RememberWhen

Comments made in the year 1955:

"I'll tell you one thing, if things keep going the way they are, it's going to be impossible to buy a week's groceries for $20."

"Have you seen the new cars coming out next year? It won't be long before $2000 will only buy a used one."

"If cigarettes keep going up in price, I'm going to quit. A quarter a pack is ridiculous."

"Did you hear the post office is thinking about charging a dime just to mail a letter?"
"If they raise the minimum wage to $1, nobody will be able to hire outside help at the store."

"When I first started driving, who would have thought gas would someday cost 29 cents a gallon. Guess we'd be better off leaving the car in the garage."

"Kids today are impossible. Those duck tail hair cuts make it impossible to stay groomed. Next thing you know, boys will be wearing their hair as long as the girls."

"I'm afraid to send my kids to the movies any more. Ever since they let Clark Gable get by with saying 'damn' in 'Gone With The Wind,' it seems every new movie has either "hell" or "damn" in it.
"I read the other day where some scientist thinks it's possible to put a man on the moon by the end of the century They even have some fellows they call astronauts preparing for it down in Texas."
"Did you see where some baseball player just signed a contract for $75,000 a year just to play ball? It wouldn't surprise me if someday they'll be making more than the president."
"I never thought I'd see the day all our kitchen appliances would be electric. They are even making electric typewriters now."

"It's too bad things are so tough nowadays. I see where a few married women are having to work to make ends meet."
"It won't be long before young couples are going to have to hire someone to watch their kids so they can both work."

"Marriage doesn't mean a thing any more; those Hollywood stars seem to be getting divorced at the drop of a hat."
"I'm just afraid the Volkswagen car is going to open the door to a whole lot of foreign business."

"Thank goodness I won't live to see the day when the Government takes half our income in taxes. I sometimes wonder if we are electing the best people to government.

"The drive-in restaurant is convenient in nice weather, but I seriously doubt they will ever catch on."

"There is no sense going to Lincoln or Omaha anymore for a weekend. It costs nearly $15 a night to stay in a hotel."
"No one can afford to be sick any more; $35 a day in the hospital is too rich for my blood."

"If they think I'll pay 50 cents for a hair cut, forget it."

Know friends who would get a kick out of these? Pass it on!

It's memory time, y'all. Do any of you remember the details around Black Friday, you know the student protest in front of the school? I think it had to do with the fact that Mr. Jones, the principal, wouldn't let us distribute our annuals and get them signed the day they came in. I didn't participate in the protest and I don't think Carol S. did either, but I remember the assembly that was called and the principal acting silly and making everyone laugh.

The reason this came to mind is that I'm thinking we might work this event in somehow to a medley of 50's songs interspersed with memories based on the musical George Bozeman did for the class of '55. Has anybody seen the DVD they made of it? It was a lot of fun to do. I don't mind adapting it for our class if y'all think it's a good idea. I have a copy of the music. We can possibly persuade George to come back and some of the singers but would need to find more singers from our class.

All is well here on this New Year's Eve. It is raining I but hope it finishes before Monday and the Rose Parade (maybe just wishful thinking according to the weatherman). It is suppose to be over by the 4th for the Rose Bowl game. I will wave at you during the game that I am sure the Trojans will win. (So lucky to get a ticket even with 38 years of buying USC season tickets,)

I think the Dairy Queen opened about '54 or '55. Ida Bell Hawkins the owner is in the Nursing Home there in Tulia and she might remember.

Joe Clayton, M. H. Jobe and Kinan Burk were in the "T" club. So guys what is the real answer to the ribbons on the shirts and their attachments??

My Mom or Grandma used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same
cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get
food poisoning.
They used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat it raw
sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown
paper bag, not in ice pack coolers, but I can't remember getting ecoli.

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a
pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then. The term cell
phone
would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA
system.

We all took gym, not PE... and risked permanent injury with a pair of high
top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes
with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any
injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we
are now. Flunking gym was not an option... even for stupid kids! I guess PE
must be much harder than gym.

Speaking of school, we all said prayers and sang the national anthem, and
staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention. We
must have
had horribly damaged psyches. What an archaic health system we had then.
Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.

thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed
to be proud of myself. I just can't recall how bored we were without
computers, Play
Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations. Oh yeah... and
where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I
could have been killed!
We played 'king of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction
sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of
Mercurochrome
(kids liked it better because it didn't sting like iodine did) and then we
got our butt spanked. Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a
10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney
to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it
was such a threat. We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either because
if we did, we got our butt spanked here too and then we got butt spanked
again when we got home.

I recall a kid from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front
stoop just before he fell off. Little did his Mom knows that she could have
owned our house. Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a
goof. It was a neighborhood run amuck.

To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were
from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that? We
needed to
get into group therapy and anger management classes? We were obviously so
duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire
country
wasn't taking Prozac! How did we ever survive?

LOVE TO ALL OF US WHO SHARED THIS ERA, AND TO ALL WHO DIDN'T- SORRY FOR WHAT
YOU MISSED. I WOULDN'T TRADE