July 1, 2012
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We had everything……when I was a kid!
I was evicted from my warm bed, one school morning in 1955, by my bellowing Mom, calling from the kitchen as she boiled up a pot of Quaker Oats for me and my brother. I threw my Hopalong Cassidy bedspread over my crumbled sheets and zombied to the bathroom to piss on the lid….my younger brother followed suit. Then we got dressed standing on the large floor vent of the furnace to keep warm until bellowed to come to breakfast.
I sat at the Formica topped kitchen table and stared down at the prison food called oatmeal. As I sat, I looked around and took stock of my young world. Our phone was a modern Western Electric, with no party line and was made of Bakelite (an early plastic). It weighted about five pounds and was permanently wired into the inners of the house. We were also proud owners of a Philco, 23 inch, black and white multi vacuum tube apparatus known as a Television. The device had three channels, and for many, was a spiritual wonderment!
Our RCA record player was also a joy and could automatically change records when the last one finished and I can remember Dad demonstrating this phenomenon often to company.
We also had a household cooling system that was transportable from room to room. It was an 11 inch, General Electric oscillating fan. It had two speeds, ‘spring breeze’ and ‘cyclone’. The trick, during the worst of summer, was to have a wash tub with an ice block in it and then to position the fan behind the tub to blow over the ice and into your direction….the hours of comfort generated from this electrical device were immeasurable.
Next to the kitchen table was our Frigidaire refrigerator. This particular model had a freezer department that held two ice trays with more than enough room to freeze four pork chops. The condensation tray under the fridge only had to be emptied twice a week. A marvel.
One final entry…Mom was an appliance aficionado and at the top of her list was her Kenmore wringer washer from Sears. This juggernaut washed all your clothes and then all you had to do was run each piece of clothing through the wringer rollers to squeeze out the water before hanging out on the line. The rollers also did a number on baloney sandwiches by mashing them to twice their size. Problem was, the clothes smelled a little funky after that.
Those were special days and we all felt that we counted cadence as the world marched in step to our technology. Even Rocky Jones on the Saturday morning kid’s show, Space Ranger, once said that Americans would most likely live on the moon by 1980.…if the Martians did not cause a problem……….Cadet Charlie, signing off.
Comments (23)
A wonderful post — with all the ‘modern conveniences’ of the 1950′s! Our first tv was later than that one, but the first were tall consoles with about a 3″ screen — did you have that one too?
@slmret - Johnny Dobbs, down the street had one. Big console with a small round screen about eight inches across. Johnny watched a lot of our TV.
Hahaha — most kids here went to watch those tiny screens in the big consoles for years before the bigger screens came out!
Memories are made of this. GREAT Post!! Loved the Rocky Jones video. Very neat…
Fun memories. My mother got a washer with a spin cycle in 1955- one of the first on our block. We still had to run the rinse-water hose out into the back yard.
Ah television way back in the day…My grandfather had the tall console with the 3″ screen but they were slightly bigger when we got our Magnavox in 1952. I could name you many more shows that were on back then than I can now. We were avid watchers and many a night…even school night I would go to sleep when they showed “The Seal of Good Practice” (which meant on their station the good guy always won) and the National Anthem then the test screen then nothing but snow until sometime early the next morning. Although the face looks familiar in Rocky Jones…I was into Captain Video and his space rangers and yes I did send off for my secret decoding ring. Here is a “pop” quiz for you youngsters…no peeking on line…name 5 characters other than Howdy Doody in the show by the same name.
The other anticdote to your blog is the telephone pictured. Mom With a Chainsaw, I, and her daughters went second hand shopping. The girls ran up to us and had seen one of the “french” style regular phones put out by Ma Bell. They said “We think it is a telephone….but how do you get the number you want to call?” Talk about feeling old…we realized that these teenagers had never seen a rotary dial phone.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane. If you read and you haven’t read it before check out Steinbeck’s: “Travels with Charlie”. In the 50′s he decided to take a road trip with his standard poodle, Charlie and see how much it had changed from the periods of “God’s Little Acre” and “Grapes of Wrath”. I especilly enjoyed it in full text audio read by Gary Sinise.
As Red used to say….”Good night; and God Bless”
@RighteousBruin - God, ya right about that hose! I just now remembered it sticking out the porch door.
@mommachatter - Talk about memories! I first read Travels with Charlie in highschool and I love the idea of doing it again on an audio cd.
The spelling will be bad, but hereit goes……..Clarabell…..Buffalo Bob…..Chief Thunder-thud…..I remember the other characters, but not the names.
@UncCharlie - Flub-a-dub, Phinneas T Bluster, Princess Summerfall Winterspring and lets not forget the Peanut Gallery. Ok…without cheating…what are the names of the Seven Dwarves? (Dwarfs?)
I love TV trivia of the old stuff. I had a friend on Yahoo IM that would call me once a day and we’d play.
I love these post about “in the day.” Your funny and informative. Seems I’m starting to read your name a lot on Xanga lately. Your friends are all saying good things about your blogging. Keep up the good and entertaining blogs……love em all!
I’m disappointed in you, Charlie. You left out one very special character in those so called moden times. Who was he ? Well, very humbly I can say… that he change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel with his bare hands, jumped building in a single bound and disguised as a mild mannered reporter for a great metropolitian newspaper, fought a never ending battle for truth, justice and the American way.
@catstemplar2 - My Dad?
We had the cold war hanging over our heads but we had faith that our government would protect us. I wish it was now, like it was then.
@LGailGarrett - Amen Gail.
Great post! I especially loved the part about pissing on the lid and the baloney sandwiches
@KnightInCROATIANarmor - It was important to come clean with the facts.
@UncCharlie - Yeah, wonders of being a boy
I love this Rec’d.
@UncCharlie - Well then… like father, like son. What out for kryptonite, Charlie
Back when I was a teeny tiny tot like my son, I remember my grandparents had these things. I was going to say I never got to witness the ancient refrigerator, but I do. I remember having a phone like that for a while when I was a while when I was a kid. I was going to say we had one of those phones as a joke in my college dorm and then I realized it wasn’t a rotary phone, it was a touchtone phone. I wonder if they (rotary phones) still work on landlines. LOL. Thanks for the memories, now I am thinking of spending a crap ton of money to buy a rotary phone that I can stick my SIM card in just for the hell of it.
I wish I grew up then.
How awesome of a post! I actually remember some of those things.. My grandma would have @ her house!
… It was a beautiful thing the things we had growing up !