~Retro Nostalgia~

Are you like me...someone who finds comfort in the past...comfort in a slower paced world? This high-tech decade is not my world. I-pods/pads, Droids, smart phones, blackberry's, do not interest me. I yearn for heavy dial faced phones, matches in folded packets, front porches with swings and legs covered in pantyhose. What is this with the bare-legged look anyway?



Two inch thick catalogs from Sears, and Montgomery Wards marked the seasons.
They came late in October for the holidays and July for the autumn school fashions. What a delight they arrived in our mailbox! Spiegel was the catalog we really yearned for though. Those clothes had an edge, were more fashionable and reflected a "big city" influence.



Remember wearing "can-cans" under a dress when young? We wanted all that fullness in those days. It's funny how fashions change, go to the extreme, then slowly return.
Maybe we'll see this style again.

Remember letters with rural route addresses? Mail postage in single digits? A sixteen year old could have a great time on the two bucks earned from babysitting. A cherry coke was a nickle, a pretzel rod was two cents. The adult price for a movie was sixty-five cents. A gallon of gas was thirty-two cents. Fast cars, drag racing, and a beer on a back road was really the worst of it when I was a teen. Drugs missed me totally...thank heavens!


Most girls owned a jewelry box. Most girls had a dressing table in her room of some sort with a large mirror. Mine had a huge circle centered mirror, with drawers on both sides. Makeup, hair rollers (dog food and juice cans because my hair was curly), and a bottle of Evening in Paris, Tabu, or Chantilly made me feel womanly.
Most of us slept on curlers every night. Wore girdles, and hose requiring garters. Would we do that now??? Heck no!

Daughters dried dishes every night, and that's when moms and daughters talked about things. Daughters helped clean the house on Saturday, with her washed hair up in rollers, anticipating a fun Saturday night. Sunday, the entire family went to church.
We stopped at the newstand to pick up the Sunday paper. There was no shopping on a Sunday in those days. Sunday was family time. Period.
I do admit to enjoying a more "relaxed" way of dressing now. Thank God for Land's End! It's handy to shop online when one lives in small town USA. No spanx (today's girdle) for me. I bulge freely here and there, so be it. Unless I spot myself in a window or a mirror somewhere, I don't have to see it!

I do miss how close family used to be. All of our kids, with the exception of Josh, live now in other states. We only see our grandkids once or twice a year. Computers do help in that area too. Skype, online viewing of photos, blogs, and Facebook, keep us connected. Weekly Sunday family gatherings were darn nice though; or at least getting together for every holiday. That does not happen anymore, darn it.