Someone asked the other day

[Ray Scully]

Someone asked the other day, 'What was your favourite 'fast food' when you were growing up?'
'We didn't have fast food when I was growing up,' I informed him.
'All the food was slow.'
'C'mon, seriously. Where did you eat?'
'It was a place called 'home,'' I explained. !
'Mum cooked every day and when Dad got home from work, we sat down together at the dining room table, and if I didn't like what she put on my plate, I was allowed to sit there until I did like it.'

By this time the kid was laughing, so I didn't tell him the part about how I had to have permission to leave the table.

But here are some other things I would have told him about my childhood if I'd figured he could have handled it:

Some parents NEVER owned their own house, wore Levis , set foot on a golf course, travelled out of the country or had a credit card.

My parents never drove me to school. I had a bicycle that weighed probably 50 pounds, and only had one speed, (slow).

We didn't have a television in our house until I was 10.
It was, of course, black and white, and the station went off the air at 10 pm, after playing the national anthem and epilogue; it came back on the air at about 6 a.m. and there was usually a locally produced news and farm show on, featuring local people...

I never had a telephone in my room. The only phone was on a party line. Before you could dial, you had to listen and make sure some people you didn't know weren't already using the line.

Pizzas were not delivered to our home... But milk was.

All newspapers were delivered by boys and all boys delivered newspapers --I delivered a newspaper, seven days a week and had to get up at 6AM every morning.

Movie stars kissed with their mouths shut. At least, they did in the movies. There were no movie ratings because all movies were responsibly produced for everyone to enjoy viewing, without profanity or violence or most anything offensive.

If you grew up in a generation before there was fast food, you may want to share some of these memories with your children or grandchildren. Just don't blame me if they bust a gut laughing.
Growing up isn't what it used to be, is it?

[GillD46]

And I remember the excitement when Wimpey came to our town - but it was called a Wimpey Bar. The food was served on plates and you ate with a knife and fork!

[Boris+]

I can remember that a nearby town had a Wimpey - and I wasn't allowed to go there!

Sulk.

Em

[barney]

I remember waiting outside the class room for the Teacher to arrive.

You went in in an orderly fashion and waited to be told to be seated.

You worked in silence and if you didn't, a blackboard rubber could come flying your way.

How times of changed. Our teachers didn't want to 'interact', they wanted to teach.

[Frank Manning]

My experience was much the same as yours Ray;

Bread and Milk was delivered,

The rent man came once a week until I was 17 and we moved to a bungalow which my parents bought and lived in for the rest of their lives.

We had TV for the Queen's Coronation, and many neighbours came round to watch it. One man was recovering from TB and someone complained to my Dad that he should not have been invited, you can imagine what my Dad told him to do.

We had a car from about 1950 but only because his job required it. No overseas holidays though it was back to the Isle of Wight every summer to my delight. Then in 1958 we were taken to Cornwall for a treat because it would be our last holiday together.

Mum cooked every day, although you could tell the day of the week from the menu.

We walked or biked to school. Then when I passed the 13+ I went by train two stations up the line every day for 3 years.

Church every Sunday, and Sunday School until I was old enough to play cricket for the local team on Sundays (16).

I dont take anything fo granted these days.

PS Fast food was fish and chips in the car on the way home from cricket away games. Berkhamstead, tring Hemel Hempstead etc.

[Gill W]

My mum had TB in the 1950's and her younger sister died if it. My mum told me it was considered quite shameful to have TB, as it implied poverty.

I can relate to quite a lot of things that have been said, and I grew up in the 1960's and 1970's

My parents never owned their own house. When they married they took a couple of rooms at my mum's cousins rented house, and took over the tenancy when he died in late 1958, due to a tropical disease he contracted during the war. They took over the tenancy, and I was born early 1960. I often think that if Cousin Jack hadn't died, I wouldn't have been born, as my parents wouldn't have had a child when living with a semi invalid.

We never had central heating, and had an outside loo and tin bath until about 1973. My mum eventually learned to drive and got a car in the early 1980's so they could visit me, as I moved away from my home area when I got married. They got an automatic washing machine sometime in the 1980's

By my time girls also delivered newspapers - I had a paper round which was seven days a week, plus the local paper Thursday, and collecting the weeks paper bill on Friday nights, which had to be recorded in a ledger, tallied up and agreed. ( good practice for a lifetime in banking). All this for £1 a week in the mid 1970's

Yet as an only child, I was considered very well off by my friends, as I never wore hand me down clothes ( my mum made most of my clothes) and because I got things like a dolls house or dolls cot for Christmas ( made by my dad who was a carpenter)

But nothing ever changes - my mum and dad told me stories of 'the olden days' during their childhood and I'd laugh at how old fashioned it was. Just as in 50 years time children will think today is primitive.

[gfwgfw]

BUT . . .

Us old farts were as happy as pigs rolling in sh*t

Halcyon days

[Dark Knight]

ee by gum
sounds like the old Monty Python sketch

did any of you live in a hole int' middle o'road and have to get up to lick road clean we ya tongue and get up 5 hours before you went to bed

[Ray Scully]

I think the big lesson I and many contemporaries learned from this experience was the value of money, and if we earned a pound we only spent 90p.

Hence now two cruises a year.

[Mervyn and Trish]

ee by gum
sounds like the old Monty Python sketch

did any of you live in a hole int' middle o'road and have to get up to lick road clean we ya tongue and get up 5 hours before you went to bed

Don't be silly Batty, of course I didn't. I never swept chimneys as a boy either. I went straight into the mills at 10.

[Mervyn and Trish]

I think the big lesson I and many contemporaries learned from this experience was the value of money, and if we earned a pound we only spent 90p.

Interesting point Ray. When I was a boy my parents opened a Post Office Savings Account for me and put some money in it (not a lot!). If I wanted to buy anything, such as my first record player, I had to save up half the price out of my pocket money and then I could "borrow" the other half from my PO book. I then had to put that back before I could start the process again.

[qbman1]

If I wanted to buy anything, such as my first record player.......

Do you still have all those 78's Merv - must be worth a bob or two now !!

[Dark Knight]

Merv has wax cylinders

[david63]

Merv has wax cylinders

Too much information (you've been peeping again )

[Dark Knight]

he was showing them off, to anyone within a 10 yard radius
they were a bit wrinkly and decepit

[oldbluefox]

Eating in the 50s

* Pasta we did not think had been invented.
* Curry was an unknown entity.
* Olive oil was kept in the medicine cabinet
* Spices came from the Middle East where we believed that they were used for embalming
* Herbs were used to make rather dodgy medicine.
* A takeaway was a mathematical problem.
* A pizza was something to do with a leaning tower.
* Bananas and oranges only appeared at Christmas time.
* The only vegetables known to us were spuds, peas, carrots and cabbage, anything else was regarded as being a bit suspicious.
* All crisps were plain; the only choice we had was whether to put the salt on or not.
* Condiments consisted of salt, pepper, vinegar and brown sauce if we were lucky.
* Soft drinks were called pop.
* Coke was something that we mixed with coal to make it last longer.
* A Chinese chippy was a foreign carpenter.
* Rice was a milk pudding, and never, ever part of our dinner.
* A Big Mac was what we wore when it was raining.
* A microwave was something out of a science fiction movie.
* Brown bread was something only poor people ate.
* Oil was for lubricating your bike not for cooking, fat was for cooking
* Bread and jam was a treat.
* Tea was made in a teapot using tea leaves, not bags.
* The tea cosy was the forerunner of all the energy saving devices that we hear so much about today.
* Tea had only one colour, black. Green tea was not British.
* Coffee was only drunk when we had no tea….. and then it was Camp, and came in a bottle.
* Cubed sugar was regarded as posh.
* Figs and dates appeared every Christmas, but no one ever ate them.
* Coconuts only appeared when the fair came to town.
* Salad cream was a dressing for salads, mayonnaise did not exist
* Hors d'oeuvre was a spelling mistake.
* Soup was a main meal.
* The menu consisted of what we were given, and was set in stone.
* Only Heinz made beans, there were no others.
* Leftovers went in the dog, never in the bin.
* Special food for dogs and cats was unheard of.
* Sauce was either brown or red.
* Fish was only eaten on Fridays.
* Fish and chips was always wrapped in old newspapers, and definitely tasted better that way.
* Frozen food was called ice cream.
* Nothing ever went off in the fridge because we never had one.
* Ice cream only came in one flavour, vanilla.
* None of us had ever heard of yoghurt.
* Jelly and blancmange was strictly party food.
* Healthy food had to have the ability to stick to your ribs.
* Indian restaurants were only found in India .
* Cheese only came in a hard lump.
* A bun was a small cake that your Mum made in the oven.
* Eating out was called a picnic.
* Cooking outside was called camping.
* Eggs only came fried or boiled.
* Hot cross buns were only eaten at Easter time.
* Pancakes were only eaten on Shrove Tuesday – and on that day it was compulsory.
* Cornflakes had just arrived from America but it was obvious that they would never catch on.
* We bought milk and cream at the same time in the same bottle.
* Sugar enjoyed a good press in those days, and was regarded as being white gold.
* Prunes were purely medicinal.
* Surprisingly muesli was readily available in those days, it was called cattle feed.
* Turkeys were definitely seasonal.
* Pineapples came in chunks in a tin; we had only ever seen a picture of a real one.
* We didn't eat Croissants in those days because we couldn't pronounce them, we couldn't spell them and we didn't know what they were.
* Garlic was used to ward off vampires, but never used to flavour bread.
* Water came out of the tap, if someone had suggested bottling it and charging treble for it they would have become a laughing stock.
* Food hygiene was only about washing your hands before meals.
* Campylobacter, Salmonella, E.coli, Listeria, and Botulism were all called "food poisoning."

However, the one thing that we never ever had on our table in the fifties …. ELBOWS

[Frank Manning]

OBF
My Dad was in Egypt in WWII, and every time boxed dates came out at Christmas he used to tell my brother and me, that he had seen them being trodden into the boxes by men in bare feet in Egypt, and those little black bits had come from between their toes! We believed him.

[oldbluefox]

Canny man, your dad. All the more for him to eat.

My MIL always used to buy boxed dates at Christmas but they were never offered around. We often wondered if they were the same box of dates and were packed away with the Christmas decorations each year.