Yesterday when we were young....

Many mini-memories of growing up the Hoosier Way

If you grew up in a small town in Indiana....when the 20th century was still not that old....when you still had to stoke the furnace,,,..when Howdy Doody was king of TV...and when it was a thrill to get to clean the erasers at school, the following might jog a few memory cells.  

The tiny Crosley car.....home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers.....party lines.....newsreels before the feature movies.....Butch wax.....Gene Allison (Channel 8).....telephone numbers with a word prefix (REdfield 1234).....peashooters.....S & H Green Stamps.....blue flashbulbs.....Beanie & Cecil.....roller skate keys.....Studebakers.....Debby Drake.....skywriting.....washtub wringers.....Abe Martin.....running boards.....fender skirts.....Nehi soft drinks.....Spin and Marty.....church pew fans.....Halo shampoo (“Halo, everybody, Halo!“).....dances at the Whiteland Barn.....Captain Midnight.....Arvin radios.....Jack Armstrong, the All-American boy.....Huffy Roadmaster bicycles.....fountain pens..... Hopalong Cassidy.....Omar bread.....Mother May I.....Wire recorders.....Bullet, the wonder dog.....Terri Lee dolls......Winky-Dink.....Forever Yours candy bars.....Miss Francis and Ding-Dong School.....Tom Terrific.....nickel hamburgers.....Mr. Keen, Tracer of  Lost Persons......Froggy the Gremlin.....ration Stamps.....McCrory Dime Stores.....Henry J automobiles.....Tee-Pee restaurant.....kick the can.....Ipana toothpaste.....Gilbert Forbes (Channel 6).....coonskin caps.....the McGuire sisters.....May poles.....Wake-Up service stations.....sleeping on the porch on summer nights.....Easy Gwynn (WIBC).....candy cigarettes.....P F Flyers.....Sky King.....45 r.p.m. records.....roller skate keys....Erector sets.....tableside juke boxes.....waxed Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside.....mimeograph paper.....Lum and Abner (at the Jot ’em Down Store).....DeSoto automobiles.....paper and comb kazoos.....Howdy Doody.....bicycle streamers.....Ed Clark Used Cars (The King Don’t Care).....reel-to-reel tape recorders.....Arthur Godfrey.....Cloverine salve.....dish night at the movies.....Cowboy Bob and Janie.....pedal pushers.....poodle skirts.....Weatherman David Letterman (Channel 13).....eating lunch at Woolworth’s.....angel hair.....sitting on the curb.....Tinker Toys.....television test patterns.....My Friend Flicka.....dime store candy counters.....pulling out the choke....Spike Jones and the City Slickers.....the ice man.....Country Cousin Chickie.....Tele-Test Quiz.....Amos & Andy.....Teaberry chewing gum.....Fibber McGee and Molly (“Don‘t open that closet, McGee!”).....the Claypool Hotel.....hula hoops.....crystal sets.....inkwells.....Nash Ramblers.....Atwater Kent radios.....Morris Plan.....cloakrooms.....tourist cabins.....and Riverside Amusement Park.

Can you remember a time when...

On a hot summer night, the best way for the family to cool off was to pile into the car and “take a ride”?

You wore a cowboy hat and had your picture taken sitting on the photographer‘s pony?

You made a sandwich with Karo syrup?

Catching lightning bugs was the main entertainment for the evening?

“Oly-oly-oxen free!” made perfect sense?

You painted pictures on store windows for Halloween?

Spinning around, getting dizzy, and falling down was more fun than any thrill ride?

You sat on the fender to watch a movie at the Greenwood Drive-In Theater?

Any bike became a motorcycle with a few baseball cards in the spokes?

Your dad blew cigar smoke into your ear to cure an earache?

Decisions were made by going “eeny-meeny-miney-moe”?

Fellow travelers, If you can remember most of these, then you have lived!