Nostalgia...the good old days

A dear friend of mine put a picture of her front porch on her facebook page. Basically saying she was taking time out from her hectic life and learning to relax on her front porch. Well, that really got me thinking about my childhood. Yes, a front porch brought back many memories. I mentioned how when we were little we could never get away with doing stuff. There was always someone's mom sitting on the front porch watching what was going on and always ready to call your parents and tell them when you were up to some shenanigans.


It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.... Oops wait, that's the opening line from 'A Tale of Two Cities'...LOL  but  I digress, childhood was such a fun time of exploration and adventure. But as they say, times are a changing. It's pretty rare these days to be without a cellphone. Even if I forget my cell at home, I go back home and get it. I feel lost without it. How did we survive before cellphones?

During my childhood there were no cellphones. Yet, my parents ALWAYS could get in touch with me. I don't care if I was playing in the park, riding my bike over a friends house, in the school's parking lot, on the playground. If your parents needed you to come home, they found a way to get a message to you.

I call it the 'messenger method'. It always started out with your parents saying to someone passing by..."have you seen..." if the person said, yes, the response would be 'well, tell them I said it's time to come home.'If the person said, no, the response would be 'well, if you see them, tell I said it's time to come home.'  LOL! Somehow, this 'message' would work it's way to you and the funny thing is that it never took very long to get through the grapevine.

 We never wore bike helmets, yet we were probably the biggest daredevils around, especially if you were around during the Evel Knievel era. (the original XTreme sports guy) I remember once, my sister talked me into sitting on the front of her bicycle handlebars while we rode down a steep hill. Halfway down the hill, she let go of the handlebars and put her arms in the air and shouted "Weeeeeee" Yes, you're probably thinking 'uh,oh'. And Uh, Oh is right, We crashed! I had a gash in my knee so deep, I swear I saw the bone.

I showed my mother and the first thing out of her mouth was not...OMG let's get you to the doctor... it was...well, why were you silly enough to get on the handlebars, go put a paper towel on it. LOL!! yep, that was it...no ER visit...and surprisingly I survived!

When I went fishing with my father on the weekends, I ate Vienna sausages, spam, sardines, bologna and drank lots of soda. Surprisingly, my cholesterol is not too bad. We ate gobs of candy & junk food from the corner store, and yet we stayed slim. But I'm guessing during those days, especially in the summer we probably put in 20-30 miles a day either by foot or on our bikes.

I sometime wonder what would happen to the kids today if they were forced to spend all day outside. Or, heaven forbid, have to walk a few miles to a friends house. Uh, I don't think they'd do it LOL!! But then on the other hand I don't think we had as many crazies running around that would try and snatch us up!

Times are a changing...