Remember when

Remember collecting Coke bottle caps with pro football players names inside. You glued them to a sheet of paper you got from the local bottling company. When you filled it up you took it back to the local bottling co. for prizes. I remember I got a football. I would go to the gas station where my parents bought gas and got them to give me all the caps from the Coke machine to fill up my sheet.

 

Also buying 2 dollars worth of gas to ride around.

 

Yikes’

 

Pepsi had one like that. Every bottle cap had a letter under it. If you collected enough caps to spell “Pepsi Challenge” you won $500. Sounds simple enough, but one of the letters was a rare find. They didn’t make very many of that particular letter. I can’t recall which letter it was.

The contest originated because of what they called “ The Pepsi Challenge”, on TV. They would blindfold people on TV and challenge them to take a taste of Pepsi and a taste of a competitor’s cola. They would then ask which one was which? Of course if you liked the competition’s cola more, you never made it to TV. LOL

 

My dad still has the same dishwasher that was in his house when I was born near 43 years ago.

 

Same here... we call her mom.

 

I had one of those with the holster and so did my little sister (which means that I had two.) The problem was the holsters were both right handed, and at eight years old I didn’t know what to do about that. (Ironically my little sister was left-handed.)

But I knew how to blast off both rolls at the same time, like some drunken pistolero.

About that time we blew up a plastic cap rocket from the 7-Eleven, and as a result we figured out how to build our own cap rockets and worse devices.

The cowboy pistols were forgotten then, & before I was 12 they were donated to some church raffle.

 

I never had the Johnny Eagle but I had the Johnny Reb Civil War canon which shot big plastic balls out of a spring loaded chamber. I think it only came with three balls and a ramrod for loading.

It was just enough power to knock your mom’s knickknacks off the shelf.

 

Stuffing a transistor radio in the pillow case so Mom wouldn’t know, because you were supposed to be asleep and not listening to some late night show.

9 volt batteries were an expensive commodity and wore out fast.

Because you had the volume turned as low as it would go and your ear was right on top of the speaker, that battery would last for ever.

The upshot was my mom asked me if I did not like the radio, because she never heard me play it. I told her it had a dead battery and she got me a new one.

When I became a paperboy, I bought a larger 6 V radio that took four “c” cells. That thing ATE batteries.

I remember taking the “dead” batteries which people would throw out, and I would just keep soldering batteries onto a pile until I had enough voltage.

Sometimes a used battery was only 1/2 volt, but adding it increased the volume. I could have a pile with nine batteries on my windowsill, that was only putting out 5.4 v but that was enough to run the radio.

 

Remember coke bottles in green glass?

Remember watching Fat Albert, Batman, Capt Caveman, HR Puff N Stuff, The Banana Splits, etc

 

I remember those shows because my children watched them. The Banana Splits didn’t last very long but the costumes were great and I love the little buggies.

I remember watching Batman with Adam West when it first came out. I was 11 and I thought it was disappointingly childish. AND Everybody had a better costume than Adam West!

Fat Albert was just a Cosby sketch on a phonograph record when I was young.

 

Remember having your mom freak out when you told her that the pet mouse, frog, snake, lizard, Crawdad, toad, bird, big spider, or whatever that you were keeping in a cage, got loose inside the house?

 

I would have dropped you off at the fire dept for that!

 

Johhny Seven, OMA!

Usually a stick would do. One kid in the neighbourhood would rate one of these. He usually died first so his OMA was up for grabs.

 

That year in Lexington, KY was 1968.

 

I remember green glass but...I was too old for the shows when they were on.

 

LOL!!!

 

My friend says his Sicilian mother stood 4 foot 9 and that she wouldn't whack his ass with the spoon. That was too easy. She'd go for the knees.

 

I never got The Spoon! That was a Maloney thing, my best friend's family up the street. Never forget riding my bike by the house and out from the garage comes Jay, running at full speed with Mom trailing behind with a mighty spoon. She was still in her housecoat and socks. The pursuit went all the way down our street where he eventually collapsed in fear on a neighbor's lawn and was then beaten about the head and neck with The Spoon and when that was over, he was pulled by the ear and marched all the back to the house squealing like a stuck pig. All of us friends watched in amazement from the seats of Stingrays. We didn't see Jay for a day or 2. I think we were ALL on our best behavior for a while after that knowing it could have been any one of us!

We had the TrailBlazer Paddle. A designated ass-slappin' tool with a label of a gunfighter on it. It was kept in the broom closet. A closet that had the most distinct sound when opened. If we were in trouble and that door was opened, you knew you were dead meat. As we got older, it meant grab a magazine or something to shove in your pants before Mom got to the room. That didn't always pan out well.