We didn’t have electricity or indoor plumbing in our house until I was 8 years old. My mamma’s cousin
When daddy came over the hill by Ern Workman’s west of our place, he saw the lights of the house and said he thought we were going to use a whole month’s electricity in the first night!! But when he got home, he danced around our circle when we sang. “Let there be light” and we laughed until our sides hurt.
We got indoor plumbing at about the same time. My Uncles Ed Rath and Owney Fisher came and helped turn the pantry into a bathroom. There were some other neighbors that came too. Dick and I were fascinated by being able to walk through the wall between the pantry and kitchen before they plastered it up. And we were in the way while they were stringing the electric wires and plumbing pipes through the walls. They installed a tank and pump in the basement that pumped the water from the cistern out by the fence that got it’s water from the windmill down the hill. They put in a hot water heater that worked from a propane tank out by the cistern. Boy, were we getting FANCY!? Mamma didn’t have to hand pump the water for baths and dishes anymore. All you had to do is turn the faucet!! FANCY SMANCY!!
I remember when gas was 18 cents a gallon and you drove 50 miles an hour. The tires had "white walls" and
You could go to town and buy 100 chicks, 5 gallons of frozen pie cherries and 10 bushels of Elberta peaches which even the kids helped peal and put in the jars for canning.
A stick of peppermint candy was a penny and soda pop was 5 cents. We had never heard of Coca Cola, but we did know about grape soda and crème soda.
You could trade a pound of butter and a crate of eggs for groceries and live on $10 for a long time!
Our toys were made of tin, rubber or wood and we only had a few, except for our neighbor, Karen - She had EVERYTHING! A dollhouse with furniture and a family of dolls, toy dishes, a little stove and toy sized pans, a toy iron and ironing board.
My first job, at the age of 14, paid 50 cents an hour and I thought I was rich! We didn't know about the 40 hour work weeks, we just worked until it was done. We didn't get SSN numbers until we got REAL jobs.
We had Continental Trailways AND Greyhound buses that stopped at every town along Highway 34 from
Our cars all had 4/50 air conditioning: (4 windows open and 50 miles an hour) and FM radios were a thing of the future. No one had even heard of “tape decks” until into the 1960s when “they” came out with 8 tracks.
Our music was either on the radio or 45 records. LPs came along and we thought we had it made! Then we got transistor radios that allowed us to take our music with us anywhere!
We had "adding machines" that had 9 numbers and a 0 with a pull down handle that added the numbers together. They were not electric. The first "calculator" I saw weighed 2 pounds and cost so much the ordinary person couldn’t afford one. We all learned how to use the SLIDE RULE.
--Editor
The Klinzmans and Odenbachs were my relatives and coming to Haigler to visit them years ago, the town was alive on Sat. nights. The first "serial"movies were shown somewhere because Esther Schorzman and I would come over on sat. nightss and watch them, and the boys.ha.
ReplyDeleteBeverly Lueschen Crane.....Hugoton, Ks.
Yes, the Saturday night movies cost .10 cents. and at least some of the time shown in a building just south of the bank building that sat on the corner of hiway 34 and Porter. Saturday night in Haigler was exciting in those days!
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