Gettin' old

[kiwi60]

Getting old......?
How old is Grandpa ?

Stay with this -- the answer is at the end. It will blow you away.

One evening a grandson was talking to his grandfather about current events.
The grandson asked his grandfather what he thought about the shootings at schools, the computer age, and things in general.
The Grandfather replied, "Well, let me think a minute, I was born before:
' television
' penicillin
' polio shots
' frozen foods
' Xerox
' contact lenses
' Frisbees and
' the pill

There were no:
' credit cards
' laser beams or
' ball-point pens

Man had not invented:
' pantyhose
' air conditioners
' dishwashers
' clothes dryers
' and the clothes were hung out to dry in the fresh air
' man hadn't yet walked on the moon

Your Grandmother and I got married first, . . . Then lived together.
Every family had a father and a mother.

Until I was 25, I called every man older than me, "Sir".
And after I turned 25, I still called policemen and every man with a title, "Sir."

We were before gay-rights, computer- dating, dual careers, daycare centers, and group therapy.
Our lives were governed by the Ten Commandments, good judgment, and common sense.

We were taught to know the difference between right and wrong and to stand up and take responsibility for our actions.
Serving your country was a privilege; living in this country was a bigger privilege.

We thought fast food was what people ate during Lent.
Having a meaningful relationship meant getting along with your cousins..

Draft dodgers were people who closed their front doors when the evening breeze started.
Time-sharing meant time the family spent together in the evenings and weekends-not purchasing condominiums.

We never heard of FM radios, tape decks, CDs, electric typewriters, yogurt, or guys wearing earrings.
We listened to the Big Bands, Jack Benny, and the President's speeches on our radios.

And I don't ever remember any kid blowing his brains out listening to Tommy Dorsey.
If you saw anything with 'Made in Japan ' on it, it was junk

The term 'making out' referred to how you did on your school exam.
Pizza Hut, McDonald's, and instant coffee was unheard of.

We had 5 &10-cent stores where you could actually buy things for 5 and 10 cents.
Ice-cream cones, phone calls, rides on a streetcar, and a Pepsi were all a nickel

And if you didn't want to splurge, you could spend your nickel on enough stamps to mail 1 letter and 2 postcards.
You could buy a new Chevy Coupe for $600, . . .. But who could afford one?
Too bad, because gas was 11 cents a gallon.

In my day:
' "grass" was mowed,
' "coke" was a cold drink,
' "pot" was something your mother cooked in and
' "rock music" was your grandmother's lullaby.
' "Aids" were helpers in the Principal's office,
' " chip" meant a piece of wood,
' "hardware" was found in a hardware store and
' "software" wasn't even a word.

And we were the last generation to actually believe that a lady needed a husband to have a baby.
No wonder people call us "old and confused" and say there is a generation gap... And how old do you think I am?

I bet you have this old man in mind...you are in for a shock!
Read on to see -- pretty scary if you think about it and pretty sad at the same time...


Are you ready ?????



This man would be only 59 years old!

[hotcam]

I was bored on a cold wet Sunday morning, so I did some reading.
Here are just the interesting bits...

Penicillin:
It was a fortuitous accident: in his laboratory Fleming noticed a petri dish
he had mistakenly left open, which was contaminated by blue-green mould.
There was a halo of inhibited bacterial growth around it. The mould was
releasing a substance that was repressing the growth and lysing the
bacteria....
A moldy cantaloupe in a Peoria, Illinois market in 1943 was found to
contain the best and highest-quality penicillin after a worldwide search.
The discovery of the cantaloupe, and other research in Illinois,
allowed the United States to produce 2.3 million doses in time for
the invasion of Normandy in the spring of 1944....
During the early penicillin era, the drug was so scarce and
so highly valued that it became common to collect the urine from
patients being treated, so that the penicillin in the urine could be
isolated and reused.

Frozen Food...
In 1929, Birdseye sold his company and patents for $22 million,
which eventually became Birds Eye Frosted Food Company.
Birdseye continued to work with the company. In 1930 the
company began sales. Consumer acceptance was strong, and
today this experiment is considered the birth of retail frozen foods.

Contact lenses...
In 1887 a German glassblower, F.E. Muller, produced the first eye
covering to be seen through and tolerated. In 1888, the German
physiologist Adolf Eugen Fick constructed and fitted the first
successful contact lens.These lenses were made from heavy blown
glass and were 18–21mm in diameter. Ouch!
Fick's lens was large, unwieldy, and could only be worn for a few hours
at a time. Gradual improvements have led to increased popularity.


Dishwashers...
Modern dishwashers are descended from the 1886 invention of
Josephine Cochrane. Cochrane was quite wealthy. She never washed
dishes herself and only invented the dishwasher because her
servants were chipping her fine china.
Models installed with permanent plumbing arrived in the 1920s.
In 1924, William Howard Livens invented a small dishwasher
suitable for domestic use. It had many of the features of a modern dishwasher, including a front door for loading, a wire rack to hold
crockery and a rotating sprayer. Livens' invention was not, however,
a commercial success.

Tumble Dryer...
The first version of the tumble dryer was created by a Frenchman
named Pochon in 1799. Known as the ventilator, it was a metal drum
with holes in it which was hand-cranked over a fire.
American Inventor George T. Sampson was granted a patent on
June 7, 1892 for his version of the clothes dryer. It included an
improved rack and used heat from a stove to dry clothes.
The first electric tumble dryers appeared in the 20th century,
around 1915 (!).

Yogurt...
There is evidence of cultured milk products being produced as food
for at least 4,500 years.
The use of yoghurt by mediaeval Turks is recorded in books written
in the eleventh century. The first account of a European encounter
with yoghurt occurs in French clinical history: Francis I suffered from a
severe diarrhoea which no French doctor could cure. His ally
Suleiman the Magnificent sent a doctor, who allegedly cured the
patient with yoghurt.
Until the 1900s, yoghurt was a staple in diets of the South Asian, Central Asian, Western Asian, South Eastern European and Central European regions.
Yoghurt was first introduced to the United States by Armenian
immigrants Sarkis and Rose Colombosian, who started "Colombo
and Sons Creamery" in Andover, Massachusetts in 1929.

So the old guy in the above story has not been paying attention to what
was available to his 100-year-old father... if his father was rich and
widely-travelled.
One thing that has improved is the affordability of items, the
wide-spread use of transport and communications and
mass production to make a wider choice of items available to a
wider range of people.
It bugs me when some of the baby-boomer generation assume that they
and their fathers did it tough and invented everything worthwhile. Nope,
they sometimes just refined and popularised stuff. Mind you, they've done
a darn fine job with computers, communications, and transport.