Mid-Century Reflections

[Nasoosie]

I have LOVED this thread!

The thought of the frozen outhouse seat made me stand up and remember only too well! When we stayed at our summer camp in CT where there was no electricity or plumbing, we used a 'Popo pot" at night, and emptied it into the outhouse in the morning. Also had to walk to a nearby spring to get our drinking water in a bucket. First we had to scare off the frogs!

And I almost forgot about the Hurdy-Gurdy man who came down our street in Cambidge, MA with his hand-cranked organ and little monkey who passed the hat for donations! I LOVED to hear him coming! Then there was the rag man who bellowed "RAGS" as he passed with his horse-drawn wagon, and the ice man who kept our ice box cold. I still have dreams of his ice pick chipping off a block of ice to fit into our particular box---it was an art to me how he did that.

More terrifying there were the 'blackout' sirens that prompted us all to douse all lights, pull the blackout curtains in our houses, and wait for the 'all clear' sirens. My mother never even smoked during a blackout, for fear the lighted end of the ciggie would show the bombers where to aim. I would peek out of the windows behind one of the curtains and imagine 'bad men in planes' looking for a place to drop their bombs. Very scary times during that war.

Doesn't it just boggle your mind when you think how far we have come in some pieces of our life, but how constant the fears of war have remained? No more blackouts now----just strip searching at the airports, for instance. Party lines with operators to cell phones. Hand typewriters to computers. Foot-pedal sewing machines to automatic stitchers. Ice boxes to our own ice-making refrigerators. Huge floor-model radios with tubes to teeny, tiny little hand-held radios you can listen to anywhere. No TV to black and white TV to monster movie-theater-type TVs that fit against the walls. I can remember being excited to count the number of TV antennas on houses and buildings as we traveled by train (coal-burning locomotives) between places when TV was just becoming affordable for many people.

Ahh....sweet memories! And totally amazing changes in our ways of living!

[Pooker]

Ah, Soos - I also remember the ice man letting all of us kids choose a nice chunk of ice to suck on in the summer. And during those blackouts - remember the volunteer who went from house to house to make sure not a speck of light was visable? It amazes me now because I lived in a small town and he must have had a lot of walking in our neighborhood! Our next door neighbor was a large woman who cuddled me on her lap during these blackouts, so I was never afraid, but always felt protected.

As others have said, we all played together, no matter what age. We didn't think it was unusual for a 15 year old to plop a toddler on his lap to go down the hill on a sled or toboggan; or pitch a ball real fast for the big kid and lob it slow for the little guy.

When I had little ones of my own we'd put the seats down in the back of the stationwagon to make a large bed and head to the drive-in movies. One by one the kids would fall asleep. And we always brought our own snacks and drinks.

I didn't realize I'd hit such a cord in everyone when I started this. I bet we could all go on forever with our happy memories. Maybe we need more of them in our lives.

Pooker