What was it like, when you were a kid?

[MaryMouse]

Quote:
Great post! Great points!

 

[seedcorn]

grew up in small town in 50's, 60's.

The good (altho didn't think so at time) you couldn't get away with anything as everybody in town knew you and (worse part) your folks.
The lazy people were identified and treated as such--altho their kids weren't treated bad. In fact were given chances to succeed.

When visited g'folks, they went to "center" by horse and wagon (about 4 miles away). G'pa being mad when family installed an indoor bathroom as "only animals do that in their homes".

 

[OldGuy43]

When I was a boy one of the things that everyone listened to was the Mine Reports. "Freeman Crown #6 will work tomorrow, Peabody # 4 will be idle" etc. You listened because everyone had at least one coal miner in the family, that being the major industry in town when I was growing up. There were over 50 deep mines running under a town of less than 100,000 souls. Everything was colored by the close proximity of the mines. There were three mine heads close to my home. I do recall a very few "duck & cover" drills in school, but from kindergarten on we were regularly admonished not to play with blasting caps. I never actually saw one, but us kids were always on the lookout for them. I did once find a wooden Hercules Dynamite box in our garage and dutifully reported it to my teacher. Dad than had to show a policeman that it was empty and explain that he just used it to store his tools. They both laughed and the policeman patted me on the head and said, "Good job, son." My dad wasn't quite as thrilled.

With coal mining came railroads. I remember laying awake at night and listening to the sounds of coal fired steam locomotives getting a long string of coal cars moving. Puff...... Puff...... Puff.... Puff... Puff.. Puff. Puff-Puff-Puff-Puff-puff-puff-puff-puff,,,, Puff..... Puff.... Puff..., etc. We used to count the cars while waiting for the train to clear a crossing. Sometimes there were more than 250. Once in a while you'd see a hobo "riding the rails."

Of course, long trains like that had to be "made up." That's what railroaders call it when they add the cars on one at a time. Than you'd get caught at a crossing, sometimes for an hour or more while the train moved forward and backward a short distance. I remember a couple of times when someone waiting would have some railroading knowledge and get tired. He'd get out of his car, wait until the train stopped at one end of it's shuttling movement, uncouple a car and push the crossing arm up. When the train moved off the crossing the traffic would cross. Of course the engineer could 'feel' that his train wasn't as long as it had been and he'd send the brakeman down to find the break and recouple the cars and close the crossing arm, but by than the traffic had cleared.

What with the ready availability of coal that's what almost everyone heated their homes with. That meant that most houses had a coal bin and chute, and had coal delivered by the truckload. As a little boy I decided that I wanted to drive the coal delivery truck. After all, not only did he get to drive a truck, but it was a dump truck with that nifty conveyor that put the coal into the chute. Fortunately, that job had all but disappeared by the time I got old enough.

I can still remember my dad or grandad shoveling coal into the furnace. There was a big lever to shake the "clinkers" (as we called them) down and they had to be carried out every once in awhile.

 

[SunnyDawn]

Oh Lord! I had forgotten about having to wear dresses everywhere! That was a traumatic part of childhood!

The hot floor grate was something we really enjoyed too. My brother and I would "dare" each other to run across it (in cotton socks, not in bare feet). You had to get across awfully fast to keep from burning your feet.

Couldn't do that these days since we don't let our feet get tough enough to handle anything like that anymore.

My Dad worked in the copper mines before becoming a machinist. The accidents they had back then were horrible and frequent!

 

[BusyBlonde]

One house my parents bought, when I was in 2nd grade, was 200+ years old. We had a claw-foot tub, a wood stove, and no insulation. My sister and I shared a room/bed, my 4 brothers shared 2 rooms. Our rooms were on the second floor, and there were wooden grate-covered 'vents' to bring heat upstairs. This was in upstate NY - brrrrr!

I took care of at least the youngest 3 kids in the family. Bathing, feeding, diapers - all my domain. My only sister thought I was her mom until she was in school because I did everything for her.

 

[Zinnia-Hen]

I don't like my generation. I would much rather be an old fart from back then than a teenager from nowadays...

 

[Blonde]

Quote:
Me too!

 

[SunnyDawn]

Awww and here we old farts think you young kids don't get us. That is a very sweet compliment. You should come to the senior dances. You'd have a ball!

 

[duck&chickencrazy]

Quote:
Me too!! I am often embarrassed because of my peers...

 

[Frosty]

Quote:
We had a cow and no delivery service available. Us kids would take an old can out and get milk from the cow to drink right there, to this day I still don't like cold milk...

I don't remember going into any buildings that had an upstairs, but now I use the steps.

We drove to the grocery store, went once a month to get food and stuff for the adults and 6 kids. The store was 15 miles away so walking wasn't really an option...

Once a year before school started was the big trip to the material store because mom made our clothes. I was always bored because I was the youngest of 4 girls and didn't get new clothes. I got the hand me downs which were always at least 4 years out of style. My oldest sister loved purple. One year mom made her this outfit that was dark purple with big bright pink polka dots. To this day, I hate purple.

A relative gave us a TV when I was about 4, it went out shortly after that. We didn't get another TV until I was 17. I read lots of library books and used my imagination. I still don't watch TV, our town doesn't have cable and we don't have satellite. I don't miss it...

I don't know if they even had treadmills back then? I keep trying to convince my daughter that instead of going to the gym she can help me clean the barn...

Our high school was out in the middle of nowhere and was about 1 1/2 miles from us so we walked... when we were younger that was were we caught the bus to the grade school which was 5 miles away. Our school district was the largest in western PA for mileage covered, I graduated in 1981 with a graduating class of 64. It was all farm land with houses few and far between.

The folks bought an old farm house in 1969 and we lived there while the house was slowly worked on. For the fist few years, we didn't have a bathroom. We had an outhouse and a big wash tub for the weekly baths. At last it looked big to me at the time... There were 3 bedrooms, one for the parents, one for the girls and one for the boys. Each of the kids rooms were about 8' x 12' and had one set of twin sized bunk beds. The two boys were lucky, they each had a twin sized bed to themselves. With 4 girls, there were two to a bed. And for some reason, the baby chicks were brooded in the girls room, though I didn't mind that

We had an oil furnace, and every winter at some point the oil would freeze between the tank and the house. Then we would start the fireplace and all live in the living room until the oil thawed.

I think we were poor and didn't have much, but I didn't know it at the time. I loved playing outside and exploring in the woods... There were huge boulders back there to climb and grapevines to swing on. And now I have the wonderful memories of the long summer days that seemed to go on forever, and the memories of walking to school in snow and freezing rain which at the time seemed to go on forever.