Next Generation

I read IA Leos thread this morning and got me thinkin.

I come from the next generation but can relate.My parents grew up in the country during the depression and had many of the same values.I grew up on the extreme edge of town but I was raised with country values.Here are things I remember.

1. Milk man on Tuesday and Saturday.If you were lucky he left a quart of chocolate milk once a month.
2. That 6 pack of 12 oz Pepsi's on the steps to the back door were a treat and not a necessity.You asked to have one.
3. Dad standing at the stove shacking a pan of pop corn.Some got burnt but you ate it anyway and liked it.
4. You smarted off at school or to the lady next door and got your a$$ beat for it.After the pain was gone you went and apologized.
5. When you were ten the BB gun showed up at Christmas.The first thing said was don't shoot the birds but you did anyway.Another whoppin especially when you put a hole in the shed roof.
6. The evening paper flew out the window of a pickup truck doin about 90 and going all over the road because the guy steered with his knees so he could throw out both windows.
7. Company came over on Sunday evening dressed for the day and the TV got turned OFF.
8. Every neighborhood had its own grocery store that sold penny candy.The people that owned it looked like your grandparents, spoke English, and sold you 11 pieces for a dime.
9. The dust to dawn light got turned on every night with a switch by the back door.The light itself was built out of 1/2 inch water line with a green metal shade and 60 watt bulb.
10. You called anybody who were old enough to be your parents Mr or Mrs.

I'm not trying to steal your thread Leo but you got me thinking of how good things were.The list could go on and on.Anybody else want to add.

Leo's post got me thinkin', too. I'll start off by admiting milk delivery is about 15 to 20 years before my time.

I do remember, as a kid, my Grandparents always turned the yard light on at night before they went up to bed. Even though it had a sensor on it. Also, Guiding Light just wasn't the same on tv as it was on the radio, so they say.

Any soda was a privledge until my teens.

Still make popcorn in a covered kettle on the stove from time to time. Microwave popcorn isn't near squeaky enough!!

I definatly got my hide tanned if I smarted off. Teachers still had some power to do so if need be.

Going visiting was always a dress up occasion & still is within the family.

My first 12 - 14 years of life were like that. The '90s seemed to ruin it for me. Buuuut, that's another story, probably best not told on a family type forum.

;v)

Mike

Was born in the 60's... the youngest of six kids. Only my dad worked outside the home.

Mom could make a meal for all 8 of us from one chicken. Everybody had a slice or two of bread to fill up.

Children were to be seen and NOT heard. (Took me until I had kids of my own to start talking much to anybody).

Kids all helped with chores, barn cleaning, dishes, mowing, laundry, housework and whatever needed to be done... NO such thing as allowance.

Mom did A LOT of canning vegetables, fruit, pickles, jelly and we froze a lot of corn. Everybody in the family helped.

Pre-electronics for the most part... played Pac Man as a teenager at some "town" kids house. Yet we were never bored with being free to roam the countryside within a mile or two from home. (Our parents did not have to worry we would be abducted.)

At meals we drank milk or water, and once in awhile Kool Aid.

Mom sewed a lot of clothes for us until we got older and wanted to look cool and fit in. We also wore hand-me-downs if possible.

6 kids had 2 bedrooms.... we 4 girls shared a large room, the 2 boys shared a room.

All 8 people in our family shared 1 bathroom.


We did not have air conditioning until I was a teenager... and then it was ONLY downstairs so the folks would be cool.p>Special treat was watching John Wayne movie on TV on Saturday night and having pop and popcorn... or maybe a rootbeer float.

All in all, I had a great childhood and have a lot of great memories!There is a good song by Bucky Covington called "Different World"... look it up on youtube. Very fitting song for my generation.

I think a lot of is in your up-bringing and possibly what part of the country
you are raised in.

In any of my immediate family's homes, kids still ask to be excused from
the table when they're done eating.

I still call people Mrs. and Mr. unless they tell me otherwise.

With the exception of immediate animal needs, work starts after breakfast,
but normally before sunrise. Roosters sleep in.

I'm too young to remember it firsthand, but I remember grandpa's stories. Things like sleeping outside at night because it was too hot in the house to sleep, His dad jacking the old model T up and putting it on blocks over the winter because it wouldn't get around in the snow. Other stories like when him and his two older brothers walked down to the neighbors to ask if they could have a watermelon, and when the neighbor told them to go ahead and take all they could find they ran out to find he had already picked all of them. They got even and picked all his pumpkins and stacked them on the railroad tracks!
In the Summer of 36 they would drive the team and wagon 1 mile to the crick, dam it up and use a water ram to fill the barrels with water because the well went dry.

Got to admit my childhod was growing up on a farm with very little money, but the best that anyone could ask for. Two parents who loved each other, and my brother and I, and LOTS of hard work. Far better than my wife who grew up with ten times the money we ever saw, but not much of the other important stuff. Fortunately for me she got the point and we raised our kids the right way. They are still in the minority at their work, but then again farm kids always are.

I remember the milk man coming but so did the ice man. I still call refrigerators ice boxes. Mom got a job after both my brother and I started school. She saved her paychecks until she could buy this fancy thing called a washing machine. You rolled it into the kitchen hooked it up to the faucets and the center of it moved around & back. After Mom said the clothes were clean she would pull one item at a time out and put it between the rollers and I had to turn the handle to turn the rollers to squeeze out the water. Then when all the laundry was done we went out and hung everything on the clothes line.

OK, which would rather have: Your internet connection or burnt popcorn?

From what I remember of the good old days, they largely stunk.

Bingo!!!

You must have had a sad life.

I wasn't born until '71 but can relate to some
-We only had one soda on Sunday
-Ate dinner together every night, said a prayer before eating
-Would ask the bus driver to drop me off by the field when I would see my parents working in the tomatoe patch (we had a "truck" farm)
-Adults were treated with respect

Didn't grow up on a farm, grew up in town. But both parents were from rural, poor backgrounds and raised us with those values.

My dad put 20 yrs in the Air Force. He wasn't a dictator, but we respected authority, adults.

If we got in trouble at school, we were in trouble, not the teacher.

My mother worked and we 3 girls did the housework. We helped with the yard, too.

This is much the way it was for me. I was born in 1964.

1.We only had three TV stations and only your Dad and Mom changed the station and you only did it if you were given permission to do so.

2. We had a party line phone and remember my parents debating about the extra cost for a private line.

3. We only got groceries on Saturday. If you ran out of something, you waited until Saturday to get it.

4. You rarely ate out at a restaurant.

5. You played outside in all kinds of weather.

Man, reading this post is killing me, wish I was around in those good old days. I was born in "83 on a small beef cattle farm (that my brother and I still operate) in the mountians of NC. I"ve got tons of good memories, one favorite is when it was silage cutting time, papaw chopping with the old 4600 ford and 300 gehl one row, dad packing, and me (after about age 12) driving our "58 chevrolet dump truck. We still grow silage but it seemed to be more fun back then. My wife says I was born 50 years to late, I think she"s right.

Well said but its time to stop dwelling on the past. The "good old days" are not coming back and neither is $2 gasoline. We just have to accept the good that thankfully still exists and move on.

Sad life? No, I have plenty of fond memories but I like to think the best is yet to come. And I'm certainly not going to wax nostalgic about a past that never was. How about polio, killer smog and segregation? That's just a short list of things we had in the fifties and sixties that we don't have today. There are dozens of medical conditions that were a death sentence in 1960 that are treatable and often curable today. You can walk away from a car crash today in any new car that would have killed you in a brand-new '57 Chevy. The good old days stunk!

Well MarkB_Mi some of us don't live just for material things. You are right about the medical problems being better but I don't believe that a new smart car is better than a "57 Chevy and as far as segregation things are better to an extent, the way the government has turned people against one another and keep stirring up the hatred is actually worse. I could go on but there isn't a need.

Jim

Man I'm glad I don't know you.

Farm folk were healthy, we didn't have too much of those things you mentioned. Some. But not worse than kids today killing themselves with drugs. Very little to no depression. You'll say it went undiagnosed. I'd say it's overdiagnosed today, due to people with too little to do with themselves. Good neighbors that cared, and families that stayed together. Yea, it was better, regardless of what you're cynical butt thinks. You either weren't there or came from a bad family.

the milkman was us boys going to the barn twice a
day to milk the two cows. TV was black and white,
late 50's. always had field work to do also.we
churned our own butter and made our own ice cream.
the 50's and 60's were great years but we just
didn't know it at the time.we were poor but had what
we needed.

Y'all sure take your nostalgia seriously. Am I really such a horrible person just because I like to poke fun at sacred cows?

Now, Red, you introduce a completely new premise: that the farming lifestyle is healthier than city life. (The idealized family in the original post were clearly city dwellers; milk and newspaper delivery were strictly in-town things.) Well, since I already have you riled up, I might as well slaughter that sacred cow, too.

Polio and other diseases affected farm and ranch families just as much as city folk. I have an elderly aunt and an old college roommate who are proof of that. Obesity and cigarettes have put plenty of farmers in an early grave. It's hardly surprising that overalls are so popular among farmers; it's a practical choice when you're fifty pounds overweight. Not to mention the fact that farming remains a very dangerous occupation (fourth most dangerous in the US) and that farms are hazardous places to live. I could tell you some horrific stories about grain augers and small children, but if you're a farmer I sure you've heard plenty already.

As for depression, my grandfather blew his brains out at the family farm in 1929.

Sure you still don't want to know me, Red?