This has nothing to do with playing the piano, but I couldn't help wanting to share it with some of the "older" members. What a great statement!! Do you agree?

***************[/b]

TO ALL THE KIDS

WHO SURVIVED the
1930's 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's !!

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant.
They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes.

Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we
rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.
As infants & children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, booster seats, seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.


We drank water from the garden hose and NOT spring water from a bottle.


We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and
NO ONE actually died from this.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank kool-aide made with sugar, but we weren't overweight because,

WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!

We would leave the house in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back home when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day.
And we were O.K.


We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down
the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem. < /P>

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVD's, no surround-sound or CD's, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or chat rooms.......
WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no
lawsuits from these accidents.

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays,

We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang
the bell, or just walked in and talked to them!

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of.

They actually sided with the law!

These generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned

HOW TO

DEAL WITH IT ALL!
If YOU are one of them .. . CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as
kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated so much of our lives for our own good

And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave (and lucky) their parents were.

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?!


The quote of the month is by Jay Leno:

"With hurricanes, tornados, fires out of control, mud slides, flooding, severe thunderstorms tearing up the country from one end to another, and with the threat of bird flu and terrorist attacks,” Are we sure this is a good time to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance?"

For those that prefer to think that God is not watching over us....go ahead and delete this.
For the rest of us.....pass this on.

Kathleen

Nice subject Kathleen ... let's hope more join in.

In thinking back ...

4 children sitting after dinner by a cosy Cape Town winter fire and listening spellbound to a master story-teller (naturally Dad) living the part of the many and varied characters Mark Twain managed to squeeze into the southern states story of "Tom Sawyer".

Can still remember the part near the end of the book

"Lookyhere, Huck, what fools we're making of ourselves! Indian Joe's ghost ain't a-going to come around where there's a cross. The point was well taken. It had it's effect.

Tom, I didn't think of that. But that so. It's luck for us, that cross is. I reckon we'll climb down there and have a hunt for that box."

The stragegic closing of the book for the night meant that we had to wait an interminable 24 hours before we'd again shake in our boots at the
thought of the intrepid boys once again going into that scary cave.

But then those were the days when we inventively played outdoors after school ... no TV games or television to distract what a boy has got to do ... lucky us.

Satu8rday mornings on the radio. All those serials. Lone Ranger, etc.

Kathleen

I'm starting to hear about schools banning the game Tag, because kids fall down and the schools are worried about liability suits.

:rolleyes:

Stick sword-fighting on a nearby grave at midnight
Making gang huts ... underground and tree
Sleeping in the wild under starry skies ... with distant baboon and leopard calls filling the ears and imagaining what if ...
Listening in bed to scary radio programmes such as "It walks by night"
Riding in the dickey-seat of Dad's posh Buick
Facing up to the dare of walking through a graveyard at night ... you might have heard me whistling.

Those were the days ... no couch-potato distractions ... and all outdoors fun ... building up an appetite for those warm evening family supper get-togethers (the time before TV dinners) ... when two subjects were banned at table ... I know that cricket was one issue(competitive brothers) and for the life of me can't remember the other ... must be getting old.

how many times did we fall out of the high chair, out of a tree, off of a bicycle ... without then making a trip to the ER for a $2000 "work up"?

and we survived!

My son, much to his mother's grief, took after me. I fell off just about everything there is, and so did he. Willing to try anything, always bruised up, with the occasional cast when needed. I remember when he was about 8 or 9 he smashed his bicycle into one of those jumping trees, so off the the ER we went. The doctor asked me to kindly leave the room so he could "discuss" my son's injuries without me there to influence him (perhaps this is where I should mention I had crashed my MC and was a little banged up myself). The doctor's first reaction was abuse, not the normal boy growing up. When I was a kid, lawyers and social workers could have set up office in ERs. I suppose the changes are important, but when did a kid go from being a kid to a subject of abuse? Parents today MUST view things differently, and in the process, rob childhood from entire generations, not to mention granddads that like lawn darts and slip&slides on sidewalks (much faster on a sidewalk, but a price at the end....). Oh, well, I can watch Dora with my granddaughter without fear of being sued.......

Penny candy, those little tin things with a little tin spoon.

My mother sang and didn't smoke, my father and everyone else did. Funny, I don't smoke and neither do my two brothers and sister.

Roller skates with a key that we used to put on a string.

Standing on the swings so we could go higher.

Can't imagine how we all survived and now everyone gets crazy if a kid skins his/her knees.

gmm1 - I loved to roller skate but never knew how to stop - so I fell most of the time and had so many skinned knees, my father said I looked like an "orphan in a storm" when I came home from my backyard - Central Park.

Anyone remember making bubbles from some sort of goo in a small tube? All you had to do was put a little of the stuff on the tip of a small straw and blow on it.

Loves Chopin this post really brings back so many happy memories.

Now you guys got me started.....

Kool-Aide in a straw (why? loved those things)
Jim Bowie Knives for kids (yes, real knives)
Candy dots on a roll of paper
Davy Crockett coon skin caps with the new nylon chord that you tied it on with that was guaranteed not to break (even when jumping out of trees and the cap gets caught on a branch)
Hopalong Cassady cowboy hats with the same nylon string that really helped when "catching" bad guys by grapping the hat on a running kid...
Cowboy "boot" tops that slipped over sneakers and almost never came loose and tripped you
Red ryder "covered wagons" that you could not steer from inside the wagon that you discovered while going downhill with no brakes

Why am I alive?????

Just thought of a few more.....

Rolled caps for capguns that you would unroll, string three or four together and light on fire. Of course when the gunpowder went off, it sometimes blew out the flame, so the smarter kids would soak in lighter fluid first....

Little silver balls that would expode when you stepped on them... roll a handful down the hall at school and get ready to laugh - adults would explode them and little kids would just slip - fun no matter what (adults running to help the kid on the floor and exploding one was a double and worth 10 points)

Dart guns - take the rubber suction cup off and sharpen the plastic to see if you could actually stick in in your brother...

Yes, I remember that stuff but I can't remember what it was called

Rocky neither can I, but it was fun.

I'd forgotten about caps and cap pistols and those candy dots on strips of paper, mary jane candies (still available - Jack's in NYC has them sometimes)and Davy Crockett coonskin hats...

Hey! I was operated on...on the kitchen table by my mom, aunt and uncle. You didn't go to the doctor in those days.

Climbing down a huge tree, I managed to find a rusty old nail and gouged a big hole in my side. Blood and other yellow stuff oozzing out. A rushed trip to the corner Walgreens for several bottles of hydrogen peroxide and gauze and bandages. All the while, I'm screeming: "I don't want to die." My mom in all her reassuring manner told me to shut up and that I wasn't going to die.

They put me on the kitchen table, poured all the peroxide on the wound, waited until all the bubbles ran clear, then put several layers of gauze and bandages over it. (Again, I'm still screaming" "I don't want to die" all the while.)

I remember that sticky plastic stuff also.

Remember just as school started in the fall, a guy from the yo-yo manufacturer would appear at the local candy store near the school. He'd give us a show on all the different tricks you could do with the yo-yo...like "walking the dog" and "around the world." Some of the "richer" kids would buy one. The rest of us would just stand around and watch them.

How about those little ice-cream cones. The ice cream was pure sugar and the cone a wafer. And those small wax bottles that contained about 1/3 ounce of colored sugar water. Then you could eat the wax.

Once, I lost the nickel change while returning from the corner grocery store. My mom spent 2 hours walking up and down the street looking for it. She finally found it. And she didn't send me to the store anymore after that.

The games were: roly-poly, kick the can, Red Rover-come over, You're it, hop scotch, jumping rope, winding yourself around on the swing and letting go and spinning like crazy.

Every summer, a man with a small pinto pony would appear, and you'd get your picture taken sitting on the pony (the poor thing).

And, of course, the good-humor man on his bicyle pushing a large white freezer-type box full of ice cream bars.

When I walked over to my friend's house, I'd stand outside and yell: Oooohhhhhh Diiiaaaannnee. Gosh, was that silly.

I should write all my experiences down somewhere for my daughter to read.

Boy, we had fun back then. But it was a totally different world. Too bad.

Kathleen

Kathleen!!!! We might be related....I completely forgot - When living in France is the late 50's, we lived in a village named "Cousse Le Zeppe" (bad spelling). we had an out building that was a combo garage, coal bin and hay loft. There was a huge rope used to get hay up in the loft and most of the time it just hung there. After being told in two languages to stay out of there, me and my brothers would climb up in the raft, get the rope and Tarzan across and over the garage/coal bin. Great fun, but just not dangerous enough, so I decided to come out at an angle, bounce off the wall with my feet to gain distance, and leap into the coal bin. When I hit the wall, I did not notice the HUGE nail sticking out of the wall and drove it through my left foot. It shocked me so bad that I let go of the rope, resulting in me hanging up-side-down about 12 feet off the ground. My brothers did not lose their cool one little bit. They saw me and all the blood, knew we were not allowed in there, so they left and did not say a word to anyone. My mother came looking for me for lunch after about 3 bizillion hours. Now, you got to know, she grew up on a farm in Maine, so her reaction (after seeing I was indeed alive and no obvious damage to the foot), called the village fire dept to get me down and then waited with me, laughing and crying at the same time. They got me down, pronounced me alive, gave me a tetnius (sp) shot, and told me to take it easy for a few days, and see a doctor if it got infected. Man, those were the days....

Dear Gmm1:

Wow, what a story. Haning upside down for a zillon hours. That's probably why you'te so smart today...all that blood rushed to your head.

Good night! I never got a tetnus shot. I'm surprised I survived. But, as my mother so apty put it: "Shut up. You're not going to die."

And mothers are always right.

I took my first and brand-new bike two-wheeler down the steepest part of a mountain (well, actually, it was a high hill). All the other kids went down the side of the hill where the slope wasn't so severe. But not me. Goodness. Do what all the other kids did. No way!

So, down I went and crashed right into a stand of bushes/trees, put a huge dent in my bike (my dad wasn't very happy with me), bent all the spokes in one of the tires, and the chain came off. It was a green Schwinn. I'll never forget it. All the other kids had blue or red. But I had a green one...like the Green Hornet.

Kathleen

This memory lane stuff must be good - I am firing brain cells that I have not used in many years - OK maybe I never really used them....

regular/baseball cards in the spokes of a bike with a clothes pin(how much money/baseball cards did I lose doing that?)

Never-sharpen pencils made entirely of lead and lead paint - so big and thick you almost needed two hands.....fun to chew on...

Soda fountains in drug stores where you waited for the next issue of Green Lantern (Cherry Coke)

Foot Long Cigarettes you could buy one at a time for a nickel (don't ask why I remember this....)

Spending 2 long days playing one game of Monopoly.. guarding the board, taking your money with you just in case.....

jig saw puzzles on the kitchen table for weeks on end - everyone walking by stopping for a few minutes (moving the pieces you so carefully lined up by color/size, etc)

Huge bloody fist fights over who's turn it was to wash the dishes - fights always lasted longer than the task itself.....

Oh Boy, gmm1:

You have really started sparking my brain cells and thank you for doing so.

In thinking back (a lllloooonnnnggg time ago), I believe I had a childhood right out of a book (maybe based a little on Happy Days---complete with a Fonzie character).

I laughed when I read about your Monopoly game and taking your money with you, just in case. Not that we didn't trust our brothers and sisters (ha!).

And...washing the dishes. I could never understand why, when it was my turn, there were so many dirty pots and pans (before the days of Teflon, I should add...get out the brillo pads). Until I discovered that my sister and brother would hide the cooking ware in the oven on their days, and then, very sneakily put them in the sink on my day. Urg!

My brother deemed that since he was the only man(?) in the house (parents were divorced), that the TV belonged to him and he took the knob off the TV and then forgot where he hid it. We actually used a metal pancake spatula (the kind with holes) to change channels. Then he hid the spatula and we had to watch the same channel for two weeks until my mother broke down and bought another spatula.

And while on the subject of TV, the ever-popular wire hanger used as an arial. Someone always had to hold it until the picture got better and then everyone else would say: "Yeah, there. Hold it. Don't move!" Like we were supposed to stand there with our arms up in the air, like the Statue of Liberty, while the others could happily watch the show, comfortable on the couch (or sofa) in those day.

One day, when my brother was in the second grade, he found the spot where my mom would hide her extra money (in case robbers broke in), and he took the $10 to school and practically bought out the candy store and treated all his classmates. His teacher called my mom to tell her of my brother's new wealth. I can't remember what his punishment was, but I'm sure it wasn't pleasant.

We never locked our doors (I know this was common in those day), but we never even had keys for our doors.

He and I always fought. Always! And physically. My poor mom would stand in the middle (she was 5'2) with her arms out-stretched pushing us apart. He was over 6 feet at the age of 12, and I was 5'8 at the age of 15. He would be trying to punch me and I was trying to kick him. Then he would accuse me of cheating because I was kicking (not fair, in his eyes).

I always thought he was so dumb (he failed 5th grade). Now he is a Vice President at Walgreens and makes (with stock options/bonsuses, etc) over 1 cool mil a year. Lives in a mansion, complete with a real movie theater in the lower level. Go figure!!

Kathleen

Do you remember, Kukla, Fran and Ollie, Howdy Doody, Uncle Miltie, Kate Smith, Telephone Hour, Show of Shows (was that the one with Imogene Coca), I Love Lucy, Our Miss Brooks, My Friend Irma, Ed Sullivan and so it goes -

When I was a kid, I spent the summers in Baltimore with all my cousins, aunts and uncles. My cousin and I played Monopoly so much, that we had our rules and of course we won. We played our version of badminton in her big backyard, I always ended fishing for the birdie in a hedge full of poison ivy which I always ended up with. My aunt always sent me to the washing room in the cellar with yellow soap (I think it was Naptha) to wash my arms. It worked.

My aunt always gave all us kids a dime and a tall ice tea glass - on hot summer days a man would come down the alley with a cart or wagon (don't remember what it was) with big hunks of ice and he shaved off the ice and filled them up and put whatever kind of sweet flavor on it -we called them snow balls and boy were they good.

We also took excursions on a boat called the Bay Belle to Betterton Beach, sometimes we went to Qwyn Oak Park an amusement park with all kinds of rides (no longer there) - caterpiller, whip, bump cars and others that I can't remember. Maybe some of you from Baltimore can remember some of these places.

My mother and father were from Baltimore and we would drive down for our one day trips. We always stopped at Lexington Market and Obrekis (forgive the spelling) for steamed crabs and off to my aunts house on Kevin Road - crab feast and cold beer. I was to young at the time for beer - it was mostly for the grownups. My father gave me the claws and my aunt gave me a coke.

I guess this has all of us going down memory lane and remembering the "good times."

musdan - god, yes - Tom Teriffic - the radio guy, whats his name........Carol Burnett got her start on his show.......AH - Arthur Godfrey - stealing cold beer at family picnics - The orginal Mouseeketers (I still love Annette - don't remember why - boy could she jump....)
puting rocks in badgammon birdies (and snowballs).... There was another famous kid show, if I think of it, I'll post.....

Yes, yes! A couple of years ago I actually saw an ad on TV for that stuff, and I was so walloped with nostalgia I called the toll free number and ordered some for my kids. When it arrived I called them around and told them excitedly "This is the greatest stuff! Just wait til you try it!" Imagine their (and my) disappointment when all we could produce were a couple of tiny anemic bubbles. (Most of the time the glob just fell off the straw when we tried to blow in it.) Either this stuff was an inferior knock-off of the real stuff from decades ago, or my memory had greatly inflated the size of the balloons I produced as a child.

What I miss the most is kids just going outside and playing with whoever else is around in the neighborhood. We used to do that all the time when I was growing up. Nowadays it's all play dates arranged by parents. My kids play outside in our front yard, but I never see ANY other kids on our street doing so. I'm not sure where they DO play, actually. Kinda sad.

You guys are really showing your age!

btw, you're supposed to hit a roll of cap gun caps with a hammer.

Since most of the adults were drunk, it didn't take a magician to sneak off some suds from the tapped kegs.

She was the only Mouseketeer with ta ta's.

I remember going around mowing lawns and, in the winter, shoveling sidewalks for money. I live just blocks from lots of kids and in the last 15 years, not a single one has asked if I'd like them to mow my lawn. :|

And how about Romper Room? Underdog? (my favorite cartoon character; SpongeBob has nothing on him); Kimba the white lion? Gigantor, the robot whose theme song is STILL engrained in my brain? ("Gigantor, the space age roBOT, he's big...etc.".)

gmm1: I loved Tom Terrific! What was his dog's name? I can't remember. I remember sending a dollar off to get a plastic sheet that I pressed on the front of the TV screen and a special marking pen. Then at certain points in the show, there would be dots that you had to connect with the marking pen to complete the scenes in the show.

I'm afraid that I remember crank phones and going through a switchboard operator for even local calls.

I forgot about that screen (and forgot to put it on the screen at my grandma's house - she thought it was not funny). The dog was.....

xxxxxxx the wonder dog......god, there goes the rest of my day.....

My grandma's phone number was 0 and ask for grammy Quirion - worked every time...

Flash, the wonder dog???? naw.....

Oh yea, the show I was trying to remember was where tom terrific lived - Captain Kangeroo

They've been showing reruns of "What's My Line" here. I could not believe that I remembered some of the episodes. I was awfully young. Maybe it was a subliminal thing?!

I always wanted to get away from the little village I grew up in. Little did I know it was "Perfect".

We had brick streets, a real town square with a bandstand, and several 'haunted' houses. I walked to school on slate sidewalks, on streets shaded by a canopy of green trees.

Horse-drawn carriages and hitching posts were a common sight. No, I'm not THAT[/b] old! I grew up in Amish country.

Once in a while we would be treated to a parade, with floats and marching bands. When I was old enough, I marched in the band.

One of the shops I fondly remember, was a pharmacy with a soda fountain. It had broad plank wood floors, very high stamped-tin ceilings, and ceiling fans. I often got a treat there, maybe a little drop of licorice, wax lips, or those little wax bottles filled with colored water. Necco candy was popular too.

It is hard to believe how similar my town was to Mayberry. My barber was a lot like Floyd with his pressed white smock and scissors, but I called him "Uncle Pete".

In public my father wore a hat, my mother wore gloves. Period.

Oh, and don't forget phone prefixes. Mine was AVenue-6. And the Operator really sounded like one! "What Number Puhleeuzz?"

Memories...

Tom Terrific's dog was Mighty Manfred the Wonder Dog. Geeze, guys. I don't even remember that show, but I entered Tom Terrific in the search engine and got your answer.

And what about Captain Video and the Video Ranger. Boy, I had a major crush on him.

Kathleen

I'd forgotten Captain Video and the Video Rangers, it was fun to watch.

"I'm Mighty Manfred, the wonder dog! And I'm Tom's ever faithful companion!" Then he'd smack his lips and lie down.

I didn't even have to google that one. At my age, my long term memory is fine -- it's my short term memory that's down the tubes.

Anyone remember Toppo Gigio from the Ed Sullivan Show and who was the on the same show who made his hand the puppet.