Things Unheard Of

I am always amazed at what some of our younger folks here at work have never heard of. I guess I am surprised because I am not that old myself just 52.

Yesterday I mentioned during a flu shot discussion, how I remember when growing up in Lewisburg whenever one of us kids was feeling bad, mom would call good ole Dr. Joe (never new his last name) and over to the house he would come with his black bag. He was the only doctor in town, and it is a college town, he had an office on the college campus. Didn't matter what time of day or night, he always came to the house. We certainly weren't special, he did this for all his patients.

Yes, house calls used to be an important part of the practice of medicine -- how well I remember. I read recently that some physicians are starting to make housecalls again, and a lot of vets are doing that, too. Let's hope it's a lasting trend!

It is amazing isn't it? When I lived in NE Illinois as a child there were vending machines outside where you could purchase milk. They were approximately the size of the soda vending machines we have today, and had some kind of man-made cow head on top to identify them along the mainroads. All you had to do was put your change in and you could get milk, chocolate milk, and half-n-half. If you didn't get to the store before it closed this was your only option because the idea of a store being open 24/7 was unheard of back then.

To bad they don't have one for milk and one for bread today...might drop the profits of Wally World and the corner convience stores....LOL

Someplace I lived, maybe Florida, there were little tiny drive-in places for milk purchases, open 24/7. I don't remember that they carried anything else, though.

I suspect we could do a very long list of things unseen today. Home milk delivery... with the cream on top of the milk, not homogenized. Merita bread that came with stickers or something kids could save and send off for Lone Ranger rings and stuff. Must be lots of those floating around in this ole brain of mine... if I could only access them.

House calls are before my time, but when I feel sick enough to need a doctor, I feel too sick to go to the doctor. I have to drive there, then sit an a chair, then go to the pharmacy. Uggh! And all I want to do is sleep.

REAL toys in Cracker Jack and those neat cards between the layers of shredded wheat that told us how to make teepees and other cool things. Penny candy. And, of course, the Captain Midnight Secret Decoder Ring from Ovaltine. Listening to the national anthem and watching the flag fly when the TV station went off the air. Listening to Uncle whatshisname read the Sunday funnies to you over the radio. Hangin' out in the field rather than the mall. Being able to entertain yourself without TV, video games, etc. It was okay for a kid to carry a pocketknife, because no one worried about what they were going to do with it.

Although it is still there in very limited supply, a patch of dirt that kids can play marbles in.

Man! Sometimes I really hate growing up. I really would like to go out and play marbles, if I could only get back up again afterwards.

Ah yes, ... I always enjoy reading these things.....

Way back when .... when life was good, and nobody had the internet to easily communicate with strangers clear across the planet ...

We had a milkbox (tin) on the porch and the milk was delivered fresh in the morn.

Here's an oldie, when my kids were born you could smoke in the hospital! And that was a mere 30 years ago!

Here's one that has disappeared in the last 15 to 20 years. Remember when bandages came in a metal box?

haighr, when I worked at Johns Hopkins 30 years ago, they had an exclusive wing for patients with money. They could smoke cigars, and have excellent wine with dinners, LOL.

LOL darius! About 15 or so years ago the library in town went smoke free. I was sooooo upset about it that they allowed me a table right by the door where I could smoke.

Of course, that got old when the weather got cold ... and come spring my table was gone. =( I still resent it, even tho I fully understand that smoking should not be allowed in the library. I hardly ever use the library any more since then.

Cheri'


This message was edited Nov 19, 2003 10:55 AM

WOW darius, didn't need exclusive wing at our city hospital. I came out of the delivery room and the first thing I did was light up, and smoked the entire time there which unlike today they kept us new moms for 3-4 nights.

It wasn't that long ago you could smoke in the hospital here. In 92 I had knee surgery and my doctor wrote permission on my chart that I could smoke. At the time, what seemed strange to me was that I needed permission ....

Cheri'

Times have really changed regarding smoking in public places. Our county has a law about no smoking in ANY public place of business. Restaurants must be large enough to have a dedicated smoking section, and not many qualify. We are a toen of lots of small and wonderful places to eat, with a large variety of cuisines available.

Pretty soon it will be against the law to smoke on the sidewalks.

BUT I DO wish they'd enforce the law about LOUD music in cars... the kind that vibrate even your car at a stoplight, never mind the damage to your hearing.

I remember doctors making house calls, although I was a little kid at the time (just so you know I'm not that old).

I remember when you could smoke in movie theaters and the air was literally blue with smoke - don't know how we even saw the screen.

When I was a kid, if you went to the movies you saw previews, cartoons, sometimes a newsreel, and 2 full length feature films. And if you wanted to stay in your seat and watch them all over again you could.

You could bring your own food into the theater too. We were too poor to buy popcorn so we brought our own in brown paper lunch bags with grease spots on them! Somehow the movie theater popcorn always smelled like it would taste better.

Also no stores were open on Sunday. We had what they called 'blue laws' so everything was closed. If you ran out of milk or bread or aspirin, you were just out of luck.

No disposable diapers either. They had to be washed and bleached and hung to dry (no dryers). And the poopy ones had to be rinsed in the toilet first before they went into the washing machine. Ugh.

Christmas was not advertised anywhere until the beginning of December. In the weeks right before Christmas we used to get 2 mail deliveries a day to handle all the cards.

Does anyone remember Malto Meal? Yuck! I never did like that stuff.

You know I love all the convience we have today.....but sometimes me thinks its a lot more stressfull because we do so much more. And have so much more to do with.......

Saturday was always the day we went to town and did all our shopping for the whole week. Never really needed extra bread and milk.

All stores were closed usually by 5-6 pm and people were home to have dinner together. Imagin a sit down dinner with Mom, Dad and the Kids.........Hummmmm naaaa, maybe not!!!LOL

My dad got paid on Fridays. Mom always went shopping on Friday late afternoon. There were 7 kids in the family and by Friday the cupboards were bare. Back then there were almost no frozen foods and the refrigerator freezer was about the size of a shoe box!

My Mom always bought fresh Polish kielbasa (it's completely different from the smoked kind and sooo much better). We were Catholic so no meat on Friday. At 11PM sharp she put the sausage on to cook and at midnight we all dove in! We never ate at restaurants or diners or even had pizza so Friday night Polish sausage was our big culinary treat!

One Thanksgiving early in the morning my Mom unwrapped the turkey to stuff it and discovered the turkey was bad. No stores were open anywhere so we had hot dogs and beans for Thanksgiving dinner. LOL

Hot dogs and beans sounds good, probably wasn't as traumatic then as that would be in this day and age!

I remember the chair right next to the TV so there could always be someone available to change the channels. My sister and I had to take turns sitting there while dad gave the orders!

Oh Haighr, I know what you mean! My Dad didn't need a remote - with 7 kids he had plenty of channel changers. Of course, there were only 3 channels until PBS appeared. LOL

Unfortunately, that Thanksgiving was traumatic to me. I have always hated pork and beans and my Mom made the best stuffing in the world. But what good is stuffing without a turkey to put it in? Oh yeah, back then we didn't know it was dangerous to cook stuffing in a turkey. &:^(

I aged myself on the spot last week at the vets. I mentioned those panthers we all had on our tv sets back in the 50's. Neither he, nor his assistant had a clue.....

Our doctor made house calls, we had home milk delivery, and I STILL have my marble collection! LOL

I remember going to the "filling station" with my Dad and getting a dollars worth of gas each week. Wouldn't that be nice now??? Ha! Lou

The people who live next door to us still get their milk delivered.

I've got you by 6 years, haighr, and I remember lots of things that are rare or unheard of now. Some are good, some not so good:

Polio ridden children in iron lungs

Lining up in school to be a polio vaccine volunteer

A tonic that my mom used to make me take called Syrup of Irasol - oh my, did it taste horrible!

Real penny candy in big glass cases and friendly shop owners who would let you customize your 5 cent order. Hmm, I'll have 2 Mary Janes, 1 BitoHoney, 1 Tootsie Roll Pop and a root beer barrel. No, make that........

Party lines (if you were real quiet, you could listen in)

Saturday matinee double feature westerns for a quarter
etc,etc,etc




This message was edited Nov 20, 2003 8:16 AM

Sunoco used to give away Hot Wheels cars with a fill-up. Minimum $3.00. We tried hard to empty the 10 gal. gas tank in our VW bugs to spend the $3.00.

This thread is very enjoyable.

We got new towels in boxes of laundry detergent.

The root beer stand.

Drive in movies.

Transistor radio's

Record Players

Eight track tapes (I loved those)

Getting to eat at McDonalds was a BIG deal

We lived in the county and had a general store where they had supplies in barrels.

Full service gas stations even if you didn't need any gas. If you wanted a pack of cigartettes you just pulled into the lot and an attendant would come out and ask you what kind you needed, lol. Those were the days.

I forgot, beehive hairdos :)

Wow, forgot about a lot of these, drive in movies were the best.

Now I remember those air raid drills when we had to dive under our school desks.

Oh, I had very long hair and we didn't have curlers other than "brush rollers" so mom would clean and save the soup cans and I would roll my hair with the cans and secure with bobby pins. Man was that hard to sleep on!

pickles in real barrels and you got to pick out your own pickle.
LOL we know have an actual butchers shop now, how new and exciting. You can actually get exactly what you want.

My mom had a Maytag washing machine with a wringer and she would spend an entire day once a week just doing laundry. We didn't have a dryer and there wasn't such a thing as permanent press clothing, so mom ironed practically everything. (Although I wouldn't give up my dryer I still use my clothesline most of the time - to me some things just smell better if you dry them that way - especially bedsheets.)

Every Saturday after we got home from the grocery store my mom and I would paste S&H green stamps into little books. I remember we had an S&H store to redeem the books and my mom would get some things she really liked.

I remember the old wringer washers... got my arm caught in them more than once!

S & H green stamps!! I forgot all about them!

This message was edited Nov 20, 2003 10:14 AM

S&H green stamps!!! What a Sunday ritual, thanks for the reminder.

How bout TV that went off the air and you woke up to that funny circle thing on the screen while they played the National Anthem.

Or, just after the news the announcement "It is now 11 o'clock, do you know where your children are?"

Since you mentioned TV:
Howdy Doody, Buffalo Bob, Clarabelle and Prinncess Summer Fall Winter Spring
Gene Autry
Roy Rogers
Sky King
The Micky Mouse Club (Was any man out there not in love with Annette Funnicello?)

This thread is bringing back many happy memories.
I remember my mom also doing all her weekly shopping on saturday and us kids fighting about whose turn it was to go with her ( there were 6 of us so we took turns).
She would always go to the local bakery and get a big bag of day old donuts for i think $1.00@!!
don't remember mcdonalds until later in my childhood but...there was a store that i remember that made burgers and fries in the back of thier store..they were the best burgers that i have everr eaten!!LOL

pop in glass bottles only

My grandmother always had her milk and bread delivered

Gandmother's glass cookie jar that always had cookies in it

T.V. western's

the tradition in our house was to get the christmas tree on christmas eve, my father never got one any other time that i remember.

we had supper together every night

and something that may be as unheard of then as it is today , my father taught me to cook while my mother worked nights to help support the family. He gave me a love of creating food that has stayed with me all my life.

Love to all, gayle







This message was edited Nov 20, 2003 5:09 PM

I think the most poignant thing mentioned so far was by Gayle (roof57mi) when she said, "we had supper together every night."

We girls used to "dress up" to go to the theater or to the mall. And this is in Southern California!

Vickey

We still have dinner together almost every night. My husband and I grew up with basically the same values, so we intend to instill them in our children, too. I don't think family values should ever go out of style.

I don't remember half of the things ya'll remember, but I suppose I haven't seen quite as many birthdays.

I do remember my parents having an orange sofa when I was a kid and my mom wore horn-rimmed glasses. I played Rock-em Sock-em Robots - does that count for anything? :)

In the summer we got 2 weeks at Sebago (my grandparents camp) The Nissen guy delivered doughnuts once a week and always parked in our driveway for lunch. He had a few cans of soda in our spring at all times. That water was bone-numbing cold. The spring flowed into the lake but we would wade in it so when you waded in the lake it felt so warm. We were wierd, guess kids still are.