I am sharing it with you today because it ended with a "double dog dare" to pass it on. To remember what a "double dog dare" is, read on. And remember that the perfect age is somewhere between old enough to know better and young enough not to care. How many do you remember? 01. Candy cigarettes 02. Wax coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside. 03. Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles. 04. Coffee shops with tableside juke boxes 05. Blackjack, Clove and Teaberry chewing gum 06. Home milk delivery in glass bottles, with Cardboard stoppers. 07. Party lines. 08. Newsreels before the movie. 09. P. F. Flyers 10. Butch wax 11. Telephone numbers with a word prefix ... (Drexel-5505) 12. Peashooters. 13. Howdy Doody 14. 45 RPM Records 15. Green Stamps 16. Hi-fi's 17. Metal ice cube trays--with levers 18. Mimeograph paper 19. Blue flash Bulbs 20. Beanie and Cecil 21. roller skate keys 22. Cork pop guns 23. Drive ins 24. Studebakers 25. Wash tub wringers 26. The Fuller Brush man 27. Reel-to-reel tape recorders 28. Tinkertoys 29. The Erector Set 30. The Fort Apache Playset 31. Lincoln Logs 32. 15 cent McDonald hamburgers 33. 5 cent packs of baseball cards...with that awful pink slab of bubblegum 34. Penny candy 35. 35 cent-a-gallon gasoline I WANT TO GO BACK TO THE TIME WHEN..................... Decisions were made by going "eeny-meeny-miney-mo." Mistakes were corrected by simply exclaiming "do over!" "Race issue" meant arguing about who ran the fastest. Money issues were handled by whoever was the banker in "Monopoly." Catching the fireflies could happily occupy an entire evening. It wasn't odd to have two or three "best" friends. Being old referred to anyone over 20. The net on a tennis court was the perfect height to play volleyball and rules didn't matter. The worst thing you could catch from the opposite sex was "cooties". It was magic when dad would "remove" his thumb. It was unbelievable that dodgeball wasn't an Olympic event. Having a weapon in school meant being caught with a slingshot. Nobody was prettier than mom. Scrapes and bruises were kissed and made better. It was a big deal to finally be tall enough to ride the "big people" rides at the amusement park. A foot of snow was a dream come true. Abilities were discovered because of a "double-dog-dare." Saturday morning cartoons weren't 30-minute ads for action figures. No shopping trip was complete unless a new toy was brought home. "Oly-oly-oxen-all-in-free" made perfect sense. Spinning around, getting dizzy, and falling down was cause for giggles. The worst embarrassment was being picked last for a team. War was a card game. Water balloons were the ultimate weapon. Baseball cards in the spokes transformed any bike into a motorcycle. Taking drugs meant orange-flavored chewable aspirin. Ice cream was considered a basic food group. Older siblings were the worst tormentors, but also the fiercest protectors. If you can remember most or all of these, then you have lived!!!! Pass this on to anyone who may need a break from their "grown up" life.... I double dog dare ya!!!!!!!!!!!!!

-- Anonymous, May 13, 2001

Answers

Fins on cars.

DeSoto's

Porthole T-Birds

NEW Hula Hoops, WITH RATTLES

All the town kids dressed their bikes up and rode them in the Memorial Day Parade.

The Memorial Day Parade and proper decorations for the graves of the Vets.

AM only car radios

8-track tapes

Real plastic RECORDS (33's and 45's) Oh yeah and OLD 78's

Perry Como's Christmas Show

Bob Hope's Christmas Special from (fill in the war)

Disney's Wonderful World of Color (followed Lassie)

June Lockheart and Walter Brennan

McDonalds Sign going over a Million

Going for a ride to cool off in the evening

Shadow tag

"HOME FREE!!"

You could wear Jeans to school to pick up your last report card

Finals when half the sweat was because it was 95 inside the school

(if you are from NY) the Regents Practice Books of previous years' exams, for review. And they talk about Competency testing here in Cleveland...HA....

Keuffel and Esser Slide rules for College

Dumping the wastebasket down the incinerator chute at school

Washing the chalkboard for your teacher

Kites with torn sheet strips for a tail

Lying awake at night and hearing the train whistle blow and the deisel trucks buildin' em up and tearin' em down to get through town

Sunshine making patterns on your bed through the pinholes in the shade

the taste of a warm blade of grass

And the sound of the shreik you can get from one held between your thumbs

balloon leaves (also known as silver dollar plants because of the seed holder in the fall) where you bruised the leaf and blew it up like a ballon

puppies (beagles)

kittens from the barn

haying

and the list could go on for the rest of the night if I could see through the nostalgic tears.

C

-- Anonymous, May 13, 2001

Trying to stay up all night, when the sky had a million stars you could see, instead of a few hundred on a "clear" night...

Unprotected sex meant you didn't know when her mom and dad where going to be home...

-- Anonymous, May 14, 2001

Coal bins in the basement to feed the coal fired house furnace. 78rpm records that would shatter if you dropped them, and were played on a windup machine with a little speaker on the end of the arm, and a needle that looked like a fat pin which had to be changed pretty often. A big AM radio in the living room that was the entertainment for adults and kids alike. The first black and white TVs that were considered a big set if it had a 12inch screen and every time you manually changed the channel it had to be retuned and fine adjusted. The first FM radios that were for home listening and were continuous music without any commercials at all, but there was only 2 or 3 frequencies available. Washing dishes in the sink and drying them by hand because nobody had a mechanical dishwasher in the whole town. Hanging laundry outside on the line or in the basement in the winter because nobody had a clothes dryer either. Whitewall tires on fancy cars and the white stripe was 4inches wide. Push lawnmowers because nobody had a personal gasoline powered mower. Driving in the summer with all the windows open because auto air conditioning didn't exist. Fans in the house and screens on the windows because nobody had home air conditioning, not even a window unit. Horsedrawn wagons for all kinds of things, including home milk delivery. Heavy trucks that had a big chain on each side to drive the rear wheels. Trusting the government to be telling you the truth about virtually everything. Thinking the FBI was the finest police force in the world and you had to be the best of the best to work for them, and would have been proud.

-- Anonymous, May 14, 2001

Chickarena Soup does not come up in a Google search. I remember the geeky kid up the road was always singing the TV ad for it in the mid sixties. Gone. If it doesn't exist on the Internet, it is just about non-existant.

Bertie the Bunyip puppet show. The Marybelle Get Well and Pitiful Pearl dolls.

-- Anonymous, May 15, 2001

Winky Dink"

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2001