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Driving down dirt roads in our station wagon, dad would stop for a moment, us kids would jump out, stand on the rear bumper, grab the roof railings, and dad would slowly drive on with us clinging to the back. Mom drove too, but she never allowed this, so it was a dad-only treat.
Cars overheating in the summer. Pouring water in, and jumping back, because it would erupt out, boiling and steaming.
Pop sold in gas stations in big ice chests, where the bottles were gripped at the top by a metal labyrinth. You’d have to guide your chosen bottle through the maze to position it at the front and pull it out. The chest was full of ice water and if your bottle was at the back, your hand would burn from cold by the time you finished.
Our first phone. It sat on its own little table, with a doily under it. It was black. Our number was 7-W. To make a call, just pick it up, and when an operator says "Number please", she'll manually patch in a cord connecting you to any other phone in town. If our phone rings once, someone wants to talk to us. If it rings twice it's for 7-M -- don't dare touch it. If it rings and nobody's home, they'll try again later if it's important enough.
The grocery store was 88. Tell them what you want, the' take it off the shelf, put it all in brown paper bags, and give it to Joe Wrzynski, who would bring it over in the side-car of his Indian motorcycle, and come in and put on the kitchen table, cold items in the ice-box. Mom had a fridge, but still called it an ice-box. End of the month she'd get dressed up (hat and stockings) and walk down the street to pay the charge account.
I remember my Dad taking me to the New York World’s Fair every Sunday in 1964 and 1965 (we lived about 10 minutes away).
We had season tickets, which was really just a stack of tickets bought at a discount. I think the $2 adult ticket cost $1.20 if you bought season tickets (and half that for a child).
My Dad knew a back way into the Fair by a residential area, so my Mom would drop us off there and we would call her when we were ready to come home and she would pick us up at a spot about a block away from the back entrance.
My Dad and I would be there when the Fair opened in the morning and hit one or two of the popular exhibits that got real crowded (AT&T, GE, GM, Ford) and then just spend the rest of the day walking around and going to the less crowded exhibits.
But, of course, we had to be at the stage outside the Spanish Pavilion every Sunday at 2:00 PM because there would be a show with Flamenco dancers with castanets (for free!). My Dad loved that.
Needless to say, food was expensive, but resourceful Dad found a small, out-of-the-way place where a slice of pizza was $0.15 and a Coke was $0.10, which I had every Sunday.
Every Sunday I would ask my Dad, “Don’t you want something to eat?” and he would always say no. Little did I know that money was so tight we couldn’t afford the extra $0.25 for my Dad to get something to eat.
We never did anything that cost extra, like go on the Monorail, but we still had a great time.
So, since we already had our tickets, every Sunday at the World’s Fair cost us exactly one quarter for my lunch and a dime to call my Mom to pick us up.
Decades later, after my parents moved down to Florida, we took my kids to Lion Country Safari one time.
There was a candy counter there, my Dad tells my kids, “Get whatever you want”, and turns to me and says, “A little different than when you were growing up, huh?”
He would laugh if he heard the expression “the Good Old Days”, knowing how hard those years actually were.
He would say, “These are ‘the Good Old Days’”.
I miss him.
Last edited by CharlieAllnut; 03-13-2022 at 06:06 AM..
My dad worked for Boeing Aircraft when I was growing up. He was a bio-chemist and used rainbow trout to test effluent water. We had a 5 gpm spring on our land and he told me if I built ponds he would bring trout home. A friend and I dug the ponds and my dad started bringing trout home in garbage cans. We fed and grew those fish until some were about 20 inches long. We had a blast fishing for them. One fall day, we had a big windstorm and the water source got plugged, killing all the fish.
Fast forward 15 years and I worked for Oregon Fish and Wildlife raising rainbow trout. We stocked trout in the Mckenzie river in Oregon. I enjoyed a 31 year career with ODFW and got to do what my dad wanted to do but couldn't. Great memories!
My dad had a 1964 Ford Country Squire station wagon with a 390 in.³ V8 that said Thunderbird on the valve covers of the engine.
My father had a 1966 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme with the 320 hp 330 cid engine. The gas cap was labeled "Premium Fuel Only", and the air cleaner was bright red. It said "Ultra High Compression" and "Premium Fuel Only". These engines were uncommonly smooth and quiet.
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