[redwitch]

Funny, I read your posts and am so envious. My childhood was a mixed bag with all the traveling we did. The first time I heard of Halloween was when I was five or six in California -- it was practiced anywhere else in the world that I can remember back then. All the kids talked about their costumes and were all excited. I went home and asked my mom for a costume. She thought I was nuts. My father, fortunately, saved the day (he was American) and turned me into a little G.I. That first time trick or treating was actually frightening. Knocking on strangers' doors and asking for candy just didn't feel right to this little girl. However, after seeing my bag of goodies at the end of the evening, I was all for it and couldn't wait til next Halloween.

Most of my younger days were spent in post-WWII Germany where survival was the order of the day and treats were few and far between, excepting when my dad was around and brought us K-rations. Loved the jam and bubblegum and, of course, the Hershey bars!

I do remember things like collecting soda bottles to get the money. Also candy cigarettes (loved 'em) and marshmallow peanuts. Saturday matinees were one of the great things of being in the States or near a military base. Loved everything -- the newsreels, the cartoon, the main attraction (usually a western).

America was also where I saw my first television. I couldn't watch The Mickey Mouse Club (it was on opposite American Bandstand, which my brother watched) but loved The Howdy Doody Show. Ditto Sky King, Lassie and Fury. BTW -- According to my brother, The Mickey Mouse Club was a Communist plot to take over the minds of American children. Took me about six months to figure out that I could watch MMC since I wasn't American and he was now stuck taking turns watching it or Bandstand. Of course, we moved to Japan right after I figured that out.

And let's not forget the Red scare. Think it terrified all of us way too much.

[Halle]

Originally Posted by buggyone

Jim,
The 16 ounce bottle of Coke was introduced in 1962. I would venture to guess most of us were at least in high school in 1962 and would not be collecting soda bottles to buy a handful of candy or to share a bottle of soda.

http://www.colacorner.com/did-you-know.html

The first Baby Boomers would have been 16 in 1962, there are many of us living here. I was 7 in 1962 and remember collecting coke bottles.

The Times They Are A-Changin.

[Buffalo Jim]

Originally Posted by Halle

The first Baby Boomers would have been 16 in 1962, there are many of us living here. I was 7 in 1962 and remember collecting coke bottles.

The Times They Are A-Changin.

Thanks for the " support ".

[senior citizen]

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[graciegirl]

Originally Posted by senior citizen

Everybody back in the 1950's only had one bathroom...........unless they added one in the basement, which many did. That's how homes were built. Aren't we all so spoiled now with three bathrooms, etc.???????

We had two bathrooms because my folks converted a two family home into a one family....using the upstairs apartment for extra bedrooms, thus freeing up the first floor for other big rooms. One bathroom up and one bathroom down.

The front foyer had an open staircase to the upstairs bedrooms and that second bathroom.

Downstairs, off to the left were the living room, dining room, huge kitchen, two side rooms and the downstairs bathroom......plus a screened in back porch......one up and one down....(the two side rooms would normally have been the two bedrooms, had not my mom decided to evict the tenant and turn the upstairs into a one family home for us).

We did have two bathtubs and two showers (as my older brother was big into the 1950's craze of home improvements....getting magazines like Popular Mechanics and some others whose names escape me....but he and my dad would remodel the kitchen, the bathrooms, etc.....like a hobby.)

Back in the older days, most people only took one bath a week....on Saturday night. The working men would come home nightly and wash up in the kitchen sink with their shirt sleeves rolled up. That did it till the Saturday night bath.......(when we had foreign exchange students from Spain, none of them liked to take baths....this was in the 1980's......they just went into the bathrooms to smoke as it was not allowed in the houses and they knew it.....then they'd spray the room with perfume. They also thought Americans were crazy because all of us "read in the bathrooms" and had "magazines and books" in the bathrooms.) Off topic I know. But funny nonetheless when I think back. Those boys and gals are now lawyers in Spain with families of their own.

My husband's childhood home, bought after the great depression for$3,000 (my folks bought our two family for $8,000) had the one bathroom up.......but then his dad added one in the basement.........ditto for his grandfather at his house.......always had one in the basement.

My mom, on the other hand, recalls when she was a child....having an outhouse. Yikes. She had some stories.

Hard to believe there were no Italian families in Cincinnati.

I have a HUGE group of cousins, in my family tree, whose parents came from Laurenzana Basilicata Italy to Cleveland Ohio. These cousins are all deceased now. They settled all over Ohio.

I do remember all that ironing.......

My mom would iron all day long on her day off from work.
She would "sprinkle" the starched clothes.......then iron.
She even ironed SHEETS, PILLOW CASES and towels........

She would set up her ironing board in the living room and watch MILLION DOLLAR MOVIE......which had a lot of old movies as I recall......but it still was a lot of ironing.

She had lots of stories about ironing as well. When younger, she was at her mom's place and IRONING when the radio show now referred to as WAR OF THE WORLDS came on......and they actually lived near Ferry Street where these martians were supposed to be landing.........I could write a book.

She was also ironing when she heard that Pearl Harbor had been attacked.

In 1965 , newly wed, with a day job....on Saturdays I would iron an entire basket of my husband's white shirts. I ironed for a long long time, even after we had kids. NO MORE. Nothing needs ironing anymore, thankfully.

For the military guys and gals out there........this should be your chuckle for the day. Back in the '60s when my husband was still going to Fort Knox as a drill sergeant.......he got some promotion so I had to sew his new patch on his army uniform. I guess he figured I knew what to do.
He didn't advise or show me how it should be. I sewed it on upside down. Never asked me again. From then on, he began sewing his own patches and buttons on.....

There were Italian families in Columbus, But not as many as the predominantly German population. We didn't know any of them well enough to be invited for home cooked food and I knew some Italian girls from public school. In the generation prior to mine, I am told that people didn't intermarry. Meaning Italians and Germans, and Germans and Irish, but that wasn't so anymore when I was growing up. I don't remember any Irish parishes, but we had one Italian Parish in Columbus when I was a kid. No French speaking people at all that I can remember. You knew this because everyone always went around to the church festivals.

Cleveland had a lot of people from Southern Europe and Slovakia, Bulgaria and so on.. Just as Wisconsin and Minnesota had a lot of people from Northern Europe. There were a lot of German Lutheran churches in Columbus too. I was raised German Lutheran and became a Catholic as a young adult.

Our worlds were very different back then than from now. It is very interesting to live in The Villages where people really didn't have the same exact life experiences as children

[senior citizen]

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[senior citizen]

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[senior citizen]

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[senior citizen]

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[Yung Dum]

Originally Posted by quirky3

Great memories, Senior! Our largest grocery store was the A&P, but "John;s Store" was a few blocks away and that's where we got baseball cards (with bubblegum), necco wafers, candy cigarettes, etc. The local dairy was one block away - they had popsicles for 5 cents.

One of our neighbors always made caramel apples for Halloween. One year I made a "Little Bo Peep" costume and used my little red wagon dressed as the lamb, and my brother's hockey stick wrapped in crepe paper for a shepherd's crook.

Did anybody actually chew that gum that came with the baseball cards? If you dropped it on the sidewalk it would shatter like glass. If you did try to chew it, you were in danger of ripping up your mouth. The cards were great, though. However, by late summer, you opened a pack and went through them saying "Got him" "Got him" "Got him", and so on. In all my years of card buying (Topps cards only), I never got a Stan Musial.

[Patty55]

Originally Posted by Halle

The first Baby Boomers would have been 16 in 1962, there are many of us living here. I was 7 in 1962 and remember collecting coke bottles.

The Times They Are A-Changin.

Me too, born in 1952, collected bottles.

My mother also got into the sewing thing, it wasn't good, she'd get out the Simplicity patterns and you'd know a cockeyed dress was coming.

Anyone else remember the duck and covers drills where you put your coat over you head, get under the desk (with your butt to the window)? Yep, that sure would have been effective.

[rubicon]

I recall much of what has been said up to now. I also was reared in an ethnic neighborhood and didn't realize until I was 12 that other nationalities existed beside Italians (that's a joke)

I remember that tires had tubes and tubes were valuable because my buddies and I would search for pieces of wood and cut the tubes to make gigantic rubber bands and fashion what would be rubber guns . We would then do battle and yes those large rubber bands hurt.

We had the best Italian flavored ice lemon, cantaloupe, etc We had a Woolworth's and Grant's .

We had record hops and competed to go on TV Dance Party broadcasted from that very large city called Syracuse (that's also a joke). My wife and I won a number of dance contests and we did get to go on TV's Dance party (want my autograph) (that's a joke too) I remember my Grandmother telling me to marry a nice Italian girl and my reply Ï don't know any nice Italian girls" Got a tongue lashing ( that was my first clue that I could not tell a joke)

Like probably all of you I believe that I grew up at the best of time and in the best place on earth. I loved our neighborhood ,my friends, my town. good people good citizens, loving caring and generous

[graciegirl]

Originally Posted by rubicon

I recall much of what has been said up to now. I also was reared in an ethnic neighborhood and didn't realize until I was 12 that other nationalities existed beside Italians (that's a joke)

I remember that tires had tubes and tubes were valuable because my buddies and I would search for pieces of wood and cut the tubes to make gigantic rubber bands and fashion what would be rubber guns . We would then do battle and yes those large rubber bands hurt.

We had the best Italian flavored ice lemon, cantaloupe, etc We had a Woolworth's and Grant's .

We had record hops and competed to go on TV Dance Party broadcasted from that very large city called Syracuse (that's also a joke). My wife and I won a number of dance contests and we did get to go on TV's Dance party (want my autograph) (that's a joke too) I remember my Grandmother telling me to marry a nice Italian girl and my reply Ï don't know any nice Italian girls" Got a tongue lashing ( that was my first clue that I could not tell a joke)

Like probably all of you I believe that I grew up at the best of time and in the best place on earth. I loved our neighborhood ,my friends, my town. good people good citizens, loving caring and generous

Rubicon!

You grew up in German Village, Columbus, Ohio too????

[senior citizen]

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