Jump to content

Celeste

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content count

    3,762

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    3

Posts posted by Celeste

  1. Posted · Report reply

    For those who are reminiscing about good old stuff, I got this email just the other day:

    "Hey Dad," one of my kids asked the other day, "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."

    C'mon, seriously. Where did you eat?"

    "It was a place called 'at home,'" I explained. "Grandma cooked every

    day and when Grandpa 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."

    By this time, the kid was laughing so hard I was afraid he was going

    to suffer serious internal damage, so I didn't tell him the part about

    how I had to have permission to leave the table. But here are some other

    things I would have told him about my childhood if I figured his system could have handled it:

    Some parents NEVER owned their own house, 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 AND 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 50

    pounds, and only had one speed, (slow). We didn't have a television in our

    house until I was 11, but my grandparents had one before that. It was, of

    course, black and white, but they bought a piece of colored plastic to cover

    the screen. The top third was blue, like the sky, and the bottom third was

    green, like grass. The middle third was red. It was perfect for programs

    that had scenes of fire trucks riding across someone's lawn on a sunny

    day. Some people had a lens taped to the front of the TV to make the

    picture look larger.

    I was 13 before I tasted my first pizza, it was called "pizza pie." 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.

    We didn't have a car until I was 15. Before that, the only car in our

    family was my grandfather's Ford. He called it a "machine."

    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 and all boys delivered

    newspapers. I delivered a newspaper, six days a week. It cost 7 cents a paper, of which I got to keep 2 cents. I had to get up at 4 AM every morning. On Saturday, I had to collect the 42 cents from my customers. My favorite customers were the ones who gave me 50 cents and told me to keep the change. My least favorite customers were the ones who seemed to never be home on collection day.

    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.

    If you grew up in a generation before there was fast food, you may

    want to share some of these memories with your children or grandchildren.

    Just don't blame me if they bust a gut laughing.

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

    MEMORIES from a friend:

    My Dad is cleaning out my grandmother's house (she died in December)

    and he brought me an old Royal Crown Cola bottle. In the bottle top was a

    stopper with a bunch of holes in it. I knew immediately what it was,

    but my daughter had no idea. She thought they had tried to make it a salt

    shaker or something. I knew it as the bottle that sat on the end of the

    ironing board to "sprinkle" clothes with because we didn't have steam irons.

    Man, I am old.

    How many do you remember?

    Head lights dimmer switches on the floor.

    Ignition switches on the dashboard.

    Heaters mounted on the inside of the fire wall.

    Real ice boxes.

    Pant leg clips for bicycles without chain guards.

    Soldering irons you heat on a gas burner.

    Using hand signals for cars without turn signals.

    Older Than Dirt Quiz: Count all the ones that you remember not the

    ones you were told about! Ratings at the bottom.

    1. Blackjack chewing gum

    2. Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water

    3. Candy cigarettes

    4. Soda pop machines that dispensed bottles

    5. Coffee shops with tableside jukeboxes

    6. Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers

    7. Party lines

    8. Newsreels before the movie

    9. P.F. Flyers

    10. Butch wax

    11. Telephone numbers with a word prefix (Olive-6933)

    12. Peashooters

    13. Howdy Doody

    14. 45 RPM records

    15. S&H Green Stamps

    16. Hi-fi's

    17. Metal ice trays with lever

    18. Mimeograph paper

    19. Blue flashbulb

    20. Packards

    21. Roller skate keys

    22. Cork popguns

    23. Drive-ins

    24. Studebakers

    25. Wash tub wringers

    If you remembered 0-5 = You're still young

    If you remembered 6-10 = You are getting older

    If you remembered 11-15 = Don't tell your age,

    If you remembered 16-25 = You're older than dirt!

    I might be older than dirt but those memories are the best part of my

    life.

    Don't forget to pass this along!!

    Especially to all your really OLD friends....

  4. Posted · Report reply

    So far all I have found is a company that claims to have a chemical that will remove (obviously I have not tried it yet!) Site is www.protekchemical.com and the stuff is $95.00 for 2 gallons - supposed to mix at 10:1. They even have a link on the site about the nasty spots. Local company here says chemists can't find a way so I'm skeptical. Also found a p/w company out of New York that says that they can clean it. Here is a quote from their site: "The positive aspect is that it can usually be removed with the proper detergent and cleaning equipment. Hot water pressure washing coupled with light hand agitation with a slightly abrasive scotch brite pad will usually do the job. " I plan to call them and see what their proper detergent is.

    I'm so aggravated!

  5. Posted · Report reply

    We went to a house today to do some brick cleaning and were approached by the homeowner to clean the black spots off of the house. Cleaned and cleaned and cleaned and no change. We called off the job temporarily until we can get some advise from some posts and do some research. In the meantime, we have found that these little nasty spots are artillary fungus and according to one chemical place, there is nothing that will clean the stuff. Has anyone else run into this and did you find something that will take these spots off?

  7. Posted · Report reply

    Why is okay to let the water go into the ground...ie, routing water into grassy areas or in the vertical cleaning area, water that goes up must come down and usually it soaks in next to the building you're washing - but water on flat surfaces must be reclaimed instead of letting it go into the gutters and storm drains? Ground water is not necessarily affected only by what goes into the storm drains?????

  8. Posted · Report reply

    Back to the intermittant cold weather - our rig is on a "non-enclosed" trailer. It was 70 today and will get down to 27 tonight. Temps will be back up in the next 48 hours so we're not ready to flush & winterize the system. What is the best way to keep the thing from freezing or cracking or whatever other horrible thing that can happen? (Murphy's Law originated at our house!)

  10. Posted · Report reply

    Please forgive my ignorance in this area, although I'm getting more educated on it by the day, but are you all primarily referring to pressure washing large flat surfaces because I really can't picture how you can reclaim your water at a residential property. Most of our water soaks right into the ground when we do a house, gutters or roof.

    This is clearly just one more aspect of pressure washing that many new companies may not take into consideration. We are not doing parking lots, drive-thrus, etc... for this specific reason. Don't have money for the reclaim piecy-parts right now so don't take jobs that may have a need for it.

    Thanks,

    Celeste

  13. Posted · Report reply

    It looks like some sort of foamer - anyone have any input on using one of these? We have a small one and it seems like a really good notion - having your chems stick to where you put them instead of rolling down the wall but as a real newbie, don't have any idea of how to use it or with what chemical, although I'm sure any acidic is out.

  14. Posted · Report reply

    The guy we bought our equipment from devised his own stand-off extensions for a standard stabilizer. He added angle iron to the each end of the stabilizer, drilled through and used a hinged pin thingie to secure each side. The little rubber feet that come with the stabilizer slipped on the ends and poof - he was another couple of feet from the wall. We haven't tried it yet but he tells us it worked just find. The angle iron was only a couple of dollars and the stabilizer is under $40 at Lowe's (quick attach/detach).

  15. Posted · Report reply

    So I'm a little confused here with the 3/8 vs 1/4 thing. We don't usually use a downstream system as we have a pump dedicated to spraying chemicals so on the one hand the 1/4 would seem to be the one we'd want, however, if the need were to arise to use the downstream method, can it be accomplished with the only drawback being the weight?

    We've got to do something pretty soon about this - the yellow noodle we're using is killing my partner!

  16. Posted · Report reply

    Thanks - I think? LOL....I (the wife) would like to spend more time fielding calls and doing paperwork. I was the one on the roof this morning :) Really the only thing he does that I don't is wrestle with the extension wand. But again, with all the kids...working together like that is about our only time alone! And as long as we are enjoying what we're doing together, it doesn't seem as much like work anyway.

  20. Posted · Report reply

    How come there haven't been any husband/wife teams piping up in this thread? Are there not many of us? Seems like if both partners are working the business together with the same goals and mindset, there will be an advantage that might make a business last where another would fail??? Sure hope that frame of mind works as good as it sounded :)

    Husband of this time still has full time "real job",at least until layoff early next year; wife homeschools one child with other two in elementary school and 4th in college. If that's not enough motivation to succeed somebody please shoot me now!

×