Posted on 05/15/2015 7:33:17 AM PDT by knarf
I feel so old ...
I've always lived in big east coast cities. It may surprise you to know that up until the 1990s, there were still many horse-drawn produce wagons, usually manned by blacks, in Philadelphia and Baltimore. I remember them from the 1940s in the heart of Washington DC. In Baltimore, they were called "A-rabbers," with the "A" pronounced like the first alphabet letter. Why, I don't know. Eventually the yuppies shut them all down because of concerns over the horses. Now you still see a few with pickup trucks. Convenient way to get fresh fruits and vegetables without having to tote them home in the city if your street is on their route.
Good times!
I tell people that I’m so old that they used to teach us how to dribble and shoot free throws with a basketball. Doesn’t make the young crowd of modern basketball fans too happy, those few who understand what I mean.
I miss when a green light used to mean go.
I remember that, we thought we were uptown when we had milk delivered. That was after we got rid of our cow Susie. Susie’s pasture was underneath where the inner loop 610 in Houston is located.
I got to churn the butter in a glass churn while my mother made cottage cheese. WOW. The memories are flooding back, this is fun!
The horse drawn vegetable wagons today are for the charm of the thing. Like horse drawn carriages for tourists.
Glad to know they are still around!
This is the milk box, different dairy, where fresh milk was dropped off in time for breakfast cereal and coffee. Sell date, what's that?
I don’t think we had a milk box. My mother was a stay at home mom who didn’t drive a car so she was always there when the milk was delivered.
Melon trucks cruised through the neighborhoods in DC well into the late fifties, the drivers singing out “fresh sweet melons an’ ‘lopes” and ‘maters.
A huge convience before supermarkets appeared.
If you lived in DC you might recall the little DGS (District Grocery Store). Dimly lighted with wooden bins for the vegatables and fruits.
The Eastern Market in DC and the big enclosed market in Baltimore were big shopping spots for things like potatoes by the bushel and such.
In our neighborhood in DC milk was delivered very early, five or six. The boxes kept the milk and dairy cool in the summer and kept it from freezing in winter as well as keeping alley cats and other critters from feasting.
I don’t remember DGS, but I do remember the Eastern Market, and also the one on the loading docks up 6th St NE near the railyards under New York Ave. In Philly, the Reading Terminal Market is smack in the middle of Center City between City Hall and the Convention Center and is still a safe area to go to; but Baltimore’s Lexington Market, while still kind of amazing, is in an iffy neighborhood huge hospitals on the one side, bail bondsmen and payday loan shops on the other. Philly also has the huge outdoor Italian Market on 9th St between Christian St and Washington Ave.
I love how these old-time markets are still in use. You can stroll from one stand to another and see an entirely different price for the same half-dozen of anything.
Do you remember Stevenson’s bakeries, with black and white tile? How about Velardi’s candy shops, with sugary homemade caramels?
My folks never would speak off-color either- in English! Italian, well, that was a different matter, lol!
God bless you!
I wouldn’t worry about it, if the bottle is sealed. I think that stuff could survive a nuclear war, lol!
You know, I didn’t always get the satire, but I loved those marginals! And the picture you had to fold on the last page to make the joke! Lol
They were probably all stoned enough to actually drink the bass...
to this day, i still have dresser scarves put away. My grandmother, using the smallest hook they made, crocheted the lace around the edges. The clothespin bags with two kinds of pins, the spring-loaded, and the straight kind that you could use to make a little doll.
When I was a baby, my Mom nearly died after three months in a cancer hospital. By nothing short of a miracle, she survived. They used to have occupational therapy, and although she was weak and it took her awhile, she made me a sock monkey. I have it to this day. I was a little over a year old when she was there, and, at one low point, she told my Dad to take it home to me, she was never going to get well. Well, my Dad, whose heart was breaking, too, put on the tough guy face and handed it right back to her, telling her he didn't want to hear that! She was coming home, and that's all there was to it. And she did come home!
This thread has been such a joy, thanks everybody for sharing your funny, fascinating, and beautiful memories!
PS: Does anyone recall the little sprinkler tops you'd put on a (glass) pop bottle? You'd fill the bottle with water, put the sprinkler thing on top, and use it when ironing before steam irons were around?
the little sprinkler tops
yes...we used those in the early 1960’s. perhaps before but I cant say that I remember that period all that well these days.
Yes I remember those sprinklers. I also remember a nipple that you could put on a coke bottle and make a baby bottle out of it.
My brother is 5 years younger than I am and he would throw his baby bottle out of the crib when he finished it, they weren’t plastic. When the last bottle was broken my mom put those strange nipples on coke bottles.
He still threw them out but they didn’t break.
Does anyone recall the little sprinkler tops you’d put on a (glass) pop bottle?”
I still have the top. I also remember the times when about half the refrigerator was filled with clothes that had been sprinkled and needed to be ironed. I still iron everything - hankies, sheets, pillow cases, etc. My grandson laughs at me because I always insist on ironing his school pants and always put a crease down the front. Some old habits never die.
New clothing only lasts a year or two now. I have some 100% cotton blouses though that are at least 20 years old!
I’m ashamed to say this but I finally saw Stripes on cable the other night. I’d never seen the whole thing. But it was a really good story for being such a silly comedy. Much better plot than current comedies. Yes, he’s a comic genius.
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