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Post by oldcajun123 on Oct 5, 2021 7:57:03 GMT -5
Early 40s (WW2) bread & dripping for dinner when things were really tight. Not owning a car - walking everywhere. Home-cooked dinner every night of the week. Wearing an apron in the kitchen for most of the day. Visits from the “pan man” clearing the out-house effluent. Home-baked bread - bread from the baker was a treat. Gathering around the radio at night. Having only one or 2 power points in the whole house. Rooms with no light bulbs fitted. Heating water in the copper boiler to do the washing by hand. Using a washboard with additional elbow grease to get the stains out of the kids clothes. Beating the rugs on the clotheslines. Having to wash the sheets again, after a steam train went past, and the smoke wafted through them whilst they were drying on the clothesline. She got very good at learning the timetables, and avoiding that! Sweeping, as there was no vacuum. Heating the clothes iron on the cast-iron stove. Cooking in the wood-fired cast-iron stove, and letting it run all day to heat the kitchen in winter, when they could afford the wood. The whole family would gather in there. 6 kids in a 2-bedroom house. Half the street were like this. Being excited, and satisfied, with just 1 Christmas gift. School kids getting the cane. Parents giving kids a slap, or the belt. “Sunday best” clothing.  |
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Post by pepesdad1 on Oct 5, 2021 8:11:42 GMT -5
Yup, that pretty much covered it...life as such was not staring at a cell phone, entertainment meant finding a stick and a couple rocks, make a fort out of cardboard if you could find some. Pants and shirt handed down from the older sibling. Life sure was different.
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Post by toshtego on Oct 5, 2021 10:28:05 GMT -5
I was raised in the 1950s so some of that I missed out on.
Not having a telephone and then getting one with a Party Line.
I recall rooms with only an overhead electric light. No outlets on the baseboard. If you wanted power, the light fixture would have to be tapped.
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Post by trailboss on Oct 5, 2021 10:41:46 GMT -5
My grandparents had the wood fired range and oven, baths for us kids were in a galvanized tub in the kitchen. Outhouse with lime, grandma had a wringer washer, but when it broke the washboard was the backup. Party line on the phone…
I am glad for the modern conveniences, so much time was spent on basic needs that are at our fingertips, but glad to have experienced it all.
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Post by simnettpratt on Oct 5, 2021 20:40:43 GMT -5
I was sixties but we still had a wood-fired stove for heat, until we built a fireplace.
We built a room called a bathroom, and put in a tub and washbasin. You had to heat water on the stove for the tub, but the basin was hooked to the well, so you got water in the house. When the water turned green and tadpoles came out, it was time to clean the algae trap.
No outlets at all, because there was no electricity.
My dad had a wooden paddle, but I never needed it.
When wild horses came through, we had to go in the house, because they were dangerous.
Mornings often included smashing through the ice in the goats' water tub, so they could drink.
Across the road there was a shallow bowl with quicksand at the bottom, but there was a fence around the bowl. Sometimes I'd climb over the fence to show how brave I was.
A snowdrift trapped us in the house for seven days once, because the front door opened out.
I started school because I begged to go, but it was in Welsh, so I'd look forward to the story at the end of the day, because it was the only thing in English.
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Post by toshtego on Oct 5, 2021 20:44:33 GMT -5
I was sixties but we still had a wood-fired stove for heat, until we built a fireplace. We built a room called a bathroom, and put in a tub and washbasin. You had to heat water on the stove for the tub, but the basin was hooked to the well, so you got water in the house. When the water turned green and tadpoles came out, it was time to clean the algae trap. No outlets at all, because there was no electricity. My dad had a wooden paddle, but I never needed it. When wild horses came through, we had to go in the house, because they were dangerous. Mornings often included smashing through the ice in the goats' water tub, so they could drink. Across the road there was a shallow bowl with quicksand at the bottom, but there was a fence around the bowl. Sometimes I'd climb over the fence to show how brave I was. A snowdrift trapped us in the house for seven days once, because the front door opened out. I started school because I begged to go, but it was in Welsh, so I'd look forward to the story at the end of the day, because it was the only thing in English. That is much the way I live now. Except the Welsh, darn it! |
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Post by Ronv69 on Oct 5, 2021 21:19:33 GMT -5
I was born in 1950. The house was built in 1908. The kitchen and bathroom were added on the back. The wind blew through the walls and floor. We didn't get our first TV until we moved into a more modern house. My uncle was a share cropper and I stayed with him sometimes. Feather bed, bare bulbs two hole outhouse. Got up early because my bed was in front of the wood stove. Since I was up I got to bring in the wood and gather the eggs . Then I was "off" until after breakfast when I got to slop the hogs and then churn the butter. Time to pick peas and other veggies. I tried picking cotton but it made me cry. I was 8 years old then. Played in the oil field across the road with homemade stick horses.
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Post by toshtego on Oct 5, 2021 21:27:27 GMT -5
I was born in 1950. The house was built in 1908. The kitchen and bathroom were added on the back. The wind blew through the walls and floor. We didn't get our first TV until we moved into a more modern house. Plus you were plagued by Comanches and outlaws such as John Wesley Hardin. If it were not for Captain Bill McDonald, your scalp would be on a Lodge pole. I might be thinking of Big Foot Wallace. Cap't Mc. would have been just a boy when you were a youngen. |
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Post by trailboss on Oct 5, 2021 21:28:12 GMT -5
I was born in 1950. The house was built in 1908. The kitchen and bathroom were added on the back. The wind blew through the walls and floor. We didn't get our first TV until we moved into a more modern house. My uncle worked for PIE (Pacific Intermountain Express) He always had the newest TV, because they could take home scratch and dents. Figured that wasn’t a bad way to go. They got rid of take home scratch and dents when I came onboard. J/K… still trucking though. |
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Post by Ronv69 on Oct 5, 2021 21:30:30 GMT -5
I was born in 1950. The house was built in 1908. The kitchen and bathroom were added on the back. The wind blew through the walls and floor. We didn't get our first TV until we moved into a more modern house. Plus you were plagued by Comanches and outlaws such as John Wesley Hardin. If it were not for Captain Bill McDonald, your scalp would be on a Lodge pole. My uncles were all married to Cherokee or Choctaw women. You know, the "civilized tribes". That were run out of Georgia and North Carolina by the whites who had made promises. |
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Post by toshtego on Oct 5, 2021 21:35:04 GMT -5
Plus you were plagued by Comanches and outlaws such as John Wesley Hardin. If it were not for Captain Bill McDonald, your scalp would be on a Lodge pole. My uncles were all married to Cherokee or Choctaw women. You know, the "civilized tribes". That were run out of Georgia and North Carolina by the whites who had made promises. Trail of Tears! |
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Post by Ronv69 on Oct 5, 2021 22:22:49 GMT -5
My uncles were all married to Cherokee or Choctaw women. You know, the "civilized tribes". That were run out of Georgia and North Carolina by the whites who had made promises. Trail of Tears! 2 of my great grandmother's made the walk. |
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Post by zambini on Oct 5, 2021 22:32:36 GMT -5
I quite enjoyed the '90s. I had a Nintendo, air conditioning and plenty of books. I can't imagine needing anything more back then.
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rastewart
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Post by rastewart on Oct 6, 2021 16:26:36 GMT -5
Also born in 1950 and grew up in the country. We definitely had some of the midcentury conveniences but not all--a coal furnace and electricity, but no running water, in the house where I spent my first six years and ten summers. Then for several winters we rented a house across the road from the school where my dad worked, and that reversed things a little--running water but no central heat. The kitchen, dining room, and smokehouse of that house had started as a log cabin onto the front of which a two-story brick house had been added some time, I guess, in the mid-1800s; there was a line of masonry running straight down the middle marking where, supposedly, half the brick structure had burned down on the night of the Chicago Fire (there were a lot of fires around the Midwest on that night) and been rebuilt. We had a cranked phone on a party line for a while, then no phone for several years, then after my parents' last move in 1960 a phone with a rotary dial on the kitchen wall. We got our first TV--a big black-and-white RCA--when I was eight, as I recall.
We always had a car, but my dad farmed, until farming became impracticable, with horses. Our next-door neighbors in the place we moved to in 1960, an older couple who lived in a tiny two- or three-room house, had never, I guess, owned a car or truck; when the old gentleman wanted to go the nine miles to town, he just started walking, and walked until somebody driving to town stopped and gave him a ride.
When I read some of Wendell Berry's novels about Port William, Kentucky, about 25 years ago, they touched me deeply. I don't glamorize those times or ways of life, but there was a certain quality to life that is lost now. Maybe the scene that captures that best in one of the books is in--I think--a barbershop, where a very old man and a younger neighbor are talking, and at some point in the conversation the younger man realizes that it is his father that the older man is seeing and talking to in his mind. To be known that deeply, your whole life long. To be intertwined with your neighbors' lives for generations. It could be oppressive, but it was also a kind of embrace, a kind of groundedness, that almost nobody in our society knows any more.
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Post by Ronv69 on Oct 6, 2021 17:07:40 GMT -5
The county we live in now is like that. The barber remembers cutting Don Henley'S hair when he was in high school. Most of the residents are in the 4th or 5th generation living here we're newcomers but we love it. Moved here after my hometown was destroyed.
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Post by Plainsman on Oct 6, 2021 18:48:38 GMT -5
Who's Don Henley?
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Post by pepesdad1 on Oct 6, 2021 19:07:24 GMT -5
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Post by Plainsman on Oct 6, 2021 19:17:56 GMT -5
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Post by Ronv69 on Oct 6, 2021 19:48:59 GMT -5
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Post by Plainsman on Oct 6, 2021 19:50:31 GMT -5
Maybe not. But I may also have "other" interests. Never heard of these entities. And don't feel the loss.
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Post by Ronv69 on Oct 6, 2021 19:58:31 GMT -5
Maybe not. But I may also have "other" interests. Never heard of these entities. And don't feel the loss. You have NEVER heard Hotel California? Cass County is a number one top selling country album. He's the sound of America for the past 50 years. In your time Scott Joplin was from here, but before Craig the barber. T-bone Walker was from Linden as well. |
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Post by trailboss on Oct 6, 2021 20:16:47 GMT -5
Bob, have you heard of Elvis or the Beatles?
I heard they are pretty good.
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Post by Plainsman on Oct 6, 2021 20:56:26 GMT -5
Bob, have you heard of Elvis or the Beatles? I heard they are pretty good. Droll. Get stuffed.
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Post by trailboss on Oct 6, 2021 21:44:21 GMT -5
Bob, have you heard of Elvis or the Beatles? I heard they are pretty good. Droll. Get stuffed.
Fair enuff.  Don Henley on vocals...best listened on Hi-fi not the phone. |
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Post by don on Oct 7, 2021 10:11:32 GMT -5
2 of my great grandmother's made the walk. Ron, have you read “Killers of the Flower Moon”. If not, I highly recommend it. |
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Post by don on Oct 7, 2021 10:20:37 GMT -5
Maybe not. But I may also have "other" interests. Never heard of these entities. And don't feel the loss. You have NEVER heard Hotel California? Cass County is a number one top selling country album. He's the sound of America for the past 50 years. In your time Scott Joplin was from here, but before Craig the barber. T-bone Walker was from Linden as well. A wonderful album, Ron. I listened to a ton of Eagles growing up. Music is important to me these days. Anything that reminds me of happy times, old friends or those who have passed on, is welcome in my life. They live on in my memory. Music can be a trigger or help me to remember very specific and special times more clearly. I can’t imagine not having it in my world. |
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Post by Ronv69 on Oct 7, 2021 13:25:01 GMT -5
2 of my great grandmother's made the walk. Ron, have you read “Killers of the Flower Moon”. If not, I highly recommend it. I've read a couple of books on the Trail of Tears and I have a couple more on the shelf. I will add this one to my reading list. |
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Post by don on Oct 7, 2021 14:56:28 GMT -5
Ron, the book I mentioned is about how the Osage were exploited in the early 1900s. They sat on some of the biggest oil reserves in the world in Oklahoma and were amongst the country’s wealthiest people. The book is about how unscrupulous whites stole their oil rights. Many Osage were murdered and virtually no one ever did much time for any crimes. Sad story, but very interesting.
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Post by Ronv69 on Oct 7, 2021 15:26:16 GMT -5
Ron, the book I mentioned is about how the Osage were exploited in the early 1900s. They sat on some of the biggest oil reserves in the world in Oklahoma and were amongst the country’s wealthiest people. The book is about how unscrupulous whites stole their oil rights. Many Osage were murdered and virtually no one ever did much time for any crimes. Sad story, but very interesting. I've heard about that. Just one of many things that we are hesitant to look at very hard. |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 7, 2021 16:24:04 GMT -5
I was born in 1965. We had TV, the radio. No internet and no computers. Contrary to kids today, we knew how to read a clock. We did math calculations by hand, using our heads. We knew how to write. We learned history, politics, economics, geography, among other subjects. We had religion and ethics. No one was trying to brainwash us into some political agenda. Teachers respected parents and parents respected teachers.
We actually learned something instructive at school. We could voice our opinions and debate with our fellow classmates and teachers. No one became offended. No one cancelled anyone based on their individual ideas.
We respected our parents, our teachers and our elders. we had chores at the house to do and that was part of growing up and learning responsabilities. I had my first job at 7, selling pop bottles to construction workers. At ten, I was a caddy for golfers. At twelve, I was picking up stawberries. At 14, I was delivering newspapers. At 16, I was a lifeguard and didn't need my parents to buy me clothes. I was becoming independent. We learned the value of money and hard work to earn what we wanted.
We played a lot, talked a lot, biked a lot, went to the pool, played a lot of sports together. We dreamed, used our imaginations, went on treasure hunts, explored our surroundings. We had a lot of fun. Obesity was a very rare sight because of a very different lifestyle and because our mothers cooked our meals.
I really pity kids today.
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