REMEMBERING
THE OLD RUATY NAIL
AN E-JOURNAL FOR OLD PEOPLE
Russell Burton, an Old Person
I suppose this very long blog will be more fun for our
grandchildren to read than for us old people still it is always fun to bring
back fond memories. So, I will write
about mostly my fond memories. And, these remembrances will tend to be in
chronological order and of course many of them will be in regard to the
evolution of technologies and the advances in medicine. And too, the cost of things back then is
always fun to recall. All of this must
be mixed in with some of my younger personal life.
My memories of technologies begin when I was about 4 years
old. I recall vividly the first time my
family and me used an elevator without an operator. It was rather scary for we had never been in
an automated elevator before. There were
no instructions my Dad just pushed buttons and it started going up. Would it stop when it was supposed to?
My second recollect was when I was in the second grade. I was six years old then for my folks first
enrolled me in school when I was five.
My birthday falling in the middle of the school year (January 15) posed
a dilemma when I should begin grammar school. There were no kindergartens.
At this time 1938, I was an only child when we moved from
State College, Pennsylvania to Newel, South Dakota. My folks had decided to buy a new car just
before we moved. Their old car I
remember was a Rockne which was named after a celebrated college football coach
named Newt Rockne who coached at Notre Dame.
There has never been a more famous college football coach.
College football was far more popular than it is today and
pro football was of little interest to anyone.
The invention of television changed all of that.
In the mid 1930s the Rockne Car Company was bought by
Studebaker. My father received a
Studebaker metal tag to put on top of the Rockne tag on the front grille. Also in that grille was a hole through which
a hand-operated crank could be placed in order to start the car if the battery
was dead. In those days batteries were
not very reliable. Today, the Studebaker
Car Company is just a memory.
Our new car, a 1938 rust colored 4-door Chevrolet was
purchased late in that year for $600. It
was a demonstrator which meant that it had been driven by people interested in
buying a new car. The dealer returned
the mileage to zero when my folks bought it.
This car was extremely modern in many ways. It had a push button radio and a headlight dimmer
head-light indicator attached to and under the dash board which is to say that
it was not incorporated into its design. It had a stick shift located on the
floor. The next year Chevrolet had it
moved to the steering wheel column and the dimmer light was now in the dash
board. Of course automatic transmissions
were not available.
Rubber tubes were inside the tires which were necessary to
inflate them. There were no seat
belts. I always rode in the passenger
side standing on the seat so I could look out to keep from getting motion sick. Of course this was very dangerous for me but then
it was not recognized as such. This car
got 15 mpg gas mileage which was standard.
Of course there was no air conditioning.
We had that car through the Second World War (WWII) my dad and me having
to replace the engine. It was traded in
for a 1946 Buick.
We lived middle class with my father working for the federal
government as an office clerk with an annual salary of $18,000. We lived in a new two bedroom government
house with indoor toilets, known than as a modern house for many houses still
had outdoor toilets. I think the rent was $25 a month. In our kitchen was an
electric refrigerator which was very small by today’s standards with the coils
on top of it. It was made by General
Electric. Many if not most homes kept
their fresh foods from spoiling in ice boxes containing a huge block of ice
which of course had to be replaced a couple of times a week. Our house had
newly invented window and door wire-screens to keep out bugs. It was hard to
believe that wires could be woven so closely together to keep out small bugs
like flies and still be able to see through them.
For entertainment we listened to the radio which was by
today’s standards very large so it was a notable piece of furniture with a design
that fit into the living room décor. It
operated using several vacuum tubes which had to be replaced when the radio
began to work poorly. It was AM as FM
was not available. So, static noise was
common some days when the weather was just right making listening to any
program a bit unpleasant.
Right after grammar school was out in the afternoon, the
radio serials for kids would be broadcast.
When we lived in town, I raced home to listen to those 30-minute
programs which included Superman, Capitan
Marvel, and the Green Hornet. In the evening were the more adult shows such
as Dagwood and Blonde, Fiber McGee and Molly, and my favorite I Love a Mystery. The most fun thing
about the radio back then was using your imagination about what the characters looked
like and the action when you heard the show.
When I saw Superman in the movies with his red pajamas on I almost
vomited for I had imagined a real Superman with bulging muscles who could
really fly (well actually it was a huge jump).
Certainly that was a major stimulus in developing brain
imagination. Where is that stimulus
today? On the other hand, is such a
brain activity of much value in real life? But, I know one thing my imagination
is great fun and I enjoy it everyday. It
was particularly in play when I wrote my novel Mary as I envisioned every scene.
The first board game for entertainment was Monopoly and it
was very popular. I suppose the fact
that everyone who played it was a rich person which was extremely rare then for
1938 was in the middle of the Great Depression.
Many men worked for the WPA which was a federal government work program
receiving $1 per day. Woman rarely
worked back then so families lived on one income.
All of the card games we play today such as bridge, poker,
whist, etc. were played back then which was a major entertainment component –
more so than today.
The only technology which could be used as entertainment
such as today’s electronic games was a game of pinball. This game was played on a large machine found
mostly in bars and some cafes. Under a
glass window a small steel ball was, using a button mounted on the side,
manually shot into a complex set of flappers, and holes for the ball to fall
into. Powered by electricity, bells rang, lights flashed, and a score was
recorded which indicated the skill of the player. For many decades this was the only ‘e-game’.
Newel South Dakota was about 60 miles north of Rapid City
which was the big city to go to for shopping.
Newel had a population of a few hundred.
I remember the family physician was a drunk so my folks got medical care
from the local pharmacist who was college educated and knew medicines. Not that anyone was capable of curing anybody
for medicine was extremely primitive. In
the late 1930s I had my tonsils removed which was commonly done and because I
got serious colds each winter. The
surgery was performed in Rapid City at a Catholic Hospital. I was terrified of the nurses all dressed in
their black garb. They used ether for an anesthetic. Today, tonsils are rarely
removed.
My mother and I spent the summers of
the late 30s and early 40s in Nebraska living on my grandparent’s 240 acre
farm. My grandfather until 1940 farmed
it with three work horses. Now that is
hard work 6 days a week. He finally bought
an Oliver tractor to do that work only after the insistence of my uncle.
The only vaccine available was for small pox, so I
contracted many of the childhood diseases which included both types of measles,
mumps, and chicken pox none of which was fun. And now, some parents do not want
to have their children to be vaccinated.
Go figure…
Of course the discovery of Poliomyelitis vaccine was
exciting. I remember in 1949 a fellow
high school senior got sick and died within a few hours from Bulbar Poliomyelitis. Thousands of people were crippled for the
rest of their lives from this disease including President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt. Many people afflicted with
this disease could not breathe so they lay on their backs with their chests
inside a machine to help them breathe called an iron lung.
Thinking about dying and longevity, it was on my mind some
when I was growing up as I suppose is thought by most young people. You know how long will I live? Because I was born in 1932 my goal was to
live to see the next century come in.
Yep, if I could live to see 2000 that would be great. Okay, the 21st Century begins on
2001 still just to write that 20 instead of 19 would be quite a thrill. Yes, I would need to live to be 68 which at
that time was the life expectancy of men.
I am now 86 and still pretty healthy looking for several more years of
life and the date is 2015! Now, life
expectancy for men has increased more than ten years to near 80. I read the other day that half of the people
born today will live to be 100!
Antibiotics were not available until the mid to late 1940s
even though the basis for them was a specific kind of mold discovered by
Fleming in 1932. The first one was
Penicillin which was truly a miracle drug for curing bacterial diseases. Earlier were the sulfonamides which although
not nearly as effective as antibiotics were at the time useful in fighting some
bacterial diseases.
On our trips to Rapid City we would stop for lunch at some
restaurant. I always ordered a BLT
sandwich which cost 25 cents. My mother
was never pleased with my choice because she could make it at home for much
less money. I don’t remember what they
ordered.
My folks made a phone call to my Mother’s aunt who lived in
California. It cost several dollars and
took many minutes to accomplish for it had to go through many switch board
operators (all were women). So, the call
was placed and the phone was hung up to wait for the operator to phone back
that the call was all connected so that the conversation could begin.
My favorite toys when we lived in South Dakota were brightly
painted small lead soldiers with different types of guns. I had several of them which cost 5 -10 cents
each. I played many hours with them outside and inside the house. I was an avid
postage-stamp collector beginning when I was in the third grade. I still have that stamp collection. This hobby is not nearly as popular as it was
back then. As these stamps were from all
over the world, I learned geography so I knew what country a certain stamp came
from at an early age.
These thoughts about my postage stamp collection got me
remembering the cost of sending mail. A
regular letter cost 3 cents took several days because it went by train. If a person wanted it to go by airplane it cost
6 cents. This stamp always had a picture
of an airplane on it. A postcard cost
just 1 cent to mail and they were used much more than today.
Jigsaw puzzles were another common form of entertainment
which of course is similar to those we have today. My mother and I worked long hours in evenings
putting them together. You know no
TV!!!!!!
Of course children played outdoors more than today. Thus getting far more exercise. One popular game was kick-the-can. Usually several boys and girls played it after
school and on weekends when we didn’t have chores. Chores, you know small jobs children were
required to perform each day about the house. A can would put outside in an
open area. The person who was ‘it’
closed his or her eyes while the other children hid. The person who was ‘it’ would search for
those hidden. When a hidden child was
spotted they both raced back to be the first to kick the can.
Black and white movies were shown in this small town and I
believe only on weekends. At lease that
was the only time I went to them. I
enjoyed Hopalong Cassidy western movies for they were not violent. Movies in color were not available at that
theater for I remember my folks traveling to Rapid City to see ‘Gone with the
Wind’. I was left behind to play with
friends for it was not my kind of move to watch.
When showing a local movie there was always a News report. One time it showed a new invention called
television. The one they showed was of
course experimental and was huge the size of a room with a very small screen. I was amazed that such a thing could be done
and sure this capability would never be found in my home if I lived to be 100.
In the 1930’s commercial air travel was by the Douglas DC-3
which was a rather small propeller driven aircraft with a capacity of I guess
30 people maximum. It was not
pressurized so it flew not much above 10,000 feet.
In high school 1946-1949 I took typing my sophomore year. I typed on a manual typewriter and for copies
carbon paper was inserted between sheets of paper when typed a carbon copy
would be made; hence the name ‘carbon copy’. What followed was the electric typewriter,
then one with a memory card, and finally the computer (word processor) with the
key board.
Of course with many invented technologies such as the
transistor, printed integrated circuits resulting in much smaller radios and
small computers which according to Moore’s Law will double the number of
transistors about every two years. And,
his prediction has held up for over 40 years.
His law warned us that change at first was slow but then more rapid
until it would change at an extremely rapid pace as it does today. As an example, TV was not commonly available
until the early 1950s. I remember seeing
my first TV picture which was black and white shown as a display in a retain
store when I was a freshman in college in 1950. Then came color TV all with picture tubes
until now flat screen TV is most common. At that time in the 1940s computers
were only available for the military which used vacuum tubes with little
capacity and the size of rooms.
In the mid 1960s I was conducting physiological research at
the University of California at Dais when I talked my boss into buying a Marchant
Underwood computer. I programmed it to
do correlation coefficients using two magnetic cards which could be
accomplished in less than a minute.
Using a regular calculator it required 30 min with a high error
rate. That simple computer was larger
than an electric typewriter and cost $4200.
Today a computer with thousands of times more capability fits into the
palm of your hand and costs a few dollars.
You know, Moore’s Law…
Oh there are numerous advances in technologies I have
witnessed which I could write about but enough is enough. Of course the
take-away from this article is that we old people have witnessed many major
changes in medicine and, technologies.
Back then life was not nearly as assured as it is today. Modern technology had not begun; workers’
productivity was probably 20% of what it is today even though they worked
physically much harder. Family life was different and much more difficult than
today even for the middle-class; yet, we had fun and enjoyed life perhaps in
some ways better than today.
Of course all of us old people remember what I have just
written, but it is fun to remember and in a way relive those times. This
article has grown more and more as I continue to remember another thing about
the good old days. So I close my walk down memory lane hoping you enjoyed it as
much as I have remembering and writing about it.
Written 3/15
