Memories, memories

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  Do you remember these? (Or am I older than you?)

—Test patterns on TV, when the three stations were off the air. The national anthem was played when their day was over.

—Rumble seats in the back of old cars. Kids loving to ride in them. Some old cars had running boards below the doors on the sides. Seat belts were unheard of.

—White margarine coming with coloring packages. You had to mix them up to make it yellow. I refused to eat white margarine! Yuck! And milk with the cream on top—you had to shake it up before they made it homogenized.

—Big John and Sparky on the radio on Saturday mornings. Jack Benny, Phil Harris and Fibber McGee and Molly on Sunday afternoons.

—Hitch hikers on the roads. I did it a few times myself.

—Milton Berle getting a 30-year contract with NBC in 1951, only to be dumped by the network several years later.

—Door to door salesmen, for the Encyclopedia Britannica, Fuller Brush and Watkins. They weren’t afraid of getting shot by residents.

—Milk delivered by the milk man. You left empty bottles on the front porch.

—Great cartoons in the Saturday Evening Post.

—Party lines on telephones. They were irritating when you wanted to call someone—but entertaining if you wanted to listen in.

—Soda fountains in drug stores serving chocolate coke or lemon coke. Did they have real food, too? I don’t remember.

—Before rock n roll, such bland singers as Frankie Laine, Patti Page and Guy Mitchell. I never liked Mitch Miller, Ray Conniff or Lawrence Welk.

—As long as we got home for dinner, parents not worried about where we went.

—Games played in the street. Red light/green light. Kick the can. Baseball.

—Roller derby and wrestling—all the rage. We didn’t know or care that they were fixed.

—Drive-in movies with double anod triple features. A portable heater with a long chord attached to a stand next to each car.

—In 1954, the NBA basketball league had eight teams: Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Syracuse, Rochester, Fort Wayne, Milwaukee and Minneapolis. I guess Chicago wasn’t big enough. The farthest west Major League Baseball team was in St. Louis. 

Am I longing for the Gold Old Days? Well, no. Kids got polio, women couldn’t get decent jobs. Racial discrimination was pervasive. Life spans were shorter.

Count your blessings!