Middle Aged Memories
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Castile soap…how can I forget Dr. Bronner's? It was the soap that spelled out the Bronner's faith statements and moral code, in very fine print, on the label. It is still available although it has been years since I've used it, and the only thing that has probably changed is my eyesight. Let me show you the "big print" version.
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Dr. Bronner’s is still highly recommended for hiking and wilderness camping since it is environmentally friendly and a little goes a long way. My son uses it. Bronner (who was not a doctor) would probably approve.
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To go back to sneakers and Clorox, I just remembered a summer when everybody had deck shoes, the canvas kind. The usual color was white and, boy, did those get dirty fast. Soaking in Clorox helped but by the second soaking, the white had that yellow bleach-y look. No worries because all that bleaching + growing kid feet usually helped a toe poke thru' the canvas before too long…easier to plead your case with mom for some new ones.
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Oh, I remember canvas deck shoes. I had some navy blue ones, and just loved them.
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Mine were navy blue, too. My mother wouldn't let me get white ones since she knew I would get them dirty.
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Hi: when I was a kid I sent in box tops or something and got an actual set of 20 mules and a wagon from Borax. It was so cool!!!
We used to use a white shoe polish that had a foam applicator. We used it on our deck shoes that were referred to as "Lily Whites" so you had to keep them WHITE. Frequent applications made them a tad stiff.
Saddle shoes were a must if you used the old roller skates with the wrenches that adjusted the length and the width of your shoes. You needed the sole that stuck out for the roller skates to clamp on to. I wore the key around my neck and was lucky not to have knocked out my front teeth when I kept falling backwards and the key would whack me in the mouth
A few years ago I was in a wonderful shop that carried everything anyone could imagine. They had a bin full of bits and bobs for 50 cents apiece. I rummaged around and came out waving my find "Look a roller skate key"…the sweet young thing with the pierced eyebrow said "a what?" I gave her a brief history
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Those roller skates were great because you didn’t outgrow them as quickly as your shoes. There were also four bladed ice skates that you could buckle around a toddler’s boots. I strapped them on my younger siblings but don’t remember wearing them myself. Actually, I don’t remember not knowing how to skate.
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My mom at Christmastime made her peanut brittle. I always got the job of buttering the cookie sheets and laying out the peanuts on them for her to pour the hot mixture on them. Once they were cooled and the candy hardened, she let me break it into chunks with whacking it with a rolling pin.
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At Christmastime my mom made meringue nests which would be filled with fruit or peppermint stick ice cream and topped with fudge sauce. I remember that the oven was heated to a fairly low temperature, turned off, and the meringues were left there overnight. I got to cut paper bags to fit the baking sheets (cheap parchment paper) and traced circles on it using a saucer so the size was uniform.
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A friend and I were talking and this generational activity came up:
Locking yourself out of your car, then getting a wire coat hanger to pop the lock yourself. Can't do that anymore (and if you even try something…cue loud, abrasive alarm sounds.)
————————————-p.s. @elderberry who wrote:"when I was a kid I sent in box tops or something and got an actual set of 20 mules and a wagon from Borax. It was so cool!!!"I ate a lot of Nabisco cereal and got about half of the plastic dog set pictured below. I lovingly kept mine in a kids' toy Pan-Am flight bag, even after several of the tails had been visibly chewed on.
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I remember my mom doing the old coat hanger trick to unlock her car door once when I was a kid and she accidentally locked her keys in the car
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I have used a coat hanger to unlock a car and as a replacement for a car radio antenna.
I have a collection of small ceramic animals that came in Lipton tea boxes. Some are farm animals and others are those you would see on safari.
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