Bicycles with tanks.  The space between the braces leading fom the seat to the front of the bicycle was enclosed with metal.  This enclosure was the tank.  Some tanks had lights and horns in them.  The most famous brands then were Schwinn, Columbia and Elgin. Paper boys placed cloth bags over the rack in back.  Many girls bicycles had a basket in front over the front wheel.

Filling Stations (Yankees called them service stations) where the attendant pumped gasoline, checked the oil and water and cleaned the windshield.

Kiddy Cars (These were metal cars with a seat inside for little kids.  Pedals were attached to the front wheel)

Free air and water where gasoline is sold.

Little red wagons.

Bicycles made for two. 

Tire Pumps (Every car to put air in tires with inner tubes after fixing flats)

Windup Victrolas (record players)

Washboards (clothes were taken out of pots, rubbed with bars of soap and then rubbed up and down on a washboard.  The wash board had a wooden top and sides with a corrugated piece of sheet metal in the center.  After scrubbing the clothes on the washboard the clothes were put back in the pot for a rinse).

Fly Swatters

8 millimeter home motion picture cameras and projectors

45 RPM records

Horses tied to hitching posts at the courthouse square or for that matter, hitching posts at all. It was not unusual even in the 1940s for houses to have a hitching post in front of the house.  

Water troughs for horses on main street

Cotton picking sacks

Reel to reel tape recorders

Six ounce bottles of soda pop

Lightening Rods (these were metal rods usually about three feet in length placed on houses and barns with a wire leading to a metal post driven into the ground.  The theory was that if lightening struck the building the rod would direct the lightening bolt into the ground and the building would not be damaged.)

Chain gangs  (prisoners would literally be connected to a chain.  This usually was when prisoners were taken from the jail to work.  Then if you were a prisoner you worked.  Prisoners were used to clear brush from creeks and streams, pick up trash from the roadside, work in parks, etc.  Now prisoners are mollycoddled.  I read recently where a prisoner sued because the air conditioner for his cell kept the temperature too low.  Another prisoner sued because he was fed fried instead of broiled chicken).  Still another sued because the television set in her cell did not have cable.

Prison farms (There are still a few.  Back then prisoners raised much of their own food)

Blue Laws – Laws that prohibited the selling of certain items on Sundays. For instance, while I worked at the Owl Drug the soda fountain was open (food) and medicines could be sold.  That was all.  Almost no stores were open on Sunday.

Sasparilla

Males holding doors open for females.

Human elevator operators

Half Time Shows on TV of football games.  The shows still are performed but television doesn’t show them.  Instead some talking head tells us what we just watched.  I guess they think we are too dumb to understand what we just saw.

Cream separators

Straight Razors.  Men shaved with a straight razor.  It was similar to a knife.  The blade itself was about four inches long and folded into a handle. After the safety razor with replaceable blades came along the use of straight razors virtually ceased. 

Razor Strops.  This was used for two purposes (1) spanking and (2) sharpening the blade of straight razors.  The blade part of the razor was stropped or sharpened with the strop.  It was of leather and about 30 inches long.

Mustache cups.

Shaving brushes and soap.  Before shaving cream men used a bar of shaving soap.  The shaving brush was dampened then brushed across the soap and the resulting lather was brushed on the face.

Carbide lights on helmets.  In the mines there was no electricity.  Miners wore a helmet with a carbide fueled lamp.  Before the carbide lamp candles were worn on the helmet.

Canaries in mines. Canaries were carried in the mines to warn of dangerous gas.  If the miners noticed the canary dying they knew they had to rapidly leave the area because poisonous gas pas present.

Domino Parlors.  Most towns had a building in which there were tables and chairs.  Men gathered there to play dominoes.

Whittlers.  Men would sit on porches at homes or on benches in town talking and whittling.  Whittling is using a pocket knife and a piece of wood either to make something such as a whistle or toy or just to have something to do.

Paper boys.  The newspaper was delivered to the home by 12-14 year old boys.

Gourds.  By the well and by a bucket on the porch a hollowed out gourd was hung.  It was used to drink water from.  

Kool Aid / Lemonade stands.  In the summer kids would make a pitcher of Kool aid or lemonade (usually Kool Aid as lemons were too expensive) and set it in the front yard for people  passing by to buy.  Little was actually sold.  Most of it was consumed by the kids.

Running boards on cars.

Hair Oil.  Brylecream and Brillantine were two brands.

Burma Shave signs.  Burma Shave was a brand of shaving cream.  Signs advertising it were placed by roads.  The signs carried a message.  One message I remember was “LittleBo Peep has lost her jeep.  She struck a tree when she fell asleep.”

Real white wall tires.  The white wall on car tires was about three inches wide.  

Tire Patches

IBM Cards

McBee Keysort systems

Butter churns

Quilting Frames

Ration lines and stamps

Savings Bond Stamps

Rumble seats on cars

Manual Typewriters (even electric typewriters are disappearing)

Treadle Sewing Machines

Hand cranked ice cream makers

Ice Boxes

Porch swings.  Almost everyone had a swing on the front porch.  This was basically nothing more than a seat with a back (no legs) suspended from the ceiling or porch roof joists with chains.

Most things made from scratch.  Today there are cookie mixes, cake mixes, biscuits already made in cans ready for baking, powdered milk, and all other types of pre-prepared foods.  There were none Back Then.  

Manual operated cash registers.

Console radios.  These were radios that stood about three or four feet high and were designed as a piece of furniture.

Even after television became more reasonably priced they resembled a piece of furniture and had wooden cabinets.  Today all television sets have black plastic cases and, to me, are ugly. 

Pallets.  When a number of people came to visit there were usually not enough beds.  Hotels were expensive.  Motels did not exist as we know them today.  One or more quilts would be placed on the floor for people to sleep on.

Outhouses

Cotton Corders

Cast iron  pots

Bungling Boards (When visiting relatives sometimes a boy and a girl would sleep in the same bed.  A board would be placed between them)

Hoboes

Rolling pins

Salt pork

Flour Sifters

#2 washtubs

Coal Oil

Kerosene Lamps

Aladdin Lamps

Hand Cranked Meat Grinders

Radios and Television sets with tubes

Caboose on a train

Ice Tongs

Push Carts

Glass milk bottles

Windchargers

Handcranked telephones

Rotary dial telephones

Pop Corn Balls

PBX Operators (companies would have several trunk lines provided by the telephone company.  The company would have many more people with phones on their desks or throughout the company.  The odds are they few would be talking at the same time so the number of trunk lines could be much less that the number of phones.  An operator would answer the phones and then connect a trunk line to the particular phone wanted.  This was accomplished with a switchboard and the operator was called a PBX operator.

Wire music and voice recorders

Fender skirts for cars

Hand cultivators

78 rpm phonograph records

Hand operated gasoline pumps with a glass top.

Hand operated calculators

Fountain pens.

Pen staffs

Slide rules

Steam Locomotives

Kids selling coat hangers to cleaners

Silly Putty

Paint by numbers kits

Gasoline blow torches (used by plumbers.  Now they use propane torches sometimes.  Now much piping is plastic.

Hand wheeled cultivators

Hand powered lawnmowers

A brand of cigarettes named wings. It was popular during WWII.

Tire Chains

Old fashioned church tent revivals.

Cars with brand names Cord, Henry J, Hudson Terraplane, Packard, Hupmobile, Essex, Morris, Whippet

Car Cranks

Mechanics at Filling Stations

Hula hoops

Corsets and Girdles

Hand rolled cigarettes.  Does anyone remember Duke’s Mixture, Prince Albert, Bull Durham or Bugler cigarette tobacco?  Duke’s Mixture and Bull Durham were sold in cloth bags, Prince Albert and Bugler were in cans.  All would fit in a shirt pocket.  A late teen thought he was big time if he pour the tobacco in a cigarette paper and roll it with one hand.  Strike anywhere matches were abundant and in little boxes.  You were double big time if you strike or light the match by drawing it over the seat of your pants. While on the subject, there were many boys who would break off part of a corncob, drill a hole in it with a knife blade, hollow out a straw and stick it in the corncob and make a corncob pipe.  The kid couldn’t afford tobacco so corn silk, coffee grounds or the bark from a cedar post was smoked.  Many fence posts were cedar.  General McArthur smoked a corncob pipe, but his was commercially made.

When kids could get to a phone and wanted to be smart they would telephone a store and ask, “Do you have Prince Albert in a can.”  If the answer was “yes” the the kid would say “Please let himout.”

Wooden cigar boxes.  You could make a guitar with a cigar box.  Cut a hole in the lid, nail on a piece of wood, run string along the handle and over the box and there was a guitar. If you were lucky you could use real guitar strings. Johnny Cash sang a song about that called “Tennessee Flat Top Box.”

Rain barrels.  A barrel would be placed to catch the rain running off the roof of a house or barn.  It usually was not used for drinking, but rather for animals or to wash clothes in.

Funny books.  They are now called comic books.

Brownie Cameras.  When a family had a little extra money they would by a Kodak.  Kodak was synonymous  with camera.  The Kodak Company was located in Rochester, New York and made a cheap little box camera with one lens speed.  It was called a Brownie.  A popular film size was 127.  Later Kodak cameras used 620 size film.  These were on rolls.Kodak also sold film.  In fact, for many years it had no real competition in the film business.  Once the film was exposed by taking pictures the film more than likely sent to the Fox Processing Company for developing the film and printing the photographs.  Later cameras with varying lens openings and shutter speeds were developed.  Some of the more well known was the C3 by Argus and the Leica made in Germany and the Canon from Japan. These latter used 35 mm rolled film.  Professionals preferred sheet film.  The better cameras of this type were the Crown Graphic and the Speed Graphic. In the movies when you see a news photographer with a camera about a foot in size with a tube on the side it is probably a Speed Graphic.

The tube on the side was a flash gun.  It contained batteries and a bulb.  When a button was pressed electricity went to the bulb and it flashed.  Now most cameras have a built in strobe light that serves the same purpose as a flash gun.

Flash bulbs.

Eight Track tapes and players (really popular in 1950s and 1960s but did not exist in 1930s and 1940s).  The same can be said of reel to reel tape recorders and players.

Real people answering telephones instead of machines

Patriotism

Respect for the United States Flag

Men and boys removing headwear in restaurants

Children and youth showing respect for those older than themselves

Ration Books

Victory gardens

People standing at attention with their right hand over their hearts when Old Glory passes by or the Star Spangled Banner is played.  Too often I see, especially professional athletes chewing gum, spitting snuff or tobacco and talking when the National Anthem is being played.

If you have read this far I have your attention.  There are a few things about today that disturb me.

There are too many law suits.  I am particularly perturbed of class action suits.  I belong to an airline’s frequent flyer program.  Somebody did not like the way the airline changed the rules of the program.  He sued and convinced a judge that the suit should apply to all members of the program.  He didn’t represent me, but the judge said he did.  When the suit was settled I received a token amount off my next ticket.  The attorneys received over $2,000,000.00.

Another thing,  there was a time when things marked “for the prevention of disease only” and sold in little foil packets and certain feminine products were under the counter and cigarettes in the open.  Now the other products are out in the open and cigarettes are under or behind the counter.  Does that say anything about our culture today?