| U High Class of 1958 Reunion Pages |
| Page 9 of 11 |
| Blast from the Past... (Nostalgia excerpts from friends' email) |
| From Tom Barger... I remember when my grandparents went down in the "cellar" to get their canned goods. Now it's the" basement" or "lower level", and nobody cans things anymore. I also recall going with my parents for a ride on the "hard road" on hot summer evenings; now it's the "highway", "interstate" or "freeway", and no one needs to do that these days to keep cool. Everyone has air conditioning. Speaking of that, do you remember when the only way to cool off in the summer was to go to the cellar, or the Irvin, Castle or Normal theatres, which were billed as "comfortably cool"? How about the non-power lawnmowers? I always had several lawns to mow, and they were bigger than most yards today. Whew! From Jim Stahly... Fender skirts! What a great blast from the past! Made me think of a car in a dress. Started me thinking about other words that quietly disappear from our language with hardly a notice, like "curb feelers" and "steering knobs". 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 point of drama that went with "emergency brake". I'm sad, too, that almost all the folks are gone who would call the accelerator the "foot feed". And remember chamber pots that fit under the bed, saving a middle-of-the-night trip to the outhouse..cookstoves...lard...garter belts...pants-stretchers to save ironing...Playboy magazine? Here's a phrase I heard all the time in my youth - "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 bag of candy. And how about "wall-to-wall"? In the 50's, it was a luxury to have "wall-to-wall" carpeting instead of just a rug on your hardwood floor. Today, everyone replaces their 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. And remember buying gas (under 20 cents/gallon) at Clark, where Burles Bennett pumped it for you? . |
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