Mom, were there dinosaurs when you were little?
When my kids were little they asked me if we had electricity when I was a kid. Yes, I did. Their Dad, who grew up in a remote part of Norway did not. The dinosaur remark came when they were in high school.
These are things that entertained my kids from my life vintage 1944-1952:
*Living in a remodeled chicken coop in Seattle. WW2 housing shortage.
*Having a stroller with wooden wheels, also WW2, rubber shortage.
*Moving to the coast where the house had an oil stove in the center of the living room that had to be manually lit. This was really central heat; it heated the center of the living room and nothing else. We had oil lamps and candles handy all winter as the power went out often in the coastal winters and stayed off for days, but we did have heat.
*Saturday nights there were dances in a hall where everyone came including us little kids who as the evening wore on slept on the piles of coats around the dance floor.
*Logging trucks roaring by on the highway loaded down with part of one single gigantic log. I didn’t realize I was watching our old growth forests go by.
*No one locked their doors for the most part.
*Listening to the radio after dinner.
*Listening to the Cinnamon Bear at Christmas on the radio in Portland. Did you hear it?
*Lead Christmas tree tinsel or “rain.” We chewed it into balls to make spit wads, no wonder I’m like I am. It was for sale on eBay, listed as “vintage.”
*Lead toothpaste tubes. During WW2 toothpaste tubes were collected for the lead to make bullets for the war effort. That’s where the saying “get the lead out,” began I think.
*Lead solder was used in commercial canned goods; I think that went on until 1993 or so.
*Worse yet...we kids broke thermometers to get at the mercury inside to shine up dimes. Okay, now I’m getting a headache thinking about this.
*Most boys had pocketknives and took them to school.
*I got put in the corner in 1st grade for kissing a little boy who didn’t want to be kissed. I guess I’d get arrested now.
*School patrols worked the crosswalks and walked small kids nearly all the way home when I was in the first grade in Portland, Oregon.
*Girls couldn’t wear slacks to school no matter how cold it was or skinny she was. I had snow pants I wore but had to take them off in the hallway and don them before I went home. God Bless Mrs. Sherwood who put all us first graders back into our outerwear. No zips, just buttons and strap arrangements, wool everything, often still wet, rubber raincoats and galoshes, they went over your shoes if you had them.
*Four wheel roller skates with a key. I skated down my gramma’s front steps and broke my tailbone.
*Everyone I knew got their milk delivered by the milkman.
*1947, we got our first oleo, margarine in a plastic bag that had a red capsule of yellow dye in it that you broke with your fingers while it was inside the bag and then kneaded the whole thing until the oleo turned butter yellow. That was my six-year-old job.
*We flew on Pan American Airlines Clipper to join our Dad in Hawaii. The plane left Portland at midnight, and landed in the morning. The lovely stewardesses piled blankets on my sister and I and plied us with hot chocolate but we still froze all night. I still have a PAA lapel pin one of those ladies gave me. And this was the first time I’d ever seen a big airplane that wasn’t a military craft. If there are any left they are probably in a museum. We left Portland in March 1949, one of the worst winters on record there, and landed in Honolulu and promptly got fried in the sun just short of needing hospitalization. To balance we left one warm March in 1951 and arrived in the winter in Portland dressed in sleeveless silk muumuus, sandals, and a tan. No coats, no socks.
*Air raid drills and sirens. They gave me bad dreams in grade school. I expected to be bombed into dust at any moment for a couple of years. They continued through high school. The local siren was on our high school roof. We had an algebra teacher who’d lived in Denmark during WW2 and the poor guy nearly passed out every time the thing went off.
These are things that entertained my kids from my life vintage 1944-1952:
*Living in a remodeled chicken coop in Seattle. WW2 housing shortage.
*Having a stroller with wooden wheels, also WW2, rubber shortage.
*Moving to the coast where the house had an oil stove in the center of the living room that had to be manually lit. This was really central heat; it heated the center of the living room and nothing else. We had oil lamps and candles handy all winter as the power went out often in the coastal winters and stayed off for days, but we did have heat.
*Saturday nights there were dances in a hall where everyone came including us little kids who as the evening wore on slept on the piles of coats around the dance floor.
*Logging trucks roaring by on the highway loaded down with part of one single gigantic log. I didn’t realize I was watching our old growth forests go by.
*No one locked their doors for the most part.
*Listening to the radio after dinner.
*Listening to the Cinnamon Bear at Christmas on the radio in Portland. Did you hear it?
*Lead Christmas tree tinsel or “rain.” We chewed it into balls to make spit wads, no wonder I’m like I am. It was for sale on eBay, listed as “vintage.”
*Lead toothpaste tubes. During WW2 toothpaste tubes were collected for the lead to make bullets for the war effort. That’s where the saying “get the lead out,” began I think.
*Lead solder was used in commercial canned goods; I think that went on until 1993 or so.
*Worse yet...we kids broke thermometers to get at the mercury inside to shine up dimes. Okay, now I’m getting a headache thinking about this.
*Most boys had pocketknives and took them to school.
*I got put in the corner in 1st grade for kissing a little boy who didn’t want to be kissed. I guess I’d get arrested now.
*School patrols worked the crosswalks and walked small kids nearly all the way home when I was in the first grade in Portland, Oregon.
*Girls couldn’t wear slacks to school no matter how cold it was or skinny she was. I had snow pants I wore but had to take them off in the hallway and don them before I went home. God Bless Mrs. Sherwood who put all us first graders back into our outerwear. No zips, just buttons and strap arrangements, wool everything, often still wet, rubber raincoats and galoshes, they went over your shoes if you had them.
*Four wheel roller skates with a key. I skated down my gramma’s front steps and broke my tailbone.
*Everyone I knew got their milk delivered by the milkman.
*1947, we got our first oleo, margarine in a plastic bag that had a red capsule of yellow dye in it that you broke with your fingers while it was inside the bag and then kneaded the whole thing until the oleo turned butter yellow. That was my six-year-old job.
*We flew on Pan American Airlines Clipper to join our Dad in Hawaii. The plane left Portland at midnight, and landed in the morning. The lovely stewardesses piled blankets on my sister and I and plied us with hot chocolate but we still froze all night. I still have a PAA lapel pin one of those ladies gave me. And this was the first time I’d ever seen a big airplane that wasn’t a military craft. If there are any left they are probably in a museum. We left Portland in March 1949, one of the worst winters on record there, and landed in Honolulu and promptly got fried in the sun just short of needing hospitalization. To balance we left one warm March in 1951 and arrived in the winter in Portland dressed in sleeveless silk muumuus, sandals, and a tan. No coats, no socks.
*Air raid drills and sirens. They gave me bad dreams in grade school. I expected to be bombed into dust at any moment for a couple of years. They continued through high school. The local siren was on our high school roof. We had an algebra teacher who’d lived in Denmark during WW2 and the poor guy nearly passed out every time the thing went off.
posted by Celia | April 18, 2009
4 Comments:
Nice and vivid images. You have a good memory.
I can identify with so many of these things as a Canadian kid. The oil stove in the middle of the room and you hoped the heat would drift upstairs to the bedrooms through the vents, but every morning there was ice on the inside of the windows anyway. Leaving a quarter in the glass milk bottle for the milkman for the bottles with the cream on top. I remember every boy carried a pocket knife and my husband still does.As I read your post him, he started laughing about his mishaps on the roller skates tightened with a key. Oh my goodness, mixing the margarine with the red button, that was my job too. I remember the air raid sirens testing during the Cuban missile crisis. My grandmother who was a religous fruitcake would tell me that it was no use, the end of the world was coming. I cried myself to sleep every night. Heck no wonder I went on to develop PTSD as an adult. It probably started then.
Wow! What a memory! I can certainly relate to some of this. The rollerskates with a key that we wore on a string around our neck. The margarine with the yellow food colouring pellet that burst when we squeezed it. The snowpants. Oh yeah, imagine not allowing girls to wear pants in winter? I can't believe how long ago all that was.
What a memory and great word pictures. I had misplaced (forgotten) the skates with a key on a string around my neck. The gym clothes we all had to wear whether we were playing or not. The 4 partyline phone that you cranked and and spoke to the operator. The plastic covers my mother put on every thing, seats in the car, living room couch, chairs, and so my list goes on. Thanks for the memories.
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