Posted on 05/01/2017 1:37:42 AM PDT by Jacquerie
Subtitle: Recollections from Pre-Politically Correct America.
A welcomed respite from the drudgery of learning multiplication tables in my third grade was Thursday lunch at the school cafeteria . . . sloppy joes! Forget today’s lean beef craze; this delicacy was wonderfully greasy and delicious. Notwithstanding Michelle O’s national lunch menus, I don’t recall a single fat kid in my homeroom class.
The working-class neighborhood of my youth was multi-ethnic. In Leftist terms, it was diverse. My friends were mostly second and third generation Italian, Irish, and Polish. Of course, we called each other Dagos, Micks and Pollacks and somehow never took offense. A new kid showed up during fifth grade. He was a Lebanese Christian who immediately took to American sports. Had we been creative enough to come up with a slur for his ethnicity, we would have used it. Mercilessly.
Since the nearest city park was several blocks away, we often played in the side-streets. Just about all of us were bumped at least once by cars. A VW Beetle hit me as it braked to a stop. I jumped just before impact, bounced off the hood, went over the top, and landed on my rear end behind the car. Save for a growing bruise, I was uninjured, but figured that was a temporary condition if my mother found out. The shocked driver stopped, ran back toward me, asking all the while if I was okay. I took off through a series of alleys to my home. I thought I lost him and walked in like nothing happened. I wasn’t slick enough; he knocked on the front door and spoke with Mom. She accepted our combined versions of the incident, and that was that; no shouting, no threat of a lawsuit, no police report . . .
(Excerpt) Read more at articlevblog.com ...
“Even Stewarts root beer doesn’t taste as wonderful as it used to.”
Nothing does, it seems. When I was a kid I loved Social Tea cookies. I picked some up a year or so ago and they were disgusting. They tasted like cardboard.
Tommy’s in Carteret still has them.
I loved Social Teas too. I guess they are constantly changing the formula. Or our palates grow up.
I remember those; a kid in our neighborhood had one. I made do with a Schwinn Typhoon handed down from my oldest brother. I got a speedometer for it that went to 50 mph, and could peg it on one of the hills nearby. Blind intersection at the bottom, and then smoke the coaster brake trying to get stopped in the (also downhill) quarter mile or so before the highway. It’s a wonder any of us lived.
P4L
We would get Crazy with playing cards
and clothes pins...
Those were the days!
Ah, we learned the ethnic slurs from our fathers :)
It was funny by the ‘80s but not so funny in the early 1900s whey white groups really did hate each other and fight each other.
But that disappeared as we headed to the suburbs and everyone was on the same black :)
Interesting what you say about the Philippines.
I am glad you guys got on well without any of today’s nonsense affecting you.
PC = ANTI FREE SPEECH AND FREEDOM = NAZI
Yuck.
Risk of injury made playing ever more fun. Fifty mph on a coaster bike? Balls for fifty.
No stewed tomatoes? Sacrilege!
As an aside, for decades the Blue Plate Special on the Friday Pennsy RR from NY to Philly was grilled swordfish, macaroni and cheese, and stewed tomatoes. All aboard!
I always ordered them with extra potatoes. I left NJ in 1978 and never ate one again :-(
I had one sorta like that. Had a banana seat and a rounded tail guard. Otherwise identical.
And that price is ~$395 is 2017 money!
Thank you, Dad!
What was it about those yeast roll the cafeterias used to serve?
You can’t get anything as good as those any more!
Aaa WHAT?!?
Seems correct...
1960 dollars equals 2017 dollars;
50 bucks inflated to 300.
Okay?
Sorry...400!
Sheesh.
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