The Over 30 Crowd

[SFC Ollie]

My school district was set up with small, neighborhood schools. Mine was Taft Elementary. I walked there (three blocks) and came home for lunch!

In 7th grade, they released the kids from St. Al's (Aloysius) and turned them loose with two schools (Junior High) formed from nine different elementary schools. Those Catholic girls start much too late. And those kids were wild!

I remember home milk delivery. I remember when most of the homes here were heated with coal rather than natural gas. Everyone had soot 'tornadoes' on their front porch during a breezy day.

They had a caboose on the end of trains and sometimes you could get a wave from the crew.

There were smudge-pots lit along road construction sites. Little black tin spheres that burned kerosene. They were a little bigger than a bowling ball.

What locally produced kids show did you brother Boomers watch in the afternoon? My favorite was always "Paul Shannon's Adventure Time". Paul played the Stooges!

Damn you are old. But we always watch the rascals, hoping to see Mom. (she always told us she had made a movie with them. We finally found it about 15 years ago)

 

[froggy]

I use to have to walk across the school yard to the lunch room and milk came in those pint bottles with the aluminum foil caps.

 

[Baruch Menachem]

We had home milk delivery too. That must have stopped in mid 80's.

Portland had Ramblin Rod on at 5:00. I think Portland was the last market that had a locally produced Kids show where the kids could show up and be on the set. Cartoons were standard of course, Popeye, lippy the lion, top cat.

Downside was just how in the pocket of advertisers all the shows were. ABC was especially bad about this, as they sold off the whole morning to Post to promote their cereals with shows around each product. AlphaBits was about a postman and his dog, Sugar Crisp was about a mellow bing crosby kind of bear and his adventures in the woods, and so on. CBS hit rock bottom in this regard with HR Puffinstuff.

But CBS also had Captain Kangaroo, which believe it or not, promoted reading in a big way.