Middle Aged Memories

Peregrinelady

http://youtu.be/7_ahJtyVuz8

She did talk! No wonder she was so loved. She sounds like your grandmother talking to you

Vslush

Thanks NM... just made my day to see her and Buffy together! I still have my doll. Her glasses are missing, the voice box is broken and one of her legs is nearly amputated. I nearly loved her to death, I guess!

NativeMainer

You are all welcome!

illimae

Had a Brain MRI on Monday and with all the odd tapping and banging noises, I imagined these little peg people working a construction site with hammers and pick axes (strange considering they have no arms, lol).

MinusTwo

Oh I remember those. Weren't they maybe Fischer Price or Playskool?

NativeMainer

Illi--sounds like a good way to deal with the noises! But funny that they have no arms.

illimae

yes, minus, Fisher price. Also, good brain mri, nothing new and only one tiny remnant from the previous gamma radiation in April.

MinusTwo

Oops - I just asked the MRI results question on the dinner thread. Great to hear good news.

Loral

I still have this stuff.........

Meow13

If I do it is in my shed with the brios. No grandchildren yet.

elimar86861

They weren't Little People, and they were nowhere near sounding like an MRI, but after reading the posts, my mind went to these...

Loral

Funny, I don't remember them..and I hate MRI's

elimar86861

These candles in The 70's. Had a very pretty one that it took me about 10 years to finally put a match to it.

Vslush

A friend of my mom had one of those. Looked like ribbon candy to me, and I sooo wanted to take a bite!

NativeMainer

I remember those candles! I had one that I never lit, but it eventually melted, I forget exactly how it happened. I wished I'd burned it instead.

elimar86861

I doubt any of us had the real thing at home, but did your parents call your refrigerator "the icebox" because they had an actual icebox when growing up? (Antique iceboxes fetch a pretty penny these days.)

MinusTwo

My parents always referred to the fridge as the ice box, and I remember my grandmother who still had a real ice box when I was a kid.

NativeMainer

Elimar--my paternal grandmother always called the fridge the icebox. My Dad did, too, sometimes. He grew up with one.

dutchgirl6

My uncle owned a greenhouse business, and I remember going to the ice factory with him to pick up huge blocks of ice for his cooler. He switched to a walk in cooler with a compressor sometime in the mid sixties, but I can still see those big blocks.

elimar86861

It's that time o' year again...

I don't know about you, but we were not posh enough to have a real fireplace in my childhood home. Oh, my! What to do? How could Santa get in? Where would the stockings hang? Mom knew what to do...get a cardboard fireplace! Yep, we had one, and let me tell you it was not even fancy enough to have a cardboard chimney attached but I did not concern myself with those kind of details as a child! I also was not bothered when I discovered it was held together by those prongy paper fasteners. What I did like about it was that the fake flames had some cellophane on them so that they could glow when a light bulb was positioned behind them. In my childish imagination, I would warm my hands by those flames. Ah, the memories. So, here's pic of the one that looked like mine (and no, I am not the girl pictured.)

MinusTwo

Great memory. I had forgotten all about those cardboard fireplaces. My parents actually did have a fireplace that they burned to help heat the house. I remember huge lumps of coal that lasted all day then Mom banked the fire at night

elimar86861

Here's one more for the holidays. My mom was not that crafty, but years ago making a "gum drop tree" was a thing. I've seen modern ones that are washable, hygenic, molded plastic, but back in the day you would just find some likely twig from outdoors and jam some gum drops on the branches and, like the pic I found, simulate some snow around the base with a few cotton balls from the medicine cabinet. Good times.

MinusTwo

Anybody else have Swedish Angel Chimes growing up? (hmmm, the picture will not go through)

NativeMainer

Minus Two--is this what you are thinking of?

I remember these, but I never knew they had a particular name!

Elimar--amazing the things we used to do and still survived! Love the gum drop tree, so pretty.

MinusTwo

Yup - thanks NM.

Peregrinelady

Yes, ours looked different, but I remember when the candles were lit, it would spin. I loved it. Thanks for the memory.

elimar86861

Swedish Angel Chimes? Hmmm. I think I got mine at Pier One for a dollar or two. Made in China. Cute, tinkly little chimes as I recall.

elimar86861

I don't know why I got some "back-to-school" memories in January, but here is something that I had not thought of for many, many years. I was thinking of zippered pencil cases, and I had several of those. One red vinyl one even surviving into adulthood. BUT THEN I remembered the kind that we schoolkids coveted the most: The plastic Roll Top Pencil Case. THIS was highly desirable. Because the tops always broke quickly under actual schoolkid usage, these are now highly prized collectibles.

And the coolest thing to have in your pencil case was the multi-colored ink pen. The one below is huge, but the 4-color pens could easily fit.

If you were a more whimsical kid, you might have had the plastic pencil-shaped pouch, which was kind of cute.

and nothing said "back to school like your brand new eraser...

everybody had the Pink Pearl (originally made by Eberhard Faber, but I think Papermate makes them now,) but when I got a little older, my own fave was the pen/pencil combo eraser...

and when I got even older, of course I had the typewriter eraser. We'll never see the likes of these weird things again, as typewriters are now obsolete.

NativeMainer

I remember those slide top pencil cases!The 4 color pen takes me back to my early days in nursing, day shift wrote notes (by hand, charts were all paper) in blue or black, evening shift in green, night shift in red.And being old enough to "graduate" from the plain pink eraser to the pen/pencil combo cuz that meant you were allowed to write with a pen.And using a typewriter eraser in typing class in high school.

MinusTwo

Eli - thanks for the memories. I didn't have the hard slide top pencil case, but i had everything else. I actually still have and use a Pink Pearl. Those stupid typewriter erasers had a tendency to tear the paper - particularly the flimsy carbon sets. As far as I'm concerned - liquid paper was a miracle invention.