Thread: My mother, the time machine---

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Strange title, right. My old mom is 88 years old, and I call her a couple of times a week (she is in a town where I grew up, about 200 Km away from where I live), in a senior citizens apartment. I talked to her yesterday, and told her that I am suffering from a terrible chest cold. This is not a small thing, because I am allergic to any and all antibiotics. My mother began reminiscing about when I was a small child in the 1940's, and the accepted "cure" for things at the time. She was talking about putting mustard plasters on my chest to break up the heavy phlegm of a chest cold, (I remember that) and about putting choppped up onions in my socks and making me wear the socks to bed to "draw the cold" (and I don't remember that). She was talking about putting a few drops of camphorated oil on a wool sock and pinning it around my neck to help me breath.---I do remember very old men at the time, who wore a block of camphor in a wool sock around their neck all winter long, to "ward off the cold".---I remember, you could smell them old buggers from a hundred yards down wind!!! Where is this big ramble taking us??? Well, nowhere really, except that there are probably a few men my age on this forum, with similar memories of another time. I grew up in VERY back woods Ontario, with no electricity. My father was a lumber jack, as were my uncles and my ancient grandfather. I remember my mother telling me about one winter when she was a child, and her and 5 siblings were living on the shore of one of the big lakes in that region of Ontario, with my grandmother. This would have been in the mid 1920's. My grandfather was away working in a logging camp. There was a terrible storm going on, and my uncle Percy went out to the shed to milk the cow by lantern light. Something frightened the cow, and it kicked him in the face, breaking his nose very badly, and giving him a terrible nose bleed. He was bleeding so badly that my grandmother thought he would bleed to death, and with no neighbours to call on, and no telphone to call for help, my grandmother put on a pair of snowshoes and, leaving the oldest girl (my mother) in charge of the other children, she walked down the lake in the middle of a blizzard to an abandoned trappers cabin. She took a brown paper bag with her and gathered up all the spiderwebs from the old cabin, then walked back up the lake, a distance of 3 miles one way, in a damned blizzard yet, and used the cobwebs to stop the bleeding. It must have worked fairly well, because my uncle Percy passed away 3 years ago, well up into his eighties. Sometimes in this age of internet, 911, medivac choppers, cellphones, and wall to wall people, we forget that there are still people alive today that truly did live in another world.---Brian

I grew up on a farm, too. I remember a couple really bad blizzards when I was a kid, seems like after the wind blew about 5 minutes we lost electricity and phone service... We had a generator for the barn that ran off the PTO on the tractor so we could always get cows milked... I remember one year in particular, probably about '59 when we no longer scooped snow to get to the barn door,,,,we went throught the snow tunnel!!!!! Best part was not having to go to school on snow days, sometimes a week at a time!!!! Country kids got to stay home, town kids had to go!!!!

Long before the time of snowmobiles, but we did have horses... Used to be a blast to saddle up a horse, get a rope and tow people on a sled behind the horse!!!! and even sometimes behind the pickup when Dad was gone and one of my older brothers would pull us around in the pickup with about 6 of us piled into an old car hood!!!!!!

PS---our first phone was a crank phone... Our ring was 2 longs and a short!!!! No such thing as a private line, all the women in the area would set a time, then they'd all get on their phones and yak!!!!!! Also remember our first TV, we got it when I was 6.... We even got 3 channels on a good day, but just 2 most of the time...... and now I complain when my 'puter slows down and there's nothing worth watching on the 60+ channels on the TV!!!!!

Dave---Where I grew up, very few people farmed---as in real farming. The land was by and large, all pine trees and rocks, and the growing season was just that little bit too short to really get any decent crops. But---everybody had a few chickens, either a cow or a goat for milk, and a couple of young pigs bought early in the spring and slaughtered at freeze up (no electricity, remember). The wealthier families had a working horse---(we didn't but one batchelor uncle had a nice team of Greys that "lived" at our place).---That particular uncle was okay in the camps where he could be kept away from the booze, but once the ice went out in the spring and the big log drives were over, the men came home from the camps for the summer and fall, and he would stay drunk untill the next freeze up.---If the horses hadn't lived at our house during the summers, God knows what would have become of them!!!

We were relatively "well off" by virtue of the fact that a medical issue when I was born prevented my mother from having more children.---and all our neighbours had from 8 to 15 children. When the Hydro finally came through in about 1956, we were among the first in our village to be actually able to afford to have it put into out house. In 1958 we bought our first television, and I can remember watching Bonanza on Sunday nights with 18 neighbour kids setting around our little "front room" watching Ben and his boys do their thing. ----an interesting sidebar to this story---When the Hydro first came to my part of Ontario, if you "signed up" to get the Hydro installed in your house, Ontario Hydro (which was a Crown corporation) would come to your house for free and convert all your coal oil lamps and gas lanterns to electric!!! I can remember my dad and a local electrician "Red" Hughey digging the holes by hand for the hydro poles that ran through the front field from the road up to our house.

I would imagine most of the guys on the forum that are my age were in the same boat,especially if your lived in the country.All my siblings except 1 were born at home. We didn't go to the drug store,but bought medicines from a traveling salesman (Rawliegh Products). No electricity kerosene(coal oil) to burn in the lamps.No indoor toilets or toilet paper.Things were really hard in the Tennesse Valley where I was born.Our doctor made house call driving a Ford.That was always a fun time to see that Dr. come by.My mother would churn milk on a hand churn to make butter and butter milk.When I was 7 ,I ask my mother to bake a cake and she no because sugar was being rationed because of the war.I said we only had beans and potatoes before sugar was rationed ,she gave me a deserved whipping.We carried water from a spring to drink,cook and bath with.Mom washed clothes on a wash board.I helped my father build our first bathroom some years later as times got better.Our first car was a 32 Essex.My Dad worked on the farm as a share cropper and eventually got a job building furnitrue.Things began to change as the years went by.I remember going to a neighbors house and watching TV ,Sat.nite fights around 1952.Our first TV was around 1954. We were poor but I learned a lot of good lessons from it all.

I'm a few generations ahead of you guys, but still remeber going to grandma ranch at christmas. It was alwys barren in the winter. It must have been about 15-20 degrees outside and 45-50 inside. She had an old two room house so all my brothers and I would be bundled under 10 blankets, freezing until our spots got warm, but man did we sleep good. The only heat in the house was an old wood stove that was fueled by grape stumps that had died in the vinyard. We'd all crowd around that fire place trying to get close to the heat. Grandma had an old black and white console tv that we would watch until the american flag would wave and then static would go across the screen. In the summers it was the oposite. 110 degrees outside and 90 inside with an old swamp cooler that gave some relief. Grandma had these great aluminum drinking glasses that were dinged up and different colors. She'd grow all of her own vegetables and make great tomatoe, onion, and bell pepper salads with a vinager dressing. I really miss those times and her. She pickled, canned, knitted, and worked at home until she died at 94 years of age in the same house with that old wood stove! She also made excellent fried chicken and a plum syrup that was perfect on pancakes!

"Grandma had these great aluminum drinking glasses that were dinged up and different colors."

My mom had those too.

I think my favorite home remedy my grandma used on us was when we were kids, was to rub Seagrams 7 on our gums when we had a toothache!!!!

: )

Pat

Whoops! I forgot, how about when they used to put "butter" on burns! (Ouch)

Those were the days. I never regret any of them. Growing up in Pittsburgh, PA was the opportunity of a lifetime I will never forget.

Pat

I guess I must have grown up with at least a silver spoon. My one grandfather drove trains for NY Central and Michigan Central rail lines and my other was Chief Chemist for Clark Equipment. My father was, luckily, a WW2 4F with one lung, courtesy of the "1918 Spanish Influenza", and was a Project Manager building WW2 factories for companies like GE, where he ended up, same as me, also a Project Manager. The only time that I recall oil lamps and crank phones was when we visited relatives in West Virginia - but they had several oil wells on their dairy farm property, it was just that reliable electricity hadn't made it to their farm yet. I do remember that both of my grandmothers worried that we had to "move our bowels" every day or face, shudder, an enema(it never happened, but the threat was always there). We also weren't allowed to sleep outside in a tent with our friends unless we wanted infantile paralysis, we couldn't go swimming for 4 hours after a meal. A doctor would do home visits - and I recall my mother complaining that he was charging $5 a visit when last year it was $4.

There were lots of positives - kids actually went outside and played, rode bikes, had B-B guns without the wrath of do gooders coming down on them, neighbors actually knew each other and held neighborhood parties, there were no beepers, cell phones, Palm Pilots, MP3 players or even computers to grab the time people used to interact with each other. Moms stayed home and took care of the kids and the house - the keeping up with the Jones syndrome was coming though Gas was cheap, cars were land boats but fun to drive, and also cheap. Vacations were 2 weeks a year and you usually went somewhere fun - reasonably.

And yes, there were bad times - the draft board sending its greetings and a trip to Korea, Viet Nam or some banana republic, major racial tension in the South, Communism, Joe McCarthy, Lee Harvey Oswald.

And I could go on - but wont

Originally Posted by Don Dalton

I would imagine most of the guys on the forum that are my age were in the same boat,especially if your lived in the country.All my siblings except 1 were born at home. We didn't go to the drug store,but bought medicines from a traveling salesman (Rawliegh Products). No electricity kerosene(coal oil) to burn in the lamps. No indoor toilets or toilet paper.

We lived on a farm in the 50's. I remember getting a bad cut on my foot and mom "doctored" it with Watkins Cow Salve. I still have the terrible scar but I still have the foot too so the salve must have been a good stuff. Now, if you don't get right to the emergency room for antibiotics the infections could kill you.
I remember using many a catolog page as toilet paper in the outhouse when it was 5 below. You didn't waste a lot of time go to the toilet in those days.

Originally Posted by stovens

Grandma had these great aluminum drinking glasses that were dinged up and different colors.

I still have & use a set of those....



I'm much younger then some of you "Old Farts" but I do remember some of those days when we'd go visit my Dad's mom & his sister in northwest Iowa. Grandma did all the cooking on her wood burning stove but used corn cobs in it. Home made breads, jams, fried chicken that was to die for, german pancakes in a cast iron skillet, man could that woman cook. Only heat in the place was a big potbelly stove she had. The bed were feather bed that would suck you in & you could get lost in them. We took a bath outside in a big wastub & had to pump any water from the outside well. She had a 3 holer outside by the barn. And it was in the early 60's just before she passed away when she finally got a dial phone rather then using the crank phone.
My Aunt Katie & Uncle Art did have it a tad better they had oil or gas heat & an electric stove, but we still have to use the outhouse, pump any water they used wan, bathed in a washtub, grew 75% of everything they ate. It wasn't intil the 70's when there kids said enough && help build them an indoor bath & install a pump.

Man, o'man did this reply hit a nerve , man do I ever miss those people. What I would give to be 5-10yrs old again & be able to go back & relive those days again. I've give anything to be sitting at my grandmathers kitchen table waiting for those loaves of hot bread to come out. She's always make one just for me. I would pull the inside out of it & then spread homemade jelly & butter on the crust && eat it, mmmmmm I loved her bread.....joe

I am also younger than alot of guys here. Where I grew up we worked the river. I remeber as a young girl setting the gill nets at dawn. Then we would spend the rest of the day fishing the crab pots or claming or oystering. If you have ever been on a oyster boat you would not forget it. The thing drops tongs and as it hauls up its load the side of the boat rocks to the waters edge. In the late afternoon it was then time to fish the nets. The funny thing about it is that all of my fathers people do not know how to swim. They said swimming is for fun and the river was for work. My mom made sure that me and my brother could swim at a early age. All the food we ate was either caught or grown. We had a outhouse until i was 8 years old. That is someplace you did not want to go to in the middle of the night. The best thing about living like that was the ice cream. Homemade with fresh garden strawberries.

We had a real nasty outhouse, and it was right down beside the forest. (not too surprising, as the house was in a little clearing in a REALLY BIG forest.) In the fall. after things froze up, but no snow yet, my dad would pull on a pair of wool socks for a midnight trip to the outhouse. No boots---just the wool socks to keep the frost off his bare feet. No clothes---Hell we were miles from our nearest neighbour---who would see him??? We always had 2 or 3 cats, one that lived in the house and a couple of "outside cats" that lived in the stable with Uncle Charlies horses. ---Anyways---you gotta picture it---Dark, moonless night, The old man heads down to the outhouse in his bare arse and sock feet, and there in the middle of the path is one of the cats. No way old dad is going to step off the path to go around a cat---so he kicks it. SURPRISE!!! ITS NOT A CAT!!! Its a porcupine. You could have heard the hollering and cursing from 5 miles away. I remember mom and I getting out of bed and dad setting by the end of the woodstove in the kitchen, with the gas lantern on, while mom pulled out quills with the needle nosed pliers.

Did he wear boots after that?