Time Marches On It’s funny, but when you get to a certain age you realize there are some things you experienced that no one born today will every see. When I was born just before World War II there were still some horses being used to pull wagons. I am talking about neighborhoods in New York City and the boroughs. I remember one man who would come around with a fruit wagon. The kids used to love to run over to him and pet the horse, which looked more tired every year. Then there was the rag man and his wagon. He would offer to buy all your old clothes by the pound and the ice man who would deliver the ice for your ice box. There were still mostly ice boxes in my neighborhood being one of the poorest at the time. People today who live in an apartment will never experience the leaks coming from the apartment upstairs, because the tenant up there forgot to empty the basin under the ice box. You needed a basin, because the ice would melt. I’ve told this story before, but it is a good one so I am going to repeat it. A friend of mine who’s parents need ice finally decided to get a refrigerator and when the ice man came around the next time they had to tell him to stop deliveries. He told them they were making a mistake and the electric refrigerator was only a fad and would break down a lot. Another thing I remember are the old cars. The cars from the 1920s were still around when I was a young boy. I guess this was because of the poverty. No one had a lot of money so if they were lucky enough to have a car, even if it was old they drove it. What stands out in my mind was the fact many of these cars had wooden spoked wheels. That is something no one will ever see again. The old cars also had poor breaking systems so you didn’t want to run out to get a ball if one was coming. Yeah, I know you shouldn’t have done that anyway, but I am just making a point. Prices were extremely low compared to today and these low prices will never be seen again. An automobile such as the Ford Super Deluxe Sedan Coupe cost $1395 and the average price for a car was $850. Ladies nylons were 20 cents and rent in my area was about $15.00 per month. An expensive piece of meat was pork loin, because it cost 45 cents a pound. Gas was 12 cents a gallon All of us kids had something even better than toys. We had war souvenirs. Many of us had German helmets, medals and other things and we used to trade them with other kids who had things we wanted. I had a German helmet with a bullet hole in the temple and there was a kid who had a toy cannon which I really wanted and why not I was only about 7 years old. I traded the helmet for it. Today that helmet would have been worth a couple of hundred dollars at the minimum. Here is the real kicker. We all know how much some collector comic books go for today. In my day you could buy used comic books for 2 for 5 cents from the local “cheap store.” The one near me was called Cheap Charlie’s. They had a bunch of cheap stuff like tiny pen knives for 2 cents, balls for 10 cents and things like Chinese finger traps for 1 cent. The Chinese finger trap was a woven tube and you squeezed one finger on each hand into it and if you tried to pull them out it would tighten and prevent you getting loose. You had to push your fingers together to relax the tube and make the holes larger. The government ran into trouble during the war, because all of our copper was needed for the war effort, but we needed something to make pennies out of, so pennies were struck in steel in 1943. I don’t think we will ever seen anything like that again. The Registration tax for cars was introduced in 1943 and the amount seems to get higher all the time. In technology a huge leap was accomplished in 1943 when the British developed the Colossus computer to break the German encryption which was supposed to be unbreakable. Messages had been encrypted using the German Enigma machine which had millions of settings. In 1945 the United States used nuclear bombs on Japan and the world was changed forever. Another invention which would change out lives forever while not as dramatic or dangerous as nuclear weapons was discovered and it was the microwave oven when we discovered microwaves could heat food. Television was beginning to catch on and by 1945 about 5,000 made it into homes. It was still a great luxury and very expensive by the day’s standards. My god parents were the first ones among us to have a television and they got it around 1949. It had a tiny 6-inch screen if I remember correctly and the main thing they watched was Milton Berle a comic show. There were only a few channels compared to today and they didn’t run shows all day long so many times you would turn on the television only to see a station pattern. A lot of jobs have disappeared over the years, because there is no longer a need for them. There used to be large telephone switchboards with operators plugging in wires which made the connection to who you wanted to call. That job is gone and will never be back. Teams of men used to lay railroad tracks and they were called Gandy Dancers. Today machines do the job. I don’t know if the following job is completely gone, but even if it isn’t you would have to go far and wide to find a soda jerk. A soda jerk was usually a man and he made you a drink from a soda fountain. He would put syrup into a glass and then seltzer and stir it. He would also make ice cream sodas, milk shakes and such while you sat at a counter in a drug store or some business with a soda counter such as a 5 & 10 store. We used to call all stores which sold a variety of cheap stuff 5 and dime stores. The two most famous were probably Woolworth and Lamston. I remember buying a hammer in Woolworth for about 59 cents and when I hit a nail with it, it shattered. It was made of cast iron. More jobs which have disappeared are pin setters, milkmen and elevator operators. Pin setting was a harrowing job. You would set up the pins for bowlers and have to sit behind the pins for the next set and many times a pin and maybe even the ball would hit you. Milkmen used to deliver all your dairy needs to your door. This was eliminated by the ease which you can now purchase and even have delivered anything you need. Elevator operators served past the time they were still needed, because the public didn’t like the idea of being alone in an elevator. I guess many people thought it somehow made things safer to have a “driver” in the elevator, but eventually they got used to the idea of pushing a button. People born today will witness far more changes than I did, because technology is advancing so much faster. There is no way to know what they might see in their lifetimes, we can only guess. There is one thing for sure however and it is much of what is around today will no longer be there in the future. |
