...when:
You go shopping for a familiar product you've used all your life, and it's not in the store, and nobody who works there has ever heard of it.
You look down at your hand or your arm and find that you're bleeding, and you wonder, "How did I do that?"
You find all the most popular current music annoying and depressing.
Clint Eastwood doesn't look so old to you.
You get a lot of junk mail trying to sell you hearing aids and burial insurance.
When the kid pumping gas sees your heavy metal tapes in the back window and asks, "Do you let your kid listen to that??"
I wasn't even 30 yet.
Except for Eastwood (who, in my opinion, looks 115 years old) ditto on the rest....... LOL
when you spend an hour looking for something and when you find it it occurs to you it's right where you put it last time so you wouldn't loose it again .
When AARP becomes a real nuisance because of all their letters in the mail.
When the dog passes gas and you're really not sure if it was the dog or you but you get blamed for it anyway.
When you go into the bathroom before bed and you come out but your teeth don't.
When you get up at least once before you go to sleep in order to go to the bathroom.
When you wake up every two hours to go to the bathroom.
When you get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and you're so shaky you have to sit down to pee.
When you go to the bathroom and have a problem with high pressure, high volume and no flow.
When you get that letter in the mail from your doctor and tell your wife there's no way it's been 5 years already.
When you go in for that certain procedure and it just doesn't bother you anymore.
When you finally get up enough nerve to go out in cutoff pants and people laugh at you calf high white socks.
When all your socks are white.
When even though the chair stinks and it should have been thrown out 5 years ago you refuse to let anyone do anything to it because it's YOUR CHAIR!!!
When you become irritated at little cars that go down the road and all you hear is fart mufflers and boom, boom, boom.
When you become irritated at people in this forum that you don't agree with and you don't know when to quit trying to make them feel they're wrong. Yep that'd be me.
For some reason, I was telling a young cashier at my supermarket about a friend of mine in the Air Force. He didn't collect trading stamps, so instead of refusing them, he would hand them to the woman in line behind him. They were always thrilled. The cashier had no idea what trading stamps were and I might as well have been speaking Martian to her.
One more; When your check goes into the bank on the first of the month and you're broke by the 15th.
Andy Williams dies, you go into work and talk about it & everyone says: "Who is Andy Williams?"
All of the above.
I have completely forgotten what y'all are talking about...........
Oh that's really good Bob. I've got another one;
When you start to wear bibbed overalls because you haven't got enough butt to hold you pants up.
GRITS Bob !!! We be talkin' 'bout grits. Add sugar or no ?
They always told me, you can tell where a person is from by weather they put sugar or salt on their grits.
Always salt and butter on grits. Maybe a touch of pepper.
Grits,what a wonderful thing. Butter, black pepper and salt to taste...add cheese and you ain't never et so good!
George, sugar...it ain't cereal. I do add sugar to my boiled peanuts to get a salty sweet flavor.....
Sugar is only for "Yankee Grits"(cream of wheat). I never put salt on my grits if I get them in a restaurant, already well salted. Pepper, butta, some cheese, I like Parmesan for it's strong flavor (Don't tell Bob, he might fire on me and start another rebellion lol).
Sorry Steve, didn't mean to take the thread in another direction.
I keep thinking of food I ate when traveling in da Sout'. I think my favorite might have been crawdads boiled with corn and onions and potatoes and peppers and...
Catfish, hush puppies, okra, grits, biscuits and redeye gravy. I spent a lot of time at a place named Sunnydale Arkansas and the guy had a biscuit maker right around the stovepipe on his wood stove. Every morning he'd make biscuits. We'd come in from hunting deer and we'd have venison, biscuits and redeye gravy. And he always made the best coffee on top of that old stove. He'd put the water in the pot, stir the coffee into an egg and drop that in and set the whole thing on the stove. He made it strong but it was so smooth too. Every part of the country has their special foods. In the north it's hotdish, walleye, crappie, stew, venison backstrap,and much more. Northeast coast I always had to have lobster, and chowder. In texas it's beef, don't touch the ketchup if your smart, you don't want to piss off the cook, also chilli and corn bread with lots of butter and honey on it. Northwest is seafood (crab). But I always ate the best in Tennessee, Arkansas and Louisiana.
Hmm, I think a little molasses on 'em is good!
In Seattle, WA in a heals--vegetarian restaurant (is there any other kind in Seattle?) I had some Cheezy Grits--some of the best grits I've ever had!
Ha, no need to restart the "War of Northern Aggression". My dad retired from the Feds after 35 years, during that time he would frequently do TDY in Washington. He would always take his homemade pepper sauce with him to enhance his meals. I grew up on "soul food" long before it was popular.....
Sorry Steve....I still don't have a clue as to what's going on.......
SO nobody in the store or engineers has heard of 680w oil or shim metal for that matter. Nor nickle plated nails. Or soldering flux. Or record needles. Or vulcanizing compounds. "What's a alloy paste?" Or lye. Or floppy disks & tapes. Or ..forget what it was but nobody has any of those things anymore.
Then it all turns to alien food?
You know you are old when nobody knows anyone you knew.
Who are all these people and why don't in know any of them? Since when was this road paved? What happened to the general store and what is all this stuff? When did they shift the road around like that? How long has that bridge been there?
These questions i ask every day.
When my son-in-law was stationed in Louisiana, we went to visit and ate at a restaurant there. They served Grits. I had never seen Grits, so I asked the waitress about them. She told me all about them. So I asked, what ingredients are in Grits and she said "Grits". I still have no idea where Grits come from.
why is everyone talking about me? I'm old and remember "WHEN............". I remember gravel and tar covered streets but not what happened yesterday.
The first thing to go is your memory and I forget what the second thing is.
There's a lot of truth in what your're saying Pops. Everyday I'll get up and go into the kitchen and forget what I went in there for. The worst one is when you go looking for something in the junk drawer and forget what you were looking for while you were rummaging through the junk. And yet I'll tell someone a story about something that happened 35 years ago and even tell them some of the dialogue from the incident.
A friend just e-mailed me this url. It says it all. Watch to the end, it is priceless.
Mike what is worse is looking for the thing that you need and it right in front of you and you cannot see it. Happens to me a lot I think.
http://stg.do/9i0c
Mike,
Your doctor allows you to have salt?
I was just thinking when the room started filling with smoke from an overheated memory bank,
"We are young, we drive cars that are older than we are and they run much better without daily complaints and they eat very little.
Feels good to be young, if only when you open the garage.
Very good. She very subtly hit a lot of the high points of the better part of growing old. Now if you don't mind it's time for my 8:00 A.M. nap.
Steve, can you be a little softer with how you say that. There's times when I think he's listening. And at my weight he has plenty restrictions on me. The worst is once a year he tries to put me on a diet that's suppose to keep my blood sugars down. He's got to know I can't live on that stuff. Heck I can't even get the dog to eat the leftovers.
What are Grits and boiled peanuts!
Alabama health food.
Got a FAT DOG TOO???? troop
I once heard it said that grits are the only food that, no matter how much you eat, there is still the same amount on your plate....
Will, You need to get out once in a while You'all need to come down south and get some real food and snacks.
I don't know about all the foods listed above, but it seams that most foods found when eating out now days are Mexican or asian. I still like my stake and potatoes. All the other statements I've had from time to time. The one I have most is " I'm not always right BUT never wrong !) NOT.
Have a great day or something.
Bob
Sunday I had eggs, ham, toast and grits with my chicory coffee. I've found that I like my grits with a large chunk of real butter in them. I think that shows that my memory is still working well. Now let's see, where did I put glasses?
Grits??
Up here in New Hampshire we call that stuff lumpy wallpaper paste or was that what we called the gravy in sausage gravy?
Can't remember -- I'm going to have a bit more maple sugar candy to help me figure it out!
Fred;
You know how candy make a little kid hyperactive.
David, my brother lives in Renton Wa and told me recently they could buy grits out there...I was pleasantly surprised. For those that don't know they are made from corn, not to be confused with hominy. Boiled peanuts,well, are just that...boiled peanuts. We make them regular and spicy using Zatarains Crab Boil. The best are green, fresh out of the field but there ain't much to them. My daughter is bringing up a mess from Dothan Al this weekend...yummmm. Fred, the maple candy sounds great!
I also like field peas but can't get them around here.
I was doing fine until you brought up hominy. My Dad use to like that crap. Just the thought of it does it for me. Might as well be lutefisk. Ufda I can't believe some of the towns around here feel it's necessary to have lutefisk feeds. Although they usually have lefsa too. And I really like lefsa.
When you walk into an antique shop and you find items which were given to you new as wedding presents.
When you drive your Model T into a gas station and someone asks you if it is a 1955?
Norm
When you drive your Model T into a gas station and someone asks you if your the original owner.
Hey Mike, Sorry about the flashback...I've seen how they make lutefisk,no thanks...lefse sounds good.
Hey Bob, it's all good. I've only been to a couple of the lutefisk feeds. I think my Dad developed his taste for Hominy while he was in the service. Dad didn't have much for food when he was young until he turned 16 in 1936 and lied about his age so he could get into the CCC;s (Civilian Conservation Corp)He said it was the first time he'd ever had decent food to eat and a bed to sleep in. From there he went into the service in 1943 and spent wartime in the South Pacific. When he'd bring hominy home we'd all just cringe at the looks of it. Then when he lived down in Florida toward the end of his life he got into eating grits. He always talked about putting cheese on the grits but I learned to eat them with salt and butter and a little pepper. I didn't like cheese and the thought of it didn't appeal to me.
You know your getting old when you can talk about your Dad's time in the CCC's.
G'day,
Vegemite on thick toast. Can't beat it.
Peter
If you have leftover Vegemite you can pack water pumps with it. Another reason not to have a water pump.
Gil Fitzhugh, Morristown, NJ
Yeah, my dad was raised on the farm about 20 miles from here, they didn't have much. In 1936 dad was 30, working in Washington following his cousin,Claude Pepper. He may have picked up the hominy on the farm or in the Navy, he served in the South Pacific too. Back in those days you ate what you had...everything on the pig but the squeal....
You know you're old when you know what the CCC is....
An "all nighter" means you didn't have to get up to pee.
Old is, when you take your kids to a museum and equipment and aircraft you worked on every day are now display items.
When you donate to a museum and they are happy to get what you have offered, and you get invited to speak about what you donated.
Peter, I agree, but only if the vegemite is very spare, and the butter heavy. I wonder if anyone has made grits in a manifold cooker? They are always good the next day out of the fridge, fryed in a pan with more butter.......mmmmmmm. What were we talking about?
"You know you're getting old when you can talk about your Dad's time in the CCC's."
Mike what does that make me? My Dad's first assignment as an Army 1st Lieutenant was as commander of a CCC camp at Calico Rock, Arkansas - Camp Hedges.
Erich, I think we could make you an honorary southerner.
Dick, That makes you...us, OLD...lol.
What ever happened to HAD-A-CALL ?????
Bob
Bob;
I remember that. Someone should have a picture of a bottle. Wasn't there a jingle that went with that?
Dick, I just bought a book about the CCC's in order to read it and maybe renew some of the good memories of my Dad. I can remember being a kid and going to one of the camps he worked out of. We have some beautiful pine forests in Minnesota because of the hard work those kids did. One of their other tasks involved building the camp and fighting fires. One of the stone fireplaces he spent a lot of time building was something he was very proud of. He'd take us to the camp, build a fire in the fireplace and Mom would make hot sandwiches for us. And brew a nice pot of coffee for her and my Dad. They still had the irons over the fire and that pot would hang there all the time we were playing. My brother said remnants of the camp are still there.
I'm sorry Dick I didn't answer your question. That makes you old! In the book they talk about a lot of military working in the camps with the guys. I guess they weren't always real popular guys because they treated their time in the camp like it was the military and the guys didn't like that "basic training lifestyle".
When you can remember when a Civil War Captain visited your school for an assembly just before Memorial Day.
Norm
I'm sorry Dick I didn't answer your question. That makes you old! In the book they talk about a lot of military working in the camps with the guys. I guess they weren't always real popular guys because they treated their time in the camp like it was the military and the guys didn't like that "basic training lifestyle".
You know your old if you ever worked with a guy who had been in the Spanish American War.
I realized that I was old when I drove to where I was supposed to be and found out that I was the only one that showed up. Everyone else was where they should have been.
Mike, I'd have to figure out where Dad's CCC papers are, but I'm sure that Camp Hedges had military staff. I'm pretty sure Dad was a 1st Lieutenant then, I think the XO was a 2nd Lieutenant and there were one or two sergeants. When I was stationed at Little Rock AFB in the 1960s, a couple of friends and I drove up to Calico Rock and located the site of the camp. One of the locals told us that the buildings had been torn down a few years previously, but that the foundations were still visible. He added, "They were pretty good buildings, though. Good enough that I'd be surprised if they didn't build them again." I'm still trying to figure that one out....
Dick, your description of the foundations being left and the buildings gone exactly like we had at Dad's old CCC camp. We had a neighbor who actually lived in a house that was a refurbished CCC building. She got it for little or nothing at all. She was my 2nd grade teacher in a 4 room country school and didn't make much money. I remember once throwing a snowball at a squirrel on a Jackpine tree and hitting it. She shook me till my teeth rattled. I was only 7 years old and I still suffer with nightmares thinking about that mean old woman.
You wake up every morning with a new girl friend in your bed.
You drive into town to go to that same store to get that one item and when you get there you stand in the store and can't remember what that one item is, so you just go home.
Went to the drug store today, they greet me by name now, and someone pinned up a "Do you remember" list, Howdy Doody show, etc. Soon everyone was remembering 12 inch black and white TVs, 45 RPM records, party lines, and so on. I felt my age when I related about 78 RPM records and the telephone we had with batteries on the floor and a crank you had to turn to get the operator. Even our ring - 3 long and 2 short.
So long ago. And so it goes.
I wonder what would happen if the youth from the city today was put out there today. No pants on the ground, no rap music, no gang signs and handed them a Hand saw,hammer with nails,some lumber or better yet a pick and shovel. I think that they would learn something and would remember it to there graves. We could get our parks and roads fixed for cheep.
DAM not going to happen, to bad.
Bob
Geez, Gary you really hit it on that one. My sister has all the 78 RPM records down in McAllen Texas. I've only got about 3 full albums. But I got the 1918 Silvertone phonograph to play them on. Our ring was 2 shorts and we had 8 phones on the partyline. Mamie Vroman's ring was 1 long. Our phone would ring into her house and hers into ours. She was the worst rubberneck on the line. I can remember when Dad brought the Philco TV home in 1953. It was really modern. We had a wood cookstove in the kitchen that burned wood. Mom would heat the water for our baths on Sunday night. The little kids were first and then me and then my brother. Dad had a '49 Chevy car and a '45 Ford 1 1/2 ton truck that he did a lot of custom log hauling with. It had the ribbed govt tires on it when he bought it.
Fortunately my dad was pretty tight with a dollar, so he held out on getting a TV until fall of 1952 when they completed the transcontinental coaxial cable and he could see the World Series on the west coast. Before that the only TV I got was going to a friend's house on Thursday nights to watch The Lone Ranger. That means I was lucky enough to get in on real radio. If you were around then, you know what I mean by that. You get a hint listening to recordings of the old shows, but it's not like being there, just as seeing one of today's small bison herds isn't like experiencing one of those 19th century herds as big as a county.
Mr. Wolf, all you had to do was ask, one of my Uncles practically lived on the stuff, look at the alcohol content! and Mr. Kling, all my ancestors were in the Confederacy, there was a big Reunion annually for the Veterans, I hung on every word, Lord, what I would have given for a recorder.
You know you are old when as a kid when you were fidgety your dad would ask if you had Saint Vitus Dance...
If you can't find any Hadacol, try Sal Hepatica for the smile of health. Anybody know what to use for the smile of beauty?
I forgot what I was going to type.
When you try to show respect for your elders but you can’t find any !
I had completely forgot their ever was Ipana toothpaste.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt_38KUk-r4
Talking about party lines, it could get interesting hearing what your neighbors had to say.
Am I reading that box right? Hydrochloric acid as a preservative?
Thanks for the pic. I never used it, but knew people who did.
Grady, remember the Hadacol Rag??? It was a popular tune down in Texas and Louisiana and a few years ago had a big revival as a contest fiddle tune. I sang the words to the theme song for some youngsters -- anybody too young to remember real radio -- at a contest one time and they didn't believe me, thought I'd just made it up. Reinforced my geezer credentials, too.
Hadacol was called Hadacol because they "HAD TO CALL" it something. Was the joke of the time, aat least what I remember.
Hadacol "Shake well before using." Well I shook myself like a wet dog but it still didn't help the taste any. ;>)
You know you're old, when the new guys at work were born after you started working there....
I remember the store when it was called New Navy.
...when One Hundred Years Ago in the newspaper mentions people you knew.