I was born in Tennessee and raised in what was called the bloody 8th, on Henley Ridge, till age 11 then we moved to Cookeville Tennessee. This was in a time when most everyone treated each other with respect. We didn't eat fast food except for an occasional visit to Scotties, DQ, or Shoney's if we were lucky.. We drank Kool-ade and juice, ate bologna sandwiches, even tuna (which was in a can not a pouch), PB&J & grilled cheese sandwiches, hot dogs, pot pies, but mostly home made meals consisting of meat & potatoes and veggies...I remember Fried Chicken every Sunday!
We grew up during a time when we would do chores and shovel snow or cut the grass for money for all the elderly people in our neighborhood. We went outside a lot to play games, ride bikes, run with siblings and friends & played hide and seek, jump rope, hopscotch, Red Rover, red light, Mother May I, kick ball, football, and soccer. We drank tap water from the hose outside ... bottled water was unheard of.
No cable TV - just 13 channels, & no microwave or cell phones. Had party lines on the phone.
We ate a hot breakfast before going to school. We watched TV as a family... Gilligan's Island, Scooby Doo, Wonderful World of Disney, Little House on the Prairie, Star Trek, Bonanza & The Walton’s. After school, we came home and did homework and chores and watched some cartoons on Saturday morning. If you were bad in school, you got in trouble there and when you got home you got in trouble again because your parents already knew.
We would ride our bikes for hours and talk until the lightning bugs came out.
You LEARNED from your parents instead of disrespecting them and treating them as if they knew nothing. What they said was the gospel.
If someone had a fight, that's what it was a fist fight and you were back to being friends afterwards or the bullying pretty much ceased. Kids that were around guns were taught how to properly use them and to respect them and never thought of taking a life.
You had to be close enough to home to hear your Mom yelling to tell you it’s time to come home for dinner. We ate around the dinner table and talked to each other as a family unit.
We said grace before dinner and we said the Pledge of Allegiance in school, stood for the National Anthem & listened to our teachers.
We watched what we said around our elders because we knew If we DISRESPECTED any grown up we would get our behinds busted, it wasn't called abuse, it was called discipline! We held doors, carried groceries and gave up our seat without being asked.
You didn't hear curse words on the radio in songs or TV, and if you cursed and got caught you got your mouth washed out with a bar of soap. Yes, “Please" and "Thank you" were part of our daily vocabulary!