My Journal 161

I recall many years ago asking my young son to roll up his window. He looked at my 1973 Chevy Pickup door, paused for a moment, and then asked, “Where’s the button”? I replied to turn the crank. He stared at me completely blank. He had never heard of a window crank.

So today I will list some things from my childhood that you probably never heard about. Enjoy.

·          Air vents under the dash on cars and trucks. You would reach under the dash, near the floorboard, and open a vent to let the air created by your vehicle moving blow into the vehicle to cool you.

·          Manual steering and manual brakes for vehicles. You literally had to have the vehicle moving to steer it. You could not turn the steering wheel when the car was stopped. And to stop the vehicle you had to REALLY push the brake.

·          Spare tires that actually were tires. When you rotated there was actually a process to rotate your spare to the ground and rotate one ground tire to a spare. Hmmm, tires lasted longer back then too.

·          No seatbelts. Yup, I remember two cars that my folks owned which had no seatbelts at all.

·          Houses with no central air conditioning. Houses were built to allow air flow. There were louvers above the doors which you could open in the summer while the door remained closed. This would allow the natural breeze to flow through the house. Actually, homes were very comfortable.

·          Home furnaces under the house. You had grates in a few rooms to allow hot air to blow up. The logic was golden, heat rises. So put the vents on the floor.

·          No locks on front doors. There was no need to lock your house. No one was stupid enough to go inside your house un-invited. But there were locks on the garage. Hmmm?

·          Phones with spiral cords. You had to actually be in the vicinity of the phone and could only move away as far as the cord allowed. You could order the long cord and be about 8 foot away. Oh, and the only colors for phones were black, mustard of avocado.

·          Party lines. You want to talk about privacy? We had party lines. You pick up a phone to call a friend or neighbor and anyone on your grid could then pick up their phone and listen in.

·          Bicycling, skateboarding and roller skating WITHOUT helmet or pads. Damn, we did all that, in shorts and no shirt for years . . . . and we lived????

And finally . . . .

·          Actual FACE TO FACE conversations with people. No spell check, no erase button, no faking or lying. We actually talked to people, said what was on our mind, and moved on.

Awwww, the good old days!