Re: OT - Older Than Dirt Quiz - Part II

[Swingman]

... along with Midnight, the cat who played the piano, Squeaky the mouse and, IIRC, Rajah the Elephant Boy on occasion.

[Ron Magen]

"NIIIIIICE"

SNIP

[Swingman]

"Hiya, kids, Hiya, hiya!!"

[Kiyu]

I think ours lasted until the early 70's - it couldn't survive the next generation of kids. Damn. I shouldn't have given it a thought. Now all evening I'll be singing I got shoes, you got shoes.....

Kiyu

[Tim Douglass]

I'd forgotten about those. I guess I don't really miss them, although my old Remington upright was very popular at college because it could be hauled down to the park to write a term paper far away from a plug-in.

Tim Douglass

[Wood Butcher]

As this thread approaches it's preordained conclusion I'm reminded of those master debaters from Python and the 4 Yorkshiremen skit.

Art

The Scene: Four well-dressed men sitting together at a vacation resort. "Farewell to Thee" being played in the background on Hawaiian guitar.

Michael Palin: Ahh.. Very passable, this, very passable. Graham Chapman: Nothing like a good glass of Chateau de Chassilier wine, ay Gessiah? Terry Gilliam: You're right there Obediah. Eric Idle: Who'd a thought thirty years ago we'd all be sittin' here drinking Chateau de Chassilier wine? MP: Aye. In them days, we'd a' been glad to have the price of a cup o' tea. GC: A cup ' COLD tea. EI: Without milk or sugar. TG: OR tea! MP: In a filthy, cracked cup. EI: We never used to have a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper. GC: The best WE could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth. TG: But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor. MP: Aye. BECAUSE we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, "Money doesn't buy you happiness." EI: 'E was right. I was happier then and I had NOTHIN'. We used to live in this tiiiny old house, with greaaaaat big holes in the roof. GC: House? You were lucky to have a HOUSE! We used to live in one room, all hundred and twenty-six of us, no furniture. Half the floor was missing; we were all huddled together in one corner for fear of FALLING! TG: You were lucky to have a ROOM! *We* used to have to live in a corridor! MP: Ohhhh we used to DREAM of livin' in a corridor! Woulda' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woken up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House!? Hmph. EI: Well when I say "house" it was only a hole in the ground covered by a piece of tarpolin, but it was a house to US. GC: We were evicted from *our* hole in the ground; we had to go and live in a lake! TG: You were lucky to have a LAKE! There were a hundred and sixty of us living in a small shoebox in the middle of the road. MP: Cardboard box? TG: Aye. MP: You were lucky. We lived for three months in a brown paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six o'clock in the morning, clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down mill for fourteen hours a day week in-week out. When we got home, our Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt! GC: Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at three o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, go to work at the mill every day for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle, if we were LUCKY! TG: Well we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife. EI: Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, (pause for laughter), eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing "Hallelujah." MP: But you try and tell the young people today that... and they won't believe ya'. ALL: Nope, nope..

"T." wrote Sat, Jan 3, 2004, 11:33am (EST-3) [e-mail]

Boy, some of you guy's are really stretching.

Now try, churning your own butter, after you separated your own milk. Then, molding the butter, in wooden butter molds. Water from a well, with a bucket. Or, water from a stream, with a bucked, on a tram line. Cornbread and milk, instead of cereal. Or, saltine crackers and milk, instead of cereal. Lucky Strike green - I can ony vaguely recall those tho. Digging a new outhouse hold, and moving the outhouse.

We did have electricty when I was a kid, but I've visited relatives who didn't. We had running water, but only cold. We did not have indoor plumbing. We moved when I was in the 7th grade, and that was our first indoor plumbing, and first hot water. And, later, our first telephone. And, even later, first television.

[Silvan]

Dude, it's less than four hours from here to there. You should treat yourself to a drive-in movie.

We have a couple of old fashioned drive-in restaurants too. One of them is right down the street from the other drive-in. The Starlite Drive-In Theater and the Starlite Drive-In Restaurant, both on, get this now, Starlite Drive. Or maybe these are all "-light." I'm not sure.

[Norman D. Crow]

C'mon now JOAT, there are more than a few of us *old farts* around here! Work one end of a crosscut saw, split the log sections with sledge/wedges so we could feed it to the buzz saw.

Those were part of my life, back then. Most of it, I would not care to repeat either. Other things would be well worth repeating. Some of the things I wouldn't mind doing again (notice, I said again, these are things I have actually done, not heard about from somone): Squirt the milk, so the barn cats will rise up on their hind legs, to catch it in their mouth, and try to make them fall over backwards.

Yup. Make a chisel, from scratch, with a forge.

Nope.

Catch frogs with a lure - white as I recall - if you were good, you could make a frog jump 3' straight up, to catch one. Nope.

Dapping for trout. Nope.

Riding on a doodlebug tracor.

Sounds like what we called a "whoopee", old truck chassis cut down with a wood box for a seat, chains on the rear duals.

Nahmie

[Kiyu]

Still got the butter mold. Never did it myself though.

White porcelain bucket & dipper in the kitchen. Breaking ice off the top on cold winter mornings.

With lots of sugar. Blah! Thanks for the memory.

Skidding the outhouse to a new hole - a grand family event. Sunshine Magazine & Guidepost for reading material.

The good old days really weren't all that good were they?

Kiyu

[Glen]

When my mother was in high school she saved up and bought an old, used Underwood. I remember her saying it was quite old when she got it. Believe it or not Staples was able to find me a ribbon that fits it. I still have it and it works great. The thing has got to be over 80 years old.

Glen

BTW, it's a cordless model. ;-)

Boy, some of you guy's are really stretching. Remembering back to the days of manual typewriters? Yo-yos? You've gotta be kidding. You can still buy, new manual typewriters. If you want a neat one tho, I've got an electric portable, that will operate on electric anywhere in the world, plus batteries. But, the kids were playing with it - I didn't know - and apparently a spring somewhere in it broke. Ah well. Maybe I can get it repaired one of these days.

And, yo-yo - remember when? I've got a regular yo-yo I got just a few, very few, years ago. I get it and use it every once in awhile. And, got at least two floating around here somewhere, that are maybe about 10-12 years old, they take batteries, and have lights that come on, if you spin them hard enough.

Now try, churning your own butter, after you separated your own milk. Then, molding the butter, in wooden butter molds. Water from a well, with a bucket. Or, water from a stream, with a bucked, on a tram line. Cornbread and milk, instead of cereal. Or, saltine crackers and milk, instead of cereal. Lucky Strike green - I can ony vaguely recall those tho. Digging a new outhouse hold, and moving the outhouse.

We did have electricty when I was a kid, but I've visited relatives who didn't. We had running water, but only cold. We did not have indoor plumbing. We moved when I was in the 7th grade, and that was our first indoor plumbing, and first hot water. And, later, our first telephone. And, even later, first television.

JOAT Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

- Sir Winston Churchill

Life just ain't life without good music. - JOAT Web Page Update 2 Jan 2004. Some tunes I like.

[Silvan]

I'm not talking about Sonics. I'm talking about a *real* drive-in restaurant that hasn't changed appreciably since the '50s.

I don't think the skating waitress chickies wear poodle skirts and bobby socks though.

Yeah, I heard that. Pretty colors and lots of chrome, but they have no soul. The hip hop gang banger kill whitey music blaring from every orifice doesn't sweeten the pot much either.

[Charlie Self]

JOAT muses:

You got that right. Not many, but lower noise levels are always better.

Charlie Self "Brevity is the soul of lingerie." Dorothy Parker

[Silvan]

Push and hold the "source" button for a second or two.

That confuses the guy at my company's yard too. I'll get in the truck and my stereo is on, with the volume turned all the way down, because the guy couldn't figure out how to turn it off.

LMAO. I just had a mental image of you cruising along with "Ride of the Valkyries" blaring from the stereo full blast, bearing down on one of those little hip hop Hondas.

[Kiyu]

Religious & inspirational subscriptions from relatives - they always found their way to the outhouse. Sunshine was terrific though.

What I hated was when someone left the door open and it snowed. Your butt could warm a toilet seat quickly (we had a genuine store bought one in ours) but not when you just swept 4 in. of snow off it and time was running out. And then there were, when and where you were the most vulnerable, the spiders in the summertime. And the lime pail. And the folk's rule not to disturb the black snakes on the way out as they kept the mice away.

And does anyone remember having cottonwood trees on all corners of the house - nature's AC?

Kiyu

[David Hall]

AWWW and here I thought he was talking about Porter...

Dave Hall