5. Window and Floor Fans
Before everyone had window air-conditioners, and then central
air-conditioning, people did one thing in the summer months. They sweat.
Summer months, especially July and August, were something that had to
be endured. Unless you went to a public place like a movie theater,
there was no air-conditioning. If it was 95 and humid outside, your
house was even hotter and more uncomfortable. Trying to sleep at night
was a real difficulty. The old
window fan that rattled away and sucked in slightly less hot air from
the outside, during the night, was a staple of all households. Many
other rooms had floor fans that you could plug in and circulate
the hot humid air around the room at your feet. Or as a kid you could
turn it on and lay on the floor with your face in it, feeling the moving
air. With central air-conditioning being almost universal now, homes
seldom use window or floor fans. Dads around the world no longer have
the joy of cramming the window fan into the window, adjusting it,
screwing it into place, and then taking it out come fall.
4. Storm and Screen Windows
And speaking of dad wrestling with windows, he had another biannual job
to do, one even more hated than window fans. Putting in and taking out
storm windows and screen windows. Again, in this age of air-conditioning
and well fitted, double-panned, thermally insulated year-round windows,
no one has to switch between storm windows in the winter and screens in
the summer. But back then, this was a necessity. Screen windows had to
be installed in the summer so you could let the air in without the bugs.
Then at the end of the summer, the screen windows had to come out and
the storm windows went back in. These storm windows were pathetic
compared to modern windows – heavy, single-pane glass monstrosities that
were hard to fit into the window slats and once in, rattled in the
strong winter winds (and did a poor job keeping out the cold and wind).
But like everything else back then, they were all you had. So they had
to do. Thankfully, men don’t need to haul these things around and climb
ladders to change windows anymore.
3. Wall Telephones
Family wall telephones were in every house back then. There may have
also been some pedestal phone sitting on a coffee table or in your
sister’s room. But somewhere, usually on the first floor, there was a
phone hanging on the wall.
Usually it came in the standard color – black. When it rang everyone
knew someone was calling. The phone was usually located near some piece
of furniture which had a drawer which contained two other disappearing
pieces of the family household – the Yellow Pages phone directory, and
mom’s little phone message book (that’s right, they had an app. for that
even back then – it was called writing down the persons name and phone number in a little A-Z book). The original wall telephones came standard with 4-6 foot cords, so you pretty much had to stand at the phone to talk to whoever it was you were conversing with. Later on they developed 12 and even 18 foot
long cords so mom could stretch that receiver over to the stove and
keep cooking while she talked. We had one friend who had a mom who
stretched their 6-foot cord into an 18-footer. We always joked she
invented the extended reach telephone cord. Of course with cell phones,
few people even have a phone in the house anymore, and the Yellow Pages may soon be extinct.
2. Playing Cards
Every house had multiple sets of playing cards. Pinochle, bridge, or
straight decks, usually all three. The area I grew up in was huge for
pinochle, everyone had pinochle decks. You could walk into any corner
store, department store, or convenience store and they sold decks of
pinochle cards. Not anymore, pinochle decks are hard to find. They just
don’t sell, so the stores stopped carrying them.
Playing cards was a social thing everyone seemed to do. Kids would get
out cards and play a game of “war.” Mom would have pinochle or bridge
parties and all her friends would come over, dressed to the nines, and
mom would bring out all her best glassware. Dad might have some buddies
over to drink beer and play poker. Card playing was just part of our
lives. Sadly, we are not as social as we used to be, friends don’t just
pop in to say hello and a card game spontaneously erupts. Moms don’t
have regular card parties. If we play cards, it is on our smart phones
or computers. Like that book “Bowling Alone,” we still play cards, just
not with other people. How sad.
1. Burn Barrels
Of all the old household items I miss from my childhood, this is #1. The
backyard burn barrel. It was a rusty old empty 55-gallon drum dad
brought home from work or found
at a junkyard, or God knows where he got it. In the autumn, my favorite
time of the year, you knew winter was coming because the geese were
flying south, you were playing football, school had started, and the
smell of burning leaves was in the air (oh yeah, mom had the Halloween
decorations up too). Everyone had one of these in their backyards to
burn their fallen leaves. There were no curbside pick-ups to recycle the
leaves back then. You just raked them up, and burned them. My mom loved
it. She would stand there with an old broom stick handle, blackened at
one end, and stir the smoldering leaves to get more air to them so they
would combust better. We would rake up the leaves and walk over and dump
arm fulls into the burning barrel. Then my mom would stir it like a
witch attending her cauldron. There was just nothing like the smell of
burning leaves in the autumn, and there still isn’t to this day. Most
municipalities and cities banned the burning of leaves decades ago, so
it is something you only found in more rural areas. Machines come around
and vacuum up your leaves at the curb. Perhaps more environmentally
friendly, but we have lost that wonderful seasonal odor as a result.
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