Middle Aged Memories
Comments
-
My mom and I making beaded ornaments to sell.
0 -
Macrame plant holders and owls (why was it always owls?). My mom was really into making those.
Soap operas...or as she called them "my soaps". When we came home from school we had to be super quiet so we wouldn't interrupt her "soaps".
0 -
Oh yes!
Birthdays were a family affair, even if it was yours and you wanted a party for just you anda few friends
0 -
Reading your posts and remembering. Yes, loved those bubble gum cigarettes that would have a puff of powdered sugar "smoke." The other cigarettes were chalky things that kind of dissolved the way that those 4-colored after dinner mints (see pic below) did. But then remember when they made the tiny candy cigarette boxes that were Halloween size? Like, three tiny cigs stuck together that you had to break apart, only they always cracked badly?
I do remember making book covers from paper grocery bags, then drawing on them or putting stickers on them. Do the stickers below look familiar?
I got to buy some book covers one time and since it was the Sixties, I remember they were Op-Art patterns. Op-art was so 60's, but I'm ready for a comeback.
0 -
Always thought those mints were gross
0 -
I don't remember those stickers, but then we weren't allowed to decorate the book covers. All we could do was put the name of the subject on the book cover--"Math" "Science" "Social Studies" "English" etc. I can't remember why decorations weren't allowed. Maybe they were considered distracting?
I love those mints! No accounting for taste, is there?
0 -
I didn't like those pastel mints as a kid (when so many restaurants had an open bowl sitting out by the cash register,) but I bought some about 10 years ago and nostalgia, and my changing tastes, made me like them.
Don't think we ever mentioned coin collecting on here yet. Anyone else do that? In my youth, I had the book for pennies. Yeah, back when I could read all those dates with my bare eyes!
0 -
Eli - my BFF collected coins with her Dad. After he passed, she kept filling in pieces & buying mint sets. Unfortunately when she died in 2005 NO ONE wanted to keep it up, or even to keep the sets. Some were from the early 1900s. I was able to sell everything and send the proceeds to her son, who lives over seas. Only a couple were worth more even $20.00 collector value, but of course all the old coins were real silver so that was usually the better deal. Sad to see all that work tossed.
My Mother saved stamps, and lots of new, unused stamps. No one in my family, or their children were interested. After she died it took me several years, but I used them as postage & put long strings of them on letters to get the higher current costs.
0 -
Making family recipes for the holidays. My mom making us go to bed early on Christmas Eve so Santa would come.
0 -
Oh yes Mommy - and we were not allowed to go downstairs Christmas morning until the WHOLE family was awake & went down together. Funny - Santa always ate some of the cookies we left out for him.
0 -
In our house, we kids could go get the stockings as soon as we woke up and take them back to our rooms. We never did take them to our rooms, we took them into Mom & Dad's room, jumped up on the bed and emptied them out there. If Mom and Dad thought they were getting a bit more sleep that way it didn't work!
0 -
We were allowed to open just one present on Christmas Eve before we went to bed. I always went for a present that was sent to me by my paternal grandmother.
0 -
Oh yup Mommy - I forgot that so were we. Hard choices.
0 -
Yep. The ones from my mom were mostly clothes. That’s why I always chose something from the extended family.
0 -
We weren't allow to go downstairs on Christmas morning until everyone was up. So I'd sit at the top of the stairs and wait for everyone. We each had several unopened gifts that were from Santa. The wrapped gifts were from our parents. My father would hand them out one by one and everyone watched everyone open their gifts one at a time. It was a long morning. We put our stocking out on New Year's Eve (not Christmas Eve) and they were filled by the Brownies.
0 -
My older sister and I couldn’t wait for Mom to get up. We'd sneak downstairs and quietly raid our stockings while we waited.
0 -
I love reading these. We were allowed to open one present on Christmas Eve. We were very particular about which one we opened because we wanted to make sure it was a toy and not pjs. On Christmas morning we had to wait until our parents got up but they were usually pretty good about getting up early. It was a free-for-all once we started opening. I don't have many happy childhood memories, but Christmas was always a lot of fun.
0 -
My Mother was exacting about thank you notes, so we too only opened one package at a time with the rest of the family looking on. That way she could write everything on her list. Usually the youngest got to be the one to pick one box from under the tree & hand out the package. That kept the one with the least patience semi-occupied.
My ex-in-laws had an interesting family tradition. You opened one present each on Christmas morning and then everything had to stop while a blender of drinks was whipped up & passed around. Basically orange juice and gin with egg whites & sugar. Sort of like an Orange Julius. The drinks only went to the adults. but the first year I was married we couldn't afford to go to either family's for Christmas so we had to drink the entire blender. Oh la la.
0 -
Family holiday traditions, I never really thought of it like that but...as a kid Christmas Eve always meant going to Grandpa's for a meal, then a few of us kids hung out in the living room looking at the tree, maybe watching something festive on t.v., and waiting, waiting, waiting (while the grown-ups drank some Christmas cheer, maybe played Uno or some kind of card game, having loud arguments over who was cheating) and interrupting them every five minutes with "Can we open our presents yet?" After about an hour, the grownups came in and arranged themselves on various sofas and chairs, and my aunts passed around present from under the tree til everyone had one and then we more or less simultaneously opened them. My uncle would always pause to guess what every single one of his gifts were. He took so long (two minutes that felt like 20) that even the grownups were saying, "Just open it already!" It was kind of annoying that he was right 98% of the time. After that frenzy, the grownups could then smoke and drink in peace for another hour or two while we played with some new toys. At a younger age, I was probably carried to the car asleep, but at an older age I was always expected to give Grandpa a hug and kiss goodbye (and that always served to verify how much boozier he was than when I had greeted him on arrival.)
Christmas morning would be at my own house. Yes, I woke up before first light, checked in the living room to see if Jolly Old St. Nick had been lured by our ruse of a cardboard fireplace into making a stop, and then reporting to mom, "Santa came, Santa's been here!" Mom knew how to buy herself some time by telling me I could take down my stocking. Thanks to that faux fireplace, I had one hanging on by a big thumbtack. My stocking usually had an orange and walnuts in it (filler!) and those wrapped hard candies that had a soft jelly center (imported from Germany or Poland) but it would also have some amazing trinkets like Silly Putty, tiny bone china dog figures, tiny 2" square book of fairy tales, animal shape erasers, one of those wooden stringed figured that if you pressed the base, it would collapse. Those little things bought my mom at least 20-30 minutes more of sleep and so the sun was at least approaching the horizon when she got up. I think the routine was for mom to delight in me opening the gifts from Santa, and then we would open our family gifts together. My dad was there somewhere, late to the party, and not interested in opening his gifts because (direct quote here) "None of them look big enough to be a Caddy." Buzzkill is putting it mildly.
I had some gifts from out of state relatives under the tree. One year, my uncle sent me a Superball (original black one) before they were even in the local store, so I was the first kid on the block to have one. My aunt always made homemade divinity fudge, a treat I could not really appreciate as a kid, but she truly was a good cook and baker and I would kill for her recipe now.
Sorry, I know I wrote about three times more than anyone else but, for those who don't realize it, I've always thought of this thread as a hedge against the day I get one of those dementias, so forgive me.
-------------
MT, Your ex-in-laws were real sophisticates!
0 -
Now what I really stopped in for, was to bring this along. Just saying the name of it was magic!!! Thought to be toxic, I was never allowed to have it. But you know how it is with forbidden fruit...it only makes it more desirable AND there is always a way to get your hands on it!
0 -
I still have the winter hat minus the pom-pom that my mom did for me when I was in 8th grade. I also have the sweater she made me in the 10th grade.
0 -
Elimar--don't worry about how long the post is, the memories are wonderful! Super Elastic Bubble Plastic is as much fun to say as Supercalifragilisticexpealidotious!
0 -
Eli - I agree with NM. I absolutely LOVED the long post. Friend's memories are always interesting. Even more so when we're all staying close to home.
We did our stocking first too while my Mom made coffee. Our other (big) gifts from Santa were never wrapped. Just sitting around the tree with the wrapped presents from friends & relatives. Actually things for each child were grouped around their specific chair. I don't know if that's regional (I was raised in CA), but it seems most people I know said their presents from Santa were wrapped also. I never could understand wrapping a bicycle or a train that was set up & ready to run around the tracks immediately.
Which nudges me to get my gifts wrapped and packaged to mail SOON this year.
0 -
Every year we had a different person handing out the gifts
0 -
The Santa gifts were wrapped, but always in a distinctly DIFFERENT wrapping paper so, if questioned, mom could always say "But I don't have any wrapping paper like THAT." I used the same line on my own young interrogators and it worked like a charm.
----------------------------------
NM, I had the same thought about that product name being similar to the Mary Poppins word/phrase. Now you are making me remember when my elementary classmates all learned that antidisestablishmentarianism was the "longest word in the dictionary." Was it? Who could fact check that back in the day??? Supercalifragilisticexpealidocious is longer and in the dictionary, but considered a "nonsense word." Ha, as if antidisestablishmentarianism made sense!
In case you all are wondering what passes for the longest word these days, I'll spare you the trouble of the search:
The longest word in any of the major English language dictionaries is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, a word that refers to a lung disease contracted from the inhalation of very fine silica particles, specifically from a volcano; medically, it is the same as silicosis.
Now if you like gibberish as much as I do, please control your sudden urge to run out and start sniffing volcanoes.
0 -
Oh wow - great word. I just have to figure out a way to use it in conversation. But because of Covid it's not urgent.
0 -
Elimar--LOVE IT! I think I can almost pronounce it, even!
0 -
MOmmyof2, I just re-read about your winter hat, with pom-pom. Then, I remembered back to he 60's when a "stocking cap" was THE FASHION. Good thing too, as I had to appear in a classroom rendering of The Night Before Christmas, and that cap became part of my costume.
(Related...)
You know how we are all old here? But you know how you can still learn something new every day? Here is what I learned today:
My line in the classroom production was "And Mamma in her kerchief, and I in my cap, had just settled down for a long winter's nap."
Well, in reality, the actual text is, "...had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap."
WTH? Did my school just have a cheap and spurious copy of the poem? Did they not want little kids to talk about brains? Settle our brains? How? They didn't have Ambien back then, so was it a reference to chugging some laudanum, or what???
Anyway, let's take a look at the actual first half of the handwritten poem (sold for $280K in 2006, so this is $140K worth!) That old Clement Moore had some pretty good penmanship, didn't he?
Happy Holidays to All, my BC Lady-girls!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
0 -
WOW!
0 -
Wow
0
