Where we came from

[Dr Mordrid]

Bathrooms? Neh. Didn't have inside plumbing save for the kitchen sink's water pump and the well on the porch until I was about 12. Yup...we also had an outhouse. Take a bath? Heat water in every container in the house, no hot water heater folks, then go to the barn and get the galvanized bath tub & put it in the kitchen. Fill tub, close doors to the kitchen and hope no one knocks on the back door.



School? Walked there, and it was a one room schoolhouse: 6 grades in one room arranged into columns - 1st grade on the teachers right and 6th graders on her left. Ink wells too. Walked, rode a bike or rode a horse. No busing if you lived within 1.5 miles unless there was a blizzard in which case we waited in little buildings next to the road, huddled together to keep warm until the bus got there.



6 foot tall coal/wood fired cast iron/chrome heater in the living room. Mom's cookstove was wood fired, one of those cast iron porcelain and chrome jobs with its own flue.



Cable TV? What was that? OTA all the way, baby. I watched George Reeve's Superman TV series first run on a B&W TV with a round screen.

Ex: Raytheon - 1949 12"


No phone until I was 10. No lines on our road.

It was a farm folks...an old school farm, but even after then.....

When I went to undergrad school calculators weren't even an option - we used slide rules. It was a choice between them and an abacus.

[Brian Ellis]

Youngster: you never had it as good!

[Dr Mordrid]

Granted by your probable standards, but some of these whippersnappers probably think outhouses were invented for movie/TV comedies.

[gt40]

LOL. I was born in the 'room' next to the stable, delivered by my gandmother. If we wanted cows milk it was a 5 mile walk to the village cow. No word of a lie.

Sounds like a start to a Monty Python skit, doesn't it?

[VJ]

Our neighbour used to have the outhouse-successor: the toilet was built in the house, but its door was on the outside. So this meant that - like with an outhouse - you needed to go outside to go to it...
When the new people moved in, the moved the door to the inside...

[KRSESQ]

Our neighbour used to have the outhouse-successor: the toilet was built in the house, but its door was on the outside. So this meant that - like with an outhouse - you needed to go outside to go to it...
When the new people moved in, the moved the door to the inside...

It's funny, but a lot of old-timers back in the day thought indoor toilets were so unsanitary they didn't want to have anything to do with them.

My big complaint is with bathrooms right off the kitchen.

Kevin

[gt40]

Our neighbour used to have the outhouse-successor: the toilet was built in the house, but its door was on the outside. So this meant that - like with an outhouse - you needed to go outside to go to it...
When the new people moved in, the moved the door to the inside...

Well I can see how that would eliminate the need for a fan or air freshener, but it would mean you would have to shovel your way there in the winter. It's not really the kind of exercise you want to do when you're touching cloth.

[Tjalfe]

the blue print from our old house in Denmark had pig staples attached to the house, just a door away from the kitchen the house was from 1913

[Dr Mordrid]

Chicken house next to the main house, barn across the yard and piggies next to that. On the other side of the barn a feed corn pen and behind the barn a grain silo. Circa 1858.

Fresh eggs and milk every morning and my Grandma Billy (Wilhelmina) kept the local kids up to their necks in pies & other baked goods. Loved to stuff males with food 'til they rolled down the path unpowered, she did. Old-school Mennonite farm wife who loved to cook all day. She was also a scream

[Jammrock]

How did Monty Python phrase it ... Luxury! Though not be me. I was raised in a fairly plush lifestyle in the US heartland. My mom's stories are fairly interesting though.

In the winter time she had to start skiing across the island in the morning dark, then either catch a ride with fishermen or row to the neighboring island where the schoolhouse was. Took about an hour on average each way.

Since it was Norway in winter she was in school for only 3-4 hours before she had to make the skiing/rowing trip home.

Her first memories are of being scared of Nazi patrols, and being scared to death of their German shepards, and running to the conrete bunker under the barn when the air raid sirens went off.

Though it's not so tough growing up there anymore as all the islands in the area have connecting tunnels under the Atlantic. The big downside to listening to my Mom's stories was you could never complain about walking to school on a cold day