Welcome back to the good old days with Ray.
I have my share of childhood days growing up with brothers Alec and Scot in Northfield, Illinois in 1945 to 1949.  I will place those memories at the end of Ray’s article.
If you have any memories to share with us, please send them in.
Enjoy.
Donald
 
THE GOOD OLD DAYS PART 1
Introduction
Above is a photo of a baker’s cart, referred to later in this article.
When I was young my elderly relatives would refer nostalgically to “the good old days”. They would then compare current days with the old days, very much to the detriment of the current days.
I wonder whether my readers had the same experience?
To put this into context, many of these relatives had been born in the latter part of the 1800s, and they had seen huge events, ranging from the 1890s Depression, the First World War, the Great Depression to the Second World War.
The period between the First and Second World Wars
 
Australia, and probably England, did not see a lot of progress in this period for the average man in the street. The period was dominated by the Great Depression, when survival was the main objective. Many men were completely out of work, and others only worked one week in three.

Although there had been considerable improvements with motor vehicles this did not flow through to the average family, who could not afford a car.

The position in the United States was somewhat better because the Government had a plan involving supplementing the economy with large public expenditure, which helped the situation.

The Second World War
This period (when I was born) was obviously devoted to the war effort, no progress was made for the average household, and this applied during the rest of the 1940s in many respects, while the nations recovered from the war. It is this latter period which I remember as a small boy because they directly involved me.
Baker’s cart
 
One of my chores at home was putting the bread away from the bread box at the side of the house. The bread carter had a horse and cart like the one shown earlier in this article. The carter put the bread in a large basket which he took to the houses, leaving the bread in a special wooden box at the side of each house.
When the bread carter had emptied his basket he called out to the horse, who then walked along the street to meet him.
The bakery was only a short distance up the street so the bread was still very warm when it was delivered to us. We loved breaking open the loaves, which easily broke into two parts, to pull out some warm bread and eat it (the loaves were not sliced).

Milk deliveries

Another chore was collecting the milk early in the morning. The milk man also had a horse and cart.
He had big drums of milk in the cart and a small drum which he filled from the big drums.
He carried the small drum to fill up our big billy can which we left in the milk box on the side fence of our house.

Ice chest
Another chore was emptying the water out of the bottom of the ice chest. We did not have a refrigerator until I was older, instead we had an ice chest which was the shape of a small refrigerator.

The ice man would bring a large block of ice every second or third day, open the top door of the ice chest and put the ice in. Food was kept in the middle part. The cold air flowed down to keep the food cold. The water from the melted ice ran down a pipe and into a tray at the bottom, which had to be emptied. In hot weather the ice man would chip some ice off the block for us to suck.

Collecting bottles

Another chore was to put used bottles in a box, ready for the bottle collector. The bottle collector had a horse and cart, which he periodically took around the streets to buy bottles. He had a loud voice, and his distinctive call of “Bottle O” could be heard from quite a distance.
 Clothes Props

In a similar vein, a “clothes prop man” came around the streets periodically. He sold clothes props, which were poles about two and a half metres long cut from local trees and were used to raise up rope clothes lines which were strung across back yards. He walked along carrying the props on his shoulders

Other deliveries

Households in many suburbs also had meat, grocery and vegetable deliveries. This was very convenient because most houses did not have telephones or the means of carrying orders (although in my family’s case I often used my billy cart).

This conveniently brings me to the subject of billy carts.

Billy carts

A major advantage of billy carts was that a reasonably handy father could make one for almost no expense, in contrast to scooters and bicycles. All the father needed was a wooden box (possibly a fruit box), a length of timber (possibly from a storage crate), four wheels (from an abandoned stroller or pram) and a long bolt (the only item that needed to be purchased, from the local hardware store).

Not shown in the photo is a brake, a piece of timber which jammed down on a back wheel.

Billy carts were great fun in the afternoons after school or on the weekends because we could go fast down hills on the streets or footpaths. We sat in the box part with our legs out straight and steered by pulling on the rope.

It was fun to have races.
 
Helping with clothes washing
Another area where I would help my mother was the family washing. This was boiled in a large tub called a “copper”, heated by gas or firewood. The clothes were then pulled out with a stick into an adjacent tub and rinsed.

Finally the clothes were put through a wringer (see above photo) to remove the water, where I had the choice of turning the handle, or feeding the washing into the wringer, being careful to avoid getting my fingers caught in the rollers.
Conclusion

What do you think, were my experiences really indicative of “the good old days” or is it merely a case of “absence making the heart grow fonder”?

In a later article I will test this theory with anecdotes about steam trains, trams, double decker buses and other memorabilia of yesteryear.
Don’s Distant Memories from Childhood in Northfield Illinois (25 miles north of Chicago)
 
  • In the mid-1940’s, Alec, Scot and I had a lot of fun as kids living at 221 Bristol Street Northfield Illinois. (After all these decades, I still remember the address…amazingly.)
  • Like Ray we had chores. After the war when butter was in short supply, the Illinois passed a protective law. The Illinois and Wisconsin dairy farmers lobbies held sway over the legislature, thus a law that margarine had to be sold white without coloring.  To get around it, white margarine was sold in soft plastic packaging with a red dot. When the red dye seal was broken, we brothers were allowed to squeeze the packaged artificial butter until it took the color of real butter.

  • One year I got a bow and arrow for a birthday gift. I could shoot the arrows a long way. Well, one day a low-flying blimp was flying over the house, when I had the bow and arrow in hand. I think I could have hit the blimp.  I am glad I had the sense not to do it, but I have often wondered.

  • During the war our father flew navy cargo planes to Australia. After discharge in 1945 he opened a Chicago carpentry shop. He built a wonderful 2-story playhouse for us in the back yard. Around 1947 he changed careers into advertising. In 1949 we moved to the west coast of Florida.
Please share some of your memories and pictures for next year’s additions.  
 

If you have any old Christmas card photos send them in for the December edition. I have our 1948 family photo!