Why when I was a boy...

[sweetsoleil]

that post made me smile...i cant tell you how many pennies i flattened on the nearby railroad tracks when i was a kid.. (ya, i was a tom boy lol)

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[Peter]

My answer to Steve's question about the pennies - Yep.

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...my mother would insist I wear a suit to go shopping.
I have three long-term memories about those shopping days: my mother was always in a hurry to pass the toy shop; both my mother and grandmother would spend hours at the haberdashery; and for a treat, we always had fresh ham and horseshoe rolls for lunch – yum!

 

[Retired]

In the City where I grew up, there were streetcars that often performed the same task as railroad trains..(penny compression).

Nice picture, Peter.

I happen to have a picture like that:



Would love to see similar photos of others taken at that time in their life

 

[David Baxter PhD]

I lived out west in the Rocky Mountains of northern British Columbia so my formal wear in those days was a little different...

 

[rdw]

I grew up in a large city in Western Canada. I can remember the street cars that my grandmother and I would take to go shopping . Hard to believe but every Wednesday at 1:00 PM all of the stores would close early. There was no such thing as Sunday shopping...

 

[Peter]

?we had an annual junk day. To me, it was a treasure-trove. I would get in trouble, from my parents, for bring home more junk than we put out.

 

[Banned]

Oh I totally remember the days of no Sunday shopping. I remember too we'd gather our friends at sun up and take off and play outside all day. We might remember to go to someone's house for a meal between tree climbing, tag, and hide and seek in the forest. Usually we'd return home at sundown, tired, hungry, and in need of a bath. We didn't have cell phones to call home and our parents never worried.

When a friend moved away as they often did in a military upbringing, we would write real letters and put on that 17 cent stamp to mail it.

 

[Peter]

?I had homing pigeons. After a while, they made such a mess, I was told to sell them. I did, but after a few weeks they came back. After selling them a few more times, my mother told me to stop feeding them, and re-selling them.

 

[Banned]

I used to be able to phone my friends just by dialing the last four digits of their phone number.

 

[Peter]

?my grandfather was speedway-car safety inspector for twenty years. I would watch, along the fence line, the Saturday night races. The hotdog stands, cold-winter nights, the smell of racing fuel, the roaring noise, the screaming commentating, and dirt flown everywhere was all intoxicating (for some reason). . . Today, we still have speedway but it?s not the same as it was 40-50 years ago.

 

[rdw]

And what about drive in movies? The speaker on the window, large drinks of coca-cola and popcorn - this was a once a summer treat for us.
Like Turtle, we were out of the house first thing in the morning and returned at night. We walked everywhere - to the pool, the playground, the store for a treat, and to the library. I loved the library! Of course I always stopped at my grandmother's on my way home from the library. There was always a hug and a treat for me there.

 

[gooblax]

I remember going to a couple of double feature drive-in movies as a kid, and falling asleep in the back seat by the time the second movie was starting. Then dad would have to carry my brother and I to bed when we got home. :lol:

 

[adaptive1]

Drive in movies, makes me also think of A and W....they used to bring those cold mugs of root beer out to your car and attach them to your car window on trays, it was so fun to order a teen burger when I was nine or ten, like I was allowed to be part of this grown up world.

 

[Banned]

Ooooh I remember getting my $2 allowance and going to the movie. Admission was 50 cents, popcorn and a drink came to a ollar, and we spent the remaining 50 cents on penny candies that really were a penny.

 

[Peter]

?of 7-9 years, I did not receive pocket money for school. So I ran to and from school to keep the bus fare. School was a mile away, and the bus meandered several miles to get their. That gave me time to get to school, and back home without anybody knowing I ran the distance. Was it worth it? It gave me money to buy a hot pie and a cold Tarax drink with my school mates, and years later I became the school?s most valued athlete. Yes, it was worth it.

 

[Retired]

cold Tarax drink

Not familiar with that

 

[Peter]

Steve. Tarax was a popular Australian brand of soft drink in the 1960s.

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Why when I was a boy…it would be embarrassing to let a shirt tail hang out, let alone showing any underwear.

 

[Retired]

it would be embarrassing to let a shirt tail hang out, let alone showing any underwear.

.....or to allow your hair to become unkempt

....or......

 

[Peter]

?.my pushbike had one gear. To climb steep hills, I had to stand on my pedals and zigzag across the road. To stop, I had to pedal backwards to put on the brakes. My light, a later luxury, was a generator attached to the wheel, and was dependent on wheel speed. So, if I slowed down because it was dark and dangerous, the light dimmed. Of course, at the time, I thought the whole thing was marvellous.

 

[Retired]

Peter,

Your reminiscences made me think back to the early cars of my parents. Initially they had no car and traveled by streetcar, but eventually my father bought a used car. I recall it was very large and had a matte finish. When I see movies from the forties, I realize that paints on cars did not have a gloss until they began using enamels in the fifties.

To celebrate the new enamels, cars were often "two tone" colors, that were usually some peculiar combination of pastels, separated by wide bands of chrome.

Interestingly my father's first "new car" was a 1950 Austin, one of the first British imports that he bought from a rural gas station operator, because City car dealers shunned those tiny "English" cars. Other similar imports were the Morris and Hillman.

During those years, though living in the inner City of Montreal, in tenement housing, ice milk and bread was still delivered by horse drawn carriage, and television was in its infancy.

There was one television station, that broadcast in English and French alternately, but only a few hours each day, mostly from studios that resembled radio station studios, using one camera and drab backgrounds. Oh yes, when TV programs were telecast, neighbors would come over to watch the new spectacles being offered.

Personally I enjoyed looking at the test pattern, with the Indian head in the center while listening to Oh Canada being played!