My grandfather was born 1899 and grew up in a world where people were not assigned numbers. Telephone calls were made by asking for the Smiths in such and such town, postal service had not yet assigned street addresses, I don’t believe there were social security numbers yet.
Our grandfathers grew up in the same world.
My granddad didn’t get his first ride in an automobile until he was almost grown. Electricity and indoor plumbing were something that only well to do folks had in their homes. Clothes were washed on a washing board by hand, and no one in their neck of the woods had a gas burning stove. Refrigeration was an ice box, and a sit down meal in a restaurant was considered a formal occasion.
My granddad was a builder during his working years. He spent decades as a master carpenter, running his own construction business. He had every tool under the sun, but the most interesting ones, were the old tools he’d used when he was young. All of them were hand-powered, manual types.
It was fascinating to think that when he first learned the trades, everything was done by hand. Those old fashioned ways came through in all of the work he did, too. It was all sturdy, and built to last. Wonderful stuff.
There wasn't even any social security! Not until 1935.
“My grandfather was born 1899 and grew up in a world where people were not assigned numbers. Telephone calls were made by asking for the Smiths in such and such town, postal service had not yet assigned street addresses”
It wasn’t just in your grandfather’s time (my own grandfather was born in 1888).
Growing up in Weston, Connecticut in the mid-1950’s, we didn’t have “house numbers”. The address was simply “RFD 3...”
Forward to the late 1980’s, not all that long ago.
I became friends with someone who lived in rural/central Pennsylvania, in a tiny town that had gotten bypassed by “the main road” in the 1920’s because the main street of the town (where the highway once ran through) was too narrow and curvy, so they re-built the road through the nearby farm fields.
As recently as 1988, the houses in town didn’t have numbers. There was no “mail delivery” — you walked to the post office and got your mail. Deliverymen just “knew where you lived”. This even applied to the U.P.S. guy, from 20+ miles away in Northumberland.
Of course things have changed, even there, and the houses now have street numbers. But I can still walk down the street there and have complete strangers smile and wave as they drive by. As much as “modern trends” have changed a large part of America (mostly urban and suburban), there still remain isolated areas where “the old ways” still exist. If the collapse comes, this town is where I’m headin’!