Replies

The rag man with his mule-drawn cart. The ice man that when the kids gathered around was a bit sloppy in cutting the cubes that would perfectly fit the ice box (from memory) so the kids would have some cold ice shavings on a hot summer day. (”Growing up - we never had ice cold drinks!”)
________________________

Born 1943. I remember all the above, only our rag man had a horse and so did the milkman, who also brought and cut the ice.

We did have cold drinks. They came out of a chest freezer-type dispenser filled with ice (often melted into cold water). You put in a nickle and guided the small bottle through a sort of maze to where it could be removed. You tried to get one long enough after the ice went in, that they were chilled, but before the ice melted into cold water, when they were only cool.

I think I was 5 when we finally got a refrigerator (war time shortages). But, we did have an ice box. No one bought bottled drinks for home consumption (ice boxes and then refrigerators were really small). You went across the hard road to the truck weighing station/general store for that. Home-made drinks were iced tea or lemonade with ice in them. You got the ice by using an ice pick from the block in the box (and not using too much) or, after we got a fridge with a tiny ice compartment, from metal ice cube trays that were difficult to release and mostly produced shards.

Clothes washers were belt-driven drums with paddles and a wringer. We all hung clothes up to dry. The vacuum cleaner was a huge horizontal tank that was difficult to move, but we had wood or linoleum floors, so a broom was used. Radios were as big as a 1950s TV, which hardly anyone had. Very few new cars right after the war, too.

The 50s and 60s were a literal golden age to us War Babies.

Grew up on a small lake in Minnestoa not far from the Twin Cities, and practically lived outdoors. When I wasn’t fishing from my dock or little rowboat, or swimming at a little beach not far from the house, I would be riding my bike down to the end of our road where there were a lot of great climbing trees, in which I could sit for hours without any “device” to keep me entertained.
Know of NO kid who “drownded” in the lake, or got badly hurt falling off a tree or the off the stairway, roof, or other part of the occassional new house being built on a vacant lot.
Soooo grateful for the FREEDOM I enJOYed!

Remember the coal man delivering the coal to the basement chute and dad shoveling coal into the furnace? Should we get the hard coal which was more expensive, gave more heat, and lasted longer or the soft coal which was cheaper, always the question.

Dad built the first TV in our neighborhood. B&W of course. I helped in the last stages of tuning it, he was tuning a pot behind the set and I was watching to tell him when the picture was clear. He kept saying, “How’s that?” and when I said nothing, he’s make another adjustment. At one point. I yelled, “Stop! There’s a good picture with a monkey eating a banana in a palm tree in color”. I didn’t know that it was supposed to be B&W. He laughed and said, “Very funny, son”.

Then he turned the pot again and there was Abbot an Costello doing a routine, all thoughts of what I had seen were forgotten ... until 65 years later when I read in Popular Science or Scientific American that way back then Johnson & Johnson had been experimenting with broadcasting color over B&W sets. The scene they were broadcasting featured the above description. The Johnson & Johnson lab was a mile from our home. I was not crazy and saw something probably no one alive saw outside of Johnson & Johnson.

"The rag man with his mule-drawn cart."

The old Italian guy scissor sharpener push cart slowly going down the street with the ding-ding bell.

The Good Humor truck...

High dives...

Senior prom...slow dancing cheek to cheek..

** No one bought bottled drinks for home consumption **

Made our own root beer, using extract bought in the A&P and cakes of yeast, and 5# bag of cane sugar and 5 gallons of water.

Gosh! I still remember the recipe. Heh.

I loved to use the bottle capper.

The stuff tasted like Moxie. Yuck!