Please accept this tale of long ago that I came across when searching thru my Documents from about 2005. Some of you may remember it and those that don't will believe I just made up this nonsense. But it is true and I never want to let go of the things that I lived thru. Take a trip with me,Val
TIME MARCHES ON
The past is the past, but much of the past is too alive to be past. There are still many of us alive to tell you about the trivial, non-history book every day important nothingness of our world in the 1920 to 40's in an ordinary USA city. By the end of 1924 when I made my entrance, the world was already bursting with new ideas, inventions. Progress was jumping ahead in leaps and bounds. But only now watching the History channel do I actually see 1924 as
long ago, yet it is burned in my memory. Come back there with me!
How my father afforded some of the things we acquired was by diligence, determination, devotion to his dental practice, his family, his pursuit of 'the new, the better.' It seems to me we ALWAYS had an automobile, but I know that was not so. That my playmates didn't have one, went over my unaware red head.
Our milk was delivered daily by horse drawn trucks. The clop of their hooves on tar streets often woke me. Ice was brought to groceries, butcher shops and drug stores, homes, in huge blocks that were chopped to suit the order left on small window signs. Refrigeration was still only a dream.
Boys delivered the Baltimore Sun morning paper directly to our doorsteps and again when the afternoon edition was printed. The Baltimore News Post was sold on street corners, held down by broken pieces of brick or from street cars where the ragged boys were allowed on free to hawk the latest news for two cents, 5 cents for Extras! Mail too was delivered to the house twice daily and on Sat. department stores delivered any and all packages, even one handkerchief, right to the door at no charge.
Clothes were washed and rinsed in big tubs in dank smelling cellars or even in bathtubs. Our cellar had a small black gas range on which my mother boiled clothes and sterilized the drinking glasses for my daddy's patients, an eternal, daily job. Mama had to light the boiler for hot water, always, always afraid it would explode. Came the day she got a washing machine. How excited she must have been! It actually had a hand wringer which she constantly warned me not to go near as it could pull in my arm and crush it flat. The still wet and heavy clothes, sheets had to be carried up two flights of stairs to be hung on clothes lines stretched across our garage roof, where they bleached in the hot summer sun or froze into odd shapes in wintry blasts. Between the new washing machine and old permanent wash tubs Daddy put up a small wooden shelf for supplies, a box of Argo starch, a bottle of bluing, a bar of Fels Naptha soap, wooden matches and a box of Ivory flakes.
By the time I was 9, Daddy had prospered some and we were the first family in our neighborhood to get oil heat. No longer was the cellar full of coal dust. Along with that wonder was the automatic hot water heater. It was on all the time. Mama was no longer afraid the whole house would explode when we needed our baths. Did I appreciate all we had? No, it just came and I accepted, NEVER lauded my good fortune over others, because I was unaware they had less.
Years later neighbors gathered on our pavement when a big truck parked in front and 4 burly, sweating black men came inside, went to our second floor front window, removed the frame and somehow, with heavy ropes and pulley, brought our new refrigerator up, up, up, into the window, down the long hall and into our kitchen. Watchers on the pavements applauded. Even I was excited and shouted as I joined the crowd. The ice cubes were magical but my friend, the ice man, never visited me again. I watched for him almost daily as he made his rounds to all the stores on our block. With a smile he still gave me little chunks of ice on hot summer days. Super markets were not yet born. Mom and Pop groceries, A & Ps, were on many corners. Barley, rice, beans and even sugar were sold from the floor in open burlap bags, a scoop in each bag. I loved to play with them while Mama told the man behind the counter what she needed. What she bought from the bags would be spread on clean white tea towels on the kitchen table, where she, our day worker, and sometimes I, would move them around, searching for (and often finding) bugs, mouse dirt. Fly paper always hung from store ceilings, sometimes with last summer's flies still captured.
Back to Daddy. He was one of the very first dentists in Baltimore to get an X ray machine. Usually the patient, uncomfortable, afraid sat on a metal chair, held the X ray in his own mouth using one finger for 60 seconds for each position to be captured. There were no lead shields. Daddy stepped back a little whenever the new X ray in his jacket pocket turned black. I too, at age 14, worked the X ray machine, standing right near its rays as we knew nothing about the dangers.
I'm going back now to when I was 5. Mothers met and excitedly began talking about a new thing–kindergarten to be started the next term. I was going to go, and like my friends, was scared. The room was in the basement, had a piano for Miss Long to play and teach us songs, a row of rolled up straw mats on the floor for our rest periods. 2 chains that were put on hooks in the entrance door so we could have a swing during recess.
There must have been big furnaces to heat the whole school but I never saw them. Part of the basement had gray stalls for boys and girls who went to the toilet separately. Between that and the class was a large empty room–except for one wonderful thing-a see saw, used on rainy days.
Mama paid 20 cents a week so I could have a bottle of milk with graham crackers every day, right after rest time. Some of my friends said they didn't like milk and watched me drink mine.
We had 'bank days' all the way into high school. "Save, save for the future, for war bonds". AND we had ink wells in all the desks. One had to be the teacher's pet to pour the daily ink in before school. I WAS. I was allowed to wash blackboards, as far as I could reach, and use the very long hooked pole to lower the windows so we could maintain the perfect 78 degree temperature. Air conditioning, window fans? Never heard of them. Sitting on the outside steps or benches in summer sufficed. Fire trucks came sometimes and opened the hydrants for the children to cool off. It was cold! It was wonderful! It was fun!
Movies were still silent when I was small but I knew no better and loved them, walking fearlessly to see whatever opened. I can still see the huge sign on the Met's marquee–AIR COOLED–a miracle for sure. Then Daddy and Mama took me to see 'Disraeli', a talking picture. Daddy had patients until 5 and we had to have supper so by the time we got to the movie there was standing room only. Most of the time Daddy let me sit on his shoulders but I kvetched and was bored. Excitement rose when the movie was over and door prizes were given out, food, dishes, towels—but we didn't win. We never won.
Street cars clanged up and down our street. Policemen walked their beats. Horses added to the dirt that men with push carts and brushes had to constantly clean up. Summer storms saturated the sewer on our corner and often flooded right up to our front steps.
Maybe I was 5 or 5 1/2 ,sitting outside with Mama and Daddy on our chained down wooden bench, Daddy pointed up to see an airplane so very high in the sky. I don't think any of us had ever seen one fly–certainly not I.
Now I jump from younger than spring time to young womanhood. Daddy bought a T.V. set. The picture was always too red or two green . Shows didn't start until about 5 p.m. Picture tubes and smaller ones kept burning out so Uncle Morton, self taught in electronics, was at our house a few times EVERY week, doing the best he could but never getting it right.
It wasn't until 2nd grade that we began to write with pens, pens that had to be dipped in the inkwells on each desk. Arithmetic was done mentally and on fingers, no calculators, no adding machines. School #62 had to install a fire escape when I was in the 3rd grade. Although the building was brick, there were not enough exits. The floors and stair wells were all wood, smelling of the oily mops used to keep dust down. An aluminum tube was constructed, a door cut in the brick wall and then the tube was attached as an exit. Fire drills began. Picturing it now, I know it would not have provided safety to the hundreds of frightened children.
The radio, oh, my, how wonderful! We had a large radio in the living room, a Majestic. Our minds were very stimulated by conjuring up images of Bulldog Drummond, Orphan Annie, Punjab, Jack Armstrong. They became our friends, our enemies. One could walk for blocks on a lovely summer evening and never miss one word of Myrt and Marge as everybody was tuned in and windows were open.
Oh, Daddy bought a Victrola (RCA) for the office waiting room but patients never heard it. I did. The big, thick wax records were stored in brown heavy paper in the side cabinets. I couldn't work the machine Daddy said as the arm was heavy and the needle could chip the record but he would run it on Sundays when I listened to Caruso, the poet and Peasant Overture, William Tell and loved doing it—especially when Daddy & Mama weren't home for a few hours on a Sunday and I turned the Victrola on being VERY, VERY careful not to break anything.
Well, I am not yet empty but feel I have overstayed my visit, so I bid you farewell until ?????
