Memory Lane: Foods Gone But Not Forgotten

Have you ever reminisced about favorite treats that are no longer made... or aren't made like they used to be?

The tiny neighborhood store next to my grandpa's house had one of these.

Do you remember when soda bottle lids had to be pried off?  And that there was a little piece of real cork in the lid to seal the bottle?

Most kids would beg for sweets... I begged for some cheese and banana chips!  When my parents shopped at "South County Mall" if I was good they would give me some money to get something at Hickory Farms.

That store was one of my favorite places to be, especially since you could sample!

This falls into the "used to be better" category.  I never was a morning person, nor do I like to eat first thing in the morning.  This was my breakfast almost every school morning... forever! 

 (They are still in my pantry for "those days".)

Do you remember cookies and milk time in elementary school?  This little milk-aholic would get TWO cartons of milk.  Friday was Chocolate Milk Day.

I would pay good money to have more school pizza!  From the middle please with lots of cheese.

Do you remember soda cans with this sort of tab?

There were many a finger cut with these.  We made long chains with them to make useless stuff.

These were the BEST!  Especially the chocolate chip.  It came with its own little pan to make a cake the size of a cake box.  I think all you had to mix in was water.  So good!

Much better than Jell O pudding.

OK... I put this up as a 'long gone' food but when I googled it to get a date... I found out that Planters has started making them again!  I've ordered some thru Walmart's online.  There will be a future post reviewing if they are as good as they used to be!

Microwave popcorn just isn't as fun!

McD's FRIED pies.  They were so good!

Just aren't the same since Hostess sold out...

I got TWO of these every Christmas in my stocking.

Enough to keep me going for a while.

THE favorite flavor!

I liked these too.

CHOICES!

Kathryn Beich products were the go-to fund raiser at my school.  The Katydids (Turtles) were good but my favorite was the Pillows (basically bite sized Butterfingers- but more tender). 

The Christmas staple at great grandma's house.

Lifesavor swirl pops.  Two flavors swirled together like banana and strawberry.

A recent "gone".  

The company was sold and it doesn't seem like the candies will be continued.  So good bye Neccos and Valentine Candy Hearts.

Memory Lane ~ School Days

Well, it is mid September and every kid I know is back in school.  The earliest start was 7 August and the last one I know of trudged in on 3 September.

Back in 'my day' school started after Labor Day.  It was proceeded with major shopping trips... clothes and shoes to replace what didn't fit any more... 

(and if the shoe still fit... a little shoe polish would make it look new)

new school supplies... 

definitely a new lunch box...

  

First day teacher would check off our names and hand out the books.

Then a trip to the bathroom to wash up for the day.

(Yes, my elementary school really did have one of those hand wash stations).

Remember papers printed on the mimeograph machine?  You either loved or hated that smell.

I hated it!

When this rolled out, you knew there's be a lot of notes to take.

Paper cutters scared me to death!  There was always some story about a teacher who had cut a finger off using one.  Funny tho... I never saw a teacher missing a finger.

But you never know...

Uh-huh...

Then when you found the book, you had to fill out the card to check it out.

If your info was in this... you had a lot of hand copying to do.  No photo copiers back then!

Now armed with books of information it was time to sharpen your pencils...

... and get to your desk to work.

These where the desks we had in elementary school.  And yes, that lid dropped down on my fingers more than once!

The big kid desks we had in the high school.

Remember walking into class and see this?  Odds were for a good morning then!

And if you saw THIS... it was a great morning!

The Snickity Snick

Oh yes!

When I was little I spent a lot of time with my great grandma.  If I had a bit too much 'vim and vigor' she would look for things to burn off that energy.  And one of those things was to mow her manicured lawn with the 'snickety- snick'.

By the time I finished excess energy was no longer a problem.

Fast forward to now...

We have our lawn mowed by a local young man who is trying to establish a mowing business.  He's not the most ambitious lad out there.  Our twice monthly mow is usually a monthly mow!  Living out here at The Sticks that is not an issue.. and it save me money.

However the yard can get really shaggy in that time, especially if we've had good rain that month.

On a recent Goodwill run I popped inside to see if there was any organizing stuff I could use.  

And I found a brand new Snickety Snick!

Perfect for my shaggy yard!

Now when he doesn't show up timely I can keep the front yard area looking good.

Hmmmm....

Nope, not an option with our hilly yard!

Memory Lane: Call Home!

I can!  In fact my parents still have that number... 52 years after they were first assigned it.

Area codes were put into use in 1947.  My area (Eastern MO) was 314.  The first two numbers were the exchanges (hubs) the call routed thru... ours was JU which was spoken as 'justice'.  The words were just an easy way to remember the numbers.  The last 5 numbers were your personal phone number.

This is what your phone probably looked like in the 1960s.  This was a 'desk phone'.

Or you might have had a 'wall phone'.

If you were stylish, you might have had a 'princess phone'.

But the thing all the phones had in common were a SHORT phone cord... only about 3 feet long.  So 'telephone benches' were popular.

Then someone came up with the idea of making a really long cord.  Then you could at least move around a bit.  But be careful... they were really good at tripping you up!

Then there came CORDLESS phones!  You might have been able to walk from one end of your house to the other.  The freedom of it all!  

Yep... phone service was charged by the minute length of your call.  The most expensive rates were during business hours- highway robbery!  Then in the evening (like 7pm to midnight) were about 40% cheaper.  

Night time rates (midnight to 6am) were very cheap.  But who makes calls after midnight (except my late father-in-law)?

Before the Internet there was the Yellow Pages.  Yes, they really could get that thick if you lived near a large city.  Made a great booster seat for the little ones too.

Ahhh ... party lines.  Or 'gossip lines' as they were often know as.

A party line was a way to get phone service to rural areas (often) to get service out there cheaper.  It means you shared a phone line with other people (tho everyone had their own phone number).  But the lines were open lines... so anyone on the line could pick up the phone and eavesdrop their neighbors conversations.  And you could not make a call until the first person hung up the phone.  Neighborhood wars started over phone hogs!

Incoming calls were handle in one of two ways.  Either each person on the line had their own personal 'ring';  maybe one ring for the first person, 2 quick rings for the next, 2 rings with a space between for the next, and so on.

Or if you were living fancy, an incoming call on rang to the number being called.

And before cell phones were pay phones.  Better have some coins if you needed to call.

This phone would have been inside a building.  A local call would cost you .10c and you had a limited amount of time to talk.  For a long distance call, you would dial the operator and tell her the number you wished to call.  She would tell you the rate for X amount of time.  Then you'd drop your coins into the machine.  Each denomination of coin made a different sound so the operator would know how much you had paid.  Then she would let the call go thru.  When time was up, you'd get a warning to deposit more coins before it disconnected.

A moment of joy for a kid was finding forgotten change in the coin return!

Outside phone booth.

A drive up phone booth so you didn't have to get out of your car.

There are still pay phones in existence (about 100,000 of them).

And then it happened...

... cell phones were invented!

In 1988 Motorola introduced the bag phone.  They were powered by a plug that went into your cigarette lighter and you had to put a big whip antenna on your car's roof.  At first you could only get reception along highways, even that dropped calls were many.

And there was even a carry phone with a rechargeable battery.  You were really something if you had one of these beauties!

Then came "The Brick".  Amazing stuff here!

That evolved into the 'flip phone'... yep, that is what they looked like back in the day.

Ain't it something??