BS: Oh, Them Good Ole Days...

Subject: Oh, Them Good Ole Days...
From: Amos
Date: 08 Jan 01 - 07:05 PM

Here's what I've been told; no effort has been made to verify this data:

 100 Years Ago
 -------------
 The average life expectancy in the United States was forty-seven.
 
 Only 14 percent of the homes in the United States had a bathtub.
 
 Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.  A three minute call
 from Denver to New York City cost eleven dollars.
 
 There were only 8,000 cars in the US and only 144 miles of paved
 roads.
 
 The maximum speed limit in most cities was ten mph.
 
 Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa, and Tennessee were each more heavily
 populated than California.  With a mere 1.4 million residents,
 California was only the twenty-first most populous state in the
 Union.
 
 The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower.
 
 The average wage in the U.S. was twenty-two cents an hour.  The
 average U.S. worker made between $200 and $400 per year.
 
 A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year, a dentist
 $2500 per year, a veterinarian between $1500 and $4000 per year, and a
 mechanical engineer about $5000 per year.
 
 More than 95 percent of all births in the United States took place at
 home.
 
 Ninety percent of all U.S. physicians had no college education.
 Instead, they attended medical schools, many of which were condemned
 in the press and by the government as "substandard."
 
 Sugar cost four cents a pound.  Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.
 Coffee cost fifteen cents a pound.
 
 Most women only washed their hair once a month and used borax or egg
 yolks for shampoo.
 
 Canada passed a law prohibiting poor people from entering the country
 for any reason, either as travelers or immigrants.
 
 The five leading causes of death in the U.S. were:
     1. Pneumonia and influenza
     2. Tuberculosis
     3. Diarrhea
     4. Heart disease
     5. Stroke
 
 The American flag had 45 stars.  Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Hawaii
 and Alaska hadn't been admitted to the Union yet.
 
 Drive-by-shootings -- in which teenage boys galloped down the street
 on horses and started randomly shooting at houses, carriages, or anything
 else that caught their fancy -- were an ongoing problem in Denver and other
 cities in the West.
 
 The population of Las Vegas, Nevada was thirty. The remote desert
 community was inhabited by only a handful of ranchers and their families.
 
 Plutonium, insulin, and antibiotics hadn't been discovered yet. Scotch
 tape, crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea hadn't been invented.
 
 There was no Mother's Day or Father's Day.
 
 One in ten U.S. adults couldn't read or write. Only 6 percent of all
 Americans had graduated from high school.
 
 Some medical authorities warned that professional seamstresses were
 apt to become sexually aroused by the steady rhythm, hour after hour,
 of the sewing machine's foot pedals.  They recommended slipping bromide
 -- which was thought to diminish sexual desire -- into the women's
 drinking water.
 
 Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at
 corner drugstores.  According to one pharmacist, "Heroin clears the
 complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and the
 bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health."
 
 Coca-Cola contained cocaine instead of caffeine.
 
 Punch card data processing had recently been developed, and early
 predecessors of the modern computer were used for the first time by
 the government to help compile the 1900 census.
 
 Eighteen percent of households in the United States had at least one
 full-time servant or domestic.
 
 There were about 230 reported murders in the U.S.annually.

Subject: RE: BS: Oh, Them Good Ole Days...
From:
Date: 08 Jan 01 - 07:10 PM

Are you trying to see if Mick remembers any of this?

Subject: RE: BS: Oh, Them Good Ole Days...
From: Bill D
Date: 08 Jan 01 - 09:21 PM

what statistics like this are really good for is perspective...and with luck, some of the younger generation will use them to explore what it MEANT to live when those statistics were fresh.

(87 pages of soapbox lecture omitted here..*grin*)

Subject: RE: BS: Oh, Them Good Ole Days...
From: simon-pierre
Date: 09 Jan 01 - 12:14 AM

(sigh!) only 8000 cars... will these times will ever be back again?... but with canned beer, of course...

Subject: RE: BS: Oh, Them Good Ole Days...
From: wysiwyg
Date: 09 Jan 01 - 12:35 AM

A--

You liar, you HAVE been to Pennsyltucky!

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Oh, Them Good Ole Days...
From: Sorcha
Date: 09 Jan 01 - 12:43 AM

Pennsyltucky, my ass! Amos gets his stats from Wyoming...could be WyoBraska except for the murders.....ah, dem good ole days......wit dem golden slippers......

Subject: RE: BS: Oh, Them Good Ole Days...
From: Crazy Eddie
Date: 09 Jan 01 - 11:55 PM

Of course in those days, we didn't have depleted uranium, so we had to make do with mustard gas.

Subject: RE: BS: Oh, Them Good Ole Days...
From: wysiwyg
Date: 10 Jan 01 - 01:14 AM

There's a probing thought.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Oh, Them Good Ole Days...
From: Kim C
Date: 10 Jan 01 - 01:19 PM

The "average" life expectancy was low due to high infant mortality rates. If someone lived through childhood they had a pretty good chance of getting old. It doesn't mean that people up and died the minute they turned 47. :)

Subject: RE: BS: Oh, Them Good Ole Days...
From: MMario
Date: 10 Jan 01 - 01:25 PM

The boss at one of my first jobs was astounded when I had to take Driver's Ed in order to get my license. when he applied for his first driver's license the requirement was to bring in a witnessed affidavit that you had already driven over 200 miles!

Subject: RE: BS: Oh, Them Good Ole Days...
From: GUEST,guest, guesT,gueST, guEST, (intruder)
Date: 10 Jan 01 - 02:14 PM

"the good old days weren't always good, and tomorrow's not as bad as it seems"

...has been deemed as the appropriate mid-thread disruptor

Subject: RE: BS: Oh, Them Good Ole Days...
From: Troll
Date: 10 Jan 01 - 02:18 PM

I can remember when the REA ran the lines on up the mountain from my grandfathers house. That was in 1950. Prior to that, his house was the end of the electric and telephone line.

troll

Subject: RE: BS: Oh, Them Good Ole Days...
From: mousethief
Date: 10 Jan 01 - 02:29 PM

100 years ago:

Irish and blacks could only get menial jobs, if that.
Jim Crow was the law of the land south of Mason-Dixon.
Fewer than 1 in 10 minority children could read or write.
Robber barons had a stranglehold on the nation's business shipping, and could destroy any company they wanted by refusing to ship its goods.
Union strikes were broken up by security guards, usually by killing enough strikers that the others gave up.
There were few out-of-wedlock births because shotgun marriages were so frequent.
Prostitution was legal in many or most western states.
Women couldn't vote.
But they could, and did, smash bottles at bars and saloons, and would shortly lead the charge to Prohibition.
Blacks couldn't vote either, due to poll tax, voting "tests," and other disenfranchisement schemes.

Those weren't the days, my friends. It just depends on who's culling the data.

Alex

Subject: RE: BS: Oh, Them Good Ole Days...
From: Hobie
Date: 10 Jan 01 - 02:37 PM

just a side note, most people who say "i wish i'd been born in another century" have absolutly no idea what they'd be gettin themselves into.

Hobie

Subject: RE: BS: Oh, Them Good Ole Days...
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Jan 01 - 02:57 PM

All of us were born in another century! It only recently occurred to me that that is one way in which I'm different from my parents' generation, who were born, lived and died in the Twentieth Century. Well, most of them.

The shame is, when we change, we dump most of the good stuff along with the bad stuff, and replace it with bad stuff as well as some that we hope will turn out to be good stuff. If we could keep the good stuff, and eplace thye bad stuff with new good stuff, that would be how it should be.

That's what folk music is all about really, I think.

Of course the question is how much of Amos's list was good stuffthat we've thrown away - quite a lot I'd say.

And as for mousethief's list of bad stuff - well, quite a lot of it we've still got with us, a lot of it tucked away in places out of sight, maybe in other countries where the same kind of people can still get away with it. And the profit still comes home to people in our own countries, at the end of the day.

Subject: RE: BS: Oh, Them Good Ole Days...
From: Kim C
Date: 10 Jan 01 - 04:28 PM

Alex, Mr. Crow lived NORTH of the Mason-Dixon too.

Subject: RE: BS: Oh, Them Good Ole Days...
From: mousethief
Date: 10 Jan 01 - 04:42 PM

Where there "whites only" drinking fountains in the North in 1901? I didn't know for sure, but I did know they existed in the South. Apologies for any inaccuracies.

Alex

Subject: RE: BS: Oh, Them Good Ole Days...
From: annamill
Date: 10 Jan 01 - 05:15 PM

I do beleive there were "white's only" lot of things in the north in 1950! I'm glad that's over!

Love, annamill

Subject: RE: BS: Oh, Them Good Ole Days...
From: Sorcha
Date: 10 Jan 01 - 05:32 PM

Sadly enough, we do seem to dump most of the good stuff from times past, and seem to be making up more bad stuff to save for future generations. Like the old Vlasic pickle commercial said,

"Times were different then Charles."

Subject: RE: BS: Oh, Them Good Ole Days...
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Jan 01 - 06:11 PM

Yes, but we're working on that, Sorcha. Playing the good old tunes and singing the good old songs, and making up new ones we hope are fit to stand alongside them, and playing and singing them and passing them on. That's why it matters.

Subject: RE: BS: Oh, Them Good Ole Days...
From: mousethief
Date: 10 Jan 01 - 06:14 PM

Those who don't remember the past are condemned to ... um ... do something. I forget.

Subject: RE: BS: Oh, Them Good Ole Days...
From: bflat
Date: 10 Jan 01 - 06:19 PM

The only good ole days I want to go back to, as a citizen of the USA, were prior to Nov. 2000 election.

Ellen

Subject: RE: BS: Oh, Them Good Ole Days...
From: Kim C
Date: 11 Jan 01 - 01:30 PM

Alex, I don't know about 1901 specifically but my husband was a child in Indiana in the 50s/60s and he very clearly remembers colored drinking fountains, lunch counters, etc. Also in the 1920s the largest Klan membership in the US was in the state of Indiana. (Maybe the Midwest doesn't count as being "north" but it definitely isn't "south.")

I believe "separate but equal" was a ruling of the US Supreme Court - someone please tell me if that is incorrect.

Subject: RE: BS: Oh, Them Good Ole Days...
From: Bert
Date: 11 Jan 01 - 01:38 PM

There were segregated cabs in Rogersville Alabama in the Nineties.

I knew the 'black' cab driver, so when I needed a cab, I called him. To my surprise, the 'white' cab driver arrived. The 'black' cab driver had called him.

Subject: RE: BS: Oh, Them Good Ole Days...
From: Cap't Bob
Date: 11 Jan 01 - 11:18 PM

THE GOOD OLD DAYS ~ Well I don't go back quite 100 years but there was a way of life that I really miss. For example on a Friday night in Hudson, Michigan during the late l940's all of the stores in town would be open. You actually knew the names of the owners of the places of business. Eddie's hamburg joint where teenagers would hang out, play the pin ball machine, sip a coke and talk teenage talk. The older folkes might stop into Pete's ice cream parlor. Soda jerk on duty, booths where you could set and enjoy a quite conservation.

My grandmother always liked to get up town early to get a good parking spot where she could sit in the car and watch the people go by, while my grandad would usually go down by Thompsons bank, lean up against the wall and swap tall stories with other grandads. On the main 4 corners the street would be roped off and the high school band would put on a concert which was followed by a dance band. The street dance would usually go on for a couple of hours. At some point during the evening they would roll out a big barrel and have a drawing. Tickets were given whenever you bought something in town and the lucky winner would usually pick up somewhere around 20 to 30 dollars.

On Saturday evenings (usually two or three times a month) my dad would get together with friends in our kitchen and spend the evening playing instruments and singing. When I went to bed, I'd turn on my a.m. radio and listen to a station from New Orleans playing dixieland music until the wee hours.

Last year I drove through Hudson on a Friday night. The streets were empty, not a single store was open. All of the old Mom and Pop stores were gone. You could run a herd of cattle through the middle of town and not worry about anyone being injured. I reckon most folks were at home watching TV or a vidio or sitting at the computer talking about the not so good "good old days".

By the way Amos I didn't take my first shower until I was in high school. We used to take a sponge bath in the kitchen with water heated on the wood stove. I guess there are many things good about the here and now.

Cap't Bob

Subject: RE: BS: Oh, Them Good Ole Days...
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 12 Jan 01 - 07:54 AM

Ahhh - Nostalgia ain't what it used to be....

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: Oh, Them Good Ole Days...
From: SINSULL
Date: 12 Jan 01 - 08:59 AM

Anyone watching the PBS series on a family living the 1901 (?) life? Mostly they smell bad. And the wife has aged 20 years in one week.
I remember 15 cent burgers at White Castle and nickle day. And penny candy for a penny. My first summer job paid $35/week and offices closed when the temperature went over 90 - no air conditioning.Ladies all wore matching bags and shoes and white gloves to work. NO SLACKS EVER! We were not permitted to wear slacks to college until my senior year. NO JEANS at all. Life is good now - casual wear in the office.

Subject: RE: BS: Oh, Them Good Ole Days...
From: Midchuck
Date: 12 Jan 01 - 09:23 AM

I was at a military reserve summer camp in the South, in 1964 or '5, having grown up entirely in the northeast and far west. I was reading the local paper and came upon an employment ad:

"Wanted: White man to drive yellow cab."

For some reason it just broke me up totally at the time. I suppose it wasn't really that funny.

Peter.

Subject: RE: BS: Oh, Them Good Ole Days...
From: Kim C
Date: 12 Jan 01 - 12:09 PM

Okay, now, I'm only 33 and I remember back in the 70s when my parents used to go bowling... Daddy would give me a dime and a nickel and I could get a Coke and a bag of chips and get back a penny or two change. Go to the Hot Stop now and a Coke and a bag of chips costs you about $2 plus tax (if your state taxes edibles). Plus the bowling lanes are all computerized now!

Subject: RE: BS: Oh, Them Good Ole Days...
From: SINSULL
Date: 12 Jan 01 - 12:20 PM

God Bless those computerized bowling alleys. My nephew started out as an hourly worker refinishing lanes, made it his business to learn the software inside out, and now names his own price. If only I could get him to stop dripping ice cream...sorry, wrong thread.