I remember when....

[TripleF]

Milk was delivered to your front door.

Just wanting to capture the days of old. All comments welcome!

[jerryd6818]

Ice was delivered to your door because you had an ice box (not a refrigerator)

[garddogg56]

I remember when I believed in my goverment and never lost my love for this country oh ya two for a penny mint juleps OH OH OH OH oh oh three dollar Imperial Kamp King knife a W.T.Grants dept.stores

[Paladin]

Ice was delivered to your door because you had an ice box (not a refrigerator)

And an ice card in the front window. It told the iceman how much ice you needed and he brought the ice around to the back door.

Ray

[knife7knut]

We had an ice box in my grandfather's home until I was about 11 years old.One of my chores was to empty the drip tray every day and God help me if I forgot! We would drive down to the filling station(gas station to the younger members)which also was the local ice house. They would cut a block to the size we needed and load it into the car(rear floor of his 34 Ford sedan)with a huge set of ice tongs and we would drive home. My grandfather would carry the ice with his tongs up the back stairs to the rear door and just inside was the ice box and load it into the top compartment.A block of ice would last about two to three days during the summer months.
Another memory was bath night(Saturday). As we didn't have a hot water tank I would have to heat water on the stove in a large pail and carry it upstairs to the bath tub and pour it in.Usually had to do two and sometimes three pails to get enough to bathe in.Stove would only hold two so if a third was needed the water in the tub would cool down.Not bad in the summer time but not so good in the winter.
Two of the best things we ever got:A refrigerator and a hot water heater!

[Paladin]

My grandparents lived in rural west Texas where they eked out a living growing cotton. Sometimes they would supplement that with a large garden and produce would be carried to the grocery store in town.
When they got electricity their whole lives changed tremendously. No more driving into town to the locker in order to retrieve a roast for Sunday dinner. Electric lights, electric refrigerator, freezer, electric sewing machine and on and on.
I believe that was all the result of the rural electrification act.
I remember picking cotton on their farm and I went with them to the barn 'way before daylight to 'help' with the milking.

Ray

[jerryd6818]

we took our baths in the middle of the kitchen in a #2 wash tub. Did that off and on, up until I was 16 years old. Try folding a 6' frame into a #2 wash tub.

[RobesonsRme.com]

I remember when we lived comfortably and never thought we were doing without, on Dad's income from a three dollars per hour wage, without any kind of health insurance.

But after Mom died and I found her meticulously kept "books", I realized they were squeezing everything they could out of every cent.

Charlie Noyes

[treefarmer]

Living without electricity, I remember the ice man bringing the block of ice through the house in a canvas bag, I always got some little chips of ice off the canvas as he put the block of ice in the icebox.
We had a shallow well with a pitcher pump, pumping that good central Florida water, laden with plenty of sulfur and iron, didn't know any better .
We had a kerosene cook stove and a fire place for heat.
I remember the outhouse, it was north and west of the house, painted white. Toilet tissue was most of the time pages of an old Sears & Roebuck catalog.
I remember my uncle putting up an electric fence to keep the range cattle out of the garden, fencing for cattle was not required till 1949. Not everybody got their fences built on time, so when power finally was supplied the electric fence was a quick fix. Seeing cows being herded down the main roads was a common thing and apparently they had the right of way, we always pulled over to let them pass by.
All this was in the late '40s. Our house had been built with indoor plumbing, anticipating the construction of power lines by Florida Power and Light along a hard road known as the Goldenrod Road, at that time also known as State Road 15-A. The electrical service was probably connected in 1950. All this was in Orange County, Florida.
Treefarmer

[jerryd6818]

I remember, the summer I turned five, sitting out in the horse lot learning to tie my own shoes. That's the same place we lived in a log house (my uncle's place) and Dad worked for the REA (Rural Electrification Administration). That would have been 1949.

[jerryd6818]

I remember using hand signals when I first got my driver's license. Left arm straight out the window pointing left if you were going to turn left (yes, in the winter time too.). Hang the left arm out the window pointing down to the ground if you were going to slow down or stop. Arm bent at the elbow and pointing straight up if you were going to turn right.

[Mumbleypeg]

I remember my grandparents party line telephone. Each family having a phone on the same line had their own distinctive ring (like two short rings and a long, etc). Sometimes when you took the receiver off its hook a neighbor would already be having a conversation on the line. My grandmother always said to be careful what you say when using the phone because you never knew who was listening. I guess that's still true today.

I remember taking baths in a washtub in the kitchen at my grandparents house. In winter it was the warmest room in the house, and close to the stove for heated water. I have two sisters. They got their turns to bathe first, then it was my turn last. By then the water was lukewarm and soapy, but since I probably had the most dirt it made sense. I didn't know any better anyway.

I remember listening to Harry Carey and Joe Garagiola broadcast St. Louis Cardinals baseball games on the radio. Also remember getting my first transistor radio which enabled me to listen to the games in bed after I was supposed to be asleep. Also remember when we got a television. It was of course black and white. My dad and a neighbor put a big antenna on the roof so we could get a signal. I think we only got one station.

I was about 14 when we finally got an air conditioner. (In Texas ). It was a window unit and only cooled the living room and kitchen. Before that we had a "swamp cooler" and electric fans. About a year later we got a color television set. By then we could get three or four stations. Of course, there was no such thing as remote control so us kids were the "change the station" mechanism.

I also remember my dad and uncles discussing the pros and cons of whether automatic dishwashers were a good thing - and the opinions of my mom and aunts regarding same.

Those were the good old days?

Ken

[jerryd6818]

My paternal grandmother (Mamaw) had a big cast iron kettle sitting out in the back yard. She used it to heat water on "wash day" and scrubbed the clothes clean on a washboard in the same #2 washtub we used to take baths in.

When it came time for hog killin', she rendered lard in that cast iron kettle. I had it but gave it to a cousin who's a good bit younger than me.

Life was hard for country folks.

[Paladin]

My paternal grandmother (Mamaw) had a big cast iron kettle sitting out in the back yard. She used it to heat water on "wash day" and scrubbed the clothes clean on a washboard in the same #2 washtub we used to take baths in.

When it came time for hog killin', she rendered lard in that cast iron kettle. I had it but gave it to a cousin who's a good bit younger than me.

Life was hard for country folks.

My maternal grandmother was also Mawmaw to all of us. She used the same wash pot to make soap in. So much of what us city kids thought was fun was in fact, a real necessity. Life was hard.

Ray

[jerryd6818]

My paternal grandmother (Mamaw) had a big cast iron kettle sitting out in the back yard. She used it to heat water on "wash day" and scrubbed the clothes clean on a washboard in the same #2 washtub we used to take baths in.

When it came time for hog killin', she rendered lard in that cast iron kettle. I had it but gave it to a cousin who's a good bit younger than me.

Life was hard for country folks.

My maternal grandmother was also Mawmaw to all of us. She used the same wash pot to make soap in. So much of what us city kids thought was fun was in fact, a real necessity. Life was hard.

Ray

After many years of use, that old kettle was "seasoned" perfectly. It sat outside year around and never rusted. Well, one time an old man showed up to the hog killin' and wanted to help so he grabbed a sand rock and commenced to scrubbing on Mamaw's cast iron kettle. Mamaw wanted to kill him but Papaw wouldn't let her.

[CheckSix]

We had fresh dairy milk delivered, along with butter, to the backdoor of our rural home. My dad worked for Philco after WWII, so we had radios, TV's and refrigerators\freezers. My dad grew up during the depression and told me how lake ice was stored all summer long and delivered by horse drawn cart to home ice boxes.

I remember JFK and what happened. I remember my parents taking me to Atlantic City and seeing Louie Armstrong perform at the Steel Pier doing Hello Dolly. I remember in 1970 when I was the post president of Explorer post 222 and went to Washington DC for the annual meeting and met the POTUS at the White House. I remember my dad taking me outside at twilight and him pointing out Sputnik as it flew overhead. So much to remember!!! Thanks for getting me to think about these things and reminisce.

[Mumbleypeg]

I remember traveling to Washington D.C. by bus with my church's youth group. I was 12 years old. We spent one night in a hotel somewhere on the way, and then stayed with families of a church in the D.C. area.

At the U.S. Capitol our group of about 20 kids plus adult sponsors was ushered into the office of "Mr. Sam", The Honorable Sam Rayburn, who at the time was Speaker of the House of Representatives. He said a few words, posed with us for a group picture, shook all our hands, and then one of his aides gave us a tour of the Capitol building. I can't remember a single thing he said, nor do I know what became of my copy of the picture. I do remember that after returning home my dad told me I had shaken the hand of the most powerful and influential men in the world.

Ken

[RobesonsRme.com]

I grew up in the suburbs. My Dad was a city boy, but Mom was country. My maternal grandparents and aunts and uncles all had outhouses until the mid to late 50's. I suspect those Sears & Roebuck catalogs were responsible for my now lifelong habit of reading in the bathroom.

When I was younger, our heat was from a coal-fired cast iron heater in the hallway and a fireplace in the living room.

I remember standing in front of the cast iron heater, turning round and round, trying to get my body as warm as possible, then dashing to my bed, jumping under all those heavy quilts, staying in one spot and hoping they achieved my body temp before my body achieved theirs. Bedroom doors were kept shut, could not afford to heat the whole house.

A gas floor furnace replaced the cast iron heater eventually, but as there was no OSHA at the time, everybody obtained checkerboard burn scars on the bottoms of their feet while walking to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

And as a boy, I remember leaving the house in the morning while the dew was still on the ground, finding my friends and us spending all day out and about, ranging far and wide, sometimes multiple miles from home, and no one ever worried about us as long as we were all home in time for supper.

And living and traveling without air conditioning, something we apparently cannot exist without today.

Charlie Noyes

[Quick Steel]

I grew up urban. I cannot remember us not having an electric refrigerator but I do remember the ice man making deliveries to the neighbors: a young fellow, very muscular and very friendly.

I remember the delivery of our first TV and my childish concern that it would be set up in time for Howdy Doody. We had been watching HD at a neighbor's apartment.

Then there was the annual summer polio anxiety. And our first car, a Pontiac coupe. Until then we always rode the "streetcars" which were a very efficient means of travel. In retrospect I wish we had kept them and not gone to buses. Saturday afternoons virtually always meant going to the Highland theater, or the Capital. Does anyone remember "The Crimson Pirate?" It made a star of Burt Lancaster. How about "The Naked Jungle" with Charleton Heston fighting off the army ants. Some have called it the greatest B movie, primarily because it was in color.

I remember my mother having milk and cookies ready for my brother and me when we arrived home (walking) from 1st & 2nd grade. Doors unlocked, young kids walking to school or elsewhere unaccompanied, playing in the dirt, staying out on summer vaction until the street lights came on-the signal to return home. Neighborhoods were different then.

[philco]

I can remember being able to stand up in the back seat of our family car. It was a 1951 Ford. My dad drove it for years. Eventually the transmission went bad and would not go into reverse any longer. He drove it that way for months but finally traded it in on a sweet 58 Chevy station wagon. My mother threw a fit. I remember her saying the brown and cream colors reminded her of dog puke.
I too started out as a city boy (If you can consider Lexington, Ky. a city that is.) We would play outside all day and nobody ever got kidnapped, molested, or murdered. We had fun. All the neighborhood kids knew each other and we'd all gang up and play cowboys and Indians, or army. Some days I'd be an Indian part of the day, a German soldier part of the day, and Roy Rogers part of the day.
When I was 13 we moved to the country. That was a whole different way of life than I'd known up to that point. We soon made friends with a family of kids who rode our school bus. We would walk the mile and a half from our house to theirs to play basketball on a dirt court or all get together to fish in a local pond or camp out on the back of the farm. My brothers and I would occasionally engage in corn cob fights out in the barn, then have to pick up all the spent "ammo" and put it back in the corn crib.
One of my jobs during cold weather was to gather in two five gallon buckets of coal from the coal shed each day after school. That coal was burned in the grate in our living room. We had that heat source and also a gas warm morning stove. My bedroom was not heated and I've slept under blankets piled on so high it was hard to turn over because of their weight, but they were needed.
In the summers I'd hire out to the local farmers to help with their hay harvest and with their tobacco crops. If you haven't ever known the pleasure of cutting and hanging tobacco, or loading and unloading hundreds of square bales of hay in a day, then count yourself blessed. It was hard, dirty work. That's how I paid for my first car when I was 16.

[djknife13]

I lived the first 5 years of my life near the end of the road 5 miles from a town of about 300. No electricity out that far. Dad worked as a meatcutter in the small town. Mom would go out to the outhouse before us kids and bang on the door so the garder snakes or once in a great while, a skunk would have time to sneak out the back before we went in. Grandpa's farm was a little farther down the road. When Grandpa died, Grandma sold the farm and Dad had our 1 1/2 story house loaded unto two large beams behind a semi truck and towed it into town. We got our first TV when I was about 8. I was bummed because all that was on the 2 stations all day were soap operas. No westerns. I spent most of my summers earning money with paper routes and mowing lawns with an old push mower that you had to wind the rope around a pulley and pull, usually many times before it would fire. You tied the rope to the handle. I mowed a huge school yard, a huge church yard and a cemetery with that old mower or one like it. The neighbor kid and I spent all our spare time when I wasn't working, hunting rabbits or grouse or riding our bikes to one of the local lakes to spend the day fishing and swimming. my parents never questioned the wisdom of letting two twelve year olds on there own with shotguns or spending the day in an old wooden boat without life jackets or sunscreen. Somehow we survived. Dad made about a buck an hour cutting meat and fed 7 kids. When our bill at the grocery store got a little to high, the owner would tear it up and start over. Mom and Dad went to the big city (Duluth) just before Christmas every year to buy presents for all us kids with about $20 in their pockets. Somehow they always ran into Dad's boss and he would pull a $100 out of his pocket and shove it into Dad's. We were rich without having a nickle to spare. Dad passed away with all 7 kids and most of our spouses and Mom at his side. We sure never lacked anything important in life. ___Dave

[jerryd6818]

My bedroom was not heated and I've slept under blankets piled on so high it was hard to turn over because of their weight, but they were needed.

I can empathize Phil.

Summer of '59 - Summer of '61 we lived in the country south of Champaign IL. Water came from a driven point well in the back yard. Fortunately there was an electric motor hooked up to the pump. Outhouse for your daily needs. No central heat. We had an oil fired space heater for the winter months. I slept upstairs where there was no heat. Had a couple of rocks slightly smaller than the size of a bowling ball that I would heat on top of the space heater, wrap in a towel and position under the covers at the foot of the bed. It helped.

Dad made a dollar an hour and the rent on that old place was $40 a month.

[TripleF]

I remember taking the note my father had written, giving the grocery store permission to sell me cigarettes for him.

It is true,.....that I never smoked a cigarette until 20 when hanging out with my younger brother!

[Colonel26]

I remember growing up on Pa and Grandma's farm. Thanksgiving day was hog killing day. All the aunts and uncles came home that day and all morning the adults and older cousins worked killing, scalding, and quartering up the hogs. Dinner (lunch) was the typical thanksgiving meal, and the afternoon into the evening was spent cutting up the meat, making sausage, salting down the hams, and rendering lard.

I remember when grandma would get a hankering for chicken and dumplings she'd catch an older hen, chop her head off with a butcher knife and let her fly! My little brother and I thought that was the grandest thing ever watching that hen fly with no head. And the dumplings were oh so good.

I remember going into the store on the main road and going back to the old Coke cooler. You had to walk past all the old men who were sitting on wooden Coke crates turned up on end sitting around the wood stove. They were there every morning to solve the world's problems and talk about the tobacco crop. You could learn some right interesting things listening to those old men. When you popped the cap off that glass bottle of Coke, it was so cold that slushy ice would float to the top. They were cheaper if you drunk the Coke there and left the bottle, so daddy always made us drink it there.

At that store you could buy the best sandwiches in the world. All the meat was sliced on the old meat slicer, served on Sumbeam white bread, and slathered with Miracle Whip, no mayonaise was allowed. Bologna was sliced almost as thick as your hand, and the cheese just about as thick. A thick sliced bologna on the big four square crackers was a favorite sandwhich.

Pa still did part of his farming with mules and Belgian mares. Summers were spent, like Phil said, working in hay and tobacco, and the falls in stripping tobacco. In the winter dad quail hunted back when there were still quail here.

Pa had a yellow and white '69 Chevy half ton truck that us kids would play in. Lots of times it had cattle racks on it and he'd haul those big old Belgian mares or cows in the back. It's a thousand wonders they didn't turn the thing over. Of course, us kids loved riding down the road standing in the truck bed holding on to the cattle racks.

Church was Sunday morning and Saturday night back then with Wednesday bible study. 4th Sunday night was gospel singing and we were there for all of it and the revivals twice a year, VBS, and one of my favorites, homecoming with all day services and dinner on the ground.

Good times, man I miss those things.

[bighomer]

Yep.