One of my neighbors posted this on Facebook:
We grew up in Sanford, Florida.
It was a time when just about everyone treated each other with respect.
We didn’t eat a lot of fast food because it was considered a treat, not a food group. We drank Kool-Aid made from water that came from our kitchen sink… no bottled water.
We ate bologna sandwiches, or even tuna (which was in a can not a pouch), PB&J & grilled cheese sandwiches, hot dogs, pot pies, and the occasional TV dinner. But mostly we had homemade meals consisting of meat, potatoes, vegetables, bread & butter, and homemade dessert.
We grew up during a time when we mowed lawns, pulled weeds, collected cans and bottles out of garbage cans (yuck), had paper routes, babysat, had a lemonade stand, and helped neighbors with chores to be able to earn our own money.
We went outside a lot to play games, ride bikes, roller skate, run with siblings and friends, play hide and seek, basketball, tag, over the line, football, dodge ball, kick the can, kickball, caught fireflies, caught worms, and we caught polliwogs in the creek, camped in the woods and even hunted!
We would ride our bikes for hours. We had to tell our parents where we were going, who we were going with, & what time we’d be back, as long as it was before dark.
Most often, we had to be close enough to home to hear our moms yelling to tell you it’s time to come home for dinner. When the street lights came on, it was time to be home.
We ate around the dinner table and talked to each other as a family. In school we said the Pledge of Allegiance, we stood for the National Anthem & listened to our teachers. After school, we came home and changed out of our school clothes, did homework and chores before going outside or having friends over.
We watched TV shows like Scooby-Doo,Sanford and Son, Brady Bunch, The Flintstones, andThe Lawrence Welk show, and the Saturday mornings we got up to eat Trix, Capt crunch, or frutty pebbles and watch our favorite cartoons.
We sat around and told scary stories with the family and neighborhood kids.
We LEARNED from our moms instead of disrespecting them and treating them as if they knew absolutely nothing. What they said was LAW!! And you had better know it!!!
We watched what we said around our elders because we knew if we DISRESPECTED any grown-up we would get our behinds whipped, it wasn’t called abuse, it was called discipline!
We held doors, carried groceries and gave up our seat for an older person without being asked.
We didn’t hear curse words on the radio in songs or on TV, and if you cursed and got caught, you had a bar of soap stuck in your mouth and had to stand in the corner. “Please” and “Thank you” were part of our daily vocabulary!Re-post if you’re thankful for your childhood and will never forget where you came from, and the time you grew up! Wouldn’t it be nice if it were possible to get back to this way of life?
