So Nana is one hundred and one years old and since I was trying to imagine the many changes she has lived through I was led on a search for myself.
First I found an old book on one of the chairs from a waiting room and it's a hardcover
LIFE issue . 100 events that shook our world in the last 10o years...or something like that.
Very interesting ! Actually they have a really interesting web site of pictures to browse when one is not so busy at her desk.
Then I started to remember for myself all the changes in my many (not as many as Nana) years on this planet.
So it was a lot of fun trying to find old pictures for this post and I focused on things remembered when I was a child.
My parents were war veterans. They were in Army Shows, and entertained the troops. My dad was a musician and my mom was a high kickin' dancer, like the ones that used to be on the Jackie Gleason show.
After the war, they were given the opportunity to buy a 'war time' house and if I remember correctly they paid $4000.00....in installments. That same little three bedroom house sold for over $120,000. several years ago.
Anyway, one of the items we owned was an Icebox...later when credit was popular we graduated to an actual refrigerator.
Ours was white I think and there was an 'Ice Man' that would deliver the large blocks of ice to our house. We were allowed to collect the ice chips that would fly off when he would cut the block to the size we needed.
Then there was the Milk Man...Tommy was his name, delivering milk in actual glass bottles in his horse drawn wagon to our back door.
There was the big old furnace in the cellar.
Very scary ! Next to it was the 'coal bin' that would receive the load of coal through the cellar window. We also had wood delivered to the driveway, and we kids would have to throw it into the basement as well.
When mother decided we needed a spanking (often it seems) she would send my brother to the cellar to get a 'stick' for her to use on our backsides.
When he would be sent to get
'my' stick he came upstairs with a two by four...not funny Rob ! No she did not beat me with a two by four, thank the Lord, she used the kindling .
Ah the memories....anyway, this pic is very similar to our old furnace, and we would have to 'empty the ashes' and throw a bit of wood on in the winter mornings. Man I hated that cellar !
Then there was the telephone ! My grandparents had one kind of like this on the left and ours was more modern. Most folks had a 'party line' or shared line, where nosy people would listen in if so inclined, so eventually we acquired a private line. I did seem to spend many hours on that phone .
It was later when colored phones became popular, and I remember my dads mother had a lovely red one in her front hall. I now own one of these myself.
The days before television came into our home we listed to the radio, and played out doors. It was safe to leave your house unlocked and the inside door open in the heat of summer. Summer spent mostly in our bathing suits and bare feet.
Hurricane Hazel in 1954 turned the sky a strange shade of yellow green and we were brought inside until it passed. Actually in researching this event it seems our little town was spared a lot of the damage that Toronto received. I just remember the warmth of the rain puddles to my bare feet afterwards. I was eight.
Then the wonderful day we welcomed the Television !! With Ed Sullivan , Howdy Doody ,Clarabell the clown, The Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, the Cisco Kid....I became a big fan of sitting in front of the tube and disconnecting from life around me.
The Hi-Fi Stereo came just in time for the Elvis, Fabian, Ricky Nelson (all were honored on my bedroom walls) the Twist and of course The Beatles ! My dad was a radio announcer and was able to bring home new releases of those little 45 records, and I fell in love with the British Invaders...
She loves me, yeah yeah yeah! Man,I had hundreds of those little disks.
In 1960, Catholic High School and terrible black uniforms with white plastic collars and cuffs . Oh my gosh !! Did anyone else have to wear those underarm padded things to keep the perspiration off the clothes ? EEWWW !!!
AND Saddle Shoes with white ankle socks....
Today, I would love some of these shoes. Go figure....
I have to say though my mom was expert at making our clothes, and I was so proud when she created my very own green flared felt poodle skirt.
TodayWe have so much advanced technology who could have imagined it back then?
Now I own two computers ,(remember when one computer filled a whole large room ?) and if we didn't have email and cell phones and the internet what would we do ???? When I see the commercials displaying the wonders of the ipod phones with every application imaginable I am amazed.
As for me....
How could I survive without the internet and all the options available, most especially the live web streaming from IHOP.
Oh almost forgot to mention blogging and Facebook of course.
So, I am aging, but I want to keep pace to some degree with all that is being discovered around me.
It's great fun, and after all, I never would have thought I would ever own my very own Red Rotary Dial (working, mind you) telephone.
