<p>Mootmom-
Thanke youe fore youre spellinge correctione :) It sounds so much more dignified :) Wow- a sprint-triathalon with a bunch of tight a--ses? That must have interesting! </p>
<p>Yes-- the spinning plates. A true gift. Such a marketable skill. Personally, I was a sucker fo Jose Jimenez ("My name Jose Jimenez"). Unfortunatley, in today's politically correct environment, I suspect he has been "retired".</p>
<p>Oooh, the family across Starlight Drive from us in NJ had a <em>GREAT</em> basement fallout shelter! It was SO COOL to sit down there and play games and pretend it was an emergency and we were locked in. I envied them. (How naive we were as kids, huh.)</p>
<p>And Jose Jimenez, who could forget... and the delivery guys! In my part of NJ we had the egg man, the milk man, the scissors grinder, the traveling carnival truck with a miniature ferris wheel on it, AND ... the Charles Chips guy who brought big metal cans of chips and pretzels. Now, THAT was worth waiting at the window for.</p>
<p>I guess we've threadjacked this into a series of nostalgia moments... I'll stop now. Maybe.</p>
<p>dcmom-
Remember the stickers on the wall (the 3 triangle symbol for nuclear/biohazard warning-- what's that called?) to tell you where to sit in the basement of the buildings?? Real useful. So... A-Bombs then, Saddam now. The paranoia remains, but the tune changes. Such a shame. One time during an air raid drill they just sent us all home-- we just walked home from school. And no bomb dropped on my head.</p>
<p>We also had a vegetable truck come down the street every Thursday! That's where I learned to love to eat raw stringbeans and raw peas! Yumm. We also had the Good Humor Ice cream truck in the summer. I had a crush on Angelo, the driver, 'til I found out he worked in the local fishstore in the "off season". I went to visit him once (under the guise that I was shopping with my mom). He didn't look too good in the white apron with fish shmootz on it, and didn't smell too good either. But in the summer, in that white Good Humor uniform with the hat... I guess I was a sucker for a guy in uniform...</p>
<p>The 3-triangles sign was the Fallout Shelter sign. I sent a PM to jym626 mentioning that when we were visiting colleges last spring with older S (see, bringing the thread back on-topic! yay me!), I noticed a Fallout Shelter sign attached to a brick building at Columbia and S insisted I take a photo; jym626 encouraged me to post it here. It's not great, but then again, the sign is 50 years old and has been out in the elements all that time... So for those who do not remember, here is what the sign looked like.</p>
<p>Mootmom, I remember the <em>yummy</em> Charles Chips...which, of course, were delivered by Charley (or so we thought). "Charley" had almost as many kids following his truck as the Good Humor man. To this day, I have a Charles Chip can on the kitchen counter, which I use for storing store-bought chips.</p>
<p>mezzo and mootmoms-
Charles Chips is still available, on line, big yellow tin and all, but no delivery guy in the Brown uniform :( And, get this, if you order, it comes UPS and takes TWO TO SIX WEEKS for delivery!! Can we say STALE????</p>
<p>We had the Fuller Brushman, whose son was a classmate of mine, and was an incredible opera singer. He (the son) is now the Cantor of a big synanogue in NYC. We also had the guy who came around to sharpen the knives. (I guess that is the same as the scissors grinder). Wonder what people would think now if someone showed up at your house to fool with your knives??</p>
<p>And Mootmom, there was a topic to this thread? :)</p>
<p>OK-- back to work!</p>
<p>Gawd I love this thread - just reading all of your recent entries put a smile on my face and shrugged my shoulder woes off!
Bomb shelters, stipped t-shirts and bowl haircuts, iodine on kneecuts, juice ice cubes and jello, visiting my Aunt and cousins on the Jersey shore and taking tins of Charles Chips to the beach with us. I was in 6th grade when the Beatles were on Sullivan so I guess we are all kinda in the same (wonderful!) age cohort.
And jym626 - we must be twins. I, too, loved the Good Humor Man and would rush down to meet him every night and ride around the neighborhood on his truck with him. I also learned to become very adept at stealing quarters, than dollars, then five dollar bills from my mother's purse so I could treat everyone. Her repeated lectures on weeds and flowers (because clearly I was growing up to be a weed) gave me a life-long prison complex....)</p>
<p>Looks like there's nothing but us NJ/DC/Md/VA geezers hanging around here. When you young ladies get a little older, you won't need to ask why I was up at 4:40am :D. It's either taking care of that business as jym guessed or stage-of-life-insomnia. Whatever.</p>
<p>Count me in on the Charles Chips (WE didn't get them, but my lucky neighbor did), the egg man, the milk man, the sausage man (ie, the egg man in the right season),the vegetable man the Fuller Brush man, the bakery man (Holmes to Homes? or something like that),the bomb shelters (desperately wanted to have one or know someone who did - but no such luck; and this was in metro DC!), the duck-and-cover, the Good Humor Man. I had just as big a crush on several of "my" Good Humor Men as I did on Paul, mootmom. Paul was my favorite, but I was never a swooner.</p>
<p>Off to a meeting and then Senior Celebration night. When I return, I've got a great remember-when type list a friend put together for those of us on a nostalgia bender. Who'd of thought Sinner's Alley would be all about the memories instead of all about the booze?</p>
<p>What's booze? Oh, you mean "highballs"?! I am on a roll now...the tacky stuff back then was duck tails, adams apples, bathingcaps with loads of rubber flowers flopping off them, rollers and spoolies worn in the middle of the day. </p>
<p>By the way, I'm not the great sleeper I used to be either...but somehow it doesn't bother me. Just gives me time to watch more videos....we can start a cc 3 am club.</p>
<p>I feel like a kidlet here, only 2 or 3 when the Beatles debut occured. This cultural experience differential in the variously aged baby boomers was made clear to me when I went to see Forest Gump with friends all about 10 years older than me- I liked the movie, they sobbed as they were so touched by things which were barely childhood memories.</p>
<p>My sibs are all waaay older than me (oops, Mom!) and we did prove that I remember Kennedy's death at the age of 22months! WHy, because all the TV shows were pre-empted and it was the funeral stuff over & over. I remember a black & white round screen TV and the colour of the carpet in the room, which changed shortly thereafter.</p>
<p>I remember the first colour TV in 2nd grade and the ice cream truck and the milk delivery- cold milk from glass bottles, yum! What about the first microwave over? I was in grade 7! It was huge and noisy and you could not watch the food cook or you would get brain damage!</p>
<p>We had duck & cover drills in California, but thought they were for earhtquakes. All those thousands of kids hiding form atomic blasts, yet we had no clue! I'm glad we had no clue!</p>
<p>OMG, crash, not the BATHING CAPS WITH FLOPPY RUBBER FLOWERS!! Nooooooo!!!! :eek:</p>
<p>Hahaha jmmom. I guessed right! Time for that bladder tuck? Or to work on Kegel exercises so you don't spring a leak when you sneeze?? I mean "you" in the generic sense here, as we are all in this same age range, except jmmom and somemom, who are probably down for their naps right now :)</p>
<p>We could wax nostalgic for eons. There was a similar thread a while back about where you were when Kennedy was shot, and everyone's ages surfaced. </p>
<p>Crash-
Lovely memory of those flowered bathing caps. The surface of the swimcap had to be a white, bumpy/bubbly texture with HUGE flowers that had half the pedals torn off. Don't forget the strap that snappoed on either side under your chin :) Choked you half to death. Then, when you dug it out the next summer it had gotten all rubbery and gummy and stuck together like superglue or something. Nasty. The only things worse were the semicircular racing swimcaps. Now those were extremely embarassing to put on.</p>
<p>And gee.. I actually remember taking the vacuum cleaner to the repair shop to be fixed. Not like this generation's disposable society.</p>
<p>And crash... stole $$ from your mother?? Tsk tsk. When I was out of cash, I'd usually just sweettalk Angelo the good humor man into giving me one of those bittersweet sundaes. Better than the chocolate eclairs!!! Hope you aren't an orange creamsicle person. Yuk.</p>
<p>We had those flower bathing caps- swam every day in the neighbor's pool and the dad did not like to clean hair out of the filter, so all girls wore caps. When I had my own pool as an adult, the rule was no caps, let your hair flow free (like a mermaid, of course!)</p>
<p>Hey Jym, it's not age, it's number of kids that causes us all the relate to those early morning/late night disturbances aka, the dangers or sneezing!</p>
<p>Any one remember drinking out of those metal drinking glasses, usually in bright colours, which were sooo cold with ice in them?</p>
<p>Restoration Hardware carried Charles Chips in the can for awhile. Out of respect I bought one. They were a little stale but the can is worth saving. I still stock up on Tastycakes and Taylor Pork Roll when I visit NJ.</p>
<p>I do. They sweated - just like us - in the summer. I liked fudesi8ckles best. I didn't like fruit in my jello. The Good Humor man never gave me anything free because a. I was a fat, freckled, buck toothed kid who was so in love with him that b. I stole enough money from my mom to keep my friend's tummy's and his cash box full all summer. I've always been known as an "easy mark" - nothing's changed.</p>
<p>We would play mermaids and dive to the bottom of the pool for all the flowers that came off the bathing caps. I used to have quite a collection but you're right, jym, by the following year they were all gummed together...</p>
<p>Summer games of choice were hide and seek, SPUD, beckon, "catch the lightening bugs and smash them on your shirt" and ISpy each other in the dark (that is, unless you want them as a bedside light in a jar...)
And then with Grandma it was Canasta, Parchesi, or cribbage...</p>
<p>Betsy Westy, Tiny Tears, Madame Alexander, and finally Poor Pitaful pearl were dolls of choice (tho my mom refused to buy me the latter as a political statement I guess....)</p>
<p>Man, I'm feeling good right now. Who cares if we can't afford a summer vacation this year. I'm already on one...doing my Kegels to the beat of "Summer in the City"!!!</p>
<p>
[quote]
Hey Jym, it's not age, it's number of kids that causes us all the relate to those early morning/late night disturbances aka, the dangers or sneezing!
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Ok somemom--yes there's a correlation with the # of kids we've dropped... but how come it didn't start happening 'til a few years ago?? I haven't had any kids in "quite" a while!</p>
<p>Yeah jym- it's a combination of # of kids plus being 40+ ( I maybe a baby here, but I'm still over 40 and ya'll are really old :P)</p>
<p>I remember getting my first Madame Alexander doll- still have it! What about Chatty Cathy?</p>
<p>Does any one remember that dangerous toy- "Vacuform" You would put little metal molds on the machine and overlay a small sheet of plastic and then the other side of the "toy" came down on top of the plastic and it was melted into a new shape! A wonderful nostalgic melting chemical smell! How did we all play with this and not lose fingers and sue?</p>
<p>Hide & go seek, and Red Rover on the lawns, be home when the streetlights go on :)</p>
<p>Cribbage with grandma and all summer long games of "War" where each player takes their cards home at the end of the day!</p>
<p>War - what a great card game. And of course, hearts.</p>
<p>Jym- it's a bit insensitive of you to be talking about anything "dropping" around this old crowd- have you looked in the mirror lately? :D</p>
<p>Yes flowered bathing caps!! Also those not-stretchy nylon speedos with white linings.</p>
<p>For me, childhood summers will always be memories of either summer camp, or swim team at the good ol' community pool-- the smell of Sea & Ski and chlorine, the all-day candyfest (neccos, abba-zabbas, charleston chews, red hots, pixie stix, beeman's "pepsin" gum, & the colored fizzy tablets that you'd plop into water...) No good humor man in Calif... But we had fudgesicles, "Missles," 50/50',s & pushups. </p>
<p>The laying out of towels in strategic spots. The bee stings. The not being allowed into the pool for "adult swim" (20 minutes felt like two hours.) The begging & bargaining with one's siblings for their $ to buy still more candy. The watching the older boys. The peeling back into a wet bathingsuit after going to the bathroom. The waiting in a damp towel to be picked up by my chronically late mom.</p>
