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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: I remember... (For older shipmates?)
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
I remember when the "Canal area" of any town was the rough part where you wouldn't want to be especially at night. This was partly because it tended to be the industrial area, which (in the Midlands where I lived) was partially or totally abandoned.
These days, of course, the canal-side flats are premium and very sought after. How things have changed.
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Blog
Music for your enjoyment
Lord may all my hard times be healing times
take out this broken heart and renew my mind.
Posts: 18859 | From: At the bottom of a deep dark well. | Registered: May 2001
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Welease Woderwick
Sister Incubus Nightmare
# 10424
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Posted
Going back 60 years or so my Gran had one of the old candlestick phones - and I'm also old enough to remember when the area she lived in [Tilbury and the docklands] had the big flood in the early 1950s.
My hair was blonde in those days and is now a rather distinguished shade of grey.
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I give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way.
Fancy a break in South India?
Accessible Homestay Guesthouse in Central Kerala, contact me for details
What part of Matt. 7:1 don't you understand?
Posts: 48139 | From: 1st on the right, straight on 'til morning | Registered: Sep 2005
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
One of my minor claims to fame, is that I actually saw the first Blue Peter. I can't remember anything about it apart from its being introduced as a new programme, the little ship appearing and an explanation about the flag a ship flies when it is about to set sail. But there was a programme about whales on the same evening.
Although it's younger than me, I can't remember the Archers starting. It always seems to have been there. My grandfather listened to it. As they did not have electricity, they had a wireless which took a battery. We used to collect this for them en route when we went to visit them. It wasn't any modern sort. Nor was it a wet one like a car uses. It was a box rather the shape of a large box of chocolates.
I can, though, remember the king dying in 1952.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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Landlubber
Shipmate
# 11055
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by balaam:
quote:
Originally posted by Landlubber:
I do admire Hilda of Whitby's wringer washer. My grandmother had a copper and a mangle and I remember the excitement when my mother got a twin tub washing machine,
AS a child my arm followed the clothes through the wringer. It hurt, but the shirt sleeve was nicely pressed.
Ouch, Balaam!
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They that go down to the sea in ships … reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man
Posts: 383 | From: On dry land | Registered: Feb 2006
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mark_in_manchester
not waving, but...
# 15978
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Posted
quote:
...they had a wireless which took a battery. We used to collect this for them en route when we went to visit them. It wasn't any modern sort. Nor was it a wet one like a car uses. It was a box rather the shape of a large box of chocolates.
I, ummm, sometimes hang out with people who make a study of this kind of thing, as you can see here. The cost of an HT battery was apparently prohibitive enough before the war that many folks would just use the radio for the news and nothing more.
[ 31. January 2016, 12:27: Message edited by: mark_in_manchester ]
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"We are punished by our sins, not for them" - Elbert Hubbard
(so good, I wanted to see it after my posts and not only after those of shipmate JBohn from whom I stole it)
Posts: 1596 | Registered: Oct 2010
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
We didn't own a washing machine when we lived at Folkestone. (I don't know what we did before.) We rented one. It was a single tub Hoover with wringer, and it cost 2/6 an hour, delivered by the Zanussi brothers, one of whom would carry it down the drive by the house (a 30s semi-detached) and deposit it in the kitchen. We also had the bedlinen done by the laundry, sometimes (as I also remember the sheets being hung up down the garden).
I went for a school visit to the laundry, where I remember they had a thing for preparing shirts, in which the garment was placed over a blower, and lifted up like an inflated Jack-in-the-box over the machine - which was tall, and like something from "Chicken Run".
On one occasion while Mum was up the garden hanging out washing, I had been pretend ironing with my miniature Morphy Richards iron, just like her big one, on my miniature ironing board, and was getting unsatisfied with the results.
So I took the string which was the pretend lead and had a pretend plug at the end which only fitted a pretend socket with a suction plug to hold it to the wall, and tied to the lead of the real iron. This was not in the wall socket, for safety. So I pushed it in to he socket.
Then, realising that this did not make my pretend iron heat up, I tried to pull the plug out of the socket, and couldn't. So I went to Dad's toolbox and got a screwdriver to lever the plug out with. But it didn't work.
So I went and swapped it for a longer one, and tried again. It touched the live pin, and started sparking around like a fairy wand - I had pulled it away. My sister screamed. I don't know if I did, but Mum came rushing in. The screwdriver had a semicircular crater near the end, with little bloblets of melted iron. It was like that for years, because Dad couldn't afford to replace it, and it was a perpetual reminder.
The serious thing about this, the divine protection part, perhaps, was that the first screwdriver was entirely brass, handle and all. The second had a plastic handle. I don't remember when, or if, I ever told my parents about that.
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
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Nenya
Shipmate
# 16427
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
quote:
Originally posted by M.:
I remember the school trip to see a computer. It filled a whole room - we weren't allowed in the room, of course, we just looked at it through big glass
The computer mouse must have been enormous, elephant sized.
![[Killing me]](graemlins/killingme.gif) This reminds me of two conversations I've had in the past. One with Nenlet2 when he was little: "We didn't have computers when we were your age." "So how did you get onto the Internet?" The other with my mum in the last few years of her life. "Should I get the Internet?" "Are you going to get a computer?" "No!" "Not much point getting the Internet, then, Mum..." "Oh. I just thought the Internet might be something I ought to have..." ![[Axe murder]](graemlins/lovedrops.gif)
[ 31. January 2016, 14:41: Message edited by: Nenya ]
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They told me I was delusional. I nearly fell off my unicorn.
Posts: 1289 | Registered: May 2011
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Baptist Trainfan
Shipmate
# 15128
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Posted
And sawdust on the floor? ![[Devil]](graemlins/devil.gif)
(Mind you, there was a butcher in this town which had that until a couple of years ago).
Posts: 9750 | From: The other side of the Severn | Registered: Sep 2009
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
It used to be fun to sign out library books, writing your name on the book card, below the names of others, with their dates of borrowing and return, wondering about the additional stories the book might tell of the lives of others.
There's also 1970s fashions in facial hair. Big moutasches and atrocious sideburns. Far out, man.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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Stercus Tauri
Shipmate
# 16668
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mark_in_manchester:
quote:
...they had a wireless which took a battery. We used to collect this for them en route when we went to visit them. It wasn't any modern sort. Nor was it a wet one like a car uses. It was a box rather the shape of a large box of chocolates.
I, ummm, sometimes hang out with people who make a study of this kind of thing, as you can see here. The cost of an HT battery was apparently prohibitive enough before the war that many folks would just use the radio for the news and nothing more.
There were animated discussions in the school playground about the relative merits of electricity and gas for light and cooking. One boy was adamant that gas radios were much better than electric ones, as his parents had one.
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Thay haif said. Quhat say thay, Lat thame say (George Keith, 5th Earl Marischal)
Posts: 905 | From: On the traditional lands of the Six Nations. | Registered: Sep 2011
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
And sawdust on the floor?
(Mind you, there was a butcher in this town which had that until a couple of years ago).
For a moment, I caught the whiff of butcher's shop, the meaty sawdusty smell. How does that work? It's clearly not in my nose, which is where one normally experiences smells.
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
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Offeiriad
Ship's Arboriculturalist
# 14031
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Posted
Change comes at a rather uneven pace, doesn't it? When Subscriber Trunk Dialling first enabled us to dial calls out of our local area (whose local codes began with 9) I was aged about 11.
STD didn't touch the remoter areas where my family came from: the trunk operator was quite bemused to be asked for 'Bishop's Castle 27' - 'that's a very short number, are you sure?' Shorter still was the number of the hotel where we stayed when my grandfather's house was full up: the Castle Hotel rejoiced in being 'Bishop's Castle 3'!
Posts: 1426 | From: La France profonde | Registered: Aug 2008
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Stercus Tauri
Shipmate
# 16668
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Offeiriad:
Change comes at a rather uneven pace, doesn't it? When Subscriber Trunk Dialling first enabled us to dial calls out of our local area (whose local codes began with 9) I was aged about 11.
STD didn't touch the remoter areas where my family came from: the trunk operator was quite bemused to be asked for 'Bishop's Castle 27' - 'that's a very short number, are you sure?' Shorter still was the number of the hotel where we stayed when my grandfather's house was full up: the Castle Hotel rejoiced in being 'Bishop's Castle 3'!
That does take you back a while. These days nobody boasts about having STD.
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Thay haif said. Quhat say thay, Lat thame say (George Keith, 5th Earl Marischal)
Posts: 905 | From: On the traditional lands of the Six Nations. | Registered: Sep 2011
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
My dad used to talk of the property at the end of Wastwater in the Lake District having the number "Wastwater 1". That was it.
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Blog
Music for your enjoyment
Lord may all my hard times be healing times
take out this broken heart and renew my mind.
Posts: 18859 | From: At the bottom of a deep dark well. | Registered: May 2001
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
One of my first girlfriends, her telephone number was 782.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
They still had them on buses in Huddersfield in 1978.
I've seen "no spitting" on buses in the last decade.
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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basso
Ship’s Crypt Keeper
# 4228
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Posted
In the mid to late 70s, I had to return a customer's call who lived in the wilds of Humboldt County in northern California. The only way to reach that number was to be connected to a local operator, who would route the call. I think it was the last such switchboard in the state. (I think I've actually seen the hardware in a museum up there!)
The real trick wasn't getting that operator to connect me - it was reaching her in the first place. Closer to the Bay Area, it involved lines like "You want an operator? Do you need directory assistance, sir? You say that is an exchange name, sir? What is its number? It must have a number, sir."
Posts: 4358 | From: Bay Area, Calif | Registered: Mar 2003
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
In the Milton Keynes Museum they have a couple of switch boards, all working. And you can operate them! It's absolutely brilliant.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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TonyK
Host Emeritus
# 35
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Posted
So many memories being triggered.
There was a (genuine) little old lady who lived up the road from us in about 1950. She had a television, which was pretty rare in those days and my brothers and I used to walk up to her house on a Sunday(?) evening to watch Muffin the Mule.
I remember the king dying the day before my 8th birthday in 1952 and hearing very serious family discussion as to whether it would be appropriate to hold my birthday party the next day. You can imagine my feelings! It did take place...
I don't know what happened to the old lady, but we didn't go to her house to see the Coronation in 1953 - we listened to it on the wireless!
My earliest recollection that I can positively date was asking my mother(?) about a road sign showing 5 rings and being told it pointed the way to the London Olympics - 1948 and aged 4!
Milk in bottles being targeted by the blue-tits; my grandfather rushing out with bucket and spade to collect the horse-droppings from the road for the compost heap; ice on the inside of the window on frosty mornings (my bedroom had a fireplace, but you only had a fire if you were really ill!); the older boys next door who had every copy of the Eagle comic since it had been started; the last trams running from my home town of Purley, Surrey and seeing a cyclist getting caught in the tram rail and falling off; our Bakelite telephone (number UPLands 1705).
And no doubt many more too boring to mention!
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Yours aye ... TonyK
Posts: 2717 | From: Gloucestershire | Registered: May 2001
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balaam
Making an ass of myself
# 4543
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by TonyK:
we listened to it on the wireless!
I had a large valve wireless at the end of my bed well into the 1970s after the rest of the family had upgraded to the portability of transistor radio. (Separate transistors in radios seem a long time ago in this age of DAB).
The reason for my hanging on to old technology was the valves that powered it. It made a good practice guitar amplifier.
Wish I still had it <sigh>.
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Last ever sig ...
blog
Posts: 9049 | From: Hen Ogledd | Registered: May 2003
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georgiaboy
Shipmate
# 11294
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Posted
So many memories of long ago (not THAT long, it seems really).
Growing up in small town & farm in KY, USA.
First event seen on TV (B&W 12" screen): Coronation of HMQE2. We didn't have a set; went to landlord's in next door apt. Telecast was made possible by the network (CBS?) outfitting an airplane with a film lab, so that they could process the film while over the Atlantic.
Phones hung on the wall, no dial. You 'took down' the receiver and told Agnes the operator what number you wanted. Our number at home was 203 (we shared phone in the corridor with the landlord).
Agnes also rang the noon whistle each day, and was dispatcher for the volunteer fire dept.
At our house on the farm we were on a party line with IIRC 7 others. There was one subscriber (maiden lady sisters) who ALWAYS listened in on everybody's calls. All phones on the line rang for all calls, you had a ring pattern to identify each subscriber -- ours was 'three longs and a short.'
There were 2 grocery stores, and you could phone in your order, either to pick it up later yourself or have it delivered. The delivery man for one of the markets was named 'Blue Tinker,' don't remember the other.
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You can't retire from a calling.
Posts: 1675 | From: saint meinrad, IN | Registered: Apr 2006
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Amanda B. Reckondwythe
Dressed for Church
# 5521
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by georgiaboy:
There were 2 grocery stores, and you could phone in your order, either to pick it up later yourself or have it delivered. The delivery man for one of the markets was named 'Blue Tinker,' don't remember the other.
Ah, yes. The lady who took the phone orders in our local store had the wonderful name of Essie Hagadorn.
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"I take prayer too seriously to use it as an excuse for avoiding work and responsibility." -- The Revd Martin Luther King Jr.
Posts: 10542 | From: The Great Southwest | Registered: Feb 2004
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
In liquor stores in Saskatchewan, it was required to fill out a form and the clerk would go and get your hootch. You could get a cheaper price with a prescription from a doctor. A mickey every 2 weeks (13 oz bottle, usually rye whisky) was permitted. The idea was it was to help you sleep.
Taverns (what we called pub, bars) had entrances for men and for couples. Separate seating. Beer was always in identical bottles called stubbies, brands merely had different labels. They all tasted alike anyway. Improved by mixing with tomato juice which is called a Redeye. Does anyone drink Redeyes anymore?
The first big TV watching I recall was the 1969 moon landing and walking on the moon. We got our first TV just before. A crowd of about 20 waited forever watching and waiting for this to happen in our living room on the one channel we could receive.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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Baptist Trainfan
Shipmate
# 15128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stercus Tauri:
One boy was adamant that gas radios were much better than electric ones, as his parents had one.
Of course, people did talk about "old-fashioned steam radios" once transistors were coming in.
Posts: 9750 | From: The other side of the Severn | Registered: Sep 2009
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Galloping Granny
Shipmate
# 13814
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Posted
TonyK remembers quote:
my grandfather rushing out with bucket and spade to collect the horse-droppings from the road for the compost heap
– for me, a student boarding in a quiet suburban street in 1950, it was my landlady in the morning ready to dash out with a shovel if the milkman's horse had blessed her.
Earlier, on a telephone party line, it was picking up the handset to ask "working?" and if someone else was on the line you hung up until you heard the short ring that meant the other person had finished.
Still a student, I went one evening with a few pennies to a public phone box. There was a woman talking with a pile of pennies ready, and when I heard her say "Then I had a birdie on the third" I decided to walk on to the next phone. It was a penny for three minutes.
I know that when I was a kid, but I don't know when it changed, you got olive oil from the chemist ('Cook with it? Don't be disgusting!') and I think margarine needed a prescription.
Going by train to boarding school in the late forties we went through a number of tunnels, and we could never get all the windows to shut, so it was smuts for all.
We must have got TV in the early 60s, and I remember going to an art exhibition opening and hearing the cognoscenti admitting that they knew people who'd got television but they weren't interested in knowing what programmes there were; they obviously regarded TV as pabulum for the masses. Our first TV when we were married was about 1972; it was a 12inch portable and we took it on holiday to keep up with, I think, the Forsyte Saga, but the reception where we camped was definitely patchy.
GG
[ 01. February 2016, 06:51: Message edited by: Galloping Granny ]
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The Kingdom of Heaven is spread upon the earth, and men do not see it. Gospel of Thomas, 113
Posts: 2629 | From: Matarangi | Registered: Jun 2008
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Aravis
Shipmate
# 13824
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Posted
I remember central heating being installed in our house when I was about 7. I didn't know what it would be like and was scared of it; probably it somehow became linked with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and the fiery furnace (my parents read us a lot of Bible stories). When the dreaded radiators actually arrived, their blandness was very reassuring and oddly disappointing at the same time.
I'm too young for mangles, but remember helping Mum fish clothes out of the twin tub with wooden tongs and slop them into the spinner. And how the towels stuck to the sides of the spinner and looked so different.
When I was five, we had a two week holiday in a cottage belonging to a distant relative, in a remote part of Shropshire, which had no electricity or running water. We lit oil lamps, took a calor gas stove, used a chemical toilet in a corrugated iron lean-to outside, and had to fetch water in enamelled metal jugs from a spring between two large rocks on the hillside. My brother and I loved it.
Posts: 689 | From: S Wales | Registered: Jun 2008
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Chamois
Shipmate
# 16204
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Posted
The first TV I can remember watching was Sir Winston Churchill's funeral. Our whole family went down the road to a neighbour who had a set. The screen was about 6 inches across.
Pre-central heating, I remember my father having to dash out on cold nights to fill the coal skuttle for the kitchen boiler. My grandmother would say, "we're running low, Pat", and dad would try to persuade her that there was enough coal to last the evening, but usually she would win the argument and he'd have to brave the winter blast.
We had an old blackout curtain from the 2nd world war on the inside of the kitchen door to try to keep the heat in. It was sewn out of a grey wool blanket. As a child I used to love to get behind it and poke my fingers through the moth holes. I remember the red wool blanket stitching around the edges.
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The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases
Posts: 978 | From: Hill of roses | Registered: Feb 2011
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Huia
Shipmate
# 3473
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by TonyK:
So many memories being triggered.
the older boys next door who had every copy of the Eagle comic since it had been started;
My brother used to get the Eagle, and I got The Princess, which had my favourite comic strip about Sue Day. She had a big sister called Gloria and a big brother called Sid who had a motor bike.
Her best friend was called Edie, whose brother was Tommy.
So how do I remember all this when the whereabouts of my ATM card is a constant challenge?
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Charity gives food from the table, Justice gives a place at the table.
Posts: 10382 | From: Te Wai Pounamu | Registered: Oct 2002
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
That last paragraph of Aravis' post is pretty much my mother's old home. Summer holidays was a week or so there about the time they were bringing in the hay (by horse and cart of course). There was one oil - Tilley - lamp which hung in the main room. Lighting it took about 10 minutes of priming and pumping. Going to bed, you took a candle, opened the latched door and climbed a very steep flight of stairs to 'the loft'. The bedrooms gave off one another. The beds were brass and had a single long bolster.
There was no bathroom or toilet. You washed in a basin of water warmed with a splash from the kettle on the range at the kitchen table. And you 'went' outside somewhere there was plenty of dock leaves.
[ 01. February 2016, 07:47: Message edited by: Firenze ]
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Offeiriad
Ship's Arboriculturalist
# 14031
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Aravis:
I remember central heating being installed in our house when I was about 7. I didn't know what it would be like and was scared of it; probably it somehow became linked with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and the fiery furnace (my parents read us a lot of Bible stories). When the dreaded radiators actually arrived, their blandness was very reassuring and oddly disappointing at the same time.
I was once interviewed for a job where the previous Vicar had allowed the diocese to install radiators in every room, but had then forbidden the installation of any kind of boiler to warm them!
It was in 2005...... ![[Ultra confused]](graemlins/confused2.gif)
Posts: 1426 | From: La France profonde | Registered: Aug 2008
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crunt
Shipmate
# 1321
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
quote:
Originally posted by Stercus Tauri:
Early 1950s, my aunt's house in Greenock had the toilet in the kitchen.
A quarter century or so later, my parents bought a house with a toilet in the kitchen. The first thing we did was get rid of it and put one somewhere else!
My house has a toilet in the kitchen - it's the one thing I don't like about it, but the rent is only around $150 a month, so I have put up with it for the last four years.
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QUIZ: Bible
QUIZ: world religions
LTL Discussion
languagespider.com
Posts: 269 | From: Up country in the middle of Malaysia | Registered: Sep 2001
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
I had an old flat with a bath in the kitchen. You could slosh around in there with your rubber ducks, and keep an eye on the cheese on toast nicely bubbling under the grill.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I had an old flat with a bath in the kitchen. You could slosh around in there with your rubber ducks, and keep an eye on the cheese on toast nicely bubbling under the grill.
Not quite, but I lived in a flat where a room had been (flimsily) partitioned into a bathroom and kitchen. If you left the connecting door open you could certainly both bathe and keep an eye on the dinner. It was also very dank, and stocked not only with particularly large bath-dwelling sp*ders but the occasional big, bouncy liquorice slug.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
I think somebody mentioned stencils, OMG, my first job, my boss was obsessed with this, and spent hours typing the damn things on a type-writer, and then putting nail varnish on the mistakes, and then putting it on an old Gestetner drum, which he would rotate to make copies. This would go on with many curses in his strong S. African accent, and so a day later, he would emerge with some faint copies of an article. Triumph! It now sounds like rubbing sticks to make fire.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
We had a coal fire in the living room during the winter of '63. It was lovely while you faced it but that winter was bitter enough for your back to be shivering at the same time as your front was thawing out nicely.
Not only that winter but many of them you could see your breath in the air in the bedrooms. One morning I went to draw the net curtains aside and discovered just too late that they'd frozen to the window during the night. Oops.
At junior school we wrote with chalk on slates at first, then moved on to using a pencil in lined exercise books. A few years later we were allowed to use fountain pens, provided we held them properly. That felt very grown up, even though we often came home with inky fingers.
(I'm not going to dwell on the horrors of the school inkwells, sometimes deliberately and maliciously sabotaged by pupils with chalk dust, blotting paper, bits of rubber and anything else they could adulterate it with during a particularly boring lesson.)
(Most of us brought our own ink. Remember the fun of discovering it had leaked inside your bag?)
[ 01. February 2016, 17:07: Message edited by: Ariel ]
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
This stuff is so addictive. After the war, coal was still rationed, and for a period the coal-lorries were not working in M/c, so people used to go to a central depot, and fill sacks with coal. I remember people taking an old pram to fill up. Now why is that so poignant? I guess, it's just a long time ago, and I'm an old geezer.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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St. Gwladys
Shipmate
# 14504
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Posted
My grandparents had a coal fire. I loved it when they were lighting it - you'd put the poker in the bars of the grate, then use a page from the Echo, which used to be broadsheet, to get the fire to draw. You'd be able to hear the roar of the flames and see them through the paper, but it was always a disappointment when the paper got taken down, as the flames were quite ordinary.
Coal fires were brilliant for making toast on a toasting fork, and the best way of eating an "oyster shell" ice cream from the ice cream van was sitting in front of the fire.
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"I say - are you a matelot?"
"Careful what you say sir, we're on board ship here"
From "New York Girls", Steeleye Span, Commoners Crown (Voiced by Peter Sellers)
Posts: 3333 | From: Rhymney Valley, South Wales | Registered: Jan 2009
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Amanda B. Reckondwythe
Dressed for Church
# 5521
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Posted
Our first house had a coal furnace in the basement, over which was a grate ("register") in the living room floor. Surprisingly, there was no register in the ceiling, so the upstairs rooms were always cold.
I loved to drop things such as crayons down the register and watch them melt on top of the furnace.
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"I take prayer too seriously to use it as an excuse for avoiding work and responsibility." -- The Revd Martin Luther King Jr.
Posts: 10542 | From: The Great Southwest | Registered: Feb 2004
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Lyda*Rose
Ship's broken porthole
# 4544
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Posted
When I was a child we were on a party line. Usually by that time it would not be with somebody you knew. In my family's case the shared line was with the folks next door whose daughter was my bff. What a coup for a budding teenager to have a phone ready made for a conference call! Of course my dad headed long conversations off at the pass. No more than one fifteen minute call per evening. ![[Frown]](frown.gif)
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"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you. Thank you for my life." ~from Joe Vs the Volcano
Posts: 21377 | From: CA | Registered: May 2003
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
When I was 16, my girl-friend lived next door. We used to sit on the dustbins at the back and do heavy petting. Those bins would be clanging like the fire-doors of hell, and my mother would be trying to look out through the kitchen window, envious I suppose.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
Milk safes were in most houses. Usually at the back door. A small door opens in exterior wall where milk and other dairy was exchanged for money. A offset door to the house inside. Kept milk from freezing in winter and cooking in summer.
There was also the breadman and iceman. Bringing their products by wagon. Horse drawn until 1960s.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
I used to have the Girl comic, sister of the Eagle, with improving tales such as the martyrdom of Ss Perpetua and Felicity, or the journeys of Mary Slessor, plus archaeology adventures rivalling Indiana Jones', nurses saving the day, ballet dancers, and adventurous schoolgirls (from which I learned how to smash a window silently with the help of brown paper and a squeezy tube of condensed milk. There was a character rather like Flash Harry at St Trinians.) My sister had Swift, and the youngest Robin, from the same stable. Swift had a story in which we were all informed how to know if a tsunami was approaching, and what to do in that case, and also how to get an elephant out of a crack in the ground by pouring in rice and water!
When I was off school ill, my Dad would go to the newsagents and stock up with back numbers of Girls' Crystal and School Friend (on newsprint), and, joy of joys, the Eagle, with Dan Dare.
Sometimes I wasn't really ill. Just unable to cope with another day of Miss Merry. I never realised at the time that she hated me. She thought, and told anyone who would listen, that I was lazy, and I don't know why. I finished everything she gave me quickly, and got everything right. I wasn't as neat as others, I think.
[ 01. February 2016, 21:02: Message edited by: Penny S ]
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
Come the Collapse of Civilisation, one of the skills I have to offer is the ability to lay a fire properly. One hindrance though is the lack of broadsheet newspapers - you need a couple of sheets that size from which to make an impromptu bag in which to carry the ashes to the bin. It would also be good if post-apocalyptic fireplaces came with those swivelling trivets for putting teapots/small saucepans over the fire.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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basso
Ship’s Crypt Keeper
# 4228
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Posted
First television: I think I must have mentioned here that we got our first television the day after JFK was killed. I remember going downtown (a couple of miles away so we rarely went there) with my dad to buy it. Some of my clear childhood memories are of watching that TV for the funeral services. And I was lying on the floor watching when Oswald was killed.
Posts: 4358 | From: Bay Area, Calif | Registered: Mar 2003
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Amorya
Ship's tame galoot
# 2652
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
One of my first girlfriends, her telephone number was 782.
The house I lived in as a child was Bridgemere 347.
That house was a bit of an anachronism in many ways. Despite being the late 80s, we had an outside loo, the coal fire in the living room heated our hot water, and it was located in a tiny hamlet with a bus to town once a week on market day. When we moved (in 1993) to a house with central heating and fitted carpets, it was like moving to the future!
Posts: 2383 | From: Coventry | Registered: Apr 2002
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Amorya:
That house was a bit of an anachronism in many ways. Despite being the late 80s, we had an outside loo, the coal fire in the living room heated our hot water, and it was located in a tiny hamlet with a bus to town once a week on market day. When we moved (in 1993) to a house with central heating and fitted carpets, it was like moving to the future!
Outhouses. Which my father called the kybo. A few places had 2-holers, which made for some odd conversations. Outhouses made for some retentive discomfort when it was -40°C or F for 6 weeks.
I'm also reminded of being lined up and given cod liver oil in the winter.
[tangent]
I grew up in Saskatchewan, where the provincial government decided to nationalize all of the basic utility services in the middle of the 20th century. Thus electricity, telephone, natural gas and (sometimes) water and sewer mains became part of a socialized plan to bring basic services everywhere where private companies refused as uneconomic. Mandatory to tie into the mains. So we got most services to rural areas in the 1960s. Urban centres subsidize rural. We're still doing it, more recently with government-owned cell phone, internet and TV cable. Co-op grocery and hardware stores, and credit unions instead of banks, are part of the legacy. Thank God for pinko socialism in this form.
[/tangent]
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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jacobsen
seeker
# 14998
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Posted
Our local parade of shops had a butcher - half pigs hanging from the ceiling, and a cask of butter on the counter. The shopkeeper would hack out the butter and shape it into a vaguely brick-like shape before weighing and wrapping it in greaseproof paper.
This was long before the superstores, of course.
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But God, holding a candle, looks for all who wander, all who search. - Shifra Alon
Beauty fades, dumb is forever-Judge Judy
The man who made time, made plenty.
Posts: 8040 | From: Æbleskiver country | Registered: Aug 2009
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Galloping Granny
Shipmate
# 13814
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Posted
When I was about 8 I got Enid Blyton's 'Sunny Stories'. Quite dramatic, because they came from England, and it was wartime, so none would arrive for a time, and then several together. I think they were (supposedly) weekly.
Farms had meat safe, where butchered meat (for the family, or just for the dogs?) was hung under a tree to be cool in the shade/breeze, and some sort of mesh kept the flies out. Every house we lived in would have a safe on the cool south side, to keep milk, meat, butter etc fresh. Not for deliveries, though: it only opened inwards.
I remember a family friend keen on photography, who would process his negatives and then put them in a wooden frame in the sun, with sensitive paper underneath, for the picture to be developed by the sunlight. I don't understand the process well enough – he must have known how long to leave them to get the right exposure before taking them in and fixing them, but I do remember a row of them along the foot of the wall on a sunny day.
GG
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The Kingdom of Heaven is spread upon the earth, and men do not see it. Gospel of Thomas, 113
Posts: 2629 | From: Matarangi | Registered: Jun 2008
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Eigon
Shipmate
# 4917
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Posted
We used to have all our holidays at a caravan site just outside Blackpool. No electric - there was a coal bunker at the back of each caravan, and we got water in buckets from a tap. The lights were gas mantles. There was a wash house with white wood draining boards and big sinks - and mangles. Me and my sister used to fight for the honour of turning the mangle handle!
Later, my gran (who looked after us at the caravan) decided to get her own mangle from a junk yard a short bus ride away. We couldn't take the frame on the bus with us, so she trundled the rollers home in her tartan shopping trolley while me and my sister carried the frame, which was unwieldy, but light.
Having no electric, we also had no TV - but the caravan in front of ours did. I remember creeping up their steps one evening so we could listen in to Star Trek. They heard us scuffling about, and opened the door very fast. I went flying backwards onto the concrete path! When they realised it was us, and what we were doing, they invited us in to see the rest of the episode, but I was too upset. Not hurt, particularly, just shaken up and horribly embarrassed at being caught.
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Laugh hard. Run fast. Be kind.
Posts: 3710 | From: Hay-on-Wye, town of books | Registered: Aug 2003
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