A story from my father, growing up in rural Nebraska:
Cisterns for fresh water, which captured the rainwater from the roof.
Cleaning it when the water level got low was a nasty business, as one would find dead birds and such.
Non-homogenized milk: nobody wanted the first glass out of a new bottle of milk, as there were chunks of cream.
Miller wrote:Don't forget that once upon a time, Coke came in glass bottles, that we didn't have to pay a deposit on!
And don't forget what the first computers looked like!!
I remember paying a deposit on glass bottles! Then they went away until more recently.
Linkat wrote:Miller wrote:Don't forget that once upon a time, Coke came in glass bottles, that we didn't have to pay a deposit on!
And don't forget what the first computers looked like!!
I remember paying a deposit on glass bottles! Then they went away until more recently.
I'm taking about the glass Coke bottles we used, before the plastic bottles hit the market. There was a time, when all soda ( tonic ) was in glass bottles. And, it sure tasted better in glass!
Joe Nation wrote:When I was six, my mother would send me to the corner store with fifty cents. I was to buy a loaf of Wonder Bread and a pack of Chesterfield Kings.
Joe(I got to keep the change)Nation
50 cents?
Today that wouldn't even pay the tax on the cigs!
Yes, Miller, but you say you didn't pay deposits and some of the rest of us remember doing so, which is why we could take the bottles back. Maybe we've lived different years. I'm speaking of '50 - '55, just north of Chicago.
ossobuco wrote:Yes, Miller, but you say you didn't pay deposits and some of the rest of us remember doing so, which is why we could take the bottles back. Maybe we've lived different years. I'm speaking of '50 - '55, just north of Chicago.
I never lived on the Northside. So I guess we SouthSiders never paid a deposit!
It' only fairly recently in the Boston area, that we have the "bottle bill" and it's only recently that I take my bottles back.
I never took a bottle back once, in Chicago!
Did we live there at the same time? (Not to be nosy, but it might explain the difference.)
I liked it when soda came in glass bottles. But once you took the cap off, you couldn't get it back on. Screw-on tops came along when plastic came along.
BTW, There were deposits on bottles in NYC, too.
Remember the pop (soda) coolers that were like big open boxes filled with cold water? The bottles hung by their necks in rows and you had to move them around (from row to row like a rubick's cube) until the flavour you wanted could be dragged to the release mechanism. You'd put your money in, haul the bottle out by the neck dripping wet and pop the cap off on the bottle opener on the front of the cooler and the cap would fall into a holder. I don't suppose anybody remembers Chocolate Soldier?
Tai Chi wrote:I don't suppose anybody remembers Chocolate Soldier?
no, tell me more :wink:
still looking for a bottle, found a few on ebay, but really want to just find one someday in a junk shop, flea market
djjd62 wrote:Tai Chi wrote:I don't suppose anybody remembers Chocolate Soldier?
no, tell me more :wink:
still looking for a bottle, found a few on ebay, but really want to just find one someday in a junk shop, flea market
Well, now I know what to look for for xmas and birthdays
One of the penances yall have to accept on a thread like this is a story by Realjohnboy. A long story, often times. Johnboy is not a person of few words. Feel free to skip over this.
We have been talking here about objects. The milkbox, the soda bottle, the cars of our past.
We still get mail delivery from the US Postal Service. But the mail is delivered by some anonymous person, for most of us, to a box out by the street or into a row of boxes in our condos. I suspect that, 20 years from now, A2Ker's responding to this thread will remark about remembering paper being delivered to their houses.
When I was a kid, our mailman was "Mac." He would park his truck at the corner of Hilltop and Rugby, and he would walk the 3/4 miles up to Blue Ridge Road. And then back. And he was a bit of a pied piper. All of the neighborhood dogs, none of whom were leashed back then (dogs knew how to behave) would travel along and back. And during the summer, so would the kids.
I was a big fan of the Milwaukee Braves baseball team. Mac was a baseball player and was, for a time, part of the Brave's minor league organization. Could he have made it to the major leagues? Perhaps, or perhaps not. But something happenend. His dad died or his mom got sick, so he took a job with the post office.
One day in summer, Mac appeared at our door, soaking wet. He told my mom that he was delivering mail down at the "R's" house. They had a pool. And in the pool was the bulldog, Chauncey. Perhaps he was still alive; perhaps not. Mac dove in and pulled him out. He was dead.
My mom sent him into a room and had him pass her his wet clothes. She applied a hot iron (remember what irons were?) and dried things out for him to get back on his way.
That is my story of how things used to be. Life was so much simpler then.
Oh, forget milk boxes. Remember milk cartons? Good for storage; rigid and more stackable than anything on the market. Need a step stool? Grab a milk carton. Put OSHA standards to shame, you bet'cha. The only ones I've seen in years are on the back of some homeless guy's bicycle. Someday, I swear, I'm going to find a homeless guy, a little homeless guy with that setup, and I'm going to hijack him. For the milk carton.
No pilot lights on stoves. Every time you wanted to turn on the stove or oven, you had to light a match. Something like the match box in the photo would be hanging on the wall by the stove.
The only artificial sweetener was saccharine. It came in pill form. No packets. No crystals. Come to think of it, sugar didn't come in packets either. It came in the form of crystals or cubes.
realjohnboy- I can remember when the mailman delivered mail TWICE a day. He had this huge leather pack which held the mail. On my block of one and two family homes, each house had a long flight of stairs to get to the door. The mailman had to walk up and down those stairs twice a day.
A letter cost 3 cents to mail for most of my childhood. Postcards cost one cent. Remember the term "penny postcards"?
Today there is a large box with compartments for each house on the end of our street. The mailman drives up in his truck, and shoves the mail in each compartment.
Miller wrote:Linkat wrote:Miller wrote:Don't forget that once upon a time, Coke came in glass bottles, that we didn't have to pay a deposit on!
And don't forget what the first computers looked like!!
I remember paying a deposit on glass bottles! Then they went away until more recently.
I'm taking about the glass Coke bottles we used, before the plastic bottles hit the market. There was a time, when all soda ( tonic ) was in glass bottles. And, it sure tasted better in glass!
I'm talking about the glass bottles too! It came from one of the old fashioned machines. At the corner store if we didn't have the extra couple of pennies or whatever it was for the deposit, we could buy the coke, drink it there and give them back the bottle. Otherwise we had to pay for the deposit.
Miller wrote:It' only fairly recently in the Boston area, that we have the "bottle bill" and it's only recently that I take my bottles back.
I never took a bottle back once, in Chicago!
I lived just south of Boston. It was in the late 60s, early 70s.
realjohnboy wrote:
We still get mail delivery from the US Postal Service. But the mail is delivered by some anonymous person, for most of us, to a box out by the street or into a row of boxes in our condos. I suspect that, 20 years from now, A2Ker's responding to this thread will remark about remembering paper being delivered to their houses.
Some of this is true, however, it takes a bit on your side too. We live in one of those condos - there are several boxes throughout for the mail. But we know our mailman - Joe. His kids are in college, he knows about our business ventures, etc. We simply say Hi and start a conversation whenever we see him.
This type of friendliness isn't gone - simply not as widespread as it once was.
the house where my mother's parents lived (oma and opa thieke) did not have any electricity - and that was right in the city of hamburg in the 1930's - , they had a gas stove and GASLIGHTS !
whenever they were lit at night , grandfather would light a long match , lift the globe , turn on the gas , hold the lighted match to the hissing gas and PUFF ! the gaslight would come on
... and scare the living daylights out me ... everytime ...
.
hbg
