Just remembering old
stuff
Not much happening in the Cranky
home, nothing worth posting. I let my
mind go and I start to wax nostalgia.
Not the good old days, not the bad old days, just days gone by…different
times.
Remember
deliveries? Today we get deliveries of
stuff we buy on-line. Seems like every
day or two there is a package left outside our front door. In the fifties and sixties, I remember other
deliveries.
The milk man
left milk and butter and eggs. Delivery was
regular, every day…we drank a lot of milk.
We would leave a note if the regular order needed changing. The milk was whole or skim. I don’t remember any percent milk. Sometimes whole had the cream on top and you
had to shake it up. In the spring the milk
had a slight onion taste…I guess the cows were eaten onion weed. The milk bottles were left in a metal box
with a lid. Used bottles went in the box
and they were exchanged for new bottles at around four in the morning.
Mom didn’t
go to the dry cleaner, that was picked up and dropped off. Shirts came on a hanger with a cardboard sleeve
on the bottom of the metal hanger. That
cardboard thing and the metal hanger made for great bow and arrow fights, who
needed nerf guns?
Beer and
soda were delivered. We had an old
fridge in the garage, the delivery guy just opened the garage door and left the
order in the fridge.
Doctors
still made house calls in the fifties, but it was rare. I remember a doctor visit when my brothers
and I had the mumps. That was another
thing that was delivered, measles, mumps, rubella (German Measles) and chicken
pocks.
I think
there was a grocery delivery too, at least for some of the fifties. Mom just called it in and paid at the door.
Shoes, do
they still have those foot sizing things and a salesman with that stool where
you put your foot? Seems like today you
just know your size and pull out different shoes to try on without a sales
person.
You made a
car appointment at the local service station to get a lube, change your oil and
filters, a lot of dads knew how to do it themselves. I even remember changing spark plugs and
sizing the gap. Do cars still use those
things?
We did mow
our own lawns, no service for that unless you were really hoity toity. We had a reel push mower and then later a
power mower that you started with a wrap around rope. It took several pulls and you had to know how
to work the choke. Landscaping was
usually just a few bushes that needed an occasional trimming.
We had a
clothes dryer, but mom preferred the outside clothes hanger, outdoor drying
just made the clothes smell better.
No cable TV,
everyone had an antenna on the roof or rabbit ears on the set. Football did not broadcast NFL games if your
local team was playing at home. When the
Giants played Philly, Dad would go up on the roof and turn the antennae toward
Philly. He’d be yelling “Better now?”
until we got maximum reception, always snowy, but we got the game.
Winters were
definitely colder in the fifties and sixties.
Every winter there was ice skating on local ponds for at least one week,
sometimes two weeks. Strangly I remember
the summers being hotter than today, lots of 100-degree days…might just be
because air conditioning was pretty much only in the supermarket or the movie
theater.
That’s
it. Oh I have more memories, this post is
just long enough for now.
What stuff
do you remember?
