More Memories from the Fifties

Posted on 9 November 2010 | 0 Comments

Pete Martinasco discovered a neat web site that highlights the 303 Drive-in.  Now here's a fond memory if there ever was one.

http://newyorkdriveins.com/hudsonvalleyregion/303di/303di.php 

Someone wrote:  You can click on these pics and they enlarge...then you can click on a specific part of an already enlarged pic, and it will zoom in again....This DI was really cool...It was so big...huge screen, the "toll plaza" entance was impressive...and the snack bar was "deluxe"...it had all the bells and whistles- coke menus and signs everywhere- the pretzles were spinning, the soda came out of soda fountain style dispensers...burgers and dogs wrapped in aluminum foil..popcorn in brand name buckets....I miss that drive-in- it was one of a kind....

 

 

And here's another look back at our childhood that has circulated through our e-mails:

My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning.  My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter and I used to eat it raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in ice pack coolers, but I can't remember getting e.coli.

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then.

The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.

We all took gym, not PE...and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now. Flunking gym was not an option. I guess PE must be much harder than gym.

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself.

Speaking of school, we all said prayers and sang the national anthem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention. We must have had horribly damaged psyches.

What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.  Oh yeah... and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!

I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations.

We played 'king of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it didn't sting like iodine did) and then we got our butt spanked. Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.

We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either; because if we did we got our butt spanked there and then we got our butt spanked again when we got home.

I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop, just before he fell off. Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house. Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof. It was a neighbourhood run amuck.