Remember the good ol' days...

[Rollo Tamasi]

Gas (Regular was the only thing available) was 18 cents per gallon from a gravity dispensing pump; you had to first use the hand pump to fill a glass see through container with lines showing the amount of gas you wanted.

My first car was a 38 Chevy I paid $20 for but it got me to Tijuana so I could buy Tequila until the Border Guards caught me.

Cigarettes even out of a machine were 20 cents a pack.

Candy and ice cream bars were 5 cents, and much bigger.

Ration stamps to buy certain products.

Reg milk was 4 cents per quart, sour milk was two cents, and clabbered was 1 cent; my mom could make many meals using 1 cent milk, and nothing was thrown away.

I remember seeing my first indoor toilet around 9 yrs old and had to try it several times.

Even in later years while in the Air Force and married with two children my last 60 cents was spent to buy one dozen sea worms which were just 9 inch centipedes that had to be handled with gloves, but they could be torn in half as bait and catch twice as many fish, and they were sure good eating.

Later yet I would near always have two jobs; I had a $78 PITI mortgage, car, and furniture payments.

I now am retired, and when I got there I remembered how God had made Abraham and Sarah return unto to the time of life; they were made young again. I remember asking somewhat in humor; Father, please don’t do to me what you did to Abraham and Sarah by making me go through it again.

Good old days? I would never trade today for yesterday. I have heard some say if they had it to do over they would do it different this time. I have thought of that and the same lusts of life and other worldly pursuits with experience might take me down a worse road than I traveled. I thank God He brought me the way He has, though I could have saved many trials paying attention in the first place.

What is clabbered?

 

[Eugene]

What is clabbered?

It was milk that went past soured to a stage similar to cottage cheese. The article below says it only occurs with unpasteurized milk but I threw away a quart of milk that that clabbered on me this morning.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clabber_(food)
Clabber is a food produced by allowing unpasteurized milk to turn sour at a specific humidityand temperature. Over time, the milk thickens or curdles into a yogurt-like substance with a strong, sour flavor. In rural areas of the Southern United States, it was commonly eaten forbreakfast with brown sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, or molasses added. Some people also eat it with fruit or black pepper and cream.

Clabber was brought to the South by the Ulster Scots who settled in the Appalachian Mountains. Clabber is still sometimes referred to as bonny clabber (originally "bainne clábair", from Gaelic bainne — milk, and clábair — sour milk).[1] Clabber passed into Scots andHiberno-English dialects meaning wet, gooey mud, though it is commonly used now in the noun form to refer to the food or in the verb form "to curdle". A German version is called Dickmilch (thick milk), a Scandinavian filbunke. In France, a similar food made from cream is known ascrème fraîche.

Clabber was sometimes served with a specialized spoon. This is a serving utensil formed with the handle made at a 90 degree angle from the spoon bowl, to accommodate the manner in which clabber had to be ladled out of the container in which it formed.

With the rise of pasteurization the making of clabber virtually stopped, except on farms that had easy access to unprocessed cow's milk. A somewhat similar food can be made from pasteurized milk by adding a couple of tablespoons of commercial buttermilk or sour milk to a glass of milk.

 

[Mike S]

I remember as a child of about 10 walking to the barber shop after school with my brother for haircuts. It was a tiny rural school in a tiny upstate NY town. I would love reading the magazines, like the Police Gazette and Boy's life, while I waited my turn. After our haircuts - which cost 50 cents - the barber gave us each 10 cents to spend on candy at the store next to the barber shop. The barber owned the candy store too. Then dad would come pick us up and chat with the barber, they were fishing buddies.

They were good times for a kid.