TBT…

After the last two weeks, I just flat don’t want to adult anymore… Sigh…

Please say a prayer for those sailor’s families from the McCain and the Fitzgerald, they died protecting America for you.

The depth of the BS is getting to the point that I’m drowning, and doubting I can even save the watch.

But there ‘are’ some memories that do bring a smile to this tired old face. How many of us busted our asses with these? Nothing like trying to get them to fit, then trying to skate down the street… Helmet? Elbow pads? Knee pads?

Nope, bust your butt, and either get up and keep going, or walk home and give up on them… I seem to remember they cost something like $5, brand new!

The more fun one, was the Coke boxes! My uncle had one of these in his store, and it used COLD water to keep the bottles cold. He had 6 oz bottles, and I think they were a whole dime! But I had to give the bottle back… sigh…

I’ll just throw one more in, cause I’m in THAT kind of mood… My family, both mother and dad, were adults during the depression. Neither had a high school education, but they had a work ethic that didn’t quit. We didn’t have a lot of money, especially after my dad died when I was nine. If I wanted something, I had to EARN the money to buy it. We didn’t go hungry, but it wasn’t steak every night (more like once a month). We grew our own vegetables, butchered our own chickens, and the extended family did a couple of hogs in the fall, and usually a cow a year, at the family reunions.

I would really prefer NOT to live though interesting times again, I did that in the Navy.

Kicking the soapbox back in the corner now.

Comments

TBT… — 24 Comments

  1. I remember the roller skates and the skinned knees that went along with them. And a Coca Cola tasted better then from a glass bottle kept cold in the Coke box. I have pictures of my Dad as a kid wearing his white privilege overalls that were more holes than fabric. And the insanity sweeping my beloved America makes me not want to adult any more, either.

    You are spot on.

  2. I remember those skates and Coke boxes, too… and we weren’t exactly privileged, although my dad and mom managed to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get my sister and I a good education — but it was hard, hard work. The last picture could be some of my dad’s cousins, though — his family came from one of them there hollers in the mountains of eastern Kentucky.
    And I’m tired and worried about this country and where it’s going, but that’s too long a story to be comment.

  3. My uncle had an old time general store in Rockcastle County, KY. It was also the post office for the “holler”. The Coke machine had every kind and flavor of sodie-pop you could imagine. Nehi’s, Moo-Cola, RC Cola, Coke, Pepsi AND…the first time I ever even heard of Mountain Dew. The bottles still had the hill billy with the jug cork shooting through his hat. Of course, being a kid that made us want to drink that Mountain Dew!

    Vicki, I have a picture of my mom taking a knee if front of a haystack with her dog, Bobby. She had her “school” bibs on. IE, the clean ones. She was the youngest of 10 and by then her older brothers and sisters could help with buying school clothes. That would have been in the late 30’s or early 40’s. Miss her, I do…

    • LCB…Dad was the youngest of nine. By the time the overalls were passed down to him, there wasn’t much left of them. I remember he told me how excited he was when it finally was his turn to get a new pair. That would have been in the 20’s. I really miss him, too.

  4. I could have written your post today, but you did it better (not to mention first). When I remember my mom having to decide whether to buy a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk, because she didn’t have the money for both, I laugh at the whole idea of “privilege”. I worked for every penny we have, and we didn’t buy our first house until last year. I was 61. If that’s privilege, then so be it.

  5. On any summer day, we’d walk the long route to the corner store, in the hope of finding a few empty soda bottles. If we were successful, we had some change to buy what we could afford.

    We’d get a penny for the six ounce bottles, and two cents for the 12 ounce bottles. A six ounce Coke was 5 cents, and the 12 ounce was 10 cents…if you drank it at the store. Otherwise, you had to pay the bottle deposit.

    A candy bar was a nickle. Bubble gum a penny, and I don’t remember what the necklace of banana flavored candy cost. It was beyond our price range.

    When the bottle yield was good, we’d sit on the front porch of the old store, enjoy our soda with a candy bar, maybe have some change left for bubble gum, and be completely oblivious of how such tiny moments would last forever.

  6. This whole “white privilege” is people wanting what others have without the work and sacrifice to get there, IMO. I know more than a few “people of color” who have made that journey the same way, hard work and discipline. Not one have I heard whine about “white privilege” other than, “get out of my way”.

  7. I heard some one say recently “Yes, I have White privilege – the privilege of not having anyone else to blame for my failings”

  8. Vicki- Thank you.

    Ian- Agreed!

    LCB/Vicki- Yes, I think we all do.

    Jim- We had one of those at church, it was 6 cents a bottle… sigh

    Rev- Heard that.

    Jess- Oh yeah, that brings back memories… Except we would buy .22 ammo, 50 cents a box, and if we had enough left over, an RC and a bag of peanuts!

    WSF- Agreed, anybody that came through the military understands it is NOT about color, it’s about personal ethics and willingness to work.

    Jon- Excellent point!

    Randy- Yes.

  9. I recall those little Coke bottles being 6.5 ounces, but I’m old and my memory ain’t what it never was, so…

  10. Skates….. yup. Skate on them long enough and when the wheels finally wore down (right in the middle of a turn at the corner) you beefed. Nickel cokes, $.15 gas during the “gas war” (that was great), other wise you paid 20-25c for it. My 50 year HS reunion is this year. Jeez where did the time go?

  11. Hey Old NFO;

    My first skateboard was a 2X4 and a couple of rollerskates…that one hurt lemme tell you, lol. My dad was in the service and my mom was a house wife. We didn’t have extra’s. I remembered cutting grass for comic book money and collecting bottles for candy money. Yeah the times were kinda hard, but I wouldn’t trade them for anything.

  12. I remember those skates also. So after falling for the millionth time. Asked my dad for a board he did not need and nailed the skates to said board. Made one of the first skateboards in the neighborhood. It took a while to figure out how to ride it. Never went back to skates.
    The the songs came out about the skateboards and the skate song.

  13. Sad tales told by all – NOT. Most of us had to take the hard road as there wasn’t any other available.
    My dad was a high school dropout so he could join the Navy during WWII, mom barely made it thru 9th grade before having to go to work to help her family get along. Dad managed to get his GED and do 26+ Navy and Coast Guard, Mom went to business school and worked for the phone company.
    Rev. Paul, I must be ‘really’ privileged since I’m now living in my 2nd or 3rd (depending on how you look at it) bought house – I call it my retirement villa (since it is in the Villas of blank blank). Then again, I am a few years older than you are 😉 Now if Harvey doesn’t wash all of South Texas away, I might survive a few more years……….

  14. White privilege! I remember my Grandpa telling about his favorite Christmas memory was getting an orange in the toe of his stocking. They were dirt poor. He was taken out of school at the end of 3rd grade to work around the farm. He put my dad to work at 14 on the well drilling rig–told the payroll gal he was 16. He was big for his age. Dad worked his way through high school and then collage–he graduated at age 16 from High School–then the Army and Korea, and then back for his Masters and PhD and went to work for GE. My mom started working for the local grocer running the cash register and was promoted to doing the books before she went off to Secretarial School and then to work at the collage where Dad was working.
    When I was a kid, I had assigned chores for which I received a very small allowance, but for real spending money, I babysat and milked the neighbor’s goats and helped clean out the goat barn in the spring. Back then $5/hour was huge money. Much more than minimum wage. That barn was pretty ripe after you shoveled off the top 4 feet.
    I remember when $5 would fill up my boyfriend’s father’s gas tank and buy us 2 tickets into the local movie theater. I didn’t live in town (15 miles one way outside it)and the car was a tank of a station wagon that got about 4 miles to the gallon maybe. He could borrow it, but had to replace any gas used.
    I always liked the glass Coke bottles, the soda tasted better than from a can when cans came along.
    White privilege was/is the privilege to get off your butt and grow a work ethic. The privilege to learn to be responsible for yourself and others. And the privilege to teach that ethic to your kids. Both are mature, responsible, self-supporting adults. So I must have done something right somewhere along the way.

    • Suz,
      My dad told me that an orange and 1 piece of hard candy was a dream Christmas. I think that’s why he and my mom spoiled me at Christmas…to make sure I had the Christmas they never had.

  15. Craig- Mine’s in two years… sigh

    Bob- Nope, that gave us the work ethic we have today!

    Heltau- We never did that, we went to go karts…LOL

    Gomez- Yep, we learned… Didn’t we!

    Suz- Damn! I shoveled s**t for a vet for $1.25 and hour… I wuz robbed! 🙂

  16. I remember dad telling me about chasing the train, jumping on and throwing coal off to take home to heat the house, in the potbelly in the kitchen with the hole in the ceiling to let the heat upstairs.
    He was privileged to work in the coal mines later until he was privileged to go ashore at Normandy.
    When I was a young boy, we had indoor plumbing while the neighbor kids were using a one holer.
    My neighbor’s dad was a mechanic in his gas station down the road and I learned a lot passing him wrenches and going to that coke machine to get him a beer when his hands started shaking.
    I was privileged.
    Privileged to know some good people.

    • Ed,
      Yup, my mom told me that they walked the rail lines all of the time looking for coal that had fallen off of the coal trains. I’m sure her brothers did what your dad did…

  17. I remember the skates, my family couldn’t afford them, even if we could I didn’t have any place to use them, no paved road. I did hunt soda and beer bottles, pick berry’s and fir cones for spending money. I also remember buying .22 shells for $.50 a box. If I wanted a baseball glove, BB gun or a fishing pole I had to earn the money on my own. The first real job I had as a teenager was working for a gas station for $5.00 a day. Not complaining, just the way things were and wouldn’t change a thing.