Growing up in the 40's and 50's

We didn't have gas furnaces. People used coal and you had to have a big room just to put the coal in. If you didn't use coal, you used oil. To make it so you didn't have to put the coal in manually, you could buy a stoker which automatically put the coal in for you. There were always ashes to take out everyday. We didn't have garbage pickup. We put our trash in an incinerator and then when it was full, we took it to the dump ourselves.

Mother's wore dresses called 'house dresses" when at home around the house. They seldom wore pants. They always had on frilly aprons to keep their dresses clean. We curled our hair using bobby pins and they were called pin curls. Sometimes we even curled our hair using rags. Very few woman drove; one car per family was all there ever was. Kids always shared their rooms unless they were an only child. The rooms in most homes were very small compared to today. Girls had to wear dresses to school. In the winter we had to wear long cotton stockings hooked on with a garter belt to keep them up. We had to wear heavy rubber boots over our shoes in the winter. The radio was all we had until the early 50's when television came out. There were only 2 or three stations and no color. The hospitals were much different then too. I went to have my appendix out and I had to stay 5 days. I had to share my room with 4 other ladies. There were no telephones or TVs in the hospital room. Nurses wore stiff white uniforms with white silk stockings and they always wore a cap.

All of us got and expected to get childhood diseases. Like mumps, chicken pox, German measles and red measles. There was no vaccine for them at the time. When we went out driving, there no seat belts and no child seats required. They didn't have contact lenses so we had to wear glasses if we had bad eyes. Most of the kids clothes were made at home. It used to be cheaper that way. We didn't have very many clothes. Mothers usually stayed at home unless they were school teachers or single or divorced. One salary per family seemed to be enough. Of course we didn't have as many things to buy in those days as now. There were no electronic games and computers. Kid played outside jumping the rope, roller skating, wading in ditches, running through the sprinkler, or playing jacks. Inside they played board games and paper dolls or guessing games. Our pets were not even treated very well. They had to be outside most of the time and if they got sick, then if they didn't get better, then they died. We never bought special pet food for them to eat. They ate table scraps and what they could find outdoors. One of our cats used to eat a lot of grasshoppers. No wonder they pets got sick with the kind of care they got.

We usually saw all the movies that came out because one movie would come out at a time and play for a couple of weeks and then another would play. There were seldom more than one movie to choose from. Phonograph records were hard plastic and broke very easily and got scratched. They were 78 records and played really fast. There were no Barbie dolls. Girls played with baby dolls. We always had to wear undershirts under our clothes. Only a few kids had braces. Most adults over 30 had dentures. Pierced ears was a no no. They were only worn by wild girls and boys never wore earrings. Boys hair was always short and slick. They used hair tonic to keep their hair down.

My mother baked 8 loaves of bread a week. She canned everything. Nothing was permanent press so she had huge ironing's to do in which she had to sprinkle and starch some of the clothes. People seldom had showers in their homes. The just had the bathtub. Baths were only taken about once a week. But we had to wash up before meals. Clothes were hung outside to dry. Nobody had dryers.

Fast food didn't didn't really start until the mid 50's in our area and they were take out only. Hamburgers, hot dogs, fries etc. There weren't that many restaurants either. The only they had that I would consider not American was the China City cafe in Provo.

School was different too. They did not come down on anybody for using the N word or calling people names but you better not take the Lord's name in vain or use the F word. Bullies were rampant in the 50's. The teachers didn't seem to care that much. They sometimes seemed to idolize the bullies. Racism was rampant as well. People had the right to restrict blacks from moving in their neighborhood. Blacks as well as Mexicans, Chinese and Greeks and Italians were called few choice names. We didn't have that many foreign people in my area, just a few Mexicans. But my mother said in Price in the coals mines her dad worked in, there were a lot and he always made fun of them. My mother taught me not to be prejudiced about other nationalites but I could tell she and my dad didn't like blacks (although there none around us just in Salt Lake.) I was scared to death when I saw my first black person. I was afraid she would come after me. We were so naive in those days. I liked Mexicans, especially the guys. Maybe that's why I married one.

Some of my mother's homemade remedies were mustard plaster, gargling salt water, a rag around the neck with Mentholatum on it for a sore throat. Washing out eyes with salt water, enemas, for dandruff, she would make me lie down on the couch while she put olive oil all over my head and scratched the dandruff flakes off. In the morning before school, she made me drink a glass of hot water with salt in it. She said it would help my digestion. These are just some of the things that were so much different then than now.