Those Were The Days 2.0

Tony Page

Tony Page

Well-known member
The owner of a live Christmas tree lot once told me the trees today are pruned and grown to make them more fuller than the trees when I was a kid. I thought maybe it was because they were a different variety.

I do remember, plus, I have a video of just how skimpy the tree where when I was a kid. They were a little better than the snoopy tree.

My father would hang the lights and garland, and my mother would decorate with Christmas balls and hang the Tinsley. My brother and I our job was to throw the cotton snowballs onto the branches. It was fun and something we looked forward to, and as far as I can tell, it is not done anymore. Next was to lay the skirt under the tree. The last thing was to plug the lights in and see the tree in all its glory.

Except for the last few years, I've had a live tree for as long as I can remember.
 
We always had live trees when I was a kid, too. My dad found them out in the woods during the summer months, remembered where to find them, and in late November or early December, he would bring home the Christmas tree. My folks always put it in a bucket of water, so that it would last longer, and then covered the bucket with the sheet that they put under the tree for the skirt.
We always had a fir tree, and the branches were not as thick as on some trees, but my mom had some beautiful old Christmas bulbs that were long ones, and they needed the space in between branches.

The tinsel we used when I was little was actual tinsel made from tin, and it was very fragile. Later, Mom got the new plastic tinsel, which is practically indestructible, and we didn’t save it like we did the real tinsel.
We always had Bubble Lights on the tree, and I loved watching those so much, especially at night when we had all the other lights out in the house, so we could all look at the Christmas tree.

Under the tree, was a little village with houses and a church, and they were lit up by a string of colored lights. At the top was an angel with a candle in her hand that lit up . She had a beautiful dress that was white and silver, and real looking hair.
We would all work on putting up the tree together. My dad put on the lights, my mom put on the fragile glass ornaments, and i got to put on the tinsel.

 
One year, my daughter and I were sitting in the car in front of the grocery store while my husband ran in to get something.

The bag boys were putting out the Christmas trees in front of the store for sale. One tree looked like a topiary....a bunch of branches at the bottom, two feet of bare trunk, another brunch of branches, another eighteen inches of bare trunk, etc., etc. They were laughing at the tree.

My tender-hearted daughter said, "Mom, they're making fun of that tree! That's not nice. We need to buy that tree!"

I said that I didn't want that tree but she insisted that we had to give it a good home. I sent her up to the boys to find out how much the tree was. She returned triumphantly, "THEY SAID IT WAS FREE IF WE WANTED IT!!!!"

So that's how we got the ugliest Christmas tree in town that year. For free, no less. I think if I had held out for a couple more minutes, they might have paid me to take it away...LOL.
 
That's some nice Christmas tree stories.

In Later years we gravitated towards getting the Frasier fir as our tree we always felt it was fuller and had a nice shape.

In truth I could sit in front of any tree with my artificial fireplace (cardboard) going, listening to Christmas music and I was in heaven.
 
Mary Robi said:
One year, my daughter and I were sitting in the car in front of the grocery store while my husband ran in to get something.

The bag boys were putting out the Christmas trees in front of the store for sale. One tree looked like a topiary....a bunch of branches at the bottom, two feet of bare trunk, another brunch of branches, another eighteen inches of bare trunk, etc., etc. They were laughing at the tree.

My tender-hearted daughter said, "Mom, they're making fun of that tree! That's not nice. We need to buy that tree!"

I said that I didn't want that tree but she insisted that we had to give it a good home. I sent her up to the boys to find out how much the tree was. She returned triumphantly, "THEY SAID IT WAS FREE IF WE WANTED IT!!!!"

So that's how we got the ugliest Christmas tree in town that year. For free, no less. I think if I had held out for a couple more minutes, they might have paid me to take it away...LOL.
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The worse tree I had was1976 or so 'before I met Jake' I tried to make, I cut down small pine tree, tried to attach more limbs to make it fuller, didn't work.
 
This afternoon I was watching an old Hawaiian Five-O TV show from the '60s. I've never watched it before. There was an actor in it that I recognized his face but couldn't think of his name. All of a sudden it dawned on me his name was Richard Denning I remember him in the 50s TV show with Barbara Britton called Mr and Mrs North. I remember my parents watch this show weekly. My brother and I sat in on many episodes and I remember I enjoyed them. I had forgotten about this show, haven't thought about it in a long while. I find it amazing how things pop on your head.

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I used to watch a lot of TV and don't recognize this one. It seems it ran for 2 years (ended the year I was born.) Must not have had any reruns. Looks like a similar plot to The Thin Man (Peter Lawford & Phyllis Kirk.)
 
I liked going to rock concerts when I could and my cousin always wanted me to go with her so I went to lots of famous rock bands in 1970s.
I also liked to roller skate.
 
Remembering road trips as a kid. We never took many actual "tourist" vacations when I was young, but we did travel between Texas and Georgia at least twice a year to see family. I remember the back window of daddy's Chrysler had a big enough "package tray" that I could actually lie down on it as the miles rolled by.

For years there were no interstate highways as such, just a few divided highways and mostly 2-lane roads with lots of small town traffic lights. We traveled mostly on old Highway 90, but by the late 1960's there were sections of Interstate 10 opening up. It took until 1973 before the bridge over the Atchafalaya swamp basin was open near Baton Rouge LA which cut hours of time off the trip.

There were roadside picnic tables, "See Rock City" and Burma Shave signs, and endless telephone poles with miles of cables. Mama packed a picnic basket and a small cooler of drinks; it was fun to get out of the car and stretch our legs, especially along the beaches of Mississippi.
 
I enjoyed traveling with my folks, too, but we didn’t go an actual vacations either, except for one, and we did that on a train. It was SO much fun ! !
We went to Denver on one train, and then took a Grand Canyon Special train to go and see the Grand Canyon, spent the day there and then took the train back to Denver again, and then went on to California on the Super Chief. My grandmother lived in SanDiego, and we were going to visit her. I was 9 years old.
We stayed in a little cabin that was part of a group of tourist cabins, and walked down to a little place that sold donuts in the mornings, and had a donut and coffee for breakfast. One day, we took the bus and went to the San Diego Zoo and spent the day there. It was just a great time for me.

Other than that, the only trips we made were shopping trips into Spokane, and camping trips up to a remote mountain lake. The roads were all 2-lane back then, roads in town were dirt and gravel (and turned into mud each spring as the snow melted). We had signs on the highway that read “Don’t Be a Guberif”.
My dad was a lineman, so he had to be available at all times in case the power went out somewhere and he had to go and fix it.
 
Beth Gallagher said:
Remembering road trips as a kid. We never took many actual "tourist" vacations when I was young, but we did travel between Texas and Georgia at least twice a year to see family. I remember the back window of daddy's Chrysler had a big enough "package tray" that I could actually lie down on it as the miles rolled by.

For years there were no interstate highways as such, just a few divided highways and mostly 2-lane roads with lots of small town traffic lights. We traveled mostly on old Highway 90, but by the late 1960's there were sections of Interstate 10 opening up. It took until 1973 before the bridge over the Atchafalaya swamp basin was open near Baton Rouge LA which cut hours of time off the trip.

There were roadside picnic tables, "See Rock City" and Burma Shave signs, and endless telephone poles with miles of cables. Mama packed a picnic basket and a small cooler of drinks; it was fun to get out of the car and stretch our legs, especially along the beaches of Mississippi.
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Beth I too laid in the back window on trips. Hot times since most cars had no AC. My first AC was a dashboard AC, had ice cycles on it where it blew out cold air.
 
Yvonne Smith said:
I enjoyed traveling with my folks, too, but we didn’t go an actual vacations either, except for one, and we did that on a train. It was SO much fun ! !
We went to Denver on one train, and then took a Grand Canyon Special train to go and see the Grand Canyon, spent the day there and then took the train back to Denver again, and then went on to California on the Super Chief. My grandmother lived in SanDiego, and we were going to visit her. I was 9 years old.
We stayed in a little cabin that was part of a group of tourist cabins, and walked down to a little place that sold donuts in the mornings, and had a donut and coffee for breakfast. One day, we took the bus and went to the San Diego Zoo and spent the day there. It was just a great time for me.

Other than that, the only trips we made were shopping trips into Spokane, and camping trips up to a remote mountain lake. The roads were all 2-lane back then, roads in town were dirt and gravel (and turned into mud each spring as the snow melted). We had signs on the highway that read “Don’t Be a Guberif”.
My dad was a lineman, so he had to be available at all times in case the power went out somewhere and he had to go and fix it.
Click to expand...

I loved train trips with my Aunt, her husband was a railroad conductor.
Our trips were from Waycross, Ga. to Atlanta Ga.
1950's our first 3 donkeys came in on a train from Mexico, picked them up at the station downtown Atlanta.
 
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