey instantly because that's how kids are. Boy was I surprised. My kids never got spanked either, although once in awhile they got a light pat on the bum. Then I discovered a book called 1-2-3 Magic. To this day (if most of them weren't in CA and were all in my house), all I have to do is say "1" and everyone shows up. Some kind of consequence was the "punishment", can't recall much about the book. Of course I only did that "1" thing to have a little fun watching the stampede downstairs, once they became older. They were always surprised about how engrained it was in them.
 
oldpanightowl said:
I got one of these for Xmas. A big seller in the old days. All plastic of course. I suppose it would cause havoc if it showed up
on a store shelf today.
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Our grandmother always bought all the boy cousins toy guns for Christmas. Since my mother was against that, my brother got underwear.

Then I had boys, and they made guns out of toast ... and I couldn't figure out where they had seen them to know the rough shape. They got cap guns and squirt guns from me, because I liked playing with them too.

Despite my mother's strong anti-gun stance, my brother became an avid hunter when he grew up.
 
MrPants said:
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My mom would have a true conniption fit if anyone had hit me with anything in school. I remember when the assistant principal decided to suspend me for skipping in high school. My class had gone on a field trip, but I couldn't go because I had a debate scheduled for my next class. So I sat on the school steps and read a library book while I waiting and had nothing else to do.

Mr. D told me I had a choice between a paddle with holes in it being applied to my bum, or he would call my mom and suspend she. Mom came roaring down to the school, heard the story, and called Mr D an f'ing pig (using the actual F-word). I didn't get any punishment in the end, probably because that f'ing pig was afraid my mom might kill him. I still don't think I did anything wrong. I had permission, but the teacher was on the field trip.
 
WheatenLover said:
All the way through my young adulthood, people smoked and/or wore curlers at the grocery store. Many had drinks with them, too. And a lot of the women, who didn't wear curlers, wore tennis whites.
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When I was quite young people could smoke in grocery store but that's been illegal in California since the mid-70s, perhaps sooner. Yes, some women wore curlers in public (usually with a scarf to cover), but it was considered a tacky move. Think that went out in the late 1960s.

Can't say I saw a lot of people grocery shopping in tennis outfits either.

These might have been a Southern customs.
I grew up in the northeast, then moved to Los Angeles...

I never saw anyone drinking in a grocery store - presuming you mean alcohol. Nowadays it's quite common for people to shop with a water bottle, Starbucks cup, or other beverage though.
 
And of course, it wouldn’t fly today to refer to women as Dames, Skirts, or Broads. Elvis would sometimes refer to his woman as Buttercup, but of course he was…The King! 😻

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RubyK said:


We hung clothes outside when I was young. My job was to hang up socks for a family of 7. Each sock had it's own clothespin. It took forever.

There was a railroad track at the end of our street. In those days (1940s) the locomotive spewed black smoke. So when the clothes were still wet and the train was coming, we had to rush out and take down the clothes or they would get dirty and have to be rewashed! Most housewives stayed home in those days and would help each other remove the clothes. That was neighborly.
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Boy, do I remember that! We lived next to the tracks and when we heard a coal-burner coming, it was ALL HANDS ON DECK to get the clothes off the line, dry or still wet. My mom would be frantic until everything was back in the house.
 
RubyK said:
Look at her tiny waist! Women who wore those corsets fainted often because they could neither breathe properly or eat much while wearing them. Must have been awful.
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Those corsets were responsible for a lot of deaths, too.

Women would not be caught dead out in public without their corsets. Catch a cold but still need to go out? Into the corset she went and then couldn't take a deep enough breath to couch properly and clear out the phlegm. Pneumonia set in and that was the end.

Same with pregnancy. "Proper" ladies "retired" from society when they started showing, so they'd lace themselves as tightly as possible in their corsets as long as possible. Result: mothers with problems and birth defects in babies.

Let it all hang out! is my motto.....
 
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