You can drink from the garden hose and live to tell about it
By Rick Fairless
Dear 1960's, I haven’t seen you in so many years, and I can’t tell you how much I miss you.
You were the best decade of my life! In the 1960's, America was not in such a hurry nor was it full of mean, ugly people like it is today (Hi, Shope). I consider myself very lucky to have grown up during the 1960s. Even though I grew up in
the Dallas suburb of Irving, it was a small town environment, or at least we thought it was.
My brother, Randy, is 11 months younger than I am and we have been best friends all our lives. Ma used to dress us alike when we were kids. Life was awesome. I got up super early every morning, and the first thing I did was wake my brother up, too. We would go straight to the kitchen for a bowl of cereal. We didn't have healthy cereal back then, we had the good stuff like Sugar Frosted Flakes, Sugar Crisp and Sugar Pops. Boy, they changed those names, didn't they? It seems like we were always running out of milk and Ma would tell us to “put some water in the jug and swish it around, you’ll be fine.” And we were!
While eating cereal we watched cartoons, and, brother, we watched the good ones like "Heckle & Jeckle," "Foghorn Leghorn," "Mr. Magoo" and "Felix the Cat." Our favorite TV show was always "The Three Stooges." What? Too violent? How about these video games so popular with the kids these days, showing realistic war and death and dismemberment? No, I call BS on my cartoons being called too violent. Yes, the Three Stooges knocked a few heads around, but nobody ever got seriously hurt -- that is, unless they really pissed Moe off!
Speaking of TVs, back in the 1960's you were lucky if you had a color TV. Dad was a welder and Ma was a housewife. Color TVs were very expensive, so we made out just fine with a black-and-white TV. Remote control? Are you kidding me? The only remote control we had in our house was when my Dad would yell, “Rickey, Randy, change the dang channel on the TV set!” I’ll tell you another thing, back in the 1960's we had one TV set and it was in the living room and we watched whatever my Dad was watching. On that TV set we had three standard channels (ABC, NBC and CBS) and one public service channel that nobody I knew ever watched.
It’s a wonder we survived the 1960's. We drank water directly from the water hose in the front yard, rode our bikes without a helmet and rode in the back of Dad’s pickup truck. We also had a “jug of water” in our “ice box” that everybody in the family drank from.
Let me tell you a few other things that we didn't have back then, and somehow we survived. We never heard of car seats, microwave ovens or “childproof” medicine bottles. I’ll tell you what we DID have: drive-in movies, S&H Green Stamps, rotary dial phones and a milkman that came to our house every morning. And every dang house in the neighborhood had a clothesline in the back yard. We grew up in a three-bedroom house with six people. Me and Ran shared a room, as did my two sisters. We only had one bathroom for all six of us, and we took turns. Our phone line was a party line, meaning we shared it with our nosy neighbors.
Back in the 1960's, when me and Ran were 8 and 9 years old, we used to leave the house around 6 a.m. on the weekends and go fishing from sun up to sunset. We would ride our bicycles about three miles to the ponds in the back woods of Mr. Carpenter’s land. We would pack a bologna sandwich, a bag of chips and a Dr Pepper. Imagine that today, leaving home before daylight and being gone until dusk. Remember, we didn't have any stinking cell phones back then. Just me and my brother, 8 and 9 years old, and you better believe that we took care of each other. Ma didn't worry about us, but she did have one rule: “When you see the sunset every day, that’s a sign from God that it’s time for Rickey and Randy to come home for supper.”
So, yes it’s true that the 1960's didn't have the Internet, or Facebook or cell phones or video games, but we didn't give a hoot! We never wanted any indoor activities during the daytime hours. Daytime was for playing football and baseball, or climbing trees, or fishin’ for crawdads, or Coke bottle hunting, or mumbley peg or even just riding our bikes and exploring.Lemme tell ya about the school system in 1960's Dallas.
Us boys had to wear our hair short. It couldn't touch the collar of our shirt. We had to wear a collared shirt every day and we had to tuck it in. We couldn't wear blue jeans or short pants or sneakers to school, and I didn't know anybody who ever wore shorts after the age of 5 years old back then. If you got in trouble at school, you got sent to the principal’s office and the boys got “licks” with a big wooden paddle. Then they called your parents, and my Dad gave us worse than that! Guess what, we didn’t want to act the fool in school because the price we had to pay was way too high!
At night, right after supper, and after me and Ran did the dishes, we would shoot baskets in the back yard under the porch light while listening to our transistor AM radio. On special occasions, my Dad would make homemade ice cream on the back porch with a hand cranked ice cream maker. And guess who hand cranked it? Yep, me and Ran!
You young people probably think we had it pretty tough. Heck no, we didn't. The 1960s were the happiest times of my life, and I wouldn't trade it for all the cell phones, computers and flat screens in the world. Siri who?! - RF
By Rick Fairless
Dear 1960's, I haven’t seen you in so many years, and I can’t tell you how much I miss you.
You were the best decade of my life! In the 1960's, America was not in such a hurry nor was it full of mean, ugly people like it is today (Hi, Shope). I consider myself very lucky to have grown up during the 1960s. Even though I grew up in
the Dallas suburb of Irving, it was a small town environment, or at least we thought it was.
My brother, Randy, is 11 months younger than I am and we have been best friends all our lives. Ma used to dress us alike when we were kids. Life was awesome. I got up super early every morning, and the first thing I did was wake my brother up, too. We would go straight to the kitchen for a bowl of cereal. We didn't have healthy cereal back then, we had the good stuff like Sugar Frosted Flakes, Sugar Crisp and Sugar Pops. Boy, they changed those names, didn't they? It seems like we were always running out of milk and Ma would tell us to “put some water in the jug and swish it around, you’ll be fine.” And we were!
While eating cereal we watched cartoons, and, brother, we watched the good ones like "Heckle & Jeckle," "Foghorn Leghorn," "Mr. Magoo" and "Felix the Cat." Our favorite TV show was always "The Three Stooges." What? Too violent? How about these video games so popular with the kids these days, showing realistic war and death and dismemberment? No, I call BS on my cartoons being called too violent. Yes, the Three Stooges knocked a few heads around, but nobody ever got seriously hurt -- that is, unless they really pissed Moe off!
Speaking of TVs, back in the 1960's you were lucky if you had a color TV. Dad was a welder and Ma was a housewife. Color TVs were very expensive, so we made out just fine with a black-and-white TV. Remote control? Are you kidding me? The only remote control we had in our house was when my Dad would yell, “Rickey, Randy, change the dang channel on the TV set!” I’ll tell you another thing, back in the 1960's we had one TV set and it was in the living room and we watched whatever my Dad was watching. On that TV set we had three standard channels (ABC, NBC and CBS) and one public service channel that nobody I knew ever watched.
It’s a wonder we survived the 1960's. We drank water directly from the water hose in the front yard, rode our bikes without a helmet and rode in the back of Dad’s pickup truck. We also had a “jug of water” in our “ice box” that everybody in the family drank from.
Let me tell you a few other things that we didn't have back then, and somehow we survived. We never heard of car seats, microwave ovens or “childproof” medicine bottles. I’ll tell you what we DID have: drive-in movies, S&H Green Stamps, rotary dial phones and a milkman that came to our house every morning. And every dang house in the neighborhood had a clothesline in the back yard. We grew up in a three-bedroom house with six people. Me and Ran shared a room, as did my two sisters. We only had one bathroom for all six of us, and we took turns. Our phone line was a party line, meaning we shared it with our nosy neighbors.
Back in the 1960's, when me and Ran were 8 and 9 years old, we used to leave the house around 6 a.m. on the weekends and go fishing from sun up to sunset. We would ride our bicycles about three miles to the ponds in the back woods of Mr. Carpenter’s land. We would pack a bologna sandwich, a bag of chips and a Dr Pepper. Imagine that today, leaving home before daylight and being gone until dusk. Remember, we didn't have any stinking cell phones back then. Just me and my brother, 8 and 9 years old, and you better believe that we took care of each other. Ma didn't worry about us, but she did have one rule: “When you see the sunset every day, that’s a sign from God that it’s time for Rickey and Randy to come home for supper.”
So, yes it’s true that the 1960's didn't have the Internet, or Facebook or cell phones or video games, but we didn't give a hoot! We never wanted any indoor activities during the daytime hours. Daytime was for playing football and baseball, or climbing trees, or fishin’ for crawdads, or Coke bottle hunting, or mumbley peg or even just riding our bikes and exploring.Lemme tell ya about the school system in 1960's Dallas.
Us boys had to wear our hair short. It couldn't touch the collar of our shirt. We had to wear a collared shirt every day and we had to tuck it in. We couldn't wear blue jeans or short pants or sneakers to school, and I didn't know anybody who ever wore shorts after the age of 5 years old back then. If you got in trouble at school, you got sent to the principal’s office and the boys got “licks” with a big wooden paddle. Then they called your parents, and my Dad gave us worse than that! Guess what, we didn’t want to act the fool in school because the price we had to pay was way too high!
Us boys had to wear our hair short. It couldn't touch the collar of our shirt. We had to wear a collared shirt every day and we had to tuck it in. We couldn't wear blue jeans or short pants or sneakers to school, and I didn't know anybody who ever wore shorts after the age of 5 years old back then. If you got in trouble at school, you got sent to the principal’s office and the boys got “licks” with a big wooden paddle. Then they called your parents, and my Dad gave us worse than that! Guess what, we didn’t want to act the fool in school because the price we had to pay was way too high!
At night, right after supper, and after me and Ran did the dishes, we would shoot baskets in the back yard under the porch light while listening to our transistor AM radio. On special occasions, my Dad would make homemade ice cream on the back porch with a hand cranked ice cream maker. And guess who hand cranked it? Yep, me and Ran!
You young people probably think we had it pretty tough. Heck no, we didn't. The 1960s were the happiest times of my life, and I wouldn't trade it for all the cell phones, computers and flat screens in the world. Siri who?! - RF
