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

[Pink Elephant]

My mother said I trained so early because even as a tiny premie, I couldn't stand to be wet or soiled and would scream bloody murder. Drove her nuts at night, poor woman had to get up every two hours to feed me when I got out of the nursery, and I would eat, go back to sleep, mum would go back to sleep, and half an hour later, I'd be screaming to have my diaper changed.

My sister trained early as well. She had diaper rash problems so bad that my mother said "you could put a drop of pee on a diaper and she'd have rash down to her knees and up to her nipples."

I think in both my and my sister's cases, cloth diapers contributed mightily to us training so early. My sister because dirty or wet diapers hurt, and me because I had a sensory thing going on (and still have sensory things going on.)

I remember how my kids used to start crying and fretting when I'd pull their rubber pants off at diaper change time when they had a rash. The elastics around the legs of the pants would pull at the irritated rash area. "Owie" I remember my oldest son saying a few times, because mommy always pulled the pants off so speedily.

 

[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.

Honestly, SOT, I don't know of a single mother (ten years my senior as you) that used disposable diapers back in the day. Not even for travel or visiting. Cloth diapers and rubber pants were the standard.

When I was in junior high school... later part of the 70's, a good friend of mine had a baby sister, and she wore cloth diapers and rubber pants. We used to babysit her and change her.

When I took in my two grandbabies (mid 2000's), I wasted no time in switching both over to cloth diapers, and I kept them in cloth diapers (fulltime/around the clock) until I handed them back to my daughter some two years later. Just as I did with my own kids, diapers were kept in a plastic pail until wash day, hung on the line to dry, fastened with diaper pins, and worn with rubber pants. The true old-fashioned way. I never once found it to be a fuss or inconvenient. I actually enjoyed folding diapers, and I still remember the plastic rustling sound the rubber pants made when changing a diaper!

And that's my ramble for Tuesday May 22, 2018.

 

[runawaybunny]

I worked as an answering service operator. Answered for DR's offices after hours etc. The PBX looked like this:

 

[GoingNorth]

Yup. That's a hybrid or switching cordboard. PBX stands for Private Branch eXchange. We were calling them PBXs for quite a while after they became computerized. Us telco geeks called the computerized ones "switches", though in actuality, they contained a multitude of switches, LoL. I don't miss those days.

I loved working telco from the network end, and supporting modems and early network controllers, but didn't particularly enjoy being a telephone operator.

When I worked for Baby Bell, we used to call the techs who worked with the mechanical switches, "Switch B!tche$"

 

[Pink Elephant]

I worked as an answering service operator. Answered for DR's offices after hours etc. The PBX looked like this:

View attachment 971

The process of inserting prongs into the right holes and circuits always escaped me. How anyone could learn such still seems impossible to me.

How in the world did you know where to plug the cables into?

 

[runawaybunny]

The process of inserting prongs into the right holes and circuits always escaped me. How anyone could learn such still seems impossible to me.

How in the world did you know where to plug the cables into?

The place where I worked the different thingies were all labeled.

 

[Pink Elephant]

The place where I worked the different thingies were all labeled.

Gosh... it all still seems so complicated to me. I can just see myself sticking prongs into every socket panicky! LOL!

 

[pasajes4]

I worked dispatch for a small electronics firm (early 60's). The "navigation' system was a huge map with the longitude and latitude marked off and I would have to use those coordinates to find where to dispatch the trucks. A red push pen marked their current location, a yellow for the next call and green for pending. Each driver had a color assigned to him and the tops of the push pens were painted his color. I made a whopping $ 2.00 an hour.

 

[Pink Elephant]

Was just giving additional thought to this topic... and how young I was when I started doing so many of these things.

Have you ever hung laundry on an old-fashioned outdoor clothesline? I remember hanging certain things for my mom when I was really young. Maybe age 6. Not entire laundry loads, just something like a damp tea-towel when my mom was doing dishes, or maybe a pair of rubber pants that had just been changed on one of my siblings, etc.

Have you ever washed laundry in an old-fashioned wringer washing machine? Many, many times, and by age 7-8, I was helping my mom with laundry, using her old-fashioned wringer washing machine (which she loved and swore by)!

Have you ever changed an old-fashioned cloth diaper with safety pins and rubber pants? By age 8, I was changing the diapers of baby siblings - and regularly may I add. Changing and folding. My mom taught me to use two diapers at a time when diapering (for added absorbency), and to always keep a couple of fingers between the baby and the diaper when pinning. Also used to babysit two cousins when I was around age 10-11, and my aunt used cloth diapers and rubber pants, too. I still tease both cousins to this day about changing their diapers!

Have you ever given a spanking? Many. If my memory serves me correctly, I would have been around age 16 the first time I handed-down a real spanking. I was babysitting.

Have you ever washed floors on your hands-and-knees using a bucket and cloth? While my mom never had me wash floors by-hand, I do remember using moms mop at a young age. It was one of those soak in the bucket, then press the handle to squeeze-out the cleaning water from the sponge head.

Have you ever canned fruit and vegetables? I was barely the height of the kitchen counters when I started helping my mom with canning.

Have you ever starched and ironed a shirt? Only thing I didn't do at an early age, but I remember watching my mom do it.

Have you ever started a fire using two sticks? Yuppers, and gave myself such nasty and painful blisters, I never tried again. I would have been no more than age 8-9.

 

[Pink Elephant]

I worked dispatch for a small electronics firm (early 60's). The "navigation' system was a huge map with the longitude and latitude marked off and I would have to use those coordinates to find where to dispatch the trucks. A red push pen marked their current location, a yellow for the next call and green for pending. Each driver had a color assigned to him and the tops of the push pens were painted his color. I made a whopping $ 2.00 an hour.

OMG... I would have been totally lost! LOL!

 

[pasajes4]

Should have read ' early 70's'. I think my sometimers is kicking in.

 

[Pink Elephant]

Should have read ' early 70's'. I think my sometimers is kicking in.

You're in good company, Pas! LOL! I go through stages of sometimers, too!

 

[Pink Elephant]

Another I just remembered... diaper liners.

I used these for a month and a bit after the birth of each of my children. Saved me time cleaning/rinsing meconium poop-filled diapers. Diapers stayed way cleaner when I used these. Worked great for nighttime, and when someone had a diaper rash. Kept wetness away from bottoms.

 

[Pink Elephant]

And for those old enough to remember... pastel rubber pants.

I remember yellow too. Babysitting... 1970's... changed many-a pair of these! From newborns to toddlers! Cloth diapers, pins, and rubber pants were the norm.

 

[BusynMember]

How old were you babysit??? I was 17 in 1971 so you were 7.

I was not a lover of babysitting.

 

[Pink Elephant]

How old were you babysit??? I was 17 in 1971 so you were 7.

I was not a lover of babysitting.

Oh, SOT, that's what I love about you most, is your true colour!

In 1971, I was 8 y/o, and already changing baby siblings diapers (cloth always in our house), and just three years later I started babysitting for our next door neighbour, Maryjane, who also used cloth. Youngest sibling was born in 1973 (cloth diapers for him, too). Was in my teens already before baby brother was out of diapers. Loved babysitting. Aunt used to drop off my two little cousins (both in cloth diapers) for me to babysit at our house so her and my mom could go out shopping, and between my baby brother and two baby cousins, I had to change all 3. All 3 were in rubber pants. Used to change them in the bathroom on the floor.

My first bicycle was the result of babysitting money.

 

[BusynMember]

I am ashamed to say my first bike was given to me, not that I rode it much. Material things were given to me, although I had far far far far less and much cheaper stuff than my uppity peers. My mother sewed my clothes and I got teased for that. Our car wasn't the popular Cadillac (to this day they still make me retch). My mother was odd. She didn't like Barbie dolls so I wasn't allowed to have one. She didn't like any toys other kids had so I couldn't have them. Made me even more of an outcast. I super rebelled against her in my teens and my peer relationships were better after I pulled away from her and broke her rules. But she screamed at me a lot. It didn't help. I wasn't going to let her make me an outcast again.

Pink, if somebody had told me to change a nasty cloth diaper with rubber pants when I was a kid, I would have refused. Period. I could throw a mean tantrum and refuse to do things I didn't want to do. I was not particularly fond of my younger siblings anyway and had no baby cousins. It is possible that if babies had worn disposables at the time maybe...but I doubt it. I was not an easy kid, which is one reason my mother didn't like me, and if I didn't want to do something, It was impossible to make me do it. I was a very depressed and anxious kid who was picked on at school and by my mother at home and I was not interested in helping out my worst enemy, my mom. You seem to have a clear memory of diapers. I didn't pay attention and don't remember but for the smell. They were not a part of my life.

Once I had my own kid's I was 100 percent Mom but not at all interested in that stuff before that. My childhood was dark and gloomy with peers and a mother who picked on me. All I wanted to do was grow up and get out. My good old days started when I met my current husband! I don't WANT to be anywhere else but now! The childhood years were not good memories.

 

[AppleCori]

We studied telephone switchboard operators in our history, and I was interested to find that the first ones, in the late 1800s, were teenage boys. Apparently, it didn’t work well, as they were not generally kind and patient with the callers, and would sometimes play jokes on them.

They tried a female out, and within hours hired her sister as well. From then on, they started hiring females, and didn’t allow males on the job till the 70s, with the EOOC rulings.

Just a bit of interesting trivia....

 

[GoingNorth]

And, having worked with those few pioneering male operators, I can tell you that the older female operators treated them like $h!t. Most of the males wound up going over to switching, which was a male job well into the early 80s.

 

[BusynMember]

Jobs used to be so gender divided. Women were limited pretty much to nursing, teaching, secretaries, other nurturing or housekeeping jobs.Women could do very limited work...factory, cooking, those listed above. Or they could work a switchboard. And I remember the few male nurses getting flack for doing a woman's job.