Old-fashioned things you've done in your day...

[Pink Elephant]

We had an 8 party line phone. Our ring was... Long, short, long, short. You couldnt dial any numbers, you just picked up the ear phone part, and talked in the the wooden box on the wall. When you lifted it up, the operator would ask, how may I help you? You would tell them what person in town you wanted to talk to. Or, you would give them a phone number for someone out of town and they would dial it.

Funny story for you, KSM. As a kid a great aunt had an old-fashioned wooden wall telephone with the hand-held gizmo that either you talked into or listened with, and then the black plastic horn that stuck out from the telephone itself.

Anyhow... it was the first time I had ever used a telephone like that and just seconds into the call, I was listening and talking into both the horn and handled gizmo! LOL! I didn't know what I was doing and everyone was splitting their guts with laughter!

 

[Pink Elephant]

I just thought of something else lol. There was not one farm anywhere near me as a kid. None. I saw them and party line phones on television. Everyone owned a house. When we moved there apartments were not allowed. The idea was to keep the burb upscale. Eventually they built townhouses but I think everyone had to buy one, not rent. Physical hardship did not exist there. It probably still doesn't. Poverty did not exist there. I mean, my dad was a Pharmacist and we were considered "poor" by the standards of the area.
Believe it or not, this entitled lifestyle turned me off. I was never for a single day a person who admired status symbols or money and that never changed. People with lots of toys and big houses didn't ever make me feel jealous. But this IS how I grew up. My Sis grew up to be so materialistic that she threatened to divorce her hub if he didn't build a new house from scratch that they couldn't afford .Hub did it and his father forever paid a lump of their mortgage but she left the man anyway! Money can cause a lot of ugliness. I am so grateful I never picked up those values. My brother didn't either.

I'm so proud of myself for not being materialistic. Never have been... never will be. Sure, we all like to have nice things, but in today's day and age it's really blown out of proportion. It seems to be all about good looks, fancy cars, and overly big homes.

 

[Pink Elephant]

LOL - My Mom had one for me, and I used it - with disposables! - when Rose was a baby. SO much easier to reach in and grab. When she got a little bigger, one side had nighttime diapers and the other had daytime pull-ups.

Leave it to a mom to establish such ingenuity! Smart thinking, Annie!

 

[GoingNorth]

But my grandma didn't have a party line either, at least not by the time I was old enough to talk to her, maybe at four. In fact the only party line I ever saw was on Andy Griffith and shows that we're filmed in supposed rural areas. We were all near Chicago

We had a private line in our apartment in Chicago by the time I was born in 1960, BUT even in the late 70's, when I was working as a long distance operator for IL Bell, I serviced party lines all the time. We called it doing "ring-downs". I also remember calling rural areas in Mexico where you called the one phone in the village, someone got on a mule, went to get the person called, and brought them back to take the call. We used primitive electronic consoles, but were trained on plug switchboards (cord-boards) in case our central office went down and we had to open up old local offices, which we did a few times. I was thinking the other day about what a huge collection of now useless technical skills I have amassed over the years.

::Operator 115, May I help you?::

 

[BusynMember]

That's interesting, GN.

 

[ksm]

I grew up in rural Kansas. We lived in very small towns.

I worked at a hospital in 1974 in Dodge City. They had the old fashioned phone switchboard. You would plug in a cord when the board lit up... Find out who they wanted, then take the other cord and plug it in to the office they wanted. It was intimidating at first, but not really hard to use.

 

[GoingNorth]

It was intimidating at first, but not really hard to use.

When you're doing it for a large area in a telco switching office, you have multiple operators, with each handling a sector, but it works exactly the same way, just a bit faster paced, and more extensions.

It's not hard. In fact, the most annoying thing for me was that the headsets dated back to the fifties, weighed a ton, and the sound quality was terrible.

 

[Lil]

Look @GoingNorth - I found a video of you!

Okay...wrong thread but who remembers:

Ernestine the telephone operator calls General Motors

It's not one of the originals, but it was the first one I came to.

 

[Pink Elephant]

Oh, all you ladies that put in time behind the old telephone switchboards, totally awesome! I always wanted to do that!

LOL, Lil! Yes, I totally remember! What an over-the-top walk down memory lane this is!

 

[Pink Elephant]

LOL - My Mom had one for me, and I used it - with disposables! - when Rose was a baby. SO much easier to reach in and grab. When she got a little bigger, one side had nighttime diapers and the other had daytime pull-ups.

I remember when my oldest was born, I kept two separate stacks of diapers folded on her dresser top. Daytime diapers were single thickness, and naptime and nighttime diapers were double, often with an additional flannelette folded into a pad to bulk up the diaper so it was even more absorbent.

Let me tell you, all of that separate diaper folding didn't last long! LOL! I went straight to double diapers and never looked back.

 

[Pink Elephant]

Speaking of old-school cloth diapers, for those that remember baby siblings in them, or babysitting and changing them, were they the old-fashioned plain flat kind that had to be folded (large sheet style), or were they the ones that came with a thicker middle section and had a blue stamp on them?

The only diapers I remember from my baby siblings (and from my babysitting days) were the traditional plain flat styled diapers that needed folding. When hung on the line, they looked like big white sheets.

Oh, and old-fashioned plastic diaper pails were about 3' high. I still have the ones I used or my kids. They were big enough to comfortably house the diapers of two babies for an entire week.

Also, the diaper pins I remember most had a snap-down or click-down cap on them. Once you fastened or latched the pin, you pushed down on the hood of the pin and a secondary safety cap would lock the pin from accidentally opening.

 

[BusynMember]

Ok....I have to ask.

I gag on the smell of urine and poop both. Wouldn't a week's worth of dirty diapers in a pail smell horribly even if it had a lid on it, and I dont know if there were lids. It reminds me of dirty cat litter boxes.

One thing I liked about disposables besides ease of use was easy disposal and a fast good bye from the house. I have no memory of my mom and a diaper pail or even her using the diapers so maybe she had a diaper service. I don't remember the smell of urine or poop in the house either.

 

[Pink Elephant]

Ok....I have to ask.

I gag on the smell of urine and poop both. Wouldn't a week's worth of dirty diapers in a pail smell horribly even if it had a lid on it, and I dont know if there were lids. It reminds me of dirty cat litter boxes.

One thing I liked about disposables besides ease of use was easy disposal and a fast good bye from the house. I have no memory of my mom and a diaper pail or even her using the diapers so maybe she had a diaper service. I don't remember the smell of urine or poop in the house either.

LOL, SOT! Goodness, yes! I never stocked-piled pails full of a weeks worth of wet and dirty diapers ever, but those old-fashioned pails I used could have easily entertained such.

I always laundered diapers every 2-3 days, and odour was never an issue, unless of course you lifted the lid (yes, diaper pails had lids), but, phew... dropping a freshly changed diaper inside had to be done quickly, and you didn't dare peek. LOL! The strong ammonia odour of urine would escape and burn at your nose and eyes, and I don't know what smelled worse, the diaper pail or the rubber pants!

 

[Pink Elephant]

I have no memory of my mom and a diaper pail or even her using the diapers so maybe she had a diaper service.

Gosh, I suspect she would have laundered her own, like so many mothers did back in the day.

Home-laundered diapers were the way when I was growing up, but we didn't live in a large centre, so maybe that was the difference between diaper service and home-laundered. Big city moms opted for diaper service, whereas country bumpkins did diapers the old-fashioned way.

 

[Pink Elephant]

I gag on the smell of urine and poop both.

One thing I liked about disposables besides ease of use was easy disposal and a fast good bye from the house.

I do, too, SOT. Believe me, I don't miss the days of dirty diapers.

I do remember changing disposables every now and then when I used to babysit, and I definitely remember how easy and fuss-free they were to use. Being able to change a diaper without using safety pins made for quick and safe changes.

 

[BusynMember]

The smell alone would have made me choose disposables. Nothing to keep or launder. So why expose myself to it?

My mom did not wash diapers in the sink or tub. Nor do I recall a pail. I don't know if there were washers and dryers back then but she had one at the house, I think, after we moved from Chicago to our house. I don't remember a laundry line in back either. My grandma had one at her apartment.

Diapers, or anything associated with them, apparently did not interest me. I can barely remember my siblings in diapers. I didn't change them or have much interest in them...I was never that little girl who wanted to be a mother to my siblings. And I tried hard not to be around my mother as she wasn't very nice to me so I didn't copy her. Except for calling my grandparents Mom and Pa! Also I had no nieces and nephews to babysit and did not do that in the neighborhood. So the first baby I changed was Bart and eagerly with disposables, which were easy, clean, and kept him relatively dry. No fuss, no mess, no big deal. Everyone I knew used them...maybe it was where I lived.

As for now, I do NOTHING the way I was raised. I tried very hard to be different from my mother and did not sadly in any way admire my mother or want to copy her way of doing anything. And I didn't. She was a pathetic mother, at least in my mind.

 

[Pink Elephant]

The smell alone would have made me choose disposables. Nothing to keep or launder. So why expose myself to it?

My mom did not wash diapers in the sink or tub. Nor do I recall a pail. I don't know if there were washers and dryers back then but she had one at the house, I think, after we moved from Chicago to our house. I don't remember a laundry line in back either. My grandma had one at her apartment.

Diapers, or anything associated with them, apparently did not interest me. I can barely remember my siblings in diapers. I didn't change them or have much interest in them...I was never that little girl who wanted to be a mother to my siblings. And I tried hard not to be around my mother as she wasn't very nice to me so I didn't copy her. Except for calling my grandparents Mom and Pa! Also I had no nieces and nephews to babysit and did not do that in the neighborhood. So the first baby I changed was Bart and eagerly with disposables, which were easy, clean, and kept him relatively dry. No fuss, no mess, no big deal. Everyone I knew used them...maybe it was where I lived.

As for now, I do NOTHING the way I was raised. I tried very hard to be different from my mother and did not sadly in any way admire my mother or want to copy her way of doing anything. And I didn't. She was a pathetic mother, at least in my mind.

Maybe your mother did go the route of diaper service after all.

I will always feel for you, SOT, over the lack of love you enjoyed as a young and growing child. Every child deserves lots of love and care. Maybe that's why helping with my baby sibs appealed to me so much... because I associated it with what a good mom my own mother was. So dedicated.

 

[BusynMember]

Probably, Pink. I spent a lot of time avoiding my mother. As a teen I was never home and I hid a lot from her, especially since she would get nutsy if I dated a boy who wasn't Jewish. Or who was Jewish and had blond hair so she thought he wasn't Jewish. I wish I was kidding but that bothered her a lot yet my crappy report cards she barely spoke about.

For my first two high school years, I mostly did date only Jewish boys, but it never made sense to me. We weren't religious and I tended to get along better with non Jewish people. I ended up telling my mom, when I hit my junior year, that I wasn't going to date based on religion period, and then I stopped sharing anything with her. She yelled but I refused to follow the Jewish rule ever again. I have never lived a culturally Jewish life...perhaps my upbringing turned me off. I am not that little Jewish girl anymore...if I ever was. I always seemed to pair up with the one or two kids in my class who were not Jewish. In 2018 If I ever bring up my upbringing, which is rare, people are shocked. Many in this town never knew any Jews and are surprised I'm not like Seinfeld or Rhoda on Mary Tyler Moore...lol. Some think if you are born Jewish you have to stay Jewish. It's weird!

I loved my brother and sister a lot as a child but I had no desire to change a diaper or be mini mommy.

What happened back then doesn't matter. I ended up having an amazing life, and I really never regret that the past is gone. I don't long for the good old days. These are the good old days! I am very happy in the now. And that is nice.

Also because maybe of my strong bond with my grandma, I was very able to love and enjoyed raising my own kid's very, very much. I didn't need old rituals. I made my own!

 

[Pink Elephant]

Probably, Pink. I spent a lot of time avoiding my mother. As a teen I was never home and I hid a lot from her, especially since she would get nutsy if I dated a boy who wasn't Jewish. Or who was Jewish and had blond hair so she thought he wasn't Jewish. I wish I was kidding but that bothered her a lot yet my crappy report cards she barely spoke about.

For my first two high school years, I mostly did date only Jewish boys, but it never made sense to me. We weren't religious and I tended to get along better with non Jewish people. I ended up telling my mom, when I hit my junior year, that I wasn't going to date based on religion period, and then I stopped sharing anything with her. She yelled but I refused to follow the Jewish rule ever again. I have never lived a culturally Jewish life...perhaps my upbringing turned me off. I am not that little Jewish girl anymore...if I ever was. I always seemed to pair up with the one or two kids in my class who were not Jewish. In 2018 If I ever bring up my upbringing, which is rare, people are shocked. Many in this town never knew any Jews and are surprised I'm not like Seinfeld or Rhoda on Mary Tyler Moore...lol. Some think if you are born Jewish you have to stay Jewish. It's weird!

I loved my brother and sister a lot as a child but I had no desire to change a diaper or be mini mommy.

What happened back then doesn't matter. I ended up having an amazing life, and I really never regret that the past is gone. I don't long for the good old days. These are the good old days! I am very happy in the now. And that is nice.

Also because maybe of my strong bond with my grandma, I was very able to love and enjoyed raising my own kid's very, very much. I didn't need old rituals. I made my own!

I've often wondered what shapes us as young children... what exactly sets us up to have such a connection with what we do. As in myself, all things old. I reminisce all the time in my mind, never letting it go.

I know our world would be a painfully boring place if we all thought alike, but carrying forth our early beginnings into the later years of our lives has always fascinated me.

I was always miles ahead of my peers and counterparts even at an early age, always able to carry on a conversation with and sit and enjoy the company of older people and crowds, far better than my own age group, and maybe that has something to do with my love of all things old. Maybe, too, just being so mature for my age and at such an early age helped steer me in the direction I happened upon. So interesting to think about.

As for yourself, SOT, even though I never lived the life that you did, I still feel that I can relate.

 

[BusynMember]

I have a good life! Yeah, my family of origin kind of sucked but there are more people in anyone's world then them. I had to and enjoyed forming my own identity. You don't get to be the family scapegoat by conforming to family norms. I remember thinking both that I was different and that my family was not the way I wanted my life to be as young as six years old. So I dreamed a lot.

Very young,more in my teens now, I knew I wanted to adopt some of my kids and have a different type of family of choice. And,boy, do I!!! I was rebellious and idealistic and wanted to adopt kids who otherwise would not have homes, kids of other races that linger and older kids. I did both. The older kids did not work out well in a family setting, but I tried so hard and feel good about the effort. The different races proved to me what I always knew....that we are all just people. Sonic and Jumper are so strongly mine that toe they are flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone. Princess too. And little grand.

I have the family I dreamed of since childhood along with a prince for a husband for good measure. I am very close to all four kids. I did my best with Goneboy and the dangerous kid but learned a lesson that many people don't accept and some won't accept... some kids are too damaged to accept love no matter how much we give. I am very content with hub and four great kids. Even Bart has done extremely well financially and as a loving father and we love one another to the moon.

There is freedom in not really agreeing with or of not being close to your family of origin. You don't need to worry about doing anything out of the box. You don't feel the need to please them so you and your husband get to choose your life. No strings attached. And in spite of my sister constantly coming and going and strangely calling the cops, I didn't miss her when she was gone because our values are so different and I felt mine were better. I am sure she feels her values are bet. This is okay. I could always live without her because she left me more than she was there and calling the cops for revenge made me angry enough each time to just let her go. Forever if she didn't come back. She always did. I think she missed me more than I missed her yet she must have known the cops would end us....who knows? Who cares anymore,? She can't come back now. I will use the law to make sure she can not contact me legally if she is bold enough to try again. I am done with the games.

My entire life has been my decision. I own the good, the bad and the ugly and I know it.

I love that I have that freedom and that there is nobody in my life who seems to want to fight with me. My hub and I may snap at times but we don't have horrible shouting fights. He has been retired three weeks. We have been together almost all the time yet we get along very well. This was a choice. My FOO frustrated me so much (and tried and succeeded in allowing them ti bait me) so that I would yell and get ugly with them. I was too sensitive around them. But with others I am a door slammer. I cool off in my time and space. I have never had a drag out fight with any child but Bart, and screaming only happened a few times. He would scream. I would stay calm and act. Usually. It has helped our relationship. I know he only gets mad when he is stressed and he has never said, like some, that I am a rotten mother and he doesn't love me. Not once.

I would probably still be crying and yelling at FOO. I did not know or particularly want to know how to correcttly and graciously handle blatant abuse, like the cops and being called names. How CAN you? The only graceful way out in my opinion is releasing the abuser and moving on.

I have no interest in my family tree. I am spiritual and to me I am only connected this one of infinite lifetimes and that all of us are connected. I spent decades on my spiritualiry. I don't know that I would ever have come to this happy place with negative DNA relations whispering in my ear. Nobody needs that even if we love them. I am doing better without dealing with sis and her cops. I did try to help her as last I heard her life was a mess of her own doing. It is who I am to try to help out. I will extend a hand. But you all know there is not much we can do to help somebody else.

Never feel bad for me. I would rather have my dream life any day than memories of abusive mother being nice. I forgive her. But I am glad she did not influence me along my life's path. I made my own choices and in general I am very proud of myself. I came from mental illness and learning disabilities to not self medicating or trying to kill myself or cutting or not eating to love and kindness in abundance. I love going to the Clubhouse to see all my friends and to talk to people if they need it . I believe in paying it forward. I have much to share about recovery from mental illness. I feel very beloved by my friends at the clubhouse, most who are as normal as the majority population.

So I am not somebody to feel sorry for. I have always been strong and independent, asking little to nothing of my FOO. I wouldn't want to have been influenced by them or my past life of snooty neighbors. That never resonated with me.

I live for each wonderful day. And I am thrilled for those of you who have and love wonderful FOO. There is no right or wrong path in life. It is what it is, as my father used to say. We make our own reality. We choose to be happy or sad or in between. And I am convinced we can all change to be happier at any age.

So there I ramble again!! But this is exactly how I got to be me. And I am at peace and content and I hope my next life is even more challenging but ends as well