Back in the 1940's

[Michael G.]

Growing up in a small town in Wisconsin back in the 40's,
I remember some things that most people never heard or seen of today.
Can you add to some?

Here is a my list:

#1 Cisterns in our basement.
#2 Coal bins
#3 Making our own soap.
#4 A pump in the kitchen to pump water.
#5 Wood burning and cooking stove.
#6 Keeping a pot under the bed at night.
#7 Ice box in the kitchen.
#8 Installing storm windows in the winter.
#9 Wringer washing machines.
#10 Push lawn mowers
#11 Horse blankets on our beds to keep warm.
#12 Raw milk was all we used.
#13 Vegetable garden is a must.

[superbat1]

Add outthouse, we had one.

[Ecuadog]

Did you have a hand-crank phone?

[Bogie Shooter]

List reads more like the late 20’s to early 30’s.

[ThirdOfFive]

1950s, Northern MN...

- Banking the house with snow to help keep it warm in winter;
- Making our own ham and sausage;
- One-room schoolhouse;
- Ice 1/2" or so thick on the bottom INSIDE of the windows in winter;
- Sawing and splitting wood by hand for winter heating;
- Hand-cranked telephone on the wall;
- Growing enough potatoes in summer to feed a family of seven all year;
- Mom and Sister making most of our "school" clothes by hand;
- Hitch-Hiking 20 miles home after school football practice;
- 17" Black-and-White TV that got ONE station...sometimes.

Etc...

[superbat1]

kerosene lamps

[asianthree]

Growing up in a small town in Wisconsin back in the 40's,
I remember some things that most people never heard or seen of today.
Can you add to some?

Here is a my list:

#1 Cisterns in our basement.
#2 Coal bins
#3 Making our own soap.
#4 A pump in the kitchen to pump water.
#5 Wood burning and cooking stove.
#6 Keeping a pot under the bed at night.
#7 Ice box in the kitchen.
#8 Installing storm windows in the winter.
#9 Wringer washing machines.
#10 Push lawn mowers
#11 Horse blankets on our beds to keep warm.
#12 Raw milk was all we used.
#13 Vegetable garden is a must.

Have you been in the towns outside of large cities
Coal still around
Soap making is high end now, and very common place as money making hobby
Wood burner still used
We drink raw milk
Vegetable fruit and chickens are common place in many communities because you know what is in your food.

So maybe 40s just evolved into better quality of life with carryover of old.
Numbers 4-10 describes our family log cabin until the 70s

[mtdjed]

1/ Saving soap bar ends, put in tin cans with holes in bottom, use for dish washing soap.
2/ Mixing yellow food dye with white margarine and putting into ice cube tray to simulate butter. Pre tinted margarine was not available (May have been banned by state at the time.
3/ Walking to store with a handheld milk can to get milk.
4/ Getting a dump truck full of used bowling ten pins to use for firewood.
5/ Doctor visiting house
6/ Dog lived outdoors in dog house
7/ Crystal Radio

[fdpaq0580]

Candel holders for lighting the Christmas tree.
Navigation tools: sextant, tafrail log.
Daily Bakery truck delivery
Daily Milk delivery

[Topspinmo]

List reads more like the late 20’s to early 30’s.

Must of been city dweller.

[Topspinmo]

Canning, chicken coops, coal oil stoves (kerosene ), wood burning cook stoves, clotheslines, firewood, ash clean out duty, and root cellars. And heating bricks wrapped in paper to keep feet warm in sub zero weather.

[Topspinmo]

Growing up in a small town in Wisconsin back in the 40's,
I remember some things that most people never heard or seen of today.
Can you add to some?

Here is a my list:

#1 Cisterns in our basement.
#2 Coal bins
#3 Making our own soap.
#4 A pump in the kitchen to pump water.
#5 Wood burning and cooking stove.
#6 Keeping a pot under the bed at night.
#7 Ice box in the kitchen.
#8 Installing storm windows in the winter.
#9 Wringer washing machines.
#10 Push lawn mowers
#11 Horse blankets on our beds to keep warm.
#12 Raw milk was all we used.
#13 Vegetable garden is a must.

For some of us that was as late as late 50’s.

[Topspinmo]

Did you have a hand-crank phone?


and party lines.

[Two Bills]

Air raid shelters.
Going out always with gas mask.
Food rationing
Queues at every shop, and saving mums place in queues.
Burning half the furniture in the winter of '47 to keep newborn sister warm, until we got some coal.
Mum doing washing in boiler, with scrubbing board, and using Mangle to get water out.
A wireless.
Outside toilet, with newspaper, or San Izal toilet paper, which was like greaseproof baking paper. (I used it for tracing as well)
Asking American soldiers for chewing gum, or candy. "Got any gum chum!"
A shilling to see the doctor, so you had to be at death's door before getting to see him.

It was hard, but unlike the adults, we kids had never known anything else, so it was just normal to us.
That's why when I saw all the panic buying and shenanigans on display during the Covid Pandemic, I just shook my head, and thought, you lot will never cope if the poop really hits the fan.

[Caymus]

My childhood house in Pennsylvania had a coal furnace until the late 60's. We were very close to the anthracite coal fields. I remember shoveling ashes and using them to provide traction to cars stuck in the snow. Very few 4 wheel or front wheel drive cars at the time.

[jebartle]

Yipsters, have we got it made now. I think I remember "party lines"

[asianthree]

Yipsters, have we got it made now. I think I remember "party lines"

In small towns in the south we didn’t dial anyone just picked up the phone and if nobody was on it Mabel asked who you wanted to talk to. That was in 1969. Dr. Made house calls in those days, but it was most likely in our household. The shaman came to take care of whatever illness we had.

Very common in those small communities to have your family dead on a table in the front parlor window. So anyone who wanted to pay their respects, could do so from the outside or inside.

Even though our family owned the funeral parlor my aunts uncles great grandparents viewing was front parlor.

Then off to the church in special made box, then the trip to either the White, Black, or Red cemetery (I kid you not entrance wrought iron gate had those words above still remain today ) another service was performed

[ThirdOfFive]

Fantastic thread, and some great insights.

Trying to pinpoint a more-or-less common theme...most of what is posted was done with, or concerned, FAMILY. Some adversity brings families, and communities, closer together. In large part, that is something that the young of the Third Millennium don't have to experience. I don't think that that is necessarily a good thing.

[manaboutown]

Thank you OP for opening up a topic causing me to feel nostalgic. Although I was born in a hospital in a city in NJ my parents lived on a small farm just outside a small town. I don't remember much about it except we had a female German Shepherd very protective of me that my mother left under my baby carriage with me in it when she went into stores in town. Nobody messed with that dog. I was told salesmen used to walk in the back doors of farm houses so my grandmother who lived with us kept a leather jacket over a kitchen chair which she occasionally had to throw over the dog's head when it started to go for a salesman.

When I was three in 1945 we completed a move to Albuquerque, NM which was a community of about 30,000 back then. I remember meat was rationed, little red and blue tokens which were portions of one cent - mils? - and stamp books for savings (war) bonds. We had no car at first so took the bus or walked. I remember mowing the lawn with a push mower, our pediatrician visiting me at home a couple of times when I got sick, a mailman delivering milk, a man with vegetables from his farm driving an old Model T truck stopping on our block to sell them to homemakers, ice cream trucks, penny post cards, 3 cents for regular mail, 5 or 6 cents for airmail. We had a two party phone line, no A/C and the furnace was an old coal burning one converted to natural gas. The house which was built in 1906 had a coal bin in the basement where my mother stored all kinds of vegetables, relish, jams and jellies, and pickles she prepared and placed in Mason jars. Most people did not bother to lock their front doors but that changed over time.

[coralway]

From the original OP list, I recall number 8 only. We (my Dad and I) putting in the storm windows for the Winter. I also recall lugging up the rugs from the basement and laying them over the linoleum floors before the Winter cold. Then, my Dad and I visited my grandmas house and doing the same things in her house. Then, in the Spring, or whenever my Mom said so, reverse the process for the warmer weather.

[Michael G.]

Food for thought:



We grew up in the 40s-50s

We studied and dated in the 40s-50s-60s-70s.

We got married and discovered the world in the 50s-60s-70s-80s.

We ventured into the 70s-80s-90s.

We stabilized in the 90s-2000s.

We got wiser in the 2000s.

And went firmly through the 2010s.



Turns out we've lived through NINE different decades...

TWO different centuries..

TWO different millennia...



We have gone from the telephone with an operator for long-distance calls to video calls to anywhere in the world.



We have gone from slides to YouTube,

from vinyl records to online music,

from handwritten letters to email and WhatsApp...

from live matches on the radio, to black and white TV, and then to HDTV...



We went to Blockbuster and now we watch Netflix...

We got to know the first computers, punch cards, diskettes and now we have gigabytes and megabytes in hand on our cell phones or iPads...



We dodged infantile paralysis, meningitis, H1N1 flu and now COVID-19...



We rode skates, tricycles, bicycles, mopeds, gasoline or diesel cars and now we ride hybrids or 100% electric...



Yes, we've been through a lot, but what a great life we've had!



They could describe us as "exennials" people who were born in that world of the forties, who had an analog childhood and a digital adulthood.



We're kind of Ya-seen-it-all.



Our generation has literally lived through and witnessed more than any other in every dimension of life.



It is our generation that has literally adapted to "CHANGE".



A big round of applause to all the members of a very special generation, which are UNIQUE.



Here's a precious and very true message that I received from a friend:



TIME DOES NOT STOP

Life is a task that we do ourselves every day.



When you look... it's already six in the evening;

when you look... it's already Friday;

when you look... the month is over;

when you look... the year is over;

when you look... 50, 60, 70 and 80 years have passed!



Do not stop doing something you love due to lack of time.



Unfortunately, time never returns...



The day is today!

WE ARE NO LONGER AT AN AGE TO POSTPONE ANYTHING. LIVE YOUR LIFE TO THE FULLEST EVERY SINGLE DAY!

[manaboutown]

My father was born in 1898 and passed away in the early 1990s. Now he saw some changes!