2737 My memories are older than I am.

Thursday, January 7, 2010

A man's perception is his reality.

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A cringing confession: I have fallen in love with the TV show "My name is Earl". It's a wonderful ensemble cast with tangled relationships and an interesting concept. Not to mention lifestyle.

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I seem to recall that in the past, the temperature rose just before a snowstorm and stayed higher during and for a while after. Doesn't seem to do that any more. Now it drops and stays very low. What changed?

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How old am I exactly?

• I remember not having hair conditioner. When you washed your hair, it was tangled and took a lot of time to carefully and painfully comb the tangles out. The first "detangling rinse" was Tame (if you wanted "conditioning", you used eggs and/or olive oil, or ideally real mayonnaise), and I was in the 8th grade when I first used Tame.
• Also, back then, it was customary to take a shower or bath and wash your hair twice a week if you had indoor plumbing, once a week otherwise. In between, you washed anywhere that needed it at the sink or basin.
• I remember when antiperspirant was suspiciously newfangled.
• I was in the ninth grade when the first credit cards came out. Before then, you used cash and checks, which also meant no telemarketing.
• I remember almost all adults smoked, and there were ashtrays on buses, in waiting rooms, and next to hospital beds, removed only if oxygen was in use.
• I remember when most of the kids I went to school with had outhouses. My father's sister had one, too, and they were solidly middle class. I was in my teens before my aunt installed a bathroom.
• I owned and wore a felt poodle skirt.
• I remember when young'uns didn't date unchaperoned until 11th grade. Before then, you might have a girlfriend or boyfriend, but you got together in groups. The b/g-friend was just the favorite in those groups.
• I remember when most drugstores would not sell you contraceptives unless you were married.
• I remember when if you bought a dozen of any baked goods, there were always at least 13 in the box.
• I remember when women were expected to wear a hat and gloves for all social occasions before evening, and for shopping beyond the grocery store.
• I remember when clothing purchases from a department store were always wrapped in tissue, and carried home in a box tied with a ribbon.
• I remember when no one we knew had a television set.
• I remember when kids were pushed out the door to play outside, and the entire neighborhood was safe because everyone watched out for and disciplined everyone else's kids, and if you screwed up, or got in trouble, there'd be a phone call to your mother before you got home.
• I remember when kids were expected to break a few bones along the way, and nobody'd get sued.
• I remember party lines, with coded rings, so your neighbors knew when you got a call, and snoopy neighbors would listen in on those calls, and it was impolite to talk very long, because while you were on the phone, no one else on your line could use the phone, unless they interrupted and yelled "Emergency! Get off the phone!" Of course, then you'd listen in to their call, to make sure it was an emergency, and yell at them if it wasn't.
• I remember (and loved) electric trolleys.
• I remember when the city bus was a perfectly acceptable way to get around town, even on dates.
• I remember trains with white linens, silver utensils, crystal goblets, and live flowers on the tables in the dining car, and good food cooked to order in the kitchen car, served by polite and attentive waiters in white shirts and black vests. Grampa was an engineer, so Gramma had a free pass, and she and I used to take all-day trips just for the food, lunch on the way out and dinner on the way back.
• I remember handkerchiefs, edged with handmade lace.
• I remember when portable hair dryers were the size of an overnight case, and had a soft plastic hood for over the rollers on your head, connected by hose to the blower in the case. It could take a half hour or more to dry your hair. (I still had that hair dryer until the Highland house flooded in 1999, and until then it still worked.) The advantage of that style dryer was that it didn't fuzz up the hair on the rollers, and you could do your nails while your hair dried, and dry your nails at the exhaust.
• I remember when men were not just allowed, but expected, to beat disobedient wives and children. It was almost a social duty to keep them in line. The term "domestic violence" didn't exist, even as a concept. "Spare the rod, spoil the child" was a warning then. (Now it seems to be a command, and has proven the warning true.)
• I remember when unwed mothers secretly went to "homes" for their pregnancies, and the babies were put up for adoption, often to married family members.
• I remember girdles. (They seem to be making a comeback.)
• I remember stockings that required garters. Pantyhose didn't come along until the '70s.
• I remember butcher shops, where you could get special cuts, and all kinds of things like beef hearts and pints of fresh blood.
• I remember when young women were expected to cut their long hair short upon marriage. Long hair on a married woman was considered low class.
• For all the prudishness, cocktail parties were all the rage, and the games played by our parents and their friends at those parties would make me blush now.
• I remember when even in a city the size of St. Louis in the '70s, it was difficult to find a female OB/GYN.
• I remember when long-distance phone calls were a BIG DEAL, pretty much reserved for Christmas and deaths. We communicated by hand-written letters.
• I remember when there were no copiers. Copies were made by carbon paper on typewriters, or by stencils on mimeograph machines.
• I remember 5-cent coffee, and 15-cent packs of cigarettes. When the first fast-food outlets opened, a hamburger was 15 cents, I think, and a hot dog was 5 cents. Of course, starting salary for a teacher then was around $4,000, a new car was well under $2,000, and a three-bedroom house was perhaps $15,000.
• I remember using a cranked wringer on the washing machine to squeeze out the water.
• I remember hanging clothes on the line, even in bitter winter, when the wet sheets would freeze as you were hanging them, and your fingers would turn white from the cold, then flame red when they warmed up. But it had to be done, because there were no home clothes dryers.
• I remember having to iron sheets. And bras. And everything else made of cotton or linen.
• Women did not wear slacks to school, the office, or socially beyond an intimate circle of friends. (Well, some did, but they were considered "loose".) I'd been out of college three years before it was acceptable for women to wear slacks in the office, and even then they had to be part of a matched suit with a hip-length jacket.
• I remember the pre-Eisenhower highway-building days, when all roads were back roads, and trips took twice as long as now, even if you didn't get stuck behind a military convoy. But they weren't boring, because we had the Burma-Shave signs.
• The odor of fresh cow manure was everywhere in the spring, and a man whose boots smelled of it was respected as a hard-working fellow.
• Scranton had huge burning culm dumps (tailings from the coal mines) that burned day and night for decades. They were beautiful at night.

There are times when I feel much younger than my years, and times when I feel older. There are some items on the list I'd like to go back to, but I guess we'll never go back.
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