I remember a time when the washing machine would foam up if you put too much soap in it and flood the washroom floor. The washroom floor was, as often as not, the kitchen, and the washing machine was a portable that hooked up to the sink. A clothes dryer, for most people, was an aluminum tree with outspread arms draped with 1�4-inch cotton rope that stood in a cement block in the backyard. The alternative, the Laundromat, could suck up a whole day.
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For kids, the good old days included doctor visits in which you had a 50-percent chance of getting stuck with a dull hypodermic needle. The throwaway concept was yet to be born. They just popped the same needle into a sterilizer and used it again. Penicillin shots were the cure-all, until they realized that you could become resistant. When I was a kid they had not figured this out so I became a virtual pin cushion.
If the doctor came to the house it meant you were too sick to go to his office, so a shot was guaranteed. Medicine by mouth usually meant a foul-tasting gagger liquid, but was still preferred to being stabbed for your own good. Oh how I hated and feared that little black bag.
Major diseases that lurked in the dark recesses of our minds included polio, tuberculosis (an affliction of the city, where large numbers of people lived in close proximity), infantile paralysis (we weren’t sure what this was, we just knew it was bad) and whatever it was that put you into an iron lung. I don’t remember cancer being much discussed, probably because there were so many other things that could get you first. On the other hand, we weren’t afraid of measles when we probably should have been.
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Clothes shopping involved finding clothes that were just the right amount too big, so you would grow into them. Of course by then they were usually worn out. Rain and snow wear had to be huge because you didn’t use it every day so it had to last while you shot up another 6 inches and grew another two shoe sizes. My rubber galoshes qualified as flotation devices.
Schools had rules for attire. My seventh-grade teacher once stood me up in front of the room as a bad example because I was wearing a “dress� shirt with no tie and the top button undone. Blue jeans were a reason to be sent home.
But the rebel lives! Now I sometimes actually wear a dress shirt, top button undone, with blue jeans. Just not in public.
Bill Abrams resides, and wistfully remembers the past, in Pine Plains.
