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Yahoo[EDITOR’S NOTE: Today at 3PM eastern U.S. time, “The Daily Apple†show on Retirement Living Television will broadcast a program on Elderblogging. It is available to view live online at rl.tv and cn8.tv. Guests include Millie Garfield of My Mom’s Blog, Susan Harris of Takoma Gardener, Mort Reichek of Octogenarian and me. There is more information at my other blog, Time Goes By.]
At year end, many people step back and take a look at the year past – what happened, what didn’t happened, what was gained and what was lost. But at my age, the years go by so quickly that it feels like I just did that.
What I found myself thinking more about this year is how much daily living has changed in my 65 years. Here are a few ways of life from the 1940s and ‘50s some younger readers may not know about. Some things have gotten better; some have not.
When I was kid, my mother had a wringer washing machine. It washed on its own, but she had to then run the dripping clothes through a ringer – two hand-cranked rollers - to get out the excess water before dragging the heavy basket of wet clothes outside to hang on the line. There were no dryers yet.
Our refrigerator was an icebox. The iceman cometh-ed once a week to haul in a hundred pounds of ice to keep perishables cool if not cold. There was a drip pan on the floor that had to be carefully emptied every day so not to spill over and we planned overnight trips toward the end of the ice cycle so it wouldn’t flood the kitchen while we were gone.
Milk, butter, eggs, cream, cottage cheese and other dairy products were delivered. There was a box on the front porch where the milkman picked up empty bottles when he delivered the week’s order. The bottle stoppers were cardboard disks and in winter, if I didn’t bring in the milk early enough it froze, rising in a solid cylinder out of the top of the bottle.
About once a month, the tinkerer came by to sharpen knives on the spot with his foot-powered grinding wheel, and repair pots and pans too. The throw-away society had not yet developed.
Twice a week, the vegetable man came down our street, the back of his open truck filled with tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, carrots, turnips, parsnips and every other sort of veggie depending on the time of year. He rang his bell and all the women on the block gathered around to make their purchases and gossip.
There were hardly any convenience foods. Our mother cooked everything from scratch. If there were to be cookies or cake, they had to be baked. I spent a lot of time in my childhood shelling peas and walnuts, removing strings from beans, sitting on a high stool stirring soups and puddings for my mother and helping her can vegetables and make jam.
There was no frozen food until I was about 10 or 12 years old and I remember the first I ever ate were peas. I still like how they pop in my mouth and - they don’t need shelling.
Penny candy really did cost a penny. When I went to the movies on Saturday afternoons, my dad gave me a quarter for the admission price and 10 cents for candy. A lot of it was two or three or even four for a penny, so I could get more than enough of a sugar high on a dime’s worth.
Movies were always double features plus a whole lot more: previews, the newsreel, four or five cartoons, the serial (sometimes two) and then two movies. No adults went to these matinees and I’m betting they loved having Saturday afternoon – four or five hours – free of the kids.
We walked to school in those days and yes, sometimes a long, long way. No one had to worry about child predators back then, and there were no drugs, alcohol or guns at school. The worst that happened – entailing a trip, if you were caught, to the principal’s office which we all feared – was spitballs. The only time we ever saw a police officer was once a year when he came to give a speech about crossing streets safely.
There was one summer when it was believed that swimming might cause polio so none of us kids were allowed to swim that year. Every fall when we returned to school, one or two kids were missing, either dead or in an iron lung. When the oral polio vaccine was developed in the mid-1950s, the entire population of the United States was inoculated on the same day, gathering at local schools where sugar cubes with the vaccine were handed out to everyone.
Before television, there was radio – not just music, and no call-in shows yet. There were Inner Sanctum, The Shadow, Lux Radio Theater, Don McNeil and the Breakfast Club, Mr. District Attorney and Radio City Playhouse which did shortened audio versions of current movies with the original film stars. In fact, I own a CD of Casablanca from that show starring Humphrey Bogart, among others, and it’s remarkably compelling as audio only.
And that’s about all the nostalgia I can tolerate today. They were simpler times, but a lot of drudgery, especially for women who rarely worked out of the home. I’ve often wondered if labor-saving devices are what really made the women’s movement of the 1960s possible.
* Contributing Editor Ronni Bennett also blogs at Time Goes By - What it’s really like to get older.
and...
Mata H December 26, 2006 - 5:07am
Congrats on the TV show!
Here are some additions to your list from a 56 yr old. (Gosh the term "elderblogger" makes me wince a bit.)
-- There was a chance to really be a child for a while, with no big decisions needing to be made about sex or drugs at a very young age.
--Halloweens were safe. Parents didn't have to escort their kids, nor did they have to worry about the contents of the goodie-bag. Some people even baked special treats for Halloween!
--Toys were not expensive electronic equipment, enabling the average family to be able to afford Christmas, even with multiple children.
-- "Playdates" were unknown. Your kid would be outside playing and everyone's Mom would watch out for the group of kids nearest them.
--"Interactive TV" meant using the special plastic film that fit over the screen and the custom colored grease pencils that wrote on it during the correct portion of (was it Romper Room???)
-- The only risk during that period of sexual exploration in the 60's and early 70's was pregnancy. Not STDs, not AIDS.
~~ Mata H. also blogs relentlessly at Time's Fool