www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall FOR THOSE OF US OVER 50!

Oh wow - these have just brought back a memory of holidays when I stayed with my maternal grandmother - I don't remember my parents with me so I must have been about the age of 11 [ that makes it the early 50s - very early 50s :p ]

Milk came to her house everyday - by pony and trap from a farm about 15 mins walk away . The milk was in churns and we took out special jugs to be filled - usually 2 each day. Granny's jugs were I think Clarice Cliff .

They were then taken to the larder - covered by beaded very fine mesh covers to keep the flies away and placed in bowls of cold water on a marble slab . Granny had no Fridge then - and Ice boxes were unknown there.

Anhelyna - giving her age away again

Sounds like Scotland would have been a wonderful place to be a young person in, like Amadeus growing up in Manila.

Huummm, vaguly remember ice box holder here grandparents, actully my grandad owned an ice house when my dad was a kid. But ahhh yes being from the rural South....outhouses, no electricity sometimes, no telephone, dad sending a telegram if he had to contact someone suddenly, and chickens and ducks running loose in the yard and whatever other animals you had. Christmas trees decorated with whatever ornaments you could make and neat litte candles on them. Something homemade by mom under the tree was perfect.

We still had milk delivery for a long time in Ohio after we were married. The milk came in glass bottles, oh it was so good. Those in Maryland, never had a milk as good as that from Greenspings Dairy.

Pani Rose

"Coke is it!"

Since my mother had one of those small retail stores, the local Coca-Cola Company provided us with one of those "ice boxes," now made of galvanized iron. We drank "Coke" from 10 oz. bottles (Filipinos, and pretty much of Asia, still do, as it seems "Coke" tastes better that way than in cans )

The milkman was nowhere in our neck of the rural woods. They made their rounds in the cities. We were our own "milkman," learning and perfecting to grasp and press the right teats of lactating carabaos and goats. I swear that the best milk is carabao's milk, followed closely by goat's milk! Cow's milk comes third, in my opinion.

At last in the 60s, "Frigidaire" and "Electrolux" came out with kerosene-fired refrigerators and we were able to afford their prohibitive cost simply because my Mom had that retail store. Electricity has not reached us by this time. (Rural electrification was achieved throughout the country during the "martial law" years of the "dictator," Pres. Marcos! Remember him?)

So, like every motorcycle was later on generically called a "Honda," every refrigerator was soon referred to as "Frigidaire!" These were added to our local lingo for every battery to be called "Eveready" and to have one's picture taken to go for a "Kodak" moment!

Ice cream was peddled by "contractors" (of factories) from their push carts, preserved "fresh and cold" under the 100-degree sunshine with dry ice.

Air-conditioned passenger buses were tried by big
transport companies, at a premium, and caught on.

Amado

Armado wrote:

"Coke" from 10 oz. bottles (Filipinos, and pretty much of Asia, still do, as it seems "Coke" tastes better that way than in cans )

Though my husband drinks very little soda now days. When does, he still says it doesn't taste as good as it did in the glass bottles. He really hates the plastic bottles and cans.

Having to return the bottles wasn't such a bad thing. Definately a lot less waste. And then of course if you delayled taking them back long engough, you realized you were broke and took all the bottles back to get a between payday boost.

I remember taking those bottles back for refunds of the deposit - 2 cents on each bottle returned. That was one of the few ways kids could get a an extra cent or two in those days. But you are right about the taste. Both Coke and milk tasted much better in the glass bottles.

Maybe Fr. Gregory needs to find us something on today for these good ol' days. :p

Pani Rose

I still can't drink milk from a plastic cup. It has to be glass. Or even a coffee mug. But NOT PLASTIC!! I can taste the difference.

Tammy

Rose,

If he doesn't >>>try this. We have something that was not available at all at all back in those good ole days. That is our P.C.'s online so we can exchange our prayer needs, share thoughts on spirituality and theology, experiences, encouragement and so we can grow in online Christian community. This could never have been in quite the same manner nor so far flung as tis now in those good ole days.

Blessings. What a fun thread this has been!

With joy and almost ROFL.

Mary Jo

Who, besides me, remembers rotary dial phones and 5 digit phone numbers?

Barbara

I remember them. When they started running out of numbers with the 5-digit system, they added two-letter prefixes before the numbers. Of course they were numbers, not letters, but every phone number in my area started with MU or MY followed by 5 digits. Eventually they dropped the letter prefixes and started listing 7-digit numbers. Does anyone remember party lines?

I remember not having phones. Then the only phones we had were dial type. When we were first married, 36 years ago, in my husbands hometown you only dialed the five digits. I was discussing this with someone some time ago and my husband doesn't remember it. Then where I was from, rural south, you had party lines. By then princess phones were all the rage. I thought they were weird.

We didn't dial. We picked up the phone and since almost everyone had party lines if someone wasn't talking you heard the operator say, Number please ...

Oh yes indeed - operator phone calls here too thanks for that memory Mary Jo - and I can also remember using candlestick phones as well , though these were not at home [ our installation was too modern for that ] but in a Nurses Home at one point .

Operators had their uses - they could tell you when the person was not there. They continued over here in the Highlands and Islands long after they had been done away with on the mainland. exceedingly useful people they were - only 1 call was needed and the message reached everyone.

Oh memories :p

Cool stories!

Barbara,

If you were from a smaller city or town, there were only 4 digits - that meant I could always remember grandma's number much easier than our big city number

Charles,

Actually, they were letters, not numbers. The letters were referred to as "the exchange" and were the first two letters (always written in CAPS) of an exchange's name. Some exchanges were named for the street on which the exchange (or "central office") was located, others for a neighborhood name or some particular local feature, still others just because they provided a word that could be readily pronounced by the caller and audibly recognized by an operator. Depending on the size of the population with phones in a particular geographic area, the transition was either from:

4 digits to 5 digits or,

from 4 digits to 2 letters and 4 digits (what a telephone operator would refer to as a "2L-4N number").

Presuming that you still lived in Tennessee back then, the MY and MU that you recollect were, respectively, the MYrtle and MUtual exchanges. Had you lived in New York City, MU would have been MUrray Hill - an exchange that one can hear referenced in any number of old black and white movies in which NYC is the setting.

John O'Hara wrote a novel titled, BUtterfield 8, which was later a movie in which Elizabeth Taylor (and maybe Eddie Fisher ?) starred. Glenn Miller recorded PEnnsylvania 6-5000 and I seem to recollect another song in which a telephone exchange was part of the lyrics - but I'm blanking.

I have one friend from childhood who still lives in his late parents' home in the neighborhood where we grew up and has the same phone number that he's had since kindergarten. When I call him, I still mentally "dial" the exchange letters - not numbers - for the first 2 digits (if pressed, I couldn't tell you what those first two corresponding digits of his number are, without looking at the keypad).

In most places, the exchanges were so specific to an area that, even in a large city, you could nail down where someone lived by the exchange. For instance, knowing that our brother James/Jakub lived on the border of Roxbury and Jamaica Plain (only blocks from me ), I can say very confidently that his phone number growing up was one of 3 exchanges - JAmaica, HIghlands, or GArrison. Had he lived a couple of blocks away, I could cut those possibilities down to either 1 or 2 choices, depending on the direction.

Exchanges sometimes were incorporated very cleverly into commercial jingles. The former Able Carpet Company in South Boston had a radio commercial that ended in a jingle that went, How many cookies did Andrew eat? ANdrew 8-8000! - much more memorable than would have been 268-8000 (yes, I had to go look at the keypad to translate that into digits ).

For anyone who wants to jog their memory on the exchanges they think they remember - or refresh their recollection as to what the letters meant, see The Telephone EXchange Name Project [ourwebhome.com] .

Many years,

Neil