I Am So Old ...

I'm going with the 30 years old is the new 15. =p

 

I don't get the difference between being old and young. Aren't you just stupid the whole time?

 

I've never been stupid.

 

nobody realizes the stupidity part til they get older.

 

....that I recall the days when pregnant women had some semblance of modesty and decorum and public ettiquette. And realized that not everyone wanted to see their swollen belly with a gestating fetus inside it. So....they wore maternity clothes.

Unlike today,,,when all these proud little mommies think that the entire world is as enamored as they are that they're pregnant, so they proudly display their pregnancy with form fitting tops and even bare midriffs. WTF?

 

I remember when Belfast was so quiet on Sunday that you could have a picnic in the middle of the road. It was ruled by Presbyterians who frowned on fun. You had to go across the border to the Republic of Ireland which was Catholic and partied on on Sundays with booze and horse racing. I remember the lamplighter coming round every afternoon at dusk and opening the glass of the streetlights with a long pole he had and lighting them up (they ran on coal gas). The coat to heat your house came on a dray - a flatbed pulled by a draught horse and a man wearing a heavy smock that was all black would haul the 56 pound socks sound the back to your coal bunker.

Even when you were a 'wain' [a rather young person] say 6 or 7, you could ride your bike from one side of the city to the other (all the roads radiated out like spokes from the city hall. the centre of a wheel) and no one would lay a hand on you (or as they say in Belfast - lay a hon onya). The big double decker buses were electric and accelerated like Teslas. They had no doors so intrepid lads could lepp aboard on the run and lepp off if their destination was betwixt stops. If you mis-judged and jumped off too fast you went down like a ton of breaks and got road rash on your knees and forehead.

It was good training for riding the rails during the Depression, but the Depression was over, sure.

and FOOD . . . . well . . .


EATING IN BELFAST IN THE FIFTIES / SIXTIES

Pasta had not been invented.
Curry was a surname.
A takeaway was a mathematical problem.
A pizza was something to do with a leaning tower.
Bananas and oranges only appeared at Christmas time.
All crisps were plain; the only choice we had was whether to put the salt on or not.
A Chinese chippy was a foreign carpenter.
Rice was a milk pudding, and never, ever part of our dinner.
A Big Mac was what we wore when it was raining.
Brown bread was something only poor people ate.
Oil was for lubricating, fat was for cooking
Tea was made in a teapot using tea leaves and never green.
Coffee was Camp, and came in a bottle.
Cubed sugar was regarded as posh.
Only Heinz made beans.
Fish didn't have fingers in those days.
Eating raw fish was called poverty, not sushi.
None of us had ever heard of yoghurt.
Healthy food consisted of anything edible.
People who didn't peel potatoes were regarded as lazy.
Indian restaurants were only found in India .
Cooking outside was called camping.
Seaweed was not a recognised food.
"Kebab" was not even a word never mind a food.
Sugar enjoyed a good press in those days, and was regarded as being white gold.
Prunes were medicinal.
Surprisingly, muesli was readily available, it was called cattle feed.
Pineapples came in chunks in a tin; we had only ever seen a picture of a real one.
Water came out of the tap, if someone had suggested bottling it and charging more than petrol for it they would have become a laughing stock.
The one thing that we never ever had on our table in the fifties .. was elbows!

 

Door to door groceries and milk delivery. Milk in glass bottles with silver foil caps. Playing outside until the street lights came on and without supervision. Mercurochrome on wounds because mercury is great stuff *sarcasm font*. DDT as a pesticide (not saying it's good, just that I remember people using it). Putting the record player on the wrong setting might have your favourite singer sounding like one of the Chipmunks. Once you were a young hippie full of hope for change and now you're a cynical old grump. I remember e-mail and chat before the internet. 2400 baud modem. Things took so long to load that you could make a snack and then take a pee before anything loaded. People complain about broadband speeds....

 

maybe that's it. i can't think of anything else that i'd been less aware of when i was younger.

 

I Am So Old I Remember When Public Places Didn't Have "Bollards" To Prevent Vehicles Being Driven

Into Them.

In Todays Local Paper It Was Revealed Our Local Cop Shop Has These So A Vehicle Can't Be Driven

Through The Front Doors.......WTF......This Is A Small Country Town Of 43.000.......When Will

This "Terrorist Based Madness" Stop...???



Cheers Glen.

 

probably when we stop breeding terrorists by destroying other country's environments.
i think people in the u.s., i mean the ones who thought they wanted it,
are beginning to realize what they voted for wasn't really what they thought they wanted.

of course there's still a core who think that hate is great,
but most people, seem to have left them in the dust,
even if its a steep climb to get back up out of all that.

when i was growing, 43,000, to me, was a city.
well the town where i went to grade school had less then a thousand population,
and the nearest larger town, big enough to have a sears and a penny's,
was i thing around 4,000 at the time. maybe more.

the nearest town that had like city buses and more then one route served by its railroad and intercity bus stations,
was fifty miles away. the nearest city that had an actually trolly network was a couple of hundred.

of course populations have doubled more then once, maybe more then twice, everywhere since then.
then having been the 50s and 60s. when ma bell owned the phones and computers were something most people had never personally seen.

 

I love this, I can relate to most of them in the streets of Liverpool.. made my memory cells open up.. thanks Don..

Glen, I know what you mean, and what about those that go up and down, cutting areas off at certain times of the day? Crazy stuff..

I remember my grandmother being my age, and she was like really old.
As Bob Dylan says, Times they are a changing..

The lamp lighter was also the knocker man Don

 

In grade school we spelt J.C. Penney with an 'ey' - different school I guess

 

I'm so old that I remember when we were taught the word "alot" in school.

 

I'm so old that I remember Perry Como and Andy Williams.

 

I want to do the Pepsi Challenge. I'm sure I'll pick Coke but it should be fun and nostalgic.
The niblings should like it and will hopefully be memorable.

 

I'm so old that I finish a cup of coffee and sit and yawn.

 

guess what was my worst subject.

 

I'm so old that I remember Shale, the OP of this thread, being an active poster.

In HF time, that is pretty old.