Getting Old

Dad loved Wildroot Hair Creme

As you can probably tell, no fishing last weekend.  However, I have a friend that is related to a good friend, Mark Mayerich.  Franklin lives on the Iron Range in northern Minnesota and admittedly we share a lot of the same values in life. To be honest,, I've only met Franklin a few times but he is one of those guys that because one shares similar values, we tend to stay email buddies. He sent this early this morning and it really hit home:

Yes, I am older than dirt!

Remember Slow Food? 

'Someone asked the other day, 'What was your favorite 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 'at Home,'' I explained.  'Mom 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 hard I was afraid he was going to suffer serious internal damage,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 figured his system could have handled it.

 Some parents NEVER owned their own house, never wore Levis, never set foot on a golf course, never traveled out of the country or had a credit card. In their later years they had something called a revolving charge card. The card was good only at  Sears Roebuck or maybe it was Sears & Roebuck.  Either way, there is no Roebuck anymore. Maybe he died.

My parents never drove me to soccer practice. This was mostly because we never had heard of soccer. 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 11. It was, of course, black and white, and the station went off the air at midnight, after playing the national anthem and a poem about God; 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 was 19 before I tasted my first pizza, it was called 'pizza pie.' When I bit into it, I burned the roof of my mouth and the cheese slid off, swung down, plastered itself against my chin and burned that, too. It's still the best pizza I ever had. 

I never had a telephone in my room. The only phone in the house was in the living room and it 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 --Idelivered a newspaper, seven days a week. It cost 10 cents a paper, of which he got to keep 3 cents.  He had to get up at 6 AM every morning. On Saturday, I had to collect the 60 cents from his customers. My favorite customers were the ones who gave 

me 3 quarters and said to keep the change. My least favorite customers were the ones who seemed to never be home on collection day. 

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? 
MEMORIES from a friend : 
My Dad is cleaning out my grandmother's house (she died in December) and he brought me an old Royal Crown Cola bottle. In the bottle top was a stopper with a bunch of holes in it. I knew immediately what it was, but my daughter had no idea. She thought they had tried to make it a salt shaker or something. I knew it as the bottle that sat on the end of the ironing board to 'sprinkle' clothes with because we didn't have steam irons. Man, I am old. 

How many do you remember? 
Head lights dimmer switches on the floor.  (Like my Mustang)
Ignition switches on the dashboard. 
Heaters mounted on the inside of the fire wall. 
Pant leg clips for bicycles without chain guards. 
Using hand signals for cars without turn signals. 
Older Than Dirt Quiz : 
Count all the ones that you remember not the ones you were told about. Ratings at the bottom. 
1. Blackjack chewing gum 
2. Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water  
3. Candy cigarettes 
4. Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles 
5. Coffee shops or diners with table side jukeboxes  
6. Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers 
7. Party lines on the telephone 
8 Newsreels before the movie 
9. P.F. Flyers 
10. Butch wax  (that was our hair product) 
11.. TV test patterns that came on at night after the last show and were there until TV shows started again in the morning. (there were only 2 channels... 

12. Peashooters
13. Howdy Doody 
14. 45 RPM records 
15.S&H green stamps 
16. Hi-fi's 
17. Metal ice trays with lever 
18. Mimeograph paper 
19. Blue flashbulb 
20. Packards 
21. Roller skate keys 
22. Cork popguns  
23. Drive-ins 
24. Studebakers 
25. Wash tub wringers 
If you remembered 0-5 = You're still young
If you remembered 6-10 = You are getting older

If you remembered 11-15 = Don't tell your age,
If you remembered 16-25 = You' re older than dirt! 
I might be older than dirt but those memories are some of the best parts of my life. 

Jared and a nice mess of panfish

This brought back a lot of memories of long ago.  The list includes Butch Wax, well my dad loved Wildroot as I put the picture up of their ad.  He would always slick my brothers and my hair with this before going to Sunday School. I remember when McDonald's in Eau Claire had 15 cent hamburgers and 20 cent cheeseburgers.  Michael's Dairy used to deliver milk in returnable glass bottles to our house.  Every December, maybe a week before Christmas, they would haul a team of horses, our delivery guy would dress up as Santa, and they would pull a sled around town and give each customer a half gallon of ice cream as a present for being a loyal customer. I still remember you could hear the jingle of bells on the harness's as they traveled down the streets of Eleva.  We all can look back at what was as things change very quickly.  I wanted to share this as it was important to me.   So this is Fishin' with Dave, not Remembering Old Times with Dave however not getting out last week was killing me!  Ben Aiona sent me a picture of this nice batch of sunfish and perch, he still hasn't told me where he got them but never the less it's a nice bunch of fish, I am sure his son Jared had a good hand in all of this!  JR's is letting wheel houses out this week at Red, so the weekend is planned.  My brother Steve is driving up Thursday night to stay with a friend on the south side of Minneapolis and will meet me at the pole shed on Friday morning.  We pick up my friend Keith in Brainerd on the way to Red and hopefully will be set up and fishing by 4:00 in the afternoon.  With a little luck we can catch supper and head into JR's.  Our plan is to spend 2 nights leaving Sunday morning while leaving the wheel house at JR's till the end of January.  It will be great to both get out fishing and to see everyone again!  I hope you enjoyed the post.