What’s your “Back in my day, we…

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When my father finished mowing the lawn in our backyard he always threw the grass in the centre of the yard until there was a great pile. We used to love jumping into it as it was always warm in the centre. Later on, after a couple of weeks, after the grass had died down, my dad used to
throw a match into it and burnt it down. Things that you can't do now.
 
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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It was much the same for that other common killer, tuberculosis. Unfortunately, Gerhard Domagk's research, which led to the discovery of sulfonamides in the 1930's, eventuated in the discovery of the anti‐TB activity isonicotinic acid hydrazide (INH) in 1952. Adding INH to PAS and SM (“triple therapy”) resulted in predictable cures for 90–95% of patients, the Holy Grail, but not for my mother. She died from TB in 1956, just short of my tenth birthday. She left a bereft husband to raise four children alone. He did it too, and held down a job. He was cook, cleaner and just about he most amazing father you could wish for. My dear Dad raised my siblings and I to adulthood, he went on to live until he was 92. I love him still.
 
Back in my day, it was easy (in one's late teens, early-mid 20s) to hitchhike on the highways. Many young Canadians got across this enormous country that way, or travelled down into the States. Up here in Canada, a young person could spend the night in any of the "youth hostels" that were established in all the major cites. Or other young people might offer you a place to roll out your mat & sleeping bag. Adverse experiences were so extremely rare that you probably never heard of one... okay, you might get stuck someplace "between pins" and have to spend one night inside your tent someplace. Basic, carry-along food was inexpensive.

You felt no need for a cell phone. You got a feel for the countryside, and for the subtle differences in lifestyles, customs & culture in various regions... didn't spend your time enmeshed in digital gaming. You learned some self-reliance, as well as some things about relating with people.
 
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JBR said:
Back in my day, it was easy (in the late teens, early-mid 20s) to hitchhike on the highways. Many young Canadians got across this enormous country that way, or gtracvelled down into the States. Up here in Canada, a young person could spend the night in any of the "youth hostels" that were established in all the major cites. Or other young people might offer you a place to roll out your mat & sleeping bag. Adverse experiences were so extremely rare that you probably never heard of one... okay, you might get stuck someplace "between pins" and have to spend one night inside your tent someplace. Basic, carry-along food was inexpensive.

You felt no need for a cell phone. You got a feel for the countryside, and for the subtle differences in lifestyles, customs & culture in various regions... didn't spend your time enmeshed in digital gaming. You learned some self-reliance, as well as some things about relating with people.
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Yes, I remember people hitchhiking all the time! I guess it was pretty safe back then. I remember always being barefooted in the summer and it was no big deal. We'd be running across hot asphalt even! No one even thought about phones. If you needed one you could maybe find a payphone and spend a dime when in town. This digital age has made things way too easy and we're all way too lazy!
 
vintageMo said:
Yes, I remember people hitchhiking all the time! I guess it was pretty safe back then. I remember always being barefooted in the summer and it was no big deal. We'd be running across hot asphalt even! No one even thought about phones. If you needed one you could maybe find a payphone and spend a dime when in town. This digital age has made things way too easy and we're all way too lazy!
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We never wore shoes in the summer except to church or to a store.

Our street was tar with a layer of fine gravel over it. The tar seeped up in the heat, so our feet always had tar on them.

We could not come in the house with tar on our feet so the first stop was the back porch where a bottle of gasoline and a rag always sat. Clean off the tar and then rinse our feet at the spigot.

Oh, yeah, can you see it now? Giving kids free access to a bottle of gasoline?
 
Back in my day I never thought I would live near where my Dad's Mom lived,yet here I am now in the same area where she lived. She hated my Mom and my sister and brother and me.They made my Dad quit school at 7yrs old to get a job and support the family.He met and married my Mom when he was 16yrs old. They never forgave him for doing that .They went on to have more children and they hated my Mom,brother sister and me. I can't believe I live near where she lived.
 
Mel N. Choly said:
to move out of the house when we graduated high school.
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There's no place to move to that a kid starting out can afford any longer. Between all the corporates buying up all the housing and all the illegals moving in there isn't the abundance of housing there was in the '50s and '60s. There's a solution to this somewhere, but when and where is a mystery.
 

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