CLASS OF 1970
REMEMBER WHEN
All the girls had ugly gym uniforms?
But the Cheerleader's uniforms were, well..., what's that saying about someone in a uniform?
It took five minutes for the TV to warm up?
Nearly everyone's Mom was at home when we all got home from school?
When a quarter was a decent allowance?
You'd reach into a muddy gutter for a penny?
Your Mom wore nylons that came in two pieces?
All male teachers wore neckties and female teachers had their hair done every day and they wore high heels?
You got your car's windshield washed and your oil and tires checked without asking and for free? And, you got trading stamps to boot?
Laundry detergent came with free drinking glasses, dishes or towels inside the box?
It was considered a great privilege to go out to dinner at a real restaurant with your parents?
They threatened to keep kids back a grade if they failed...and they did?
When a 55 Chevy was every guy's dream car...to cruise, peel out, lay rubber or drag Main with your girlfriend?
You went steady with your boyfriend or girlfriend?
And all the guys carried their girlfriends books at school!
The very first time you saw a color TV?
No one ever asked where the car keys were because they were always in the car, in the ignition, and the doors were never locked?
Lying on your back in the grass with your friends and saying things like, "That cloud looks like a ..."
Playing baseball for hours on end and with no adults to help us with the rules of the game?
You had to ask your parents permission to use the phone and if you talked for more than 5 minutes you were told to get off?
Slumber parties?
Trick-Or-Treating without your parents?
Walking to school with friends?
Saying the Pledge of Allegiance before school started?
Stuff from the store came without safety caps and hermetic seals because no one had yet tried to poison a perfect stranger?
And with all of our progress, don't you just wish, just once, we could all slip back in time and enjoy the simpler, slower pace again and share it with our kids today?
When being sent to the principal's office was nothing compared to the fate that awaited you when you got home?
As a result, we were in fear for our lives, but it wasn't because of drive-by shootings, drugs, gangs, etc. Our parents and grandparents were a much bigger threat! But we survived because their love was greater than the threat of their punishment.
Can you still remember Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, Laurel and Hardy, Howdy Doody, The Lone Ranger, The Shadow Knows, Sky King, Mighty Mouse, The Little Rascals, Superman, Mickey Mouse Club and, of course, Leave It To Beaver?
Summers filled with bike rides, baseball games, Hula Hoops, bowling, Drive-in movies and long sunburned days at the swimming pool?
Doesn't it feel good to be able to say, "Yeah, I remember all that"?
Do you remember what a "double-dog-dare" is?
And remember that the perfect age is somewhere between old enough to know better and too young to care?
Candy cigarettes
Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside
Candy necklaces
Saturday Matinees at the Fox Theater
Caramel Corn
Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles
Baseball cards and the gum that came with them
Coffee shops with tableside jukeboxes
Super Bubble bubble gum
Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers
People riding around town on bicycles selling donuts
Cinnamon sticks
Grape gum
Grape, Orange and Strawberry Soda
Cherry Limeades
Neighborhood Grocery Stores
B & D (Bad & Dirty) Hamburgers & Fries (Simply the Best!)
The Tunnel-of-Love at the State Fair
Newsreels before the movie
P.F. Fliers
Sting-Ray bicycles (mine was green)
Five digit telephone numbers
Party lines
Skating Rinks
Sock-Hops
8-track tapes
Watching the colored lights at night at the Carey Park Fountain
Bobby Socks and Bobby Sock pins
Saddle Shoes
Candy Stripers (girls in a uniform again!)
Bleeding Madras shirts
Tincture of Merthiolate (ouch!)
Princess Phones
Barbie Dolls
Paper Dolls
Damn (or was it Dam?) Dolls
Peashooters
45 RPM records
S and H Green Stamps
Hi-Fi's
Metal ice-cube trays with levers
Mimeograph paper
Beanie and Cecil
Captain Kangaroo
Romper Room
15 cent McDonald Hamburgers (and yummy fries!)
A & W Root Beer served in a frosty mug. To die for!
Nightmare Theatre (Scary!)
Roller-skate keys
Duncan Yo-Yo's
Playing Hide and Seek
Cork pop guns
Dragging Main
The Dairy Queen
Studebakers
Washtub wringers
The Fuller Brush Man
The Electrolux Man!
Reel-To-Reel tape recorders
Tinkertoys
Erector Sets
Lincoln Logs
Train Sets
Penny Candy
Jiffy Pop popcorn
Santa's Workshop with KAKE-man on TV (Oh Santa, Santa!)
Listening to the World Series over the intercom at Sherman Jr. High
25 cents a gallon gasoline (18 cents a gallon when there was a gas war)
Decisions were made by going "eeny-meeny-miney-moe"?
Mistakes were corrected by simply exclaiming, "Do Over!"?
"Race issue" meant arguing about who ran the fastest?
Catching fireflies could happily occupy an entire evening?
It wasn't odd to have two or three "Best Friends"?
The worst thing you could catch from the opposite sex was "cooties"?
Having a weapon in school meant being caught with a slingshot?
A foot of snow was a dream come true?
Saturday morning cartoons weren't 30-minute commercials for action figures?
"Oly-oly-oxen-free" made perfect sense?
Spinning around, getting dizzy, and falling down was cause for giggles?
War was a card game?
Baseball cards in the spokes transformed your bike into a motorcycle?
Taking drugs meant orange-flavored chewable aspirin?
Water balloons and squirt guns were the ultimate weapons?
If you can remember most or all of these, then you have lived!
Pass this on to anyone who may need a break from "grown-up" life.
Go on, I double-dog-dare-ya!
© Daydream Dezigns / Hutchinson High School Class of 1970, 2021. All Rights Reserved.