Growing UP Ain't What It Used To Be

I remember when refrigerators didn't run on electricity......they ran on ice !

I don't know if I'm OLDER THAN DIRT.......but in the good ole days gettin dirty didn't mean shit to me ! ! !

'My son asked me one time, 'What was your favorite fast food when you were growing up?'

'We didn't have fast food when I was growing up,' I informed him. 'All the food was slow.'

'It was a place called 'at home,'' I explained. ! 'Mom cooked every day and when Dad got home from work, we sat down together at the dining room table, and if I didn't like what she put on my plate I was allowed to sit there until I did like it.' Eat up we were admonished as there are children in China starving. I could never figure out why I had to clean my plate due to this.

My parents never wore Levis , set foot on a golf course, traveled out of the country or had a credit card. In their later years they had something called a revolving charge card. The card was good only at Sears Roebuck. Or maybe it was Sears & Roebuck. Either way, there is no Roebuck anymore. Maybe he died.

My parents never drove me to soccer practice. This was mostly because we never had heard of soccer. I had a bicycle that weighed probably 40 pounds, and only had one speed, (slow). We didn't have a television in our house until I was 13 and then mostly you saw just black and white snow or a test pattern. We had only one TV station in Louisiana at that time WDSU out of New Orleans. Since we lived in Baton Rouge we had trouble getting a clear picture.

I was 10 before I tasted my first pizza, it was called 'pizza pie.' My parents took me to the only place selling pizza pie. It was called the Fleur de Lisle. When I bit into it, I burned the roof of my mouth and the cheese slid off, swung down, plastered itself against my chin and burned that, too. It's still the best pizza I ever had.

The first car we had was a black Model A Ford. It had a hand crank in the front. Daddy would always warn me about the kick back hand crank he had to use when the battery was dead which was often. The kick back could seriously hurt you.

The second car we owned was a 40 blue Chevy coupe and then in 1946 when the war ended Dad bought the first being produced, a 46 black Nash coupe which I learned to drive in by stealing it at night when I was 13. We all piled into it one summer and Dad drove us to Mexico City through the narrow mountainous Pan American Highway. What an adventure.

I never had a telephone in my room. The only phone in the house was in the living room and it was on a party line. Before you could dial, you had to listen and make sure some people you didn't know weren't already using the line.

Pizzas were not delivered to our home. But milk was.

All newspapers were delivered by boys like me who received 2 cents for each one. The customer paid 10 cents and I could keep 2 cents.

Movie stars kissed with their mouths shut. At least, they did in the movies. Touching someone else's tongue with yours was called French kissing and they didn't do that in movies. I don't know what they did in French movies. French movies were dirty and we weren't allowed to see them

A happy day was when my parents bought me a pair of black hightop skate shoes. I hated the clip ons. I would wear out the City Park roller rink trying to imitate the best skater there who was named Termite Termini. Can you imagine naming your
son Termite. I'm sure he must have changed it later in life.

We spent a couple of Xmas times in Clinton, La.(Long Hot Summer was filmed there) at my grandparents White's home. They had no electricity. Santa brought me a Lionel electric train set. I took it out of the box and set it up on the floor and then realized I would have to wait until we returned to Baton Rouge where there was electricity.

I still love the smell of the kerosene lamps used at my grandparents and can still see her cooking breakfast on the wood stove using kindling wood. I was allowed to go gather the eggs in the back yard for breakfast.They were the best damn eggs I've ever eaten. Full rich dark orange yokes with firm whites. Today, they yolks are
pale yellow and the whites just fall apart. I think my grandmother must have made a pie every day of her life also.

My first encounter with bubble gum was on the grammar school bus. An older kid had a wad of Fleers Double Bubble in his mouth and stood up in front of the bus and we kids were absolutely awe struck seeing him blow bubbles. You couldn't hardly buy any as every place was sold out and we'd carefully put it back in the wrapper overnight.
After a few days, it became hard and you could not blow a bubble.

Momentous chronological points in my early life were getting a Red Ryder BB gun, a Remington bolt action 22, a 20 gauge single shot Harrington Richardson shotgun and later a 12 gauge Model 50 Winchester automatic. I must have killed a million snakes and turtles with the 22 rifle and thousands of squirrels, rabbits, possums and doves
with the shotguns. I also killed my share of songbirds with the BB gun. Kids didn't have any pity back then.

Endless summer days of swimming naked in the Bogue Chitto river with both white and black kids together.Catching crawfish with my black friend Nat and boiling them in a can by a little fire we lit and then going over to the little shotgun shack where he lived with his mother and then eating cheese and saltine crackers which his mother put out. I was about 10 yrs. old and hadn't caught the racist bug yet.

Endless summer days of catching turtles and fishing and running my 5hp Royal outboard on some wooden boat that I would steal if it was simply tied up around the lake. Many times people came to my home to tell my Dad to teach me not to take their boat. He simply told them to put a lock on it. I actually was doing this at 10 years old. Simply pulling on the starter cord of that motor for a 10 yr. old was tough.

Catching flying squirrels in our little wooden traps was a lot of fun. You had to handle them with a glove at first as they were vicious. We domesticated them this way. We would put them in a sock and swing the sock until they got dizzy and then we could handle them for a little while. After many times of doing this, they caved in and became tame. We would tie a string around their necks and keep them in our pockets ect.

I use to keep a pet flying squirrel in a drawer in my bedroom. He chewed his way out and would hide in the day and since they are nocturnal would only come out at night. He was free for a week in our home and I finally caught him when he flew from somewhere and landed on my chest while I was in bed one night.

I spent hours taming a young Raccoon which I named Bill. He was damn vicious in the beginning and I had to handle him with thick gloves. After a week or so, he became domesticated, but as he grew bigger, Dad wouldn't let me have him roaming around the house freely anymore as he was getting into everything. I even slept with him. Finally, Dad put him in a cage behind our home with his collar and leash on and poor Bill managed to get out of the cage which was high off the ground and we found him hanging one morning by his neck. I dug a grave and put up a small cross and cried like a baby.

I had caught several baby alligators and kept them in a large tub in my room. My grandparents came to spend the weekend with us and I recall my grandfather complaining to my Dad that he didn't get a wink of sleep all night due to the bellowing of the alligators. Dad made me remove the tub to the backyard.

I heard Sen. Biden relate how he was bullied by some kid and his Dad told him to go back and fight and said, "Champ, when you're down, get up and fight."

Well, something similar happened to me. Sonny Harris and Earl Frenzel who were a year older than me and lived down the street had bullied me and took my bicycle. I would have been about 10 yrs. old. I came crying home and my Dad read me the damn riot act. He scared the hell out of me that he was going to give me a whipping worse than those kids and if I did not go back out there and get my bicycle then don't bother to come home ever again.

He motivated me to the point that I ran with tears in my eyes down where they were and without saying anything charged them both with the ferocity of an adrenaline filled Lion. I beat the hell out of both of them and got my bike back. It was then that I had an epiphany. I realized that I was much stronger than most guys and had better reflexes and agility. I didn't much fear anybody the rest of my life.

That was one of the few lessons I learned from my Dad. He didn't give me many, I assure you. He owned Bob White's Silver Dollar Bar and Lounge which was a front for a gambling Den. He did make me open oysters on Saturdays for the customers and I believe I still have scars on my hand from doing this, but it was worth it to hear the country bands he hired to play on Saturday night.

The nearest side of heaven was drinking a Grapette on a hot summer day.

Growing up isn't what it used to be, is it?

Bob White