Remembering the Good Old Days

Happy Sunday friends.

Welcome to Sunday Stealing. Here we will steal all types of questions from every corner of the blogosphere. Our promise to you is that we will work hard to find the most interesting and intelligent questions. Cheers to all of us thieves!

We're going into the new year by looking back. Randy at GeneaMusings encourages us to reminisce. 

When I Was Young

1. Tell us about a time when your family got a newfangled invention (your first air conditioner, color TV, VCR, microwave, computer, etc.).

My father bought a big air conditioner  and put it in one of the dining room windows. Before that we just had a big attic fan and a fan in my grandmother's room window to draw the air upstairs.  I don't remember details at all.

2. Is there a particular song that sparks a childhood memory?  

There are many.  

Chanson D'amour and Petite Fleur  remind me of my mother. 

3. What is something an older family member taught you to do?         My grandfather taught me a love for watching the trains.  We were always at the train station watching them come and go.

My grandmother taught me how to make a daisy chain and play a comb and tissue paper.  She also taught me to be polite by her example.  

4. Back in the day, what name brands would we have found in your family's kitchen?

In my mind's eye I am scanning the butler's pantry and the "ice box" as we all called it then, for names.

Del Monte Ketchup back when it was still made with Pineapple vinegar!  

A&P's 8 O'clock coffee. They made 8 oclock, 4 oclock and bokar coffees.

My-T-Fine butterscotch and chocolate pudding.

Rexall brand Mercurochrome in the kitchen drawer.

Philadelphia Cream Cheese and Laughing Cow cheese wedges.

Ideal Farms milk delivered to the house.  

Butter delivered in a crock from Lambrects Dairy also delivered to the house.
Del Monte stewed tomatoes in a can along with other canned veggies.

Eggs from the local farm.. home delivery too

Charles Chips home delivery potato chips in a big can

Minute Maid Frozen Orange juice

Aunt Jemima pancake mix

Milk puncture lid

Gold Medal Flour

Pet Evaporated Milk which my grandmother used in her coffee.

She even had a special metal top that punctured the can and then served as a lid for it.

5. As a child, did you collect anything (rocks, shells, stickers, etc.)?

I  really didn't collect things, but when I would go to Stangl's Pottery in Flemington, NJ my mother would buy me tiny glazed pottery animals I really liked... a tiny bear one time, a fawn, a teeny little mouse with a long tail, and a few others.   My father built me a "whatnot" cabinet by taking a beautiful wood frame off a mirror and building a box back for it, lining it with the mirrow and putting glass shelves in it.  It hung on the living room wall to showcase my tiny animals. I still have most of those tiny little animals in my jewel box.  

Each time we went to Stangl's she bought me something... cat's eye marbles, the animals, a cup for tea  and the last time we went she told me to pick a china pattern I liked and bought me a set for my future  hope chest even though I was still in elementary school.

That was also the time we went with my aunt who was nuts about the Meadows sisters, Jane and Audrey. 

 Well, that day they were both there shopping and my mother warned me to say nothing to my aunt the die hard fan.

  But, of course, I did tell my aunt who immediately went into hyper drive running straight for them yelling.  "Jane and Audrey Meadows!!!" over and over again as she ran toward them giggling and screaming like a school girl.

I hid under a display table when I realized I had released the Kraken!   She was like a bullet headed right for them.  I was horrified and my mother shot me looks of "what have you done!!".  

 My aunt (married to my mother's brother) threw herself into them but they were just so lovely to her and Jane Meadows (married to Steve Allen and star of the Honeymooners) came over to get me out from under the table.  She had seen what transpired and was sympathetic.   She assured my mother it was fine  and she could not have been sweeter to me, as was her sister Audrey (That Touch of Mink and 20 other movies!).  My aunt, oblivious to the chaos came home with their autographs. 

Jane Meadows probably saved my life that day!