BetterMost Community Blogs > Cellar Scribblings
Cellar Scribblings
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on November 01, 2020, 04:53:21 pm --- Maybe it was more like the early Seventies, but I'm positive there was some sort of cable service available where I grew up when I was still a kid. It was some sort of newfangled thing, and, again, we had good TV reception because we had the device to change the position of the antenna, so why pay for it? Of course, there wasn't much, if anything, more to watch than ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS. ...Things come to different places at different times.
--- End quote ---
Oh, this Wikipedia article might help explain:
In 1950, Robert Tarlton developed the first commercial cable television system in the United States. Tarlton organized a group of fellow television set retailers in Lansford, Pennsylvania, a town in the same region as Mahanoy City, to offer television signals from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania broadcast stations to homes in Lansford for a fee. The system was featured in stories in The New York Times, Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal.
--- Quote ---I have it on authority that I trust that there are still places in this country where the only internet access is via dial-up.
--- End quote ---
I think that's true in remote places in Minnesota, among others.
A while back I interviewed a woman who remembers as a kid moving from a two-room schoolhouse into a brand new schoolhouse in a rural area about 20 miles west of Minneapolis. The kids were all excited because it had indoor plumbing! I asked her if she had indoor plumbing at home and she said no. That was in 1965.
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: serious crayons on November 02, 2020, 10:21:09 am ---In 1950, Robert Tarlton developed the first commercial cable television system in the United States. Tarlton organized a group of fellow television set retailers in Lansford, Pennsylvania, a town in the same region as Mahanoy City, to offer television signals from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania broadcast stations to homes in Lansford for a fee. The system was featured in stories in The New York Times, Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal.
--- End quote ---
Mahanoy City is in the mountains. I'm sure TV reception there was very poor. I wouldn't be surprised if it had been nonexistent.
--- Quote ---A while back I interviewed a woman who remembers as a kid moving from a two-room schoolhouse into a brand new schoolhouse in a rural area about 20 miles west of Minneapolis. The kids were all excited because it had indoor plumbing! I asked her if she had indoor plumbing at home and she said no. That was in 1965.
--- End quote ---
My maternal grandparents got central heating sometime in the Sixties. I remember the cellar being cleaned out before the furnace was installed. I have a memory of once watching my grandmother add coal to the coal-fired heater in the living room. It was the Seventies before they got a shower and an indoor toilet. There was hot and cold running water in the kitchen; I don't remember where the hot water heater was located. So I know what it's like to use a chamber pot and an outhouse.
brianr:
While we had plumbing, the toilet, as was common in houses built in the 1930's, was reached by going out the back door and along to the left. I was terrified at night. One of the downsides of holidays was that the rented house at the beach rarely had plumbing.
I think the inside toilet in the bathroom would have been installed in the early 1960's.
I know my birth was of some advantage as the family was allowed to buy a refrigerator (gas operated) during the war in 1944 to replace the ice chest.
CellarDweller:
Hiya BetterMost friends!!!!
Hope that everyone is well today.
Fingers crossed for the results of the election today, and that the outcome is peaceful.
Very interesting conversation here regarding what everyone had in their houses as kids. If I'm recalling correctly, in my childhood home, there was a large coal room in the basement, which later my parents had converted to a bathroom.
serious crayons:
Well, I guess I should tell mine, then. My parents moved into a newly built suburban development in the early 60s, when I was really little. Our house had a full bathroom upstairs, a powder room on the main floor and a regular furnace.
It did, however, have a septic tank. I'm not sure how those work. We also had a water softener. Does that mean we had some kind of well? I'm not familiar enough with plumbing. I know we needed a water softener for a while, then we did get city water at some point and no longer needed the water softener.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version