What’s your “Back in my day, we…

Back in my day, we couldn't get away with *anything*!

Everybody within a 6-block radius knew each other and you just KNEW that if somebody's mother saw a bunch of you smoking behind the garage or any other type of misdeeds, your mother would be hearing about it forthwith.

You might as well go home and get it over with.

Nowadays, you tell on a kid and you'll either be told to MYOB or told that their little darling would NEVER do anything like that.
 
Back in the day we picked a bunch of berries to surprise my parents and made a pie. Every seed had pips in them making the pie horrible. They made our teeth all blue too. 😂

Once made a surprise carrot cake when I was really young and instead of grating the carrots, I peeled them. Needless to say, the consistency was very stringy with carrot peels.

We used to make snow forts in our backyard and all the things we told our parents we never took we found in the spring when the snow all melted. Luckily they weren’t usually around so we just put them back. Lol

One of my best memories of my mom was staying home with her before I went to kindergarten and baking cakes. My dad was at work and my brothers at school so I had my mom all to myself. It was a wonderful bonding moment.

Picking tomatoes and roses my dad grew in the summertime. He was a fairly good gardener. I really enjoyed having BBQ’s. That’s another thing my dad was good at.
 
Back in my day I spent a lot of time with my maternal grandma. I loved being with her tending her garden, watching her cook and make bread. She would make a little loaf just for me because she knew I'd want some when it came out of the oven. That way she didn't have to cut the big loaf. Having my own made me feel special.

On summer afternoons she'd send me to the soda fountain on the corner for a couple of twin ice pops. Flavors were specific, lemon and root beer, her favorites. She'd ask me which one I'd like to have, split it, and we'd go out to the porch and sit on the couch swing to eat it. The other pop was tucked into the freezer for us to share later that night. Some evenings she'd play pick-up sticks with me.

There was nothing I liked better than being with my grandma. ❤️
 
jujube said:
Back in my day, we couldn't get away with *anything*!

Everybody within a 6-block radius knew each other and you just KNEW that if somebody's mother saw a bunch of you smoking behind the garage or any other type of misdeeds, your mother would be hearing about it forthwith.

You might as well go home and get it over with.

Nowadays, you tell on a kid and you'll either be told to MYOB or told that their little darling would NEVER do anything like that.
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I was lucky raising a kid in my neighborhood. All the parents were raised the same way and we all watched each others kids and gave reports to each other if anything was going on.

I was advised that my son was involved in an egg fight on the elementary school black top making quite the mess. Said son, when confronted confessed, said son was required to walk buckets of water and a push broom to school to clean up the mess. Mind you, we only live 4 houses away but it took many bucket trips to get the job done.

We did not have a repeat of this type. We had other incidents but they were dealt with quickly and he learned very fast it would not be tolerated. He learned to pick the right friends to stay out of trouble.

I had a few more incidents when his Dad died but I found out that those were about grief. He was struggling just as much as I was. Somehow, we got through it.
 
Remember that one of my main concerns was 'what do kids wear to school and do
I know the games they play' at my new schools.

Seems that clothes and games were pretty much universal ,no matter where I was.

In the small towns, I always hated when the teacher would call you to the front
of the class with the 'students, we have a new classmate, tell us about yourself'.
I know they meant well, but they didn't know what kind of pressure it placed on kids.

On a lighter note, when I opened my 'Have Gun Will Travel' metal lunch box and found my Mom
had put in my favorites, all was Right with the World...
 
I grew up in the mountains, so a lot of winter fun. We would go sledding at night, pack down a long sled run, hang Coleman lanterns on the branches of trees to light the way, and go for it. Someone's mom would make a pot of chili, and another some hot chocolate, so we would build a fire at the bottom of the run to keep warm, eat chili, and drink cocoa.

We would often go to one of the nearby lakes that was frozen over, slide down the hill on inner tubes, and when you hit the iced-over lake, you could slide quite a distance. We would skate on the lake while having snowball fights, and some would even tie their dog to their sled and have it pull them around. Traction was tough, but the dogs with big toenails could dig in.

As a teen, one of my friend's dad had a 4X4 and we would chain up all 4 wheels, throw the sleds in, and he could get us almost 2 miles up a mountain road. We would then tie a flashlight on the front of the sled and could sled downhill for 2 miles. What a ride that was !
 
"Back in my day" is a preface I use when I want people to understand I'm putting on my old fart pants, and shouldn't be taken too seriously. But I don't want to diminish the importance of this thread. I firmly believe that somethings back in my day were far better than they are today. Not everything was better. There's a lot about today that is better, but I can't honestly say everything is better.
 
Pappy said:
Back in my day, we didn’t have shots for many diseases such as polio, mumps, measles, chicken pox and a few more. I had all the above except polio. A classmate wasn’t as fortunate. He was put in an iron lung.
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The Salk Polio vaccine which began to be used in the first part of the 1950's was a life saver, for sure. When I was working for Metro Toronto Ambulance, starting in 1977, the Riverside Isolation Hospital in Toronto was mainly polio patients who were in iron lung breathing machines, for life. Imagine living in such a way, unable to move their body, only their head and neck, due to being immobilized.
JimB.
 
Pappy said:
Back in my day, we didn’t have shots for many diseases such as polio, mumps, measles, chicken pox and a few more. I had all the above except polio. A classmate wasn’t as fortunate. He was put in an iron lung.
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I had a friend who was a polio survivor. He had a well developed upper body, but spindly legs, and required crutches to get around. I remember getting vaccinated at school, both with the sugar cubes and later the shots. We had to have parental consent, but as I recall, the whole class participated.
 
Back in my day, there was only one television set, one corded telephone, and one car per household. You watched what your parents wanted to see during the evenings, all incoming phone calls were listened to by your mother, and if you wanted to go somewhere beyond walking or biking distance, your mother would drive you there and back. The notion of every child having their own phone, TV set, and if of driving age car was unthinkable…
 
Fyrefox said:
Back in my day, there was only one television set, one corded telephone, and one car per household. You watched what your parents wanted to see during the evenings, all incoming phone calls were listened to by your mother, and if you wanted to go somewhere beyond walking or biking distance, your mother would drive you there and back. The notion of every child having their own phone, TV set, and if of driving age car was unthinkable…
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And we did just fine! We are all spoiled now.
 
Fyrefox said:
Back in my day, there was only one television set, one corded telephone, and one car per household. You watched what your parents wanted to see during the evenings, all incoming phone calls were listened to by your mother, and if you wanted to go somewhere beyond walking or biking distance, your mother would drive you there and back. The notion of every child having their own phone, TV set, and if of driving age car was unthinkable…
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Back in MY day, not one of my friends' mothers' could drive, much less take us anywhere. Only a few of the fathers' drove and none would drive the kids anywhere..except shopping with the family on Saturday mornings.

Even on cold dark winters' nights we girl guides would all come out of the guide hut , and everyone walked home alone through the dark streets.. and this was in the most violent city in Eruope at the time ( altho' tbf not the part where we lived) and no parents ever dreamed of coming to pick anyone up..
 
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Fyrefox said:
Back in my day, there was only one television set, one corded telephone, and one car per household. You watched what your parents wanted to see during the evenings, all incoming phone calls were listened to by your mother, and if you wanted to go somewhere beyond walking or biking distance, your mother would drive you there and back. The notion of every child having their own phone, TV set, and if of driving age car was unthinkable…
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We didn't get driven or picked up. We walked .. a lot.
 
Pinky said:
We didn't get driven or picked up. We walked .. a lot.
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yep, if walking made you grow, I'd be 7 feet tall by now.. we walked everywhere, except when we could cobble together a couple of pennies when it rained to get a bus...

We walked 2 miles to school in the morning.. back and forth 4 times a day.. ..our lunch was never anything more than a small bowl of chicken noodle soup and a Banana, which we gobbled down, and then had to rush back to school. It's no wonder we were all very skinny..
 
In my day we sent Christmas cards during the holidays. Some would have a picture of the family or a note with news of this or that that happened this year.

You worked all weekend long signing them, looking up the addresses, telephoning some to confirm the address was current, then stamping and mailing them Then little by little answers would arrive more and more as Christmas got closer.

Today? No cards or letters. The occasional email with a hello. Can't display these across the fireplace mantle. No sense of family 'being there' with you for the season. Just nothing. And, that's it. Just not the same. No growing anticipation for the arrival of Christmas day. It just comes and then is gone.
 
Hahaha...
In reading what you all had back in your day it is pure luxury compared to what I had in my day.
Of course y'all know I am sorta ancient and I won't go into detail except to say that I did brush my teeth with salt and baking soda when it was available and I still have quite a few left.
Enough to eat and show a smile.:ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO:
 

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