You Know You Are Old When

[CalG]

As a small one, I recall the coal shed scuttle and shovel. The heat and glow from the stove in the center of the front room.
The "Winn Generator" on top of the short tower in the chicken yard. The water was pumped under a larger wind mill in the side yard. The pump handle was stored on the tower frame, and was more than I could lift.

 

[WinterDeere]

Saturday mornings guy would push a cart along main street, early morning shouting, "Hay......Berries!" Not strawberries, but " Hayberries."

That's nothing. We had a guy pushing a cart and yelling, "bring out your dead!"

 

[masseyrider]

I smoked for 8 years
Haven’t smoked for 53 years!

Got you beat.
I smoked for 9 months (Ma's pregnancy) and haven't smoked since and that's a lot longer than 53 years.
As a kid I remember my parents having get togethers in the summer.
The blue smoke came out of the windows with all the smokers inside.
Us kids survived OK.

 

[masseyrider]

That's nothing. We had a guy pushing a cart and yelling, "bring out your dead!"

Luxury. We weren't allowed to have dead.

 

[MoKelly]

That's nothing. We had a guy pushing a cart and yelling, "bring out your dead!"

When I was a teen, I thought Monte Python was the funniest movie I ever saw!!! Had a great time at the theatre watching that movie.

Many year later I thought it would be great to show the movie to my kids. “You won’t stop laughing” I said.

Well - it didn’t work as planned. They thought it was “dumb”.

Oh well.

 

[WinterDeere]

My daughter loves it, son thinks it's stupid.

I'd have probably thought it was stupid if watching it alone with my parents, as well. Like Wayne's World, you sort of had to be there in the theater, with a whole group of cohorts laughing at the stupidity.

My daughter still makes me play the French castle scene at least a few times per year:

"I don’t want to talk to you no more, you empty-headed animal food trough wiper. I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.”

and

"They say they've already got one?"

 

[masseyrider]

How old were you when you got electricity?

We always had electricity but running water was another thing.
We got cold running water when I was aboot 5 and hot water a couple years later.
There was a plumbed bathroom but to flush it you had to bring in a bucket of water.
So of you were going outside you would check for empty buckets.
Tell kids that now and they'll look at you like you're crazy.

 

[WinterDeere]

We always had electricity but running water was another thing.

I'm only 50, but I remember a few family properties as late as the 1970's that still had an outhouse in use, one of them being right across the street from another local TBN'er. Several more had the outhouse still in use as late as the 1960's, such that they were still standing and functional, but used too infrequently to be sure you wouldn't walk in on snakes or hornets by the time I was curiously exploring them late 1970's or early 1980's.

I also remember drinking out of hand-pumped (and hand-dug) wells, at both my great-grandparents and two uncle's houses, all in the New Hope PA area. One would sit weeks or even months at a time without use, between us kids visiting it, and was always some work to re-prime.

I live in another old house now, built in four phases starting in the 1730's. It would bring me great pleasure to find the original well, and refurbish it with a new hand pump, but I strongly suspect it's under our rear patio.

 

[MossRoad]

My daughter loves it, son thinks it's stupid.

I'd have probably thought it was stupid if watching it alone with my parents, as well. Like Wayne's World, you sort of had to be there in the theater, with a whole group of cohorts laughing at the stupidity.

My daughter still makes me play the French castle scene at least a few times per year:

"I don’t want to talk to you no more, you empty-headed animal food trough wiper. I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.”

and

"They say they've already got one?"

 

[MossRoad]

My daughter loves it, son thinks it's stupid.

I'd have probably thought it was stupid if watching it alone with my parents, as well. Like Wayne's World, you sort of had to be there in the theater, with a whole group of cohorts laughing at the stupidity.

My daughter still makes me play the French castle scene at least a few times per year:

"I don’t want to talk to you no more, you empty-headed animal food trough wiper. I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.”

and

"They say they've already got one?"

I'm kinda partial to the Bridge of Death...