I miss “Good to the last drop” and “See the USA in your Chevrolet.” I miss “Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh, what a relief it is.” Just one more time I’d like to soak my hands in Palmolive.

Weren’t times grand when advertisers didn’t resort to using bodily parts and intimacy to sell their wares? The most daring commercial in my youth was the Playtex girdle with the woman saying, “My girdle is killing me.” We never saw her in her girdle, however. I am totally sick of the idea that the only way to sell toothpaste is by showing a beautiful woman caressing her toothbrush. Worse yet, I’m sick of those male commercials — you know the ones. Smiling Bob.

I miss funny sitcoms. Sitcoms without laugh tracks that laugh when nothing is funny. Canned laughter does not make me laugh.

Where do producers find these laughing people? I am not swayed by fake laughter at fake humor. I want to go back to no canned laughter and shows like “I Love Lucy” and “Father Knows Best” and “Leave It To Beaver.” Even “Mayberry” still keeps me entertained even though I’ve seen every episode. I miss having a sitcom to watch each night and looking forward to the family sitting down together during that time.

“The Honeymooners” was a good one too. I miss funny sitcoms. I miss Coke. I will never believe that original Coke is the original Coke. Remember when the company decided to introduce the “new Coke”? Remember how up in arms consumers became over the change? Then the company went back, supposedly, to the old Coke. I don’t know what happened in the process, but the old Coke isn’t the same to me. When I am in Austin, Jon (our son) always has a supply of Cokes that are produced in Mexico. I call them Mexican Cokes. THEY are the real thing. I miss Coke.

I miss good actors. There must surely be another John Wayne or another Clark Gable somewhere in the world. Guy has memorized every John Wayne movie and I fell for Clark Gable in “Gone With The Wind.” I’m looking for actors like Jimmy Stewart in “Harvey,” Charlton Heston as Moses, Gregory Peck in “To Kill A Mockingbird,” Audrey Hepburn in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart in “The African Queen” and Grace Kelly in “The Country Girl,” or my all-time favorite Spenser Tracy in “Father of the Bride.” Will there ever be classic actors like these? There are a few like Jack Nicholson, Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, Denzel Washington, Tommy Lee Jones, Meryl Steep, Elizabeth Taylor and Shirley McLaine, but they are all over fifty. Who is coming behind them? Tom Cruise? Brad Pitt? I miss powerful movies with good actors.

I miss fun fashions. Remember the three-inch stretch belts that locked in the front with silver buckles? Sack dresses, pop beads and Keds? All of us girls had an elastic belt, usually in black, that accented (or didn’t) our waists and held up our gathered skirts that were made with a waistband and a zipper on the side. We all learned to make them in Home Ec. Classes out of four yards of cotton. Later, the sack dress, made popular by Twiggy, replaced the full skirts. No more standout slips. Pop beads, which came in all colors, accented our sack dresses and also drove teachers crazy.

Sitting in class with a string of pop beads around our neck WITHOUT popping them was out of the question. We all wore white Keds, especially in the summer. I wore them long after they weren’t in vogue. We polished our Keds back then. I miss fun fashions.

I miss heavy-duty cars. Cars that didn’t dent when someone leaned on the hood or propped up with one leg against the door. Cars that don’t scratch when another car door barely touches it. The cars of the 50’s and 60’s could withstand weight — lots of weight. Go through a stack of pictures made back then and you will see relatives sitting proudly on the hoods of their cars. If they tried this today, the hood would cave in. I felt safer riding in my mom’s ‘55 Mercury than I do in the cars of today, even though we now have airbags and seatbelts. With these flimsy cars, we need them. I miss heavy-duty cars.

I miss little things like Sunday dinners with fried chicken, homemade biscuits, and chocolate pie. Chocolate fudge that was usually so runny it had to be eaten with a spoon. Milk in glass bottles left on the doorstep. Walter Cronkite on the evening news, Johnny Carson on NBC every night, Howdie Doodie on Saturday morning, and Captain Kangaroo every morning before school. Oh, I miss so much more, don’t you?

Contact Carol Perkins at cperkins@scrtc.com or P.O. Box 134 Edmonton, KY 42129.