They were like wish lists

And when my parents were done with them, they gave them to us and we cut things out and played paper dolls and made houses with furniture

because it was heinous and apparently scarred me for life was merthiolate/mercurochrome. Jaysus, how many times I skinned my knees and saw more stars after the treatment than the actual accident.

brushburn did.

Transistor radio
Station wagon (great for moving things and a movable motel room!)
Gas lawn mower (mine is electric)
Console stereo with turntable, cassette deck and receiver (I’m fully high-end Bluetooth)
La-Z-Boy chair (ugh)

Still miss her RIP not the chair

Sometimes I miss having them around since they were impossible to lose or misplace.


Also, heavy console televisions.

telephone jacks, black & white TV.

I do have radiators; my house is 130 years old. And until relatively recently, until i did a major remodeling, I had a bathtub with feet.

That was our 'intercom' system. If mom wanted me or dinner was ready, she'd tap her ring on the pipes in the living room. If she was summoning my brother, she'd tap her ring on the pipes in the dining room.

to ring in my brother's 3rd floor (aka attic) bedroom.

It was probably used mostly to warn anyone smoking pot in my brother's room that parental units were heading upstairs.

Even in the winter, they felt hot and sticky.
And when they cracked.... there went your nylons.
Nope, don't miss them at all.

We have an insta-pot instead, which is an incomprehensible computer-driven pressure cooker

look into the insta-pot.

My wife's aunt blew a hole in their kitchen ceiling when a pressure cooker exploded

Yeah, they could be dangerous if not carefully watched - and listened to. I received one for my wedding shower back in 1973, used it a few times and packed it away. Probably 'accidentally' left it behind during one of our moves.

They're fine as long as you know what you're doing and pay attention. Oh, and you don't let it sit around for years and years so the gasket wears out - that could be disastrous.

How about a TV console? Weighed hundreds of pounds, sat on the floor, was less than 1/4 of the screen size you probably have right now? And a wired remote for the same? And TV antennas with the two aerials and the loop in the middle?

Avocado-colored appliances.
Wood paneling in the basement.
Bean bag chairs.
Shag carpeting.

bed was placed right next to the radiator. It was too hot for me and the bed was too close to it.

sometimes there is a lag of a few hours of too much or too little heat. But I love them.

...in the late 1960s.

I guess my folks should have paid the mortgage?

for tolerating me, deb! I'm a bit goofy.




Hey, aren't you up past your bedtime?

for a while my morning job was go outside fill a can with fuel oil fill and light the heating stove in kitchen.

Also black buckle snow boots, ice cube trays, encyclopedias, phone books, and free standing ash trays.

Knob and tube wiring
Fuse box vs. circuit breakers
record player for 78 RPM
Coke bottle with a sprinkler plug for my Mom to dampen clothing when ironing.
darning egg
tooth powder
wringer washing machine
coal burning furnace and coal bin

...and put them in the freezer so they wouldn't develop mildew if she wasn't going to iron them right away.

The sprinkler bottle predated the steam iron. I still hate ironing, you can tell by looking at me.

And it's relative instant gratification - whatever is being ironed looks so much better for the effort. Mostly, I use a hand held steamer, which is really fast.

I'd rather iron than dust or vacuum, any day of the week. 2 hours after dusting, it looks like you never did.

I have a little sign that says, "You may touch the dust, but please don't write in it. With 4 cats in the house, there is always dust.

that if ironing was a crime there wouldn't be enough evidence to convict her. 😄

a sewing machine with an external belt and one direction sewing, a Polaroid camera, a 110 film camera , a party line rotary wall phone, my brother had a CB radio in his car.

Window fans before central AC was common.

Fusebox

Only one bathroom

One car garage

TV antenna

Party line phone

Sears & Roebuck catalogs.

Set of Encyclopedias.

Cloths line and cloths pins and laundry baskets

Mantel clocks that you wind every 8 days

Floor furnace

Screened in porch
Noisy whole house fan, before ac
Mustard yellow colored kitchen cabinets and appliances
Library room with incredible shelves
Sterling silver utensils used on Christmas and Easter

Oh and an enema bag. My grandmother had some weird ideas. My mother and I escaped when I was 10. When I moved back in decades later, all three were long gone, thank goodness.

Edited to add: I'm cracking myself up over here because I haven't thought about those things in years. Is it weird to laugh about them?

and my grandparents said I needed an enema. Knew of them , but cried myself to not getting any of them. TY Butterfly. Looking back it was very strange.

Last edited Tue May 12, 2026, 05:54 AM - Edit history (1)

Long ago, my mother spread this medication on my gums to ease my teething troubles.

A (Semi-Off-Topic) Secondary Story
One day, dad was trying to teach mom how to drive our stick-shift car. Now mom could easily manipulate the shift lever near the steering wheel, but she never could master the gas pedal along with the clutch pedal. Soon, mom took me and got out of the car as dad drove off to cool off.

As we stood in the parking lot, mom pulled that bottle of Paregoric from her purse and poured an amount of that nasty-tasting liquid onto her tongue. After a few minutes she said she felt much better and that's when dad returned and took us home.

I never saw mom drink that again, and she never learned to drive stick-shift. I love you mom.

*Paregoric (camphorated tincture of opium) is an oral liquid medicine primarily used to treat teething problems. It contains morphine, along with anise oil, benzoic acid, and camphor. It is habit-forming and requires a prescription.

it to me and I vomited. I always remember that it was out in the open and I, a kid, at the time bought it.

get developed. It would come back in an little envelop with the pictures and negatives.

Old habits die hard, I guess.

S and H green stamps! My mom would be saving them for some useful items while I’d be looking at the toys in the catalog!

Coal chutes.

Upstairs floor vents to allow heat into the upstairs.

TV antennas on the roof.

A pitcher pump. I have not seen one of those inside a house for over fifty years.

A 'widow's walk' on the house. Some houses today still add them, but they are seldom accessible for actual walking.

Horse doors. (Now bear with me. My grandmother's house was pre-Civil War. It has these large doors that went from floor to ceiling in the front hallway. These doors faced each other in the widest part of said hall. They were there so the owners could bring in their horses should the weather become too cold. That way, they could just heat the house in very cold conditions. I had only seen them opened once in my lifetime, and that was to just check and see if they were still working and sealing okay.)

A 'carriage door' or 'carriage hall' on a house. This was where the people would get into the wagon/carriage under cover so that they would not get wet between the door and the carriage. Most people parked their cars under them back when I was a kid, but it only worked for smaller cars, since the space was for a horse and buggy, which are not very wide.

So much has changed since I was a kid. It sometimes amazes me.

Window fans, suppers served with everyone at the table.

A hand held egg beater, metal ice cube trays with a handle, an iron that didn't have a water reservoir, and in the backyard a giant clothes line because we didn't have a dryer.

arms stuck in it.

For that matter, an iron that isn’t tucked away and covered in dust.

washing with a roller wash machine. My hand and arm got pulled through. Instead of opening the rollers up, she put them in reverse. Don't know if it causes any broken bones as I didn't go to ER or doctor's office.

Mercurochrome and merthiolate.

Do outhouses count.

Now I know why southerners worry about constipation.

Clotheslines (and clothespins) in back yard, gas heating stoves in each room, big cars with huge trunks, bath tub with no shower

so we always had about 50 gallons of something brewing in the basement.

While they couldn't buy beer or wine at the grocery store, you could buy all the ingredients and mix up a batch of your own.
The beer blew up one really hot night, but that's anther story.

tapioca in the pantry. No one eats tapioca (or bread) pudding that much, anymore. Now they make Boba with it. (Intriguing!)

Cozy shack still makes it. You can get it at grocery stores. On a side note the bobas in boba tea are made of flavored tapioca perls.

My parents had a fire in their house and the fireman said if it were not for the asbestos the entire house would have gone up in flames.

and I don't get to shovel coal anymore, which was fun as a kid. Probably because I was a budding arsonist.