Also found in the shed, this piece of pottery. It’s handmade and I have no idea where we got it. An art fair? I used to frequent a yearly fair in Balboa Park in San Diego. Was it a gift? It reminds me of something I would have purchased in my twenties when I was into earth tones. But, though this photo doesn’t show it at its best, it’s got a lovely glaze. Don likes it. Right now, it’s providing some height on the kitchen table.
It’s very cold here today so we are limiting our time outside working in the shed. It will be warmer tomorrow. It’s also windy. (What else is new?)
I was remembering the clothes chute in my childhood home yesterday. Did any of you have a clothes chute in your home? It was a feature of our little bungalow. A little door in the hall, which opened to a chute that went all the way down to the basement. We’d shove our clothes in, they’d fall down the chute and land in a laundry basket. The only place for a washer and dryer in our house was down in the basement.
We also had a milk chute. Same size as the clothes chute. It had an outside door that was easily accessed by our milkman. He would pull up in the driveway, open the door to the chute and place the milk bottles (glass, of course) inside. My mom, or one of us kids, would open the inside door, which was in the kitchen, and get the milk. When we were locked out, one of us kids would be lifted up by my dad, go head first through the chute, and then unlock the door.
Memories of another time when things were delivered to your door by people you knew by their first name. Our milkman happened to be our neighbor, who drove a truck for Twin Pines Dairy. We also had an eggman, a guy who had a farm where he raised chickens. He wore a leather jacket and a leather pouch on his belt, where he kept change. We’d yell out “The eggman is here!” and we’d let him in the house. He’d sit in my dad’s chair and count out how ever many dozens of eggs we wanted, placing them carefully in a bowl. Then he’d count out the change. He was a quiet man of few words and I can see him vividly to this day. I liked him.
We also had an occasional knife grinder and a guy who had a speaker in his truck who would drive slowly down the street saying (with an Italian accent) “Strawberries…nice, juicy strawberries!” We’d occasionally buy fresh fruit from him.
Very strong childhood memories. I miss the seeming simplicity of that era. I’m not idealizing it, of course, because there was much that was troubling, but a neighborhood with small business sellers coming right to your door is something we don’t see any longer.
Ah, well.
Stay safe.
Happy Wednesday.
You have given me things to think about that I haven’t thought of for years. The milkman! The egg man! The Watkins’ salesman! All at our door. Our egg man had the great Icelandic name Gudjon Gudjonson. My spelling may be off, but we kids thought his name was magical.
Aren’t they wonderful memories? Love that name!
Stay safe, Brenda.
Yes, we had a laundry chute in our house, too. It was built in the fifties and we lived with my grandparents while they built it, the first brand new house we ever lived in. Moved in in second grade and lived there until after the seventh grade. Of course, the laundry chute was a necessity back then, along with the basement laundry. Our milk was delivered to a box on the front porch and I never met the milkman, though. Good Old Days.
Our house was built in maybe 1950 or 1951? My parents moved in before I was born.
Love those little details that you don’t see anymore. Just like niches built into the wall for phones. My apartment in San Diego had one.
Stay safe!
We had a laundry chute and milk compartment too. When I was younger we also had some kind of coal chute that would transport the coal to our basement. What neat memories.
We had a milk and egg man now. We leave him a note to let him know what we’d like each week and like magic it’s there in the morning. He’s a great guy who told us he likes talking to his customers almost as much as he likes talking to his cows. Life in a small town…….
I love your pot. It must be like a treasure hunt. I love finding things from the my past that I have forgotten.
Keep safe,
Eileen
I do remember the milkman but no egg man. We got eggs from my grandparents farm. Those definitely were simpler times.
I love that pottery! Who knows what other treasures await.
Michigan starts a 3 week semi-lockdown. Restaurants, bars, bowling, movies closed again. We can get take out though.
I shopped yesterday and the toilet paper aisle was almost empty! I guess the hoarding has begun again.
Take care
I think we’re going to have to go shopping soon because I think NY isn’t far behind Michigan.
Stay safe, Marilyn.
The coal chute was in the house on Manor? Love that. You’re so lucky to have a milk and egg man now, Eileen!
Stay safe!
We didn’t have a laundry chute in our house (it was a newly built house), but there was one in my grandparent’s house. It was in the main bathroom on the top floor of a quad-level house. As kids, we had a blast throwing small toys such as Barbie dolls and Matchbox cars down the chute, then running to the basement to retrieve them.
We did have a milkman that came to our house when I was growing up. He left the glass bottles of milk in a metal silver box that sat on our front porch. Whatever happened to all those boxes? I bet they’re huge collector items now.
Ours was newly built as well. The developers put them in all the neighborhood homes. It was a new subdivision – my parents moved in right before I was born.
I’ve seen a few of those boxes in antique stores.
Stay safe, Melanie!
I,too. Desperately miss the good old days. I never really thought i would be able to say that. Life was so much simpler. As kids, we could play outside until dark – no worries. Walked to and from school ‘ no worries. My how times have changed!
Same here. Played until the streetlights went on. Walked to school, rode bikes several miles, never worried once.
Stay safe, Judy.
sweet memories and pottery! the pottery looks like a good place to put candy or loose change. and i think your photo does a good job showing off the glaze!
we had a milkbox (delivery service) on the back porch at home growing up and still have the milkbox. after that delivery service ended, the milkbox was often used as a base to hold a Christmas tree. my father grew up in a home with a laundry chute. when we were younger, my brother, sister, some cousins and i would drop bath towels and washcloths, tissues and toys down there, watch them fall two stories, run down to the basement, get those things and start again, over and over, because it fascinated us so much! and the main home i grew up in had a mail chute. played with that one, too, until one day we found a bat in there! we didn’t have a nice-sharpener-guy or someone selling fresh fruit from a truck, but we had an ice cream truck go around our neighborhood in the middle of hot summer afternoons and after dinner (lots of families with lots of kids there = lots of customers). sure wish i could find a home to buy like any of those. will always treasure those experiences, memories and my family!
thanks for reminiscing; i like hearing about other people’s lives, finding the commonalities and differences … and it brought up some wonderful memories for me. even the one with the bat.
hope the cold temperature and wind aren’t so bad, that you can get done in the shed what you want/need to and then sit back, take it easy!
it’s been windy here, too. supposed to get close to 70 degrees here tomorrow, then back to much colder temperatures. to be expected here, of course. it’s almost thanksgiving!
hope you, don and everyone else have a good day today and stay safe!
kathy in iowa
The neck is too narrow. You couldn’t get your hand down it!
We had an ice cream truck, too. A couple of them! Good Humor ice cream was a favorite! I loved seeing the guy open up the freezer compartment to pass out ice cream.
Stay safe, Kathy.
thanks, claudia.
hey … have you heard about a new interior design book called “upstate”? i don’t know if it does or does not feature lots of the white/gray/wood decor that you mentioned (disliking) on instagram a couple days ago, but the homes in that book are to be from upstate new york. fyi …
hope you and don have a good night. stay safe!
kathy in iowa
Yes I’ve heard of it. I didn’t say I disliked that kind of decorating, just that I was tired of seeing it everywhere. And it IS everywhere!
sorry for my misinterpretation!
and yeah, seeing the same trends over and over practically everywhere is tiresome. i’ve never been one for anything trendy except when i was in high school. by graduation, i’d learned to better ‘march to my own drum’, thanks to my much-loved and very wise parents. :)
happy, safe thursday!
kathy in iowa
Oh my gosh, Claudia!! You sent me right back to my childhood. My father built our house. In the linen closet’s floor he cut out a square for the laundry chute. He then built my mother an
enclosed ‘cupboard’ in the basement where the clothes went down. Mom would unlatch and
out came the clothes that needed washing. We also had a milk box. beside the back door. If
my Mom wasn’t home, I would drag the metal washing tub over to reach the milk box, open it and unlock the door. My childhood was not happy but these are the memories I treasure.
Marion
Sometimes it’s the simple and satisfying things that make good memories, Marion.
Stay safe.
Shopping your shed….what fun! Better than Christmas. (Laundry chutes? I’ve always wondered where the washing machine/dryer are in your beautifully compact little cottage? Surely not in the basement.)
The laundry chute I was referring to was in my childhood home.
Our stacked washer and dryer are in a closet in the downstairs bathroom.)
Stay safe, Sherry.
Milk box on the kitchen porch, but no egg man. The neighbors had one, but our eggs came from my grandfather’s dairy about 45 minutes away; we saw our grandparents often enough for eggs and butter, but went through milk too fast. My mother called the grocer every morning and the food was delivered in the afternoon. The laundry man picked up sheets and my father’s shirts every week, delivering the clean ones from the previous week. The man from the dry cleaners would just walk into the back door and hang up the clothes, leaving with items that had been piled on a stool awaiting his visit. No laundry chute in our big old house, but the family next door had one, and we kids all loved it.
Isn’t it amazing that the groceries were delivered so quickly – and right to your front door?
Stay safe, Margaret.
We also had a milk box on the porch growing up. The other day I was looking at my front stoop. I couldn’t figure out why it looked so empty and unhomey until I realized it was missing a milk box. We don’t have milk delivery where I live. The imprint of those childhood years lasts.
It surely does, Di.
Stay safe.
Laundry chutes are almost unheard of in Britain probably because the house styles are so different (Remember I have porch envy!)
I still have a milkman who delivers in glass bottles to my doorstep and you can order any dairy product from him.
Growing up we used have a Rag n Bone Man who would come along with a horse and cart (this was the Sixties not the Victorian era😀) and people would come out and give him old clothes or unwanted household goods. In exchange he would give a ‘donkey stone’s which could be used by folk who lived in terraced house to whiten their front doorstep. My grandmother lived in such a house and it was a matter of pride to have a white door step, front windows would be sparkling clean and dazzling white net curtains. You would see women in their 70s scrubbing on their hands and knees. I can’t imagine that happening today!
Apart from the milkman and ice cream van that still drive around, we also have ‘scrappies’ – scrap metal merchants who look out for and will collect anything metallic from outside your house. You often see cookers, washing machines but they’re never there for long!
Happy Wednesday
I wish we had scrappies! That would be perfect!
Stay safe, Dee Dee!
I remember
Fuller Brush man
Dry cleaner deliver
Don’t believe we had milkman or eggman
Up the street and over one the tiny grocery we frequented
I remember walking everywhere
My most exciting day was the day the Bookmobile started
Amazing
I would take grocery bags and fill them up
Memories
Prayers for you and Don
Yes we had a Fuller Brush man, as well!
I’ve written a few posts on the Bookmobile and how much I loved it!
Stay safe, Brenda.
No laundry shute for me either, although I remember my Mum always did the laundry on a Monday, and had a twin tub/ a machine with two compartments, one to wash and one to spin. Then out onto to line or in front of the coal fire to dry
Lovely memories Claudia
S
Thank you, Siobhan!
Stay safe!
We didn’t have a milk door (but we DID have a milk box on the porch) but in every home I’ve ever lived in (not apartments) I’ve had a close chute. I love them. It was also an easy way to get unbreakable things down to the basement when I didn’t feel like going down myself! Now that I don’t have a washing machine or dryer here, it’s probably used more for that than anything else!
I love your piece of pottery. And the process of rediscovery. There’s something very pleasing about that. Like an unexpected present. Something like that is so nice because it is functional too — you could store popcorn in it, for example, or remove the lid and it would be a most attractive vase, I need to return to the basement and find a few more treasures down there!
Have a lovely week. Yes, it has been windy here, too. Windy all summer and fall for that matter. And now cold. But the sun is out. I’ll take it!
The neck is pretty narrow, so I’m thinking it would work better as a vase.
Stay safe, Jeanie.
Oh…I do remember the laundry chute…and the milk chutes. Love those sweet memories. I am a bit curious as to what people who still have those in their homes, do with them nowadays? Especially the milk chutes.
What a great pottery piece. The glaze is lovely. I’m curious what you might use it for…any plans? It’s been windy here for 5 days. I’m quite done with it…but I think Mother Nature has other plans.
Stay safe! ;)
No plans for it right now. The neck is rather narrow. It could make a lovely vase for a dried arrangement.
Stay safe, Donna!
Downsized about 18 mo. ago from 1965 two-story to 1948 rancher and I have a laundry shoot! Thank goodness the previous owner (age 87) moved the washer/dryer from basement into what once was a cedar linen press near bedroom area. Don’t much care for steps down to basement. Figure if hubs ever gets his “man cave” area set up in the basement, I can just open shoot to yell down at him to come up for supper.
Grew up with milkman and bread man. Every now and again, the breadman would come to the house w/ this huge metal basket displaying the sweets and us kids’ eyes would light up. Seldom did we get store-bought goodies and of course, as kids we could not have appreciated that homemade was better than whatever was in those shinny packages. But we remained ever hopeful.
On occasion we would go into town and buy “day-old” from that same bakery, mostly bags of bread that had come open and this was fed to three pigs we were raising. They filled huge flour bags with offerings and you could always count on rooting and rooting to find one or two day-old miniature fruit pies or maybe a package of cinnamon rolls that were out-of-date and us kids were thrilled.
And one more memory while we are it. Snow ice-cream! Mom would be ever so careful to find “clean” snow, free of ashes and soot that sometimes spewed from the chimney and I think she added vanilla, milk and sugar. That was a real treat for us back then and I wonder what I would think of that today. Maybe just as well that we don’t get snowfalls like that anymore. Good memories.
My mom wouldn’t let us get any treats from the breadman, either! She baked everything, and it was all delicious, but somehow those forbidden items seemed like they might be even more delicious!
Stay safe.
Similar memories growing up in Livonia where we moved to in 1953. Also the Awrey Bakery truck would come through the neighborhood every few days and you could step right inside it to look at all the wonderful baked goods. The dry cleaner man also picked up my dad’s shirts and suits to be cleaned. And I certainly remember Twin Pines and Milky’s Movie Party! Going with my brownie troop to the dairy, itself , was a very exciting experiemce for a seven year old!
I forgot about the ‘Breadman’ which was Awrey’s Bakery. We had that truck, too. My mom wouldn’t let us get anything but bread
I was on Milky’s Party Time! Somehow, Michigan Bell Telephone, where my father worked, got a bunch of us on the show! I was so excited!
Oh,how I love reading these comments! Even though times were hard,I have warm memories of the Fuller Brush Man,the Watkins man,the Avon lady and,because of our Italian immigrant status,we had a friend deliver imported olive oil in beautiful large tins!Also, I am old enough to remember the ice truck delivering ice blocks for our ice box.When I was tall enough to reach the sign in our front window,I had the job of placing in an upright position the card that indicated if we needed 25,50,75 or 100 pounds of ice! Then,of course,we had a fruit and vegetable peddler ,a scrap collector and last but not least the milkman.We did have a milk chute and a laundry chute in the bungalow we moved into when I was ten.Thanks for the memories!xo
What a fun post! As I read I thought about my neighborhood in NJ. We had guys who would walk down the street yelling, “clothes props!” And I would ride the bread man’s route with him and eat brownies. Our mailman was Charley. And every now and then the little truck would come around with the merry go round on it and we could ride for a dime. Kit
A truck with a merry-go-round? How cool!!
Stay safe, Kit.
I have lived all my life in Ky–childhood years in a very, very tiny farming community–no cities!! Since we were sharecroppers, milk, butter, eggs were provided by our animals and chickens. Gardens provided most of our meals. However, one grocer had a ‘huckster’ which was an enclosed truck w/shelves for grocery items, drove throughout the community to sell the items. I don’t think Mymaw ever bought much (no money) but she did trade eggs and butter for coffee and sugar. I think maybe this was a fulltime venture for the grocer because he drove all over the community (different days for various areas). Our route was every other week. No service in winter!! That era would certainly be a ‘foreign’ concept to younger generations !! stay healthy !!
What great memories, Linda!
Stay safe!
We had a donut truck that would come around every couple of weeks. It was actually a bakery truck but all the kids in the neighborhood cared about were the donuts. 10 cents a piece. It was a pale yellow van that would open in the back and there all the beautiful donuts would be displayed.
I could go for a donut truck right about now…
I could, too!
Thanks, Andrea.
Stay safe.
I remember our milkman, Bill. He did his route through our neighborhood and the next one down the road. We lived out in the country. If my friend and I could get to the end of our road to meet him, he would stop and pick us up and we would ride in the back where all the ice was and chip some off for a cool treat. Yeah, ice w a bit of sawdust. Yumm! Alone in a truck with no back windows with Bill. He would then finish that part of the route, and when he got to our house, we would jump off yelling our thanks. When I told my children this, their eyes were as wide as saucers and kept shaking their heads, amazed I am still alive! Then, when I was about 4 yrs old and we still lived in Chicago in a brownstone (around 1953-54), I remember when the coal man came and the coal would come down the chute. Standing there amazed, breathing in coal dust in my little lungs. Ahhhh, good times!! Remember grocery shopping when we got S&H Green stamps and loading up those little books saving for some treasures for our house?Those were the days, my friend!!!!! Love the pottery piece!! So many treasures to discover!
There’s something wonderfully Frank Capra about you riding with the milkman! I remember Green Stamps! My mom collected them!
Stay safe, Chris!
These are lovely stories, Claudia; a way of life so many of us do miss, when things seemed easier instead of too much technology of today. You’re causing me to reminisce now …
I remember the Fuller Brush man; the Avon Lady. The Fuller guy had good-quality stuff, and my mother developed a nice relationship with Mrs. Belden, the Avon Lady, who came to the house for most of my youth and beyond (my mom didn’t get out much, so I think she enjoyed the friendship as well as the fun of sampling products; I can never, nor do I want to ever, forget the pleasant scent of the Avon face cream that Mother always used from Avon for essentially my entire life).
Our neighbor drove a Helms Bakery truck which was a mid-century, SoCalif institution. Another aroma that I’ll always remember, when he’d open up the big back doors of the truck with all of its display trays of freshly-baked bread … and the cookie drawers. Even if you weren’t in our neighborhood where he lived, you knew the Helms truck had arrived with its ‘toot-toot’ of the horn, just an unmistakable sound. When we’d hover around his truck at the day’s end, home from his route (with his goods I assume now soon-to-be-classified-as ‘day old’), he always had a spare cookie left over for us kids (fond remembrance of big, round, vanilla-y sugar cookies with colorful sprinkles).
We had the milk chute of which you speak in our former house which was built in 1923. We’d thought it to be for ice although we could never quite work out how it would have worked, so it makes sense it was a milk chute that, over the years, they’d sealed between outside and inside, probably indeed to keep somebody from breaking in by going thru to the other side to unlock the back door. Interesting; you just solved the mystery for me!
I miss a lot of things. I miss rotary-dial telephones; that SOUND. That FEEL of finger in the dial.
Mostly I miss my town’s Main Street as it was, until the 1990s when it began to deteriorate as a lot of Main Street USAs in the U.S. Too many malls squeezing out the Mom & Pop establishments; a variety of reasons, I guess. Not too long from when customers started doing more purchasing online, too. But in my ‘prime time’ of it, from the 50s thru the 80s, especially I suppose in the 60s-70s, there was no need to ever leave the town to shop anywhere else because we had absolutely everything we needed right here; and, oh, how I miss some of my favorite small shops; just wonderful clothing stores, drug stores, gift shops, shoe stores, the Sears catalog store, the JC Penney where they kept the ladies’ lingerie/’underthings’ in discreet little drawers in rows of burnished-wood cabinets, jewelry stores with items of affordable quality and uniqueness, flower shops, clock & watch repair, individual stores for appliances and floor coverings, photo studios and framing stores (which also displayed good, local art for sale), a few good reupholstery shops, of course the TV stores where you could buy a television set or the early stand-alone stereo cabinets (‘ Sight and Sound”, and they also did TV repair because the televisions had tubes you could replace), shoe repair & scissor-sharpening inside the feed store where you could buy garden seeds, bales of hay, pet food; the tiny drive-thru dairy hut for milk/butter/eggs, the A&W drive-in with car hops and those amazing root-beer floats, a few favorite lunch counters/coffee shops on Main, stationery stores with any kind of little thing you needed for your desk at home (which also had available to buy, newspapers and magazines, comic books, etc. [a sort of combination store/newstand]). And we had some stately banks, with the gorgeous marble floors and counters; grand entrances with ornate iron grill work; just pristine places of elegance and a certain refinement. (Everything is so different now; where I am is too casual; we’ve lost an element of sophistication which wasn’t a bad thing, in a small town or a big town. Southern California was always casual but I remember when it wasn’t sloppy.)
I miss the 5 & Dimes which had such an assortment of necessary and unnecessary little things, but where there was a section with bolts of fabric and drawers of dress patterns, a small department where you could get embroidery hoops, thread and pre-printed cloths; another area of the store where you could find scrapbooks and photo albums to fill; an ‘art’ section with mosaic and painting kits; and it’s also where we could buy some affordable 45rpm records for our ‘record players’ at home (affordable, as on babysitting money where we got paid the going rate of 50 cents per hour, no matter how many kids you were looking after when you were a teen) or buy a tube of lipstick to swipe on once out of sight of Mom, when we were all of age 12. Of course Mom remembered when the Rexall Drug had a soda fountain but that was before I was born. You also had the smaller automotive stores where you could get tires or have some work done on your car whereas today I feel like everybody just goes to Walmart for car tires.
We had the coolest, sprawling ‘place’ just outside of town in the late 1970s/early 1980s which began as a farmstand; the ‘farm’ was surrounded by orchards and row crops. But it also became a nursery and a sort of mercantile, so it was half outside/half inside shopping. They had incredible potted plants and ceramic planters along with the ever-popular in that era ‘macrame’ pot hangers. But also very boho accoutrements for home like fringed throw pillows, candles, table scarves and other ‘tapestries’; baskets & rugs. As you said, Claudia, from that time period, so much was of the ‘naturals’ in color like the earth tones but also rugs and other textiles in rustic weaves. Oh my did I love this place; I spent hours there. They’d do the most interesting ‘rooms’ (for display of their wares for purchase), like take a very large (small-paisley) scarf or length of madras-style fabric and hang it from the room’s four ceiling corners to create a sort of canopy/tent-effect over the space, almost like a casbah sort of feel. I remember going into Pier 1 Imports in those days, too, where they’d hang hand-painted paper Japanese umbrellas upside down from the ceiling and I also thought that was a very intriguing look for a space, just as much as (and they did this, too) hanging decorative paper lanterns from the ceiling of different sizes & height.
We had a ‘general store’ which was really more of a higher-end gift shop of international treasures (started from long-time residents of the town who also had a furniture store) and I’d shopped there for 15 years before the building burned to the ground (not from wildfire; just some other problem in an old building of which I can’t recall the details; I was living out of town when it happened). I’d furnish my first apartment in the early 70s with small things I could accessorize with, such as modest accent pieces like a ceramic or two for an end table; I remember having a couple of basket-vases filled with straw flowers (straw flowers were kind of a thing at the time, more natural than plastic or fabric flowers). I remember they had apples made of wood, painted a flat red; looked good in a wood salad bowl as a centerpiece for a table. But it’s also where I collected things I still have, like some very-good-quality Christmas decorations; things made in Germany, Poland, England. Like tabletop decorations. Of course also for a Christmas tree; but, no plastic; these were the days before so much was made in China. It’s more the stuff of paper, wood or glass. More of the ‘unique’ rather than made with mass production. The proprietor had wonderful kitchen things, like stoneware crocks and the kind of tablecloths you always keep, which last; also truly beautiful dolls (a pair of which I bought and who I bring out at Christmas), storybooks for children; one entire glass cabinet of handmade lead soldiers, really-excellent craftsmanship. I guess so much of this sort of thing can be found on Etsy in this day & age.
I miss the record-album, stand-alone stores of the 1970s; was before they started combining them with VHS rentals. Just case after case of long-playing records to buy, the 33rpms, of everything we were hearing, initially only on AM radio (American Top 40 with Casey Kasem; my teen years!) or maybe the occasional variety show on TV, like Ed Sullivan or of course American Bandstand with Dick Clark .
And I must admit that I totally miss full-serve gasoline stations! I liked it when somebody else pumped my fuel, cleaned my windows, checked under the hood to make sure I had enough oil and water for the engine plus enough air for the tires; we paid nothing extra for such great friendliness and service by the gas station attendant!
I loved 5 and 10 cents stores. I really miss them. And I’ve written about record stores and how much I miss them. The neighborhood feeling of mom and pop stores and a main street was even in my hometown which was a large suburb of Detroit. All of that has gone away to a mass of chain stores. It’s so sad.
Thanks, Vicki.
Stay safe!
I do remember when the waffle ice cream cone only cost five cents at the Thrifty Drug store, but it was never good enough for me. I wanted the 31-Flavors store’s sugar cone of something other than vanilla, strawberry or chocolate (the cone’s cost of which was a whopping twelve cents at this Baskin-Robbins ‘exotic’ ice cream store chain [another SoCalif icon]).
Of course the Saturday matinee at the ‘show’ (local movie theater with one big screen and some balcony seating) was only fifty cents. And you could sit in those big, plushy seats through two features, the best of which were the films from Disney. I’d pick up my box of Good & Plenty, Milk Duds and/or long-lasting candy sucker/lollipop (or Sugar Daddy on a stick) and I was good to go (never had quite the pocketbook for those delish-smelling hot dogs being roasted, or the popcorn and Coke). Fave childhood movies of Disney at the time: Pollyanna, Swiss Family Robinson, 101 Dalmatians. The Absent-Minded Professor, The Parent Trap. In Search of the Castaways, Miracle of the White Stallions. Summer Magic, The Moon-Spinners. The Three Lives of Thomasina. (Too many to mention; it was a glut of fun childhood movies and of course, at front/center, was Hayley Mills, and I know more than one woman my age who named her own daughter Hayley as a result of those films!)
I also remember when we went thru a phase in junior high of only wanting to wear suede moccasins with no soles for our feet, but then we somehow made the leap to retro saddle oxfords after tennis shoes (which thrilled my mother; she felt the oxfords were better for the growing feet). Wearing plastic pop beads around our necks was another odd craze at age 12. “Tent” dresses with empire waists at age 13. Knee socks and penny loafers at age 15 with wool-plaid, pleated skirts and fuzzy pullover sweaters (some kind of weird return to ‘preppy’ amid the ‘hippy’ era). And my uniform in the last year of high school, when the school officials finally let us wear plants/slacks which quickly turned to jeans, was a pair of slouch Levis (bell-bottom jeans came about five years later) which my brother had broken in and outgrown; a tee-shirt (unless a cotton peasant blouse) and a bandana wrapping my head like a kerchief tied at the nape. Oh, and big but thin gold hoops in my ears. This lasted til I had to change my clothing style for a conventional office job while still in my teens. (Before I’d graduated to the jeans/bandana look, we were wearing crocheted vests with out school outfits, accessorized with matching crocheted snoods to gather up our long hair into a bun.) When I was age 20, I was tucking long pants into knee-high leather boots with chunky stacked heels. I had fake Diane von Furstenberg wrap dresses for ‘work’. We had more colorful jeans in the mid-70s (Ditto brand) and I loved cute, chunky-platform shoes from Candie’s. They were girly.
(But I often now wonder WHAT we were thinking in how we dressed at the time!)
I wore bandanas on my head for what seemed like years. I have a photo of me somewhere with one on. Lots of peasant blouses, Earth shoes, wide legged bellbottoms. Long hair parted down the middle.
xo
Bonjour Claudia,
I see that you are making a big clean in your shed. I have idea that some stuff will be keeped and will go to your house (ah ah !)
The more I age the more I tend to get rid of stuff around me. I have virtually no trinkets at home. These are dusty stuff for me (ah ah !), but I fully understand that others like to surround themselves with these kinds of things that have sentimental value.
I like the minimalist style of some japanese homes. I want a home with the less things possible but my husband is the “conservative” type. He doesn’t throw anything away and it despairs me :o). Sometimes I throw something in the bin and later I see that my husband has been at it and has kept it !! at least my studio (a tiny room) is not cluttered with things I no longer use. I throw a lot : old watercolors and other stuff that is not necessary in my point of view.
Stay safe you and Don. A la prochaine ! et bonjour du Luxembourg :o)
I’m not a minimalist at all, but I do see the value of purging those things I no longer have room for. And that’s what we’re doing! We’ve thought about this for years and I’m so glad we’re finally doing it.
Stay safe, Helene! xo
Your memories touched a nerve! We had a milk man who left the bottles in a wire basket on our porch each morning from the Golden Arrow Dairy. The Helms Bread Truck guy would come around every week or so selling bread (duh!) and other baked goods. Just around the corner and up the street was the egg farm where my mom would send us to a carton with strict instructions not to go inside the shed. Rumor had it he was a bit of a perv (I’m sure that’s unfair, but who knows–he was always OK with us). Oh, and the Ice Cream truck! It was southern cal and ice cream season all year round. I can still hear that tinny tune. The Fuller Brush guy would come inside for a cup of coffee, and the insurance man would visit quarterly. My mom had a big crush on him. It must have been really. nice for all the old retired military farts in our town to have that kind of regular contact when they weren’t outside driving in their giant Buicks, Cadillacs, and Lincolns in dangerous fashion to the grocery or post office. Honestly, they all had tiny hands and you could barely see their thick glasses or tight white curls above the steering wheels. We always had ranch houses with no basements, but a laundry or milk chute sounds fun, especially when you got locked out. Thanks for the big smiles and memories of a time when most of us felt safer and life was a wonder.
I loved the sound of the ice cream truck. It still gets me when I hear one somewhere. They aren’t around here, of course, because we’re in the country, but I have heard them in the NYC area.
Stay safe, Nora!
sorry for my misinterpretation!
and yeah, seeing the same trends over and over practically everywhere is tiresome. i’ve never been one for anything trendy except when i was in high school. by graduation, i’d learned to better ‘march to my own drum’, thanks to my much-loved and very wise parents. :)
happy, safe thursday!
kathy in iowa
xoxo
I certainly remember the milk chute and the laundry chute. In fact, my brother still has the laundry chute in his house. What a fun memory of the Strawberry Man! We grew up in a great neighborhood.
Of course as you said, those times seemed idealistic but we know bad things happened.
I love the jar. I have 2 vases with a similar glaze.
Does Steven not have the milk chute any longer?
Stay safe, Kay.