Does anyone remember? I do. Share your memories..

[etcallhome]

Princess Pine is used for decorations and wreaths, along with balsam fir tips. Both grow all over- everyone makes and sells wreaths. People are always coming by and asking if they can tip on your land.View attachment 282476

I remember going with my parents , aunts, uncles and some cousins ,near Davis-Elkins ,WV and picking Princess Pine. After being there all day and loading the back of Dads truck and several other vehicles. We would make 5 maybe 10 trips a year to pick the Princess Pine one stem or if lucky a handful at a time..After we got home ,taking the yellow tips or cones off the pine. Then dad and others would wind thin metal wire around the stems making them into a long rope. Then Dad and others would wrap the rope of pine around a quart jar to make it into a wreath. You could remove the wire from the wreath and hang rope around your front door or use a wreath thinking they 15-18 ' long. After the first year between dad and my uncles they make a wrapping tool you would sit on a bench , turn a handle as you placed pine on a seat one piece at a time and the wire would wrap around the stems making a rope. This started about this time of year ,would keep the pine damp until time to sell ,sometime after Thanksgiving. Someone came up with a green dye and each wreath would be put in a wash tub or 55 gal drum for a few min. to give all the color plus they would last longer. One or two years we took the Princess Pine made into wreaths to Columbus ,Ohio in Dads 58 Chevy wagon. I'm thinking we took 500 wreaths and sold everyone. On the way home we stopped at a new fast service rest ,,early McD's .
As for running cedar ,we called it running pine it grew on a long vine or rope. We would still take each stem off and then make it into a long rope. People didn't like running pine in a wreath compared to the Princess Pine.
Thanks for the memories....

 

[Bob77064]

We had a big family so we had a big garden too. One of the things we grew were strawberries. Some mornings, breakfast was biscuits or pancakes smothered with hot strawberry sauce. :licking:

We ate lots of good food like cornbread and milk, cooked cabbage, collard greens, creases, creamed potatoes or my favorite: potato soup and cornbread.

After Thanksgiving dinner (which was the noon meal) tradition was that we would all wonder the land to find and mark the Christmas tree. That was a pretty smart tradition, since Thanksgiving dinner will throw you into a near coma unless you take a walk or something. Sometimes we'd find a pine that would make a good Christmas tree, but usually it would be a cedar. We had some pretty cedar trees.

The Christmas decorations consisted only of that tree decorated, and mantle decorations which consisted of an arrangements of holly, long needle pine, and "running cedar." I wish I had a picture, but the mantle had an old clock in the middle, a red candle on each side of the clock, and the holly/pine/running cedar arrangement.

The clock had been in our family since new, and it chimed the hour every hour, so the chime had to be pretty pleasant for us to put up with that thing chiming 12 times at midnight, etc.

View attachment 282139

Two of my siblings have obtained identical clocks because they missed hearing the chime.

For those who may have never seen it, here is what running cedar looks like:
View attachment 282140

For Christmas, our folks would try to get us a present of some sort, but if they asked me what I wanted, I never knew, so I'd usually say "nothing." Truth be told, when the "Wish Book" arrived each year, I'd wear that thing out looking at it...I'd look at every item a boy would be interested in, and read the description entirely...multiple times. By the time Christmas came, I had already had most of the fun that was possible just reading the "Wish book." (I used to love it when the big book came too.) I knew even as a kid what I know now: I have way more fun looking and imagining and wondering than I ever have had possessing the actual item. Looking at the catalog as much as I did, if I truly wanted something enough to justify my folks spending their hard earned money on it, I would have been able to decide what I wanted. If the Wish Book didn't arrive in the mail free each year, the answer to their question would have been really easy: I want a Wish Book!

That is a fine clock.

 

[etcallhome]

Seeing and holding my first daughter was great, but work called . Second daughter came along, while working a flood in the southern part of the state. Made it home by the way of a 1 or 2 star general helicopter. But God needed her in Heaven more than we did here on earth. Our 3rd daughter came along but again worked called 2hrs after she was born .Made it home from training same day she came home from hospital.
Years later our Grandaughter came along in the middle of the night ,called work told them I would see them maybe in a day or two. The biggest memory is our first Grandson ,10 weeks early 2# 10oz . doing fine now. God didn't need him in heaven for now but touch and go for mos. never held him till he came home from the hosp on Fathers Day ........ What a great feeling !!(called work told them I might see them in a wk or a mo. and sure when I would be at work.) After seeing him grow to almost 7# he came home . Then our next joy is the second Grandson but like brother ,came early ,at least he was 4# 5 oz. .Again called work and told them I would see them in maybe a week or 2.He came home a week after Fathers Day .
When we were young the biggest things in life come along and we can't take time to see all the things God has given us till later in life.
All doing great and a being spoiled by Pappy !!! But now I don't need to call work .

 

[toppop52]

For Christmas, our folks would try to get us a present of some sort, but if they asked me what I wanted, I never knew, so I'd usually say "nothing." Truth be told, when the "Wish Book" arrived each year, I'd wear that thing out looking at it...I'd look at every item a boy would be interested in, and read the description entirely...multiple times. By the time Christmas came, I had already had most of the fun that was possible just reading the "Wish book." (I used to love it when the big book came too.) I knew even as a kid what I know now: I have way more fun looking and imagining and wondering than I ever have had possessing the actual item. Looking at the catalog as much as I did, if I truly wanted something enough to justify my folks spending their hard earned money on it, I would have been able to decide what I wanted. If the Wish Book didn't arrive in the mail free each year, the answer to their question would have been really easy: I want a Wish Book!

As a child in northeastern NC, I remember dreaming that I could reach in and pull the Shooting Shell Fanner .50, holster and all, out og the Sears Catalog! The wonders of a child.....

 

[2LaneCruzer]

As a child in northeastern NC, I remember dreaming that I could reach in and pull the Shooting Shell Fanner .50, holster and all, out og the Sears Catalog! The wonders of a child.....

My wish was for the wind-up bulldozer. It had rubber tracks and cleats and a lithographed engine and a driver and would climb over rocks and books...and stuff! I remember when if finally came in the mail. What a day. I think it cost $1.50.

 

[creekbend]

My wish was for the wind-up bulldozer. It had rubber tracks and cleats and a lithographed engine and a driver and would climb over rocks and books...and stuff! I remember when if finally came in the mail. What a day. I think it cost $1.50.

We usually had eggs with bacon or sausage for breakfast. At other times, our Mother would fix oatmeal or Cream of Wheat. Although money was tight, sometimes Mom would buy store bought cereal. I remember getting a "Plastic Submarine" in one of the cereal boxes once. By putting baking soda in it, it would run above and below the water. I really love that little submarine.

 

[toppop52]

We usually had eggs with bacon or sausage for breakfast. At other times, our Mother would fix oatmeal or Cream of Wheat. Although money was tight, sometimes Mom would buy store bought cereal. I remember getting a "Plastic Submarine" in one of the cereal boxes once. By putting baking soda in it, it would run above and below the water. I really love that little submarine.

I had one, came out of a box of cereal as well. It would submerge until the baking powder bubble formed then it would surface and the bubble would escape and it would submerge again. You could rub a bar of soap on the stern it would travel across the water until the soap was gone.

 

[tcreeley]

I was five and we had been living overseas. My brother, sister and myself were fluent in Mallorquin and just relearning English. My brother told us we could not speak it anymore and we forgot it. When we moved into our house in Conn. I saw my first phone. I still remember the number -1413. There was a wooden cabinet with swinging doors and a roundish TV inside. Our farm neighbors down the road had a color TV and we'd go over sometimes- play in their dusty white chicken coops in the field, and watch the hay conveyor lifting up the loose hay off the field and dumping it into a trailer.
One time my brother and I noticed the TV in our house was unplugged and we plugged it in. The TV worked! It wasn't until after college and married with our own kids that we owned our first color TV. As a kid, when a tube burnt out- it might be 6 months or a year or two before someone came to the house to fix it.
That winter in Conn. I saw my first snowstorm, and experienced my first ice storm. You could hear the tree limbs cracking and falling, occasionally a tree went as well. We'd had a hailstorm once in Majorca -the size of eggs and a couple of inches but it was gone soon.
We moved a year later to a big old farmhouse/guesthouse and the 150 year old barn to go with it. A while after we drifted into dairy farming when my divorced mother married the chimney sweep who came to do the chimney. It was a crazy life full of contradictions, but it settled into a routine- barn cleaning and the stalls on the weekend, hay bales in the summer, corn silage in the fall, private school during the week. My stepfather added "& Sons" to his name on the side of the GMC when my brother graduated from highschool. Instead my brother left for college and never came back -heading on to his graduate work.
By the time I was graduating- the farm was gone, stepfather too, and the next chapter was underway.
I have the fewest memories from the stable periods when everything blends and the sharpest from when things were uneasy and changing.
...there was that cereal box camera that squirted water out of the lense when you squeezed it!

 

[dodge man]

How about playing Kick the Can on a hot summer night.

 

[EE_Bota]

How about playing Kick the Can on a hot summer night.

On hot summer nights, we'd go out and monitor bat and lightning bug activity. We kids used to like to try to throw pebbles into the air to get the bats to follow them toward us so we could use a fishing rod (sometimes) to knock one down for inspection. Most of the time, it didn't actually seem to harm to bat since the tip of the rod was very light. Left alone on the ground, they'd take off again. It was almost like they were playing possum.

We'd end up watching the stars before going back in, just to make sure they are all present and accounted for.

Nothing was more interesting on TV when it was time to go out, but this got to be competition...half the time, I'd come back in briefly to see if indoors was more interesting than outdoors. Either way, the Smothers Brothers theme marked the earliest you could go out and see all three (bugs,bats, and stars.)

The Smothers Brothers - My Old Man - YouTube

The Who on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour 1967 (High Quality).mpg - YouTube

Beatles 'Revolution" live for The Smothers Brothers Show 1968 - YouTube

Hey Jude The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour Us Tv - YouTube

Harry Nilsson On The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour 1960s - YouTube

Mama Cass Elliott - Dream A Little Dream Live - YouTube