BS: Odd perspectives in time

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: Ed T
Date: 27 Sep 15 - 03:53 PM

My Dad, was born in 1898, my still living Mom is 101. My Dad was a WW1 veteren, and was injured in the Halifax (Nova Scotia) explosion. He was a gold prospector n Yukon for 18 years. I recall, as a very young rural youth, not having electricity, it arrived in my community when I was 5 or six years old.
Memories:
We had the first TV in our community, and neighbours visited to watch favourite programs. (My Mom made sandwiches for everyone, from her tasty home made bread, cooked in our wood stove). We canned goods for winter, smoked meat, dried fruit and vegetables and home made pickles and jams for winter. We had a cold storage building with huge squares of lake ice sawdust in it to store meat from our farm. I recall using horses to process loose hay for winter animal feed- and using them to lift hay on a huge rope driven fork to the upper barn loft.
an eerie autumn sound was logs being sawed for winter wood, using a large circular saw, driven by a tractors power take-off powered by a long belt.
My Dad had a sock knitting machine (I still have it) he made the socks and my Mom Knit the ends.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: akenaton
Date: 27 Sep 15 - 04:39 PM

Yes Ed, my earliest memories too are of a world without electricity.

Paraffin oil was the source of light, wood the source of heat, with a little coal if we could afford it.
I was brought up in a real family home, grandparents uncles aunts all lived with us, times were hard no chance of housing for individuals.

What strikes me most looking back, was how not a minute was wasted the women did knitting, darning, made their own clothes, art work etc, in the evenings after the lamps were lit. The men repaired tools or made musical instruments, bred livestock to supplement income and cage birds as a hobby. We had an old wind up gramophone and the records were almost worn away, when a new one appeared, either bought or given by neighbours it was a real treat.
Everyone did a lot of reading, and books were passed round from house to house.....home grown vegetables were bartered or shared.

The Friday concerts in the village hall(2 large Nissen huts) were the highlight enjoyed by unpaid performers and audience alike....they made the drudgery of long hard days bearable!

No one was abused for lack of musical ability, all were generously applauded......being unwilling to contribute in some way was looked on as a serious flaw.
There was no unemployment, unless through incapacity.
I sometimes wonder if society has really progressed, it all disappeared as if from a dream.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: Bill D
Date: 27 Sep 15 - 06:29 PM

My grandfather took his family to Oklahoma right after the land rush when it became a state. He 'thought' he might get rich in the oil fields....it didn't work out, so he moved to Kansas and bought a hotel.

Here is the a web page about that town in Kansas. The last 2 pictures (scroll down) were ones I sent in, showing my father on the far right in each picture. My family was also probably in the crowd scenes in earlier pictures taken about 1914-1916.

Note... the great flu pandemic of 1918-1919 began in the US not far from there, in Fort Riley, Kansas... but in the small, isolated town of Lost Springs, my family was not affected.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 27 Sep 15 - 08:31 PM

My grandad had a car in the early fifties that had turn signal. a wee orange thing , about eight inches long, that popped out between the front and rear doors when a button was pushed next the choke (remember chokes?) but as no One knew it was there but grandad , it was useless , he said. I believe the car was a Hillman ! I have a "snap" of it, very tiny thing.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 27 Sep 15 - 08:46 PM

The car was tiny, not the photo. Also, just wanted to say what a grand thread this is . Thank you for reviving it, truly enjoyable.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 27 Sep 15 - 10:22 PM

We had a seafoam green Hillman when I was a child. Imagine a family of six crammed into it. I was seven when I broke my leg and when my parents took me to the doctor apparently they couldn't get me to sit on the seat so they opened the back and had me lie in the cargo area.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: GUEST,Hilo
Date: 27 Sep 15 - 10:28 PM

Apparently my grandad had a great slobbering dog who always got the front seat, gran sat in the back and directed , when she could see round the dog.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Sep 15 - 10:28 PM

I was born a month or a little more before Pearl Harbor.

I realized a while ago that, for a person of high school age now, World War II was longer ago than the Spanish-American war was for me when I was in high school. Perfectly logical, but it still seems weird.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: GUEST,#
Date: 27 Sep 15 - 10:38 PM

Turn signal from a 1955 VW. They sue do look useless.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: JennieG
Date: 28 Sep 15 - 03:34 AM

Twenty years or so ago I worked as a high school librarian, and the history syllabus started to include the sixties. The sixties!! That was my heyday, not history!!

My fellow librarian and I were sought after for our memories of being Sweet Young Things at the time......

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: BobL
Date: 28 Sep 15 - 04:30 AM

I was born towards the end of WW2, my grandparents were born and grew up under Queen Victoria. As a boy I must have known plenty of adults who'd fought in it, and they in turn would have known ones who fell.
Last year we observed the Great War centenary: it's sobering to think that those remembered on our war memorials are only a couple of handshakes away.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: akenaton
Date: 28 Sep 15 - 04:47 AM

Acme ..... It was a Hillman Minx, yours was the Estate version, never saw one like it in UK. My first car was a Hillman Minx saloon, exactly the same colour!   They were taken over by the Roots Group who built a factory in Linwood Scotland and started producing a competitor to the BMC mini, called the Hillman Imp....it was very popular.

The back seat of that Hillman Minx could tell some tales :0)

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 28 Sep 15 - 01:18 PM

Thank you, Guest Hilo, for your appreciative words 8 posts back about this thread, which I OP'd and revived. Glad you enjoy it.

≈Michael≈

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 28 Sep 15 - 01:28 PM

I am enjoying it very much and I wish we had more like it, very amusing and informative.