childhood memories

a friend of mine wrote out some childhood memories on her blog and i replied with some of mine. Well, i kept writing and writing and writing... So I thought i would share it here. Enjoy!

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i lived on my bike, as did everyone else. we spent lots of hours exploring the woods and fields and having bb gun fights and ice skating in bitter cold and playing football with way too much violence and way too little protection.

we had a barn with a rope that hung down from the pulley at the peak. we put our foot in the loop at the bottom, grabbed tightly to the rope, and pushed ourselves off the second story hay mow ledge to swing out the door on the other side of the barn. (my little sister broke her arm when she fell off once.)

you could tell who was really a christian by who went to church on sunday NIGHT. and the most holy huddled at Wednesday prayer meeting where we knelt on the floor and put our faces into the pew we had just been sitting on. (pew is the correct terminology!) "Altar calls" to get the sinners saved and the christians sanctified capped every service. We used hymnals, and memorized most of the king james bible. When the living bible paraphrase came out we could finally understand what the bible was trying to say.

i listened to many LP's with music or stories or comedy. We had a whole bunch of bible stories by ethyl barrett on 45’s, and they were see-through red! i had a small reel-to-reel tape recorder which i sang into or interviewed people with or pretended to be on the radio.

when we got a super 8 movie camera life was good. When people would visit we would turn off the lights, drag out the projector and screen and delight them with silent movies of our wonderful family antics. The most fun was to play it in reverse, after we watched it all forward. At least it was better than watching hours of slides my grandfather took, mainly of flowers!

taxes were too high, the price of electricity was outrageous, and inflation was on everyone's lips. when the price of gas got to be $1 the end of the world was clearly near. We went out to eat when McDonald’s had the 10 hamburgers for a dollar special going.

the communists were hell-bent on taking over our country and our freedom and our religion, so we ducked under our desks from time to time so we would be prepared for their bombs.

our 63 impala was as long as a boat, but rode like a dream. we never used seat belts, stood up on the front seat and looked out the window, and on trips we would sleep on the back floor or the back window ledge. humans filled your gas tank, checked your oil, washed your windows, and then gave you green stamps to boot! some days were special because you got double stamps.

having family dinner together every night was not a question. What else would you do?

the god-hating atheist madeline murray o'hare was out to take God out of the pledge of allegiance, off the money, and anything else she could get her hands on. and we hated her for it.

everyone smoked everywhere. offices, restaurants, elevators, hospitals, movie theaters, planes, busses, trains, home, car, on tv shows, movies... even in the church parking lot (if you were baptist or catholic).

nikes, converse, addidas, and pumas were the footwear to have, and wranglers, levis, lees, and calvin Klein, and jordache were the jeans to have.

we listened to the christian radio staion 24/7, with a mixture of children’s programs, bible study programs, doctor dobson, and "music for dining" from 6 to 8 pm (string arrangements of familiar hymns or other christian songs)

when cars crashed people usually got hurt badly or died. car tires could be counted on to blow once or twice during every vacation. planes were used only by the rich and famous.

in phys ed you could throw balls at people and actually TRY to hit them. And if you couldn’t run fast or climb a rope all the way to the ceiling, or do 10 chin-ups you got a bad grade. Being fat was not considered a disability.

nobody took ritalin or prozac. nothing was sugar-free, or salt-free, or fat-free, or caffeine free. why would anyone want that?

woman actually used recipes and cookbooks. if their hair was curly, they left it that way. if it was straight, they left it that way (except for very special occasions.) the daring dabbled with Clairol home-color kits.

boys took shop and girls took home ec.

no cell phones, ipods, skateboards, roller blades (only roller skates) video games (until atari came out), cds, dvds, computers, internet, vcr’s, tivo. if you wanted to watch a tv show you had to watch it when it was on or you lost your chance. if you wanted to see a movie you had to go to the theater while it was playing. if you wanted to see it again... tough.

backpacks were only used by mountain climbers and we seldom brought home many books from school. My mom had 3 dishwashers... me and my two sisters.

some fun toys were "klackers" and yo-yos and caps and cats in the cradle string and easy-bake oven and making creepy crawlers with dangerously hot metal molds and toxic plastic goop.

i spent hours reading our set of "snoopy" books, encyclopedias, and childcraft books. (yes i'm a geek)

We climbed trees way too high. We spent hours driving the lawn mower, or tractor, or our old vw bus, or motorcycle around the fields.

We had fun at Halloween and didn’t worry too much about evil spirits, or needles in the candy apples or popcorn balls.

Spanking with a belt on a bare butt was not considered child abuse.

The introduction of the microwave helped make hot dogs, popcorn, and leftovers become staples.

The speed limit was reduced to 55 mph so it took several hours to get anywhere.

We looked forward to Friday nights: The brady bunch and the partridge family. We looked forward to Saturday nights: Emergency. Other shows of note were chips, the munsters, the mod squad, bewitched, gilligan’s island, the courtship of eddie’s father, lost in space, the price is right, password, match game, star trek, and hogan’s heros. There were lots of shows and movies about cowboys and Indians, and nobody got offended.

Man finally landed on the moon and we were therefore blessed with the new delicacies of “space food sticks” and tang.

Long hair, bell-bottoms, stripes, and paisley were in.

The rules for what was appropriate to do on Sunday gradually changed over the years, but at the height of restriction the following things were taboo, and were cause to question someone’s relationship with the Lord…
Watching tv
Doing homework
Listening to non-christian music
Playing outside
Buying anything, including gas
Going to a restaurant
Working
Anything except eating, sleeping, visiting people, and going to church

I could go on and on… but I suppose that’s enough for you to have a taste of my childhood. Bring back memories??