When my mother (who will be 90 in a week) was growing up, her mother cooked meals on a coal-fired stove/oven.
After my mom married she went to open a bank account in her own name where she could keep pin money. Bank officials would not let her do so. My father had to come down to the bank and put his name on the account as well.
This was in the 1960’s.
I’d like to know what company still does this. I worked for New England Telephone (part of AT@T) and in 1984 divestiture occurred, and along with it, no more rental of telephones.
My ex actually ended his Great aunt’s rental deal with the Philadelphia phone company about three years ago. He and his Mom estimated that she had payed about $26,000.00 for that phone.
That’s seriously incredible. The Tyler men sure have hearty sperm.
I have an uncle who is in his 80s now. He was a slave laborer under the Nazis.
I know a woman who is 96 years old.
She was alive when the 19th Amendment was passed.
She was alive when Russia was ruled by an Emperor.
She was alive when Britain was truly an empire and had a presence on every inhabited continent.
She was alive before the first clear radio broadcast of human speech.
She was alive before the first TV station started broadcasting.
She was alive when the Great Depression began.
Well, yes, but I’m pretty sure they don’t keep them in a jar at Walgreens, where you can just go and buy a half dozen after you finish your ice cream soda.
My father is 87. He uses handkerchiefs. He blows his nose in them and puts them back in his pocket and uses them again, over and over. I think this is absolutely disgusting. He thinks tissues are “a waste of good paper…” My mother willingly washes them so he can use them again, which I think is also disgusting.
When I was 17 he was crabby and irritable. I recently did the math. He was 52 then. I’m now 52. If I had to live with a 17 year old now, I’d be crabby and irritable too.
I’ve heard this before, and it’s one of my favourites. “Yep, my pappy was born before the Civil War. Remembered it starting and finishing. But grandpappy was about in George Washington’s time - was a man full-grown when that King George III died.”
My home town had milk delivery by horse drawn wagon when I was a kid.
Our telephone was a turn the crank and tell ‘central’ to connect you to whoever. When we got dial phones, all local phone numbers were four digit.
I had friends who had no indoor plumbing; a few of my friends had no electricity.
Girls absolutely could not wear jeans or pants of any kind to school; shorts were simply unthinkable.
Married girls were not allowed to attend high school; unmarried pregnant girls were shunned; they wouldn’t even think of attending school.
Blacks had their own (very inferior) schools and their very own side of town; that side of town had no running water or electricity.
Blacks had to prove literacy (IIRC) and pay a poll tax in order to vote. (I believe whites had to pay a poll tax as well, but whites could (usually) afford it while blacks couldn’t—I would be willing to bet that tax would be waived if a white couldn’t pay it but never for a black.
Blacks rode in the back of city buses and had to surrender their seats if a white person demanded it.
Bus and train stations had separate waiting rooms, restrooms, and water fountains for blacks and whites.
Black men removed their hats to speak to white men; if they had to speak to a white woman, they removed their hats and would not make eye contact. (This wasn’t law; it was what blacks did if they knew their place-----I don’t subscribe to that view, just to be clear.)
I attended school with sharecropper kids.
We didn’t have TV until I was 10-12 years old.
I never attended a class in an air conditioned classroom, not even in college. (Chemistry lab had a window unit that generally didn’t work.)
Radio repair shops were common.
We had no idea what an FM radio was until I was around 18-19 years old.
Most cars had no radios; an air conditioned car was unheard of; automatic transmissions were a real novelty and only for the rich.
I had things hard and didn’t know it; we liked it that way, too. Uphill both ways and through the snow. Get off my yard; it’s my ball now.
We had a fenced in smoking area for students at my high school.
They took it away in 2005.
My mother was forced to drop out of HS after the school realized she was pregnant (her quickie wedding clued them in). This was in the early 1970s. My grandmother (her mother) also ran into problems with her school after she got married in the middle of her junior year (during WWII). Although in her case she wasn’t pregnant; she just eloped because my grandfather was being sent to the Pacific. She threaten to cause a scandal if the school board expelled her while her husband was off fighting the Japanese. They let her stay.
My mother, who is 60 (though I can’t believe it looking at her) tells a story about sexual harassment.
Before that was even a phrase/idea.
She worked as a clerk/typist and there was a man that would come up behind the women. (it was all women like a typing pool) And rub their shoulders to make their boobs bobble around. He was kinda rough, it was very personally violating and embarrassing.
And there was nothing they could do about it.
Nothing.
If you complained it was all 'why do you have to be so mean? Bob (or whatever) is just having fun. He’s a working man with kids! You’re the bitch here!"
My mom was at that time, a working woman with a husband and a kid.
She’s now still a working woman with the same husband and two adult kids.
Years ago, the American Chemical Society ran a contest to ask for “the 10 most important contributions of chemistry in the 20th century”. My entry included one from Grandma: modern female toiletries.
There is a sad part: not that there are women in this world who still use rags, but that there are women who got used to modern toiletries, forgot their traditional methods, and now have lost access to those modern toiletries due to the economic hardships of their countries. We need a Tampons Mundi.
Shortly after SiL’s Dad died, her Mom got into a reminiscing mood, something extremely unusual for her. Not only are there still people in Spain who grew up sleeping on a blanket on the floor with their three sisters while their parents shared the bed with their only son, in a single-room house, eating from a single pot with a single spoon, but I know one - from that, to “my daughter is a doctor and my son’s an engineer”.
I didn’t get hit across my left hand for using it: it was on the tips of the bunched-up fingers.
My mother-in-law was a girl in India when Gandhi was around.
Over the weekend I read a book called “The Girls Who Went Away.” The “girls” were women who got pregnant pre-legal abortion outside of wedlock and were forced to give their babies up for adoption to avoid the stigma of a “bastard” child.
The mothers were told to forget and go on with their lives. None of them did or could.
Catholic school, perhaps? Not randomly dissing them - I attended them for 12 years myself, and was fortunate enough that handedness wasn’t an issue there that I recall.
Teachers randomly smacking kids around for making mistakes, let alone misbehavior, now… that was something they still did when I was in elementary school.
My mother died in 1967. I have a little brochure from the cemetery where my parents bought two burial plots before her death that says it is for whites only.
Well they aren’t rags, but I LOVE these: http://partypantspads.com/ The initial investment wasn’t cheap (but they sew easy if you want to DIY), but I haven’t bought pads in months.
(I’m not a Diva cup girl. Tried it, wanted to be, but my body didn’t cooperate).