The Good Old Days

On By MarquessaIn Blog

Do you remember the good old days when:

  • a letter from a friend or a monthly magazine in the mail was one of the highlights of your day;
  • your elementary school participated in “penpal” programs with other schools in far away exotic lands;
  • you looked forward to getting a loot bag at a friend’s birthday party;
  • stores and malls closed at 5PM and nothing was open on Sundays;
  • dinner meant eating as a family, homemade food, fresh and hot off the stove because your mother would only heat up the pot once;
  • you had to wait an entire summer to get the answer to the cliffhanger of a tv show (à la “Who Shot JR?”);
  • the only way to record your favorite song was to leave your tape recorder next to the radio and race to press the record button;
  • dropping the needle on a 45 album was the only way to re-listen to your favorite part of a song;
  • fun on a Saturday was a matinee movie at the cinema with snacks “sneaked in” or breaking out Monopoly, Scrabble or a deck of cards around the kitchen table;
  • squabbling over the big clunky channel box (pre-remote days) was normal because there was only one tv in the entire house;
  • librarians helped bookworms like us to sort through library index cards to find just the right books for a project;
  • you only got your messages at the end of the day, after school, on the big tape recorder-like machine attached to the landline telephone;
  • taking “real” photos meant waiting to finish an entire “roll” of film before taking it to the store to be developed and waiting an entire week to get them back – you could easily have two birthdays and Christmas on the same roll;
  • getting your mother to buy a certain cereal had nothing to do with its taste but everything to do with the Smurf toy, Jungle Book figurine that you could hang off a cup or the secret ink detective pen at the bottom of the box.

The older folks out there know what I’m talking about…

It sounds corny but I wouldn’t trade in those sweet, simpler memories of the old days.

What could you add to this list of sentimental nostalgia? Feel free to add as many as you want in the comments box.

All Rights Reserved ©2017 Marquessa Matthews

39 thoughts on “The Good Old Days”

  2. I’d say you covered that lot pretty well. We were more naive, more innocent compared to today’s children and a clip round the ear by the village bobby probably meant the same at home.
    xxx Massive Hugs xxx

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  3. You’ve just reminded me I had a pen pal from India called Rajesh Malhotra! 😂 I’d quite forgotten about him. We must be getting older… The other best thing was endless summer holidays on a Greek island, barefoot and just idling with other kids. 🇬🇷

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  4. Alex H.

    I just recently found two shoe boxes full of letters I received from penpals from all over the world. It was both hilarious and cringeworthy to read some of them (I was a big fan of the Backstreet Boys for a while ca. 1994 and so were my penpals, to give you an idea of what those letters were about…).

    I am still shooting film on those old analog cameras today though. It’s just so much more fun, you have to put more effort into taking pictures, and the process of handing the films over to a lab and waiting for the results is like a mini-Christmas for me every time. This is one thing from my 90s youth that will never get old.

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      1. Alex H.

        I used to have them developed at a specialist photo lab when I lived in Liverpool. Now I live in the countryside and there’s no labs around so I had to give them to the local drug store, they have a big central lab for photo prints and other merchandise…it doesn’t feel quite the same and it was more expensive but they are still able to develop film at least.

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  5. Great trip down memory lane! I remember a lot of things on your list, and miss the eating as a family all together…no TV just at the table. For me it’s like this happens mainly at Christmas. I’d love if this was a norm. That said, my family and I may try this, I may insist on Sunday no TV all at the table. Thank you for the memories.😊

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  7. Love this post, I had a smile as I was reading and think of those memories. I love telling my children about some of those things and seeing that look of fascination. However, I sometimes get the “Mom did they have that when you growing up?” question for things like stoplights or car or something that really isn’t past my childhood years. Sometimes I think they think I was born in the Stone Age! Haha. Anyway, great post.

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    1. You are like wine…getting better with time! I didn’t do much of the record store shopping. With older siblings, most of my faves were bought by them and I’d play their records when they weren’t around. 😆

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  10. Pingback: Lessons from The Good Old Days #nostalgia #thegoodolddays | Simply Marquessa

  11. Family is always the first thing which floods my mind when reminiscing about the ‘good old days’ because we did everything as a family. We were never dropped off or sent anywhere. Our parents took us – both of them. Well, that was until most of us were older with part-time jobs and would “BRIBE” mother to get daddy to take her to dinner and/or the movies so we could have some ‘free time.’ LOL!

    The family meals resonate with me. It was true family time and not only was anyone allowed to miss it, but no one would even dream of not being there. Meals were eaten in the dining room and there was NO TV, radio, or phone. (The phone was on the wall in the kitchen and do NOT get caught stretching it into the dining room! LMAO!)

    I raised my children the same way, and even as technology crept into our lives, bringing devices into the dining room was the fastest way to lose them! LOL! #MeanMom

    I miss carnivals, fairs, and circuses with a small town flair.

    I miss homemade ice cream in the back yard after chasing fireflies.

    I miss playing Twister.

    I miss the back-to-school shuffle – hair dresser, Buster Brown for shoes, Sears for school clothes, and Kmart for school supplies.

    I miss impatiently waiting for mother to inspect our chores so we could get outside to play because…bike races! LOL!

    Thanks for the trip down memory lane! 😉

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    1. So much to say to this…absolutely right about not having “free time”! And stretching the phone into another room? Never ’cause you couldn’t have that kind of privacy. 😶 And we loved my mother’s ice cream machine where you had to add ice and salt and everyone took their 100 turns at cranking the arm to get fresh homemade ice cream! And Twister? Mine is still at my parents place!😊

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  12. Ah.. nostalgia. I hope to raise my kids this way- with a balance of technological savviness and good, old-fashioned playtime. We played on Nintendo or watched tv some afternoons after school when it was too hot or wet or cold and played in the yard, skateboarded in the driveway or walked to play at the park until sundown on better days. It seemed so simple. I miss it.

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