Johnny L.A. - My 150 year old farmhouse still has a wooden screen door. That is a very distinctive sound.
StG
Oh, yeah, duck and cover! I had no idea what those Civil Defense ads on TV were about. When a car drove by one afternoon, and its windows reflected the setting sun through the front windows, I remembered the “blinding flash” part of the ad, and I frantically tried to talk the babysitter into going down to the basement. That evening, everybody told me not to worry, but they never explained why. I figured it out years later.
As a kid from that age, it was a big deal to see Wizard Of Oz on television - this was pre-video. I think it was usually shown annually around Thanksgiving time, and my brothers and I would get set down front of the tv with the pillows propped and dash to the bathroom during commercials. And it was a special treat to stay home sick from school because you got to see the re-runs of I Love Lucy that they showed in the mornings.
And yeah, lots of bike rides and camping out in the woods and rootbeer floats at the local A&W drive-in, and the Jaycee Carnival would come to town for a week in the summer and I would ride my bike there every night.
And like many remember, there was no such thing as seat belts in cars (which used to be called safety belts in planes but the airlines changed the name to seat belts because the term “safety belt” scared the customers). Of course, because there were no seat belts even minor traffic accidents back then killed entire families.
My father would put on a tie and sport coat, my mother a dress and pearls - to go over to friends’ or neighbors’ homes for a drink! (Drinks were Hi-Balls and Manhattans and stuff like that back then.)
Still - was fun while it lasted, but would never want to go back there…there was lots of crap going on back then as well. At the age of 12, I remember mowing my parents’ front yard chanting, “I have to get out of this town. I have to get out of this town. I have to get out of this town.” So obviously, all was not paradise.
But I sure would like an original A&W root beer float in one of those frosted glass mugs about now though.
I feel like I’m crashing this thread. As I said, I wasn’t alive in the '50s. But anyway…
Yeah, Wizard of Oz. Had to watch it. Also Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown, It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, Frosty the Snowman, and that stop-motion animation about Kris Kringle. Every year like clockwork, I lived for those! They told me that Halloween or Christmas was here.
Dad and I used to go A&W Drive-In. I’d have to reach way up on his '74 Toyota pickup to take off the CB antenna so that it wouldn’t smash the flourescent overhead lights when we pulled in. Super Papa Burgers, baby! And they’d come on a hostess tray. (Nowadays “hostess tray” is camera support.)
I may have to buy some A&W Root Beer. When I was a kid, I liked Mug. It came in little brown bottles. I wonder when they stopped bottling mug and went to plastic or aluminum? Anyway… Some A&W Root Beer and some vanilla ice cream…
I vaguely remember I Love Lucy, however, it was a major turning point in my parents’ lives. They played in a bridge club every week. The club shrank and fizzled out because Lucy was on that night ! Before that, nobody dreamed of rearranging their lives to accomodate a television show.
I was a child of the late 40’s thru the 50’s. I graduated high school in 1961. When I was in grammar school, the school was less than a mile away from home, and I either walked or rode my bicycle. After school I let myself into my house. No key necessary because it was never locked. Play was mostly outdoors. We lived in San Gabriel, CA then and the weather was usually good. Then I thought I was overprotected, but I remember now that I had quite a lot of freedom. We lived in a cul-de-sac, so playing in the street was relatively safe. We were cautioned about the “busy” street that crossed ours, but there wasn’t much traffic there either.
I guess the one place we were to stay away from was a drainage canal known simply as “the wash.” It wasn’t cemented in the way “rivers” in Los Angeles County are now. There were fences along it, but gaps in them made it possible to explore the wash (against parental orders). We were told that there were hobos living down there, but we never saw any.
In the turn-around area at the end of the cul-de-sac the neighborhood kids would lay out a diamond in chalk lines and play kickball. We invented games, some based on TV shows we liked, like Ramar Of The Jungle with Jon Hall, or the latest Hopalong Cassidy adventure, some traditional ones like kick the can. A vacant lot (there still were some then) was better than a playground. TV was new, and there wasn’t a lot of it.
I remember wax lips, bubble gum cigars, and Three Musketeers bars that cost a nickel and were big enough to actually share with two friends. Not long after TV came TV dinners, but even with those, which were seldom resorted to, the family sat down at the table together for meals with the TV off. I miss that.
I grew up in the 70’s.
I never stayed in too much that I can remember. But the few times I did stay in, on occasion, my Dad would tell me to get up off my lazy ass and go outside and play. This probably because we wanted to get funky with the Mom unit…
I also distinctly remember when you got into a fight with some-one, it was settled with your fist; not a gun or a knife. :rolleyes:
Oh, forgot to add:
I also remember being my Dad’s own personal remote control for the damn tv!. Grrr!
It would be something like this:
click,click,cick
Dad: “Hold it!” watches it for about 3 seconds “OK keep going…”
Me: :rolleyes:
click,click,click
Point taken, but hey, people couldn’t check Snopes on the internet back then, so every parent I knew fell for it. My parents took the “family and friends” route, but most kids I knew just weren’t allowed to touch their candy until their parents “checked” it first.
You should check out Arch Oboler’s The Twonky (1953). In it, Hans Conried portrays a college professor whose wife is going on holiday. To keep him company, she buys him a television. But the television is actually an extraterrestrial invader disguised as a television (which comes to be called “The Twonky”). The plan is that the aliens will insinuate themselves into people’s homes, make them dependent, and then take over.
Coach Trout (Billy Lynn), who’s a bit of a philosopher, says something to this effect: “Soon Twonkies will be everywhere. People will no longer live by their own schedules, but on the Twonkies’ schedule.” (I don’t remember the line exactly. The one and only time I caught this gem was 20 years ago.)
I was born in 1942, so I was a kid in the late 40’s and the 50’s in a western suburb of Chicago. I walked a mile to Catholic elementary school then rode public transportation to high school.
Summer was great. Like others here, we rode our bikes as far as we could go and still be home before dark. In the neighborhood, we played in vacant lots and each others’ yards. We made forts, walked fences, caught lightning bugs, played games and generally wore ourselves out.
Life was not without its intrigue – local knowledge among us kids was that the guy we’d see driving the blue coupe was weird and we should be careful of him. I suspect it was a local urban kid-legend just to provide a way for the older kids to scare the younger ones. As we approached puberty, we played kissing games in the privacy of the weeds in the vacant lots.
We explored, we made friends, we had fights, we made pacts. We went home for lunch or if we needed first aid or had a fight with someone and went home in a snit.
On rainy days we played in each others’ houses.
We learned to organize ourselves in teams, handle the bullies and how to manage socially in a diverse neighborhood. We learned how to get around on public transportation. We learned how to con the local storekeepers into selling us cigarettes “for my dad”. We learned how to take care of ourselves and each other
Although I was a kid of the 70’s, much of what has been said about previous decades is applicable to my childhood. I grew up on the northside of Minneapolis, in the Camden area (for those who know Minneapolis). Our neighborhood was bounded by Shingle Creek on 50th and Fry Roofing on 48th. Perfect for running the neighborhood.
On our block there were 6 of us in the same grade. During the summer ee would be outside by 9am, check in for lunch, then back out til supper. We’d be back out again until the curfew siren at 9pm. Our parents would kick back in lawn chairs, beer or coffee in hand, while us rugrats would play kick the can or ride our bikes. My “bestest” friend Barb and I would take my dad’s garage blankets and make forts over my swingset (using lawn chairs, sawhorses, whatever else we could find), sitting and playing dolls in there for hours. Or we would “mine” the walkway, trying to dig to China. Of course, we did that SMACK in the middle of the walkway! 
If we became bored with digging, it was mudpie Cafe time!
We walked to school, often hitting the playground for a few hours afterwards. Sometimes if we knew someone had a new gizmo, we’d head over to their house. We rarely called to “check in”. Halloween was a huge deal, my Dad at the end of the block while a bunch of us kids loaded up on the goodies. One guy on Morgan worked at Frito Lay, so they always gave us good stuff!
Our TV was a Zenith console, bought new in 1971. We had ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS. I grew up with Mr. Rogers, Sesame Street, and Electric Company. Saturday mornings were for Bugs Bunny.
Every once in a while, on a humid summer day, I get a whiff of my childhood and I do miss it. It makes me want to build a fort, open a lemonade stand, or play a rousing game of kick-the-can (boundaries Knox Ave - Morgan Ave).
Man, do I ever. It was threefold, the first being an longer ssppprrrrreeeeeeeeeeee ar the metal spring stretched tight, then a brief light whooshing and a loud THWACK. The thwack was always slightly off as the door never hit perfectly flush since the spring was mounted lower than in the middle.
I was born in 1962. I remember the late 60’s and early 70’s. Summers were hot and public swimming pools were great hangouts. I played little league baseball, built tree forts, GI Joes, HotWheels. My bicycle was a CCM DuoMatic, sissy bars, banana seat, and 2 speeds. Every summer my family would go on a vacation. I remember the Canadian dollar was worth more then the US dollar. I got in trouble for playing with matches and turning the sprinkler on too close to the window. We always had family dinner at 6:00pm and if you did not clean your plate it was because you snacked too much before supper time.
These were simple times, it feels nice bringing up the memories.
DesertGeezer, another member of the class of '61 here. We had it all, didn’t we, chum?
I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t allowed outside alone. We lived on about 3 or 4 acres with lots of shade trees. Perfect for an old quilt spread out as a pallet. A few years ago when my mother was moving into assisted care, I found that old quilt, Kept it too. I may want to doze in the shade again soon.
Saturday serials at the movies (admission 12 cents)…sleeping on top of the bread rack at my father’s store…girls in flour sack dresses…Pet milk…slinging statues… red rover… the awful music in those educational films…weiner roasts…“Tell me why the stars do shine”…FHA/FFA joint meetings…the dust on dirt roads…the nubby feel of the car upholstery on the back of the front seat as you sat in the back but put your head up front to see what was going on…a nickle for a coke or an ice cream cone…rodeos I could watch from my own front yard…baby-doll pajamas…listening to Wonderland by Night being piped out from the local teenage hangout…Christmas 1960: “Where is Vietnam?”
And I’m sure the kids today will feel sorry for kids twenty years from now, and so forth and so on. Everybody thinks the time they grew up in was the best.
I’m finding this thread very interesting. My Mum and her many siblings gre up in the fifties and sixties in a village in the middle of nowhere (in Canada, it REALLY is in the middle of nowhere). Someone tried to kidnap one of my Mum’s sisters in the late fifties/sixties (luckily someone heard her screaming), where as I was brought up in the eighties and spent most of my time playing outdoors on the edge of town with no problems whats so ever
I’m finding this thread very interesting. My Mum and her many siblings gre up in the fifties and sixties in a village in the middle of nowhere (in Canada, it REALLY is in the middle of nowhere). Someone tried to kidnap one of my Mum’s sisters in the late fifties/sixties (luckily someone heard her screaming), where as I was brought up in the eighties and spent most of my time playing outdoors on the edge of town with no problems whats so ever