Wednesday, June 4, 2025

Living through the hard times

  I often see posts about the old days, how hard life was back then and all of that. Many folks claiming to have survived through the roughest times, like having no air conditioning in their homes. I just smile about all of that, as a great deal of it is just the way it was in my house growing up. And I grew up in a fine home, good as most everyone else that I knew and visited. We had indoor plumbing, central heating and enough beds for everyone, three beds in one room as a matter of fact! Now, what was there to complain about with that? 
  Thinking about that I do recall some things in homes that you just don't see much anymore. Perhaps the most forgotten feature being a door on the bottom of the staircase leading to the second floor. My grandmothers house was like that and so was the house of a close friend. The reason is quite simple, there was no heat in the upstairs so you kept that door shut to keep the heat downstairs. Heat rises you know. In those homes the only rooms upstairs were bedrooms. You don't need heat in bedrooms that's what blankets and quilts are for. My great grandfathers house was like too, now that I really think about it. Of course he had a coal chute as well, grandma only had a coal box on the end of her house. Well, some folks just have it easier than others I suppose.
  As I said we didn't have air conditioning. We also didn't have wall to wall carpeting. There were what Mom called throw rugs everywhere. Some were quite large and I remember putting them over the split rail ranch and beating them. We didn't have one of those fancy rug beaters though I just used my baseball bat or the broom handle. What we also had was a door stop. It was a cast iron Cat weighed about ten pounds! My house was outfitted with those new aluminum storm doors. You know the type, you get your initial in the middle of it and change it to a screen door in the summer months. The front door stayed open until we went to bed. 
  We did have television and radio. We had a few electric fans, a gas stove and a refrigerator, although it was usually called the ice box. My parents used instant coffee, a modern invention at the time, until the Mr. Coffee machine came out. What Mom did before that I can't say for certain as I don't remember but I suspect it was a percolator. Grandmother Bennett had an electric percolator, state of the art, that was always on. She "put on the pot" first thing in the morning and it stayed on all day, refilled as needed. My home had two and half baths! Yes, one bathroom for my parents and the other for the kids and that half bath in the laundry room. That was there so you wouldn't track dirt all through the house when just coming in to your necessary business. And yes Mom had a washer and a dryer. She seldom used the dryer however, clothes were hung on the clothesline. 
  Homes and the designing of them have changed over the years to meet certain needs and wants. Kitchens have generally grown a lot smaller and formal dining rooms almost disappearing. The Brady bunch had a very modern home but he was an architect so that explained that. Now we did have heat upstairs, as Dad had installed that himself. Hot water baseboard heat! No radiators, we were up to date on that tech. No door at the bottom of the stairs for us. Yeah, all in all I'd say I grew up in a modern home and have nothing to complain about. The kitchen floor was linoleum, that brick pattern that was all the rage. We even had a light over the kitchen table that you could pull up and down. It was shaped like a wagon wheel. Yeah, we had it all. 

                                                                                 

                                                                                  

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