Of course that’s not far off from the “Potted Meat Food Product” label.
I’m the youngest of three kids, so I always had to sit in the middle of the back seat (on the hump!). I can remember getting up on the top of the seats, under the window, and lying there. It would have been an early 70s Chevy sedan, so there was plenty of room, not like most cars today.
If anyone’s parents had a station wagon, we always rode in the back with the third seat folded down, with the tailgate window open all the way.
I wonder when was the last time any kid found a stash of porn books in the woods or by the railroad tracks? It seemed commonplace in the 1970s and 1980s; walk through a parcel of woodland that somehow escaped development, an abandoned factory, or along the tracks, and there was a chance you would stumble upon a pile of Ouis or Hustlers.
I had my 25th year high school reunion last weekend. My high school was located at the end of a street in downtown Buffalo that was at the time the city’s skid row; adult bookstores, taverns catering to the homeless, titty bars, fleabag hotels, pawn shops, streetwalkers, and the like. Many of us took public transit to school, and we had to walk the entire length of that skid row to get from the bus stop to school. Were any of us corrupted from the experience? Nope. At the reunion, many of us said that no parent would even think of letting their kid so much as look at such a street.
Also today, that skid row is gentrified; it’s lined with party bars and wine bars catering to downtown workers and residents, ultra lounges, coffee shops, restaurants, expensive loft apartments, and two upper-middle end hotels. The most today’s students of that school get to experience are hot college women yelling “WOOOOOO! JELLO SHOTS! WOOOOOO!”, while we were offered five dollar blowjobs by obese she-males, and constantly hit up for “case quarters” by bums.
Unreal how times have changed. Today a blowjob from an obese she-male would cost you at least $25, and with all the shopping centers going up everywhere disposing of their body afterwards makes it hardly worth the effort.
What’s a “case quarter”?
A 25 cent piece as opposed to two dimes and a nickel.
SSG Schwartz
At my junior high school in the 70’s, the boys gym teacher had a notebook and pencil to write down the name of every boy who used a swear word during gym class. Aftwer class, all the boys on the list were taken to his office and thwacked on the ass with a large wooden paddle for every bad word uttered.
For the girls it was creepier. Our female (but somewhat mannish looking) gym teacher felt we weren’t taking thorough showers after gym class so she would stand at the entrance to the shower stalls and feel our upper thighs/ hip area to see if we were wet enough as we left the shower.
OMG! the more I think about this, it’s just fucked up.
I’ve heard that as a “solid quarter”.
My mother worked two or three jobs through most of my childhood, so most days my sister and I would walk to the grocery store several blocks away and buy whatever we could figure out to eat for dinner. For $3. Starting when my sister was six and I was four. We grew up that way, eating TV dinners and occasionally performing incredibly bizarre culinary experiments. The money loosely tracked the CPI, though there were periods when we used food stamps. School lunches are probably the only reason we didn’t have horrific vitamin deficiencies.
Needless to say, we walked to school (about half a mile) & back by ourselves from those ages, and would be alone in the house several nights a week until my mother got home, maybe as late as 10:00. We never thought it was a big problem, though we were painfully aware that we didn’t live the same lives as many of the kids we knew.
I also seem to recall occasionally going sledding with friends on those sleds with about four wooden slats and metal rails, head first, of course, and in one particular park, the bottom of the hill crossed a concrete sidewalk, then dropped about a foot and a half onto a man-made pond, which was also frozen. The problem was that the sidewalk was rarely covered in ice, so it became loud and terrifying just before the drop. (Kissena Park in Flushing, NY.)
We also broke into construction sites and had dirtbomb fights. On one occasion, I hit my best friend on the head with a rock by accident, drawing blood. No lawsuits, but his father did come over and tell us, very sternly, not to play around there unless his older brother was around.
My neighborhood had a bunch of chestnut trees, so when they were available, we’d whip chestnuts at each other as well. And we’d throw snowballs at the front windows of buses. In retrospect that doesn’t seem very nice. I’ve been in So Cal for 30 years, so for all I know, maybe the kids still do that. Wow; I’m really reminiscing. Do kids still run out behind moving cars, hang onto the bumpers and see how long they can skid along on their feet before falling? I think we called it “skitching.” I don’t think car bumpers are shaped for that activity anymore, and they are probably better at salting the streets. (This only seemed to work well when there was hard-packed snow on the street, just shy of being icy). I’m feeling a little amazed that I survived childhood at all.
Remember all the pictures of missing children printed on cardboard milk cartons back then? Once they went to plastic jugs without printing, the children stopped disappearing. Makes you wonder…
Wouldn’t that just be “a quarter”? 
25 cents could be either a quarter or two dimes & a nickle, but a quarter is just… a quarter.
I spent a lot of time walking along the top rail of fences. Maybe only six feet off the ground, but enough to maim or kill. The adults and neighbors ignored us
But it simplifies things when someone asks for a quarter, say for a vending machine that doesn’t take dimes or nickels. Asking for a case quarter means that you won’t have someone offering change that you can’t use.
Back in the day, I knew a panhandler who used to hang out by a newspaper box that only took quarters, and not nickels and dimes. He would ask passerby for a case quarter to make it seem as though he was trying to buy a paper. When he got the quarter, he would ask the next passerby for the same thing.
SSG Schwartz
Random stuff:
My older brother, late 60s/early 70s, was allowed to walk by himself or with a non-adult friend over a mile to the Long Beach Pike. This was basically a low-rent Coney Island. Sleaze Galore, I’m told.
Me, I was your basic Latchkey Kid from the time I was eight. Divorced mom who had to work, older siblings in school as well. Usually in the house two or three hours by myself.
I would often walk to various liquor stores on the weekends (to purchase comics books and candy, gutter-mind). My mother would always say (and I’m not sure if she was joking or not) “Just let me know where you’re going so I know where to claim the body!” I wouldn’t even think of letting my eleven-year-old walk the distances I used to at his age.
My cousin and I were eleven when we spent the day by ourselves at the State Fair, and then we took the bus home at about 10 p.m. Wonderful time.
At twelve, while with my family in Florida, I took the shuttle bus to Walt Disney World and spent the day there by myself, coming back to our hotel after dark. Couldn’t have been happier.
Someone else mentioned beer in the car. That was what I remember. A hard day of work and a long ride home? Stop and get a six pack that was conveniently on ice at the local store and have one to three on the way home.
I’m still not sure why this is illegal. As a 200lb man, I could stop at the bar, have three beers, and THEN drive home and I would be under the limit. Why can’t I enjoy them ON THE WAY home? Oh well, another thread…
Until very recently, it was perfectly legal for a driver to drink a beer while driving in Montana and Wyoming, (and in Montana you could also have a loaded 357 Magnum on the seat next to you) provided the driver was not above the .08 legal limit.
I think there are still a few states where the passengers can have an open alcoholic beverage, but not the actual driver. Of course, it seems there are a few loopholes for a driver who is pulled over with a beer; he can just pass it to his passenger while the cop is none the wiser, right? (all this assumes the driver is not over the limit)
Am I missing something?
Have all these laws allowing passengers to drink been done away with?
Feel you thighs for…shower water? Sweat? That is really odd.
Just after we left Louisiana they opened up a drive through by the glass bar in our town. But they put Saran Wrap over the cup, so it was okay.