The following reminiscences were sent to me by the husband of a childhood friend.
Not everything from the “good old days” were good, but they are old.
The observations are the anonymous writer's view of the past and are in bold face type. Some I agree with and some I see in my own way, which I did not hesitate to give my version of the good ole days.
See what you think.
*My mom 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.
True, but chickens were raised differently then, and weren’t fed all kinds of things that may be promoting the harmful effects we see now. The Europeans don’t seem to have the same chicken-related health problems that we do.
And every time I mess with chicken, I wonder why we even invite food that might be contaminated into our kitchens, and if it’s really that bad and that dangerous, how come people aren’t dropping dead all over the country from bad chicken? Very few cooks are scrupulously clean when preparing chicken, especially not the ones seen on TV.
*My mom 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 E-coli.
The above comment applies here, too.
*Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring)-- no beach closures then.
I, on the other hand, loved to go to the lake, but hated wading or swimming in it. “Too mush hair,” on the lake bed as the little me would always say.
Yuk. Walking on all that slimy, squishy grass was not my idea of a fun thing to do, any more than getting tangled in smelly seaweed in the Pacific, or coming home from the beach with tar stuck all over my feet.
No one made a big deal over the contamination flowing into the Pacific from costal oil wells and ships, which they should have.
*Remember when we all said prayers and sang the national anthem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention.
I don’t ever remember saying prayers in either Michigan or California schools…as it should be. Never said prayers, that is, unless you count silently praying: Don’t call on me! Don’t call on me! Don’t call on me!
*The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.
I thought pagers were the kids who ducked out of a “learning” class by taking an elective that allowed them to work in the school office, leaving them free to duck behind the gym for a quick smoke between delivering those “paging” pink slip messages to kids in the class room that summoned them to the office to talk to mom on a land line phone, see the principal, or pick up their forgotten lunch in the brown bag and not on ice.
*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.
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