WHAT WAS COOL WHEN YOU WERE YOUNG?

I can remember way back when they came out with plaid clothing but at first it was worn by farmers. When I was a young girl my parents were raising 6 children I being the oldest. Money was tight for a family of that size Daddy was the only who worked in the family and mom's stayed home taking care of the children and the home and did the cooking, sewing and gardening.

My Mom was raised in an orphanage and she lacked a lot of those skills there was no one to teach her how to cook, sew, gardening but she was a very good housekeeper that was about the only an orphanage taught them. There wash no love no toys to speak of just a roof over your head you wore uniforms. You hair was all cut the same very short to protect from head lice. Life was just very uniform and when you think about this it makes you think how lucky you are or maybe the importance of adopting.

As I grew up these same ideas came with my Mom. I can remember when I was 10yrs old she went down to Montgomery Wards and took all 4 of us girls that Saturday morning to buy school clothes. On them racks was plaid dresses yes plaid dresses we each got 2 brand new dresses in plaid she told us money was short and the dresses would be exactly what she could handle because we could wear them more than once a week without laundrying them they would hide the dirt. I hated those dress we were all dressed a like. I never voiced my opinon to my mom though I cherished her and still do to this day. We have talked about those dresses since then and I told her how us girls felt in those dresses and she told us she didn't realize it at the time but she was acting out her childhood and she guessed she was dressing us in a manner that was of the same without ever realizing this. UNIFORMS. To this day I totally hate plaid and I wouldn't care if they were or ever become the coolest thing to be wearing or if it made you so cool you just had to have one.

As I got older and could earn my own money it was important being a young girl and being cool in school to be excepted by others or being popular and clothes had a lot to do with and it's still that way today.

How about the HOTPANTS, weren't they coolest thing you ever had. I had a hotpant suit that was white on top red around the middle and dark navy blue on the bottom and it zipped up the front. It hugged your figure and showed off every curve, that was hot.

How about the BELL BOTTOM PANTS the kids think they have something on us today with bell bottoms well when we were young the bigger the bell bottom the cooler you were in fact we took material pices of flowers and sewed them in tie make them bigger, and that was cool. And the cotton shirt with the buttons down the front you brought the tails around to tie to show off your belly, not your belly button though that wasn't allowed.

HIP HUGGERS woops the belly button appeared in this darling outfit and then you learned to swing those hips to when you walked.

MINI SKIRT my Dad put the breaks on this one I couldn't have a mini skirt but my mom had one and wore it out with Dad on seeral occasions little did he know that the minute we were on the bus or out of his sight the skirt we would have on we would roll it up around the waist to get the same look. This one you din't dare bend over in zI remember learning how to stoop very carefully but the boys would alwasy watch hopeing they would catch a glimps of something.

ANGORA SWEATER couldn't never figure what was so hot about this one I always itched and so did everybody else but you just had to have one and pink angora was the coolest. We also bought angora hair strand to wrap around a boys classring to make it fit that was cool too.

And today they dress sloppy or as little on as possible, everything is baggy the other day I saw a teenage girl with knee knockers on with a pink short skirt over that dirty tennis shoes untied, a sweater wrapped around her butt and some see thru cotton shirt that only covered her breast, with her belly hanging over none of this matched, her hair was pulled off the one side high on her head in a pony tail and she was very much overweight. But she had all kinds of girls with her and others hollering out her name. I must say most of them were dressed this way. And the boys with their pants down below their waist with boxer shorts hanging out the back side of their pants stepping on their pant legs all chewed up. Besieds all the fac piercing why coverup soemthing so pretty on a girl or look so hard core on a guy. I ran into one the other day and he had piercing over both eye brows, all around his mouth, in his nose on both sides, his ears and he wass good looking I walked by him and I just couldn't help myself I said Hello stud to him. He just tipped his head and smiled. I think they lack attention from somewhere and thats to bad. If they only knew what they were going to look like when they turn 30, 40, 50, 60 with all that piercing.

MEMORIES

This'll bring back some memories.
I came across this phrase yesterday "FENDER SKIRTS".














A term I haven't heard in a long time and thinking about "fender skirts" started me thinking about other words that quietly disappear from our language with hardly a notice like "curb feelers"













And "steering knobs." (AKA) suicide knob













Since I'd been thinking of cars, my mind naturally went that direction first.
Any kids will probably have to find some elderly person over 50 to explain some of these terms to you. Remember "Continental kits?"
They were rear bumper extenders and spare tire covers that were supposed to make any car as cool as a Lincoln Continental.














When did we quit calling them "emergency brakes?"
At some point "parking brake" became the proper term. But I miss the hint of drama that went with "emergency brake."

















I'm sad, too, that almost all the old folks are gone who would call the accelerator the "foot feed."

Didn't you ever wait at the street for your daddy to come home, so you could ride the "running board" up to the house?

Here's a phrase I heard all the time in my youth but never anymore - "store-bought." Of course, just about everything is store-bought these days. But once it was bragging material to have a store-bought dress or a store-bought bag of candy.

"Coast to coast" is a phrase that once held all sorts of excitement and now means almost nothing. Now we take the term "world wide" for granted This floors me.

On a smaller scale, "wall-to-wall" was once a magical term in our homes. In the '50s, everyone covered his or her hardwood floors with, wow, wall-to-wall carpeting! Today, everyone replaces their wall-to-wall carpeting with hardwood floors. Go figure.


When's the last time you heard the quaint phrase "in a family way?" It's hard to imagine that the word "pregnant" was once considered a little too graphic, a little too clinical for use in polite company So we had all that talk about stork visits and "being in a family way" or simply"expecting."

Apparently "brassiere" is a word no longer in usage. I said it the other day and my daughter cracked up. I guess it's just "bra" now "Unmentionables" probably wouldn't be understood at all.

I always loved going to the "picture show," but I considered "movie" an affectation.

Most of these words go back to the '50s, but here's a pure-'60s word I came across the other day - "rat fink." Ooh, what a nasty put-down!

Here's a word I miss - "percolator." That was just a fun word to say. And what was it replaced with? "Coffee maker." How dull. Mr. Coffee, I blame you for this.

I miss those made-up marketing words that were meant to sound so modern and now sound so retro. Words like "DynaFlow" and "Electrolux." Introducing the 1963 Admiral TV, now with "SpectraVision!"

Food for thought - Was there a telethon that wiped out lumbago? Nobody complains of that anymore. Maybe that's what castor oil cured, because I never hear mothers threatening kids with castor oil anymore.

Some words aren't gone, but are definitely on the endangered list. The one that grieves me most "supper." Now everybody says "dinner." Save a great word. Invite someone to supper. Discuss fender skirts.

I thought some of us of a "certain age" would remember most of these.

Just for fun, Pass it along to others of "a certain age"!

See how much the children of today know about the culture of the yesterday.

And here's a few more you might mention phonograph, 78 record, the record player, 45's, or album's, how about the eight track player, cassettes, typer writer, word proscessor, how much can we say about canning is it done anymore?

Learning how to conserve is in the past we seem to make it then spend it never worry about the future but I myself do not feel our economy is very stable to take all this so lightly.