Recent Comments

1. about 4 hours ago on Pluggers

   I would have to agree with that! At least, in those days, you didn’t have to worry about someone mugging you because they believe you might be carrying a $1,000 phone in your purse! In the early advent of cell phones – it was cheaper than your average phone bill. But, then, with all of the extras tacked on to cell phone service – people are paying phone bills which are higher than anyone in my generation could have even dreamed that they might one day be paying for a telephone! Also, you lived with a LOT of other interests which did NOT center around your phone – Your boss probably wouldn’t call you at midnight to tell you about something extra you needed to do – If you were asleep when the phone rang – and there were no answering machines – your boss would just have to wait until you were near the telephone and awake before calling you!

2. about 5 hours ago on Pluggers

   Actually – I predate the time when you needed to have a number in order to call someone – One of my aunts had a wall phone with a crank. When you grabbed the handle and began cranking, the sweet lady would say “Operator” – and you would say – Operator, I would like to speak to my sister, whose name is — and she lives in city and state – and the operator would connect you, since your sister was usually the only person in that city and state with her name who had a telephone. I also predate the time when you needed an address to be able to mail a letter – There were eleven kids in my Dad’s family and 10 kids in my mothers family. So we lived in a small town with a hundred or more people who had the same last name, since most of my aunts and uncles lived in the same town. One of my aunts lived in a different town and had married a gentleman who had around 11 siblings – most of whom also lived in the same town. When my cousins wrote to me, they just put my name, city and town on the envelope and the letters always got to me even though there were a hundred or more people in the same town with the same last name. Likewise, when we wrote our cousins – we just needed their name, city and state – and, even though there were a hundred or more people with that same last name in their town – the right cousins always received the letters. My sister actually worked as a telephone operator, living in a nearby town. She was stunned when she realized her 9 to 5 job meant 9 PM to 5 AM – The rates always reduced at 10 PM and were reduced until around 6 AM – so she was amazed at the number of people who made calls during those hours! She finally decided it was too spooky to to walk to work after dark and return home before dawn most days – so she finally gave up that job and came back to our town and worked at the Mom and Pop drug store! Not totally convinced all of the technology has really benefitted us.

3. 2 days ago on Pluggers

   You’re probably a SENIOR Plugger if you remember that, once upon a time ALL phones were hooked to one spot in the house and had a little dial with numbers 1 through zero on them and you had to dial the right numbers in the right sequence in order to make it through to your party. You are even a MORE Senior Plugger if you remember that, once upon a time, most phones only had ONE number – zero – and when you dialed THAT number, a sweet lady would answer the phone and ask you who you wanted to talk to. And IF you said Joe Doaks in Chicago, Illinois, you could be reasonably certain she would find your party right away because there was probably only one person in Chicago named Joe Doaks who had a telephone.. You are even more senior if you remember the time the telephone company representative came around to your house and asked if you would like to have a telephone and your folks told them that there was no reason for you to have a telephone because you didn’t know anyone who had a telephone, so there would be no one you would need to call. OH – and you took pictures with a little black box called a camera. And, after you had taken a bunch of pictures , you took a little roll of stuff called “film” out of the little black box and took it to the drug store, where they wrapped up the little roll and sent it off to a place called KODAK to get it developed. And you would keep checking back at the drug store until they told you that your pictures had been developed. And you took the pictures home and put little stickers on the corners and put them in a book called an album and 80 years later, you could STILL see those pictures because they had NEVER been on a computer page which crashed and dumped ALL of those pictures out into outerspace!

4. 2 days ago on Nancy Classics

   Little Lotta didn’t begin to make regular appearances until around 1953 and was popular up until 1993 – However, since Little Lotta’s size also seemed to give her super human strength, which she often used to dispatch bullies, maybe Sluggo SHOULD have been thinking about making the acquaintance of Lotta – since Sluggo seems to have a bad habit of frequently running into bullies!

5. 3 days ago on Nancy Classics

   I KNEW my memory wasn’t deceiving me – there WAS a time when Nancy and friends celebrated holidays! A little late for Go Comics to be finding it – but – better late than never! Is far this week – Sluggo has made plans to get a football game going, Nancy watchhed a baseball game, and Sluggo went to the movies. A pretty average week for the average third grade kid in the United States during 1950.

6. 18 days ago on Nancy Classics

   Oh – to be in third grade again – with a new dress to show off at the Labor Day Parade – when everyone else was too busy to notice!

7. 20 days ago on Nancy Classics

   GREAT to see Sluggo getting together with friends for fun and games.. It has been a banner week for Nancy and friends in the just being kids and getting together with friends and neighbors for some celebrations. Just in time for Labor Day too! Thumbs up on all counts.

8. 25 days ago on Nancy Classics

   Of course, life in cities was different—but most of the people in our community seldom, if ever , made it to a city. It would have been unlikely for anyone in our community—or nearby communities—to be excluding anyone. As a general rule, no one was ever officially “invited” to a barn dance. Because there was no electricity or major media, people usually learned about barn dances via word of mouth. Anyone who turned up with an instrument which they could play was welcome to take a turn at keeping the party going. The war ended in 1945 and our community, as well as adjacent communities—had quite a number of relatives still in Europe—who had gone through all of the paperwork necessary to make it possible for them to come to the United States—but when war broke out, all of those plans were put on hold and, consequently, many of the adults who had plans to come to this country never made it—but their orphaned children did. While I was in school, our school played host to orphaned children from Norway, Sweden, Germany, Italy, Greece and France—to name a few. All of them arrived in our community, knowing only a few phrases of English. All of them were eager to learn English and, I don’t know how widespread the one-room schoolhouse was in Europe, but no one in our school thought it was odd that 8th grade aged kids were sitting with the first graders to learn how to read and write in English. After all, ONLY the first graders had ever been in a class which was only for first and second graders! Most of the orphaned kids were adopted by the American relatives who had agreed to sponsor their families in the U.S. Most never learned what had happened to their birth families in Europe. ALSO – a number of soldiers returned from the front with wives who had been born in Europe. These ladies also enjoyed sitting in on first grade reading and writing classes. I don’t recall any of them ever being excluded from anything. We still had time for friends!

9. 26 days ago on Nancy Classics

   We didn’t get TV in our town until 1958, so we were probably the last generation to grow up without TV dominating our every waking moment. We lived in a farming community, so nearly everyone we knew got up around 4 AM to milk cows and gather eggs – then get washed up and head to school. The one-room school houses began to be phased out during the year before I entered first grade. No one we knew had any electricity until around 1947 – and most didn’t have telephones until much later than that. But we still had plenty of time for fun! Since no one had any electricity – and, therefore, no radio – when neighbors got together, neighbors brought fiddles, guitars, and acordians along with them and we could still have quite a party, One of my grandmothers played fiddle for barn dances, and one of my grandfathers played fiddle and called for the barn dances. I went to work for the local newspaper when I was 12 – worked as printers devil and local news correspondent. I called everyone in town and collected all of the news they wanted to share with friends. When I was 18, I had enough money to pay all of my my own tuition and take care of living expenses at business school – and even had enough to be able to stay at the school’s dorm. My folks and all my uncles and aunts worked in the fields when they were growing up, and had plenty of chores to do before and after schoool. My sister and I were driving trucks in the harvest field by the time we were 12. Even though we worked hard, we knew we were not alone – everyone we knew was doing the same thing. Newspapers of the 50s were just as full of stories about grim events as today’s newspapers – but we never let that stop us from taking time out to enjoy our relationships with family members, friends and neighbors.

10. 26 days ago on Mutt & Jeff

    LOOKS LIKE this guy was taking a bath in the days before the use of electricity became widespread. Electricity came to our town in 1947 – and, even then, it took everyone a while to get their houses wired for electricity. And, of course, electricity was available ONLY in town – it was not until several years later that outlying farms had access to electricity. We would go out in the pasture every morning to gather up dry cow pies in a burlap bag, then bring them home in stash them in a large empty oil drum, which we kept beside the front door – so the cow pies could “cure.” We used the cow pies for fuel in the KITCHEN stove. After supper on bath night, Mom would use the indoor clothes line to hang sheets around the kitchen and put kettles of water on the stove to get warm. We stood in the laundry wash tub and she poured water over us after we had been soaped up. After we kids had finished our baths, we got dressed in our warm PJs and headed upstairs, with a brick (which had been warming on the back of the cook stove) wrapped in a towel, to keep our feet warm in bed. Then the adults would take turns dousing each other with warm water from the kettles on the stove, until they were all clean. When I see Western movies with people having baths in regular bath tube UPSTAIRS – I always wonder who had to run up all those steps with buckets of warm water and whether or not any of the water was still warm by the time they got their buckets upstairs. When each bath was finished, we tossed the used water out onto the herb garden, which was usually growing beside the kitchen door. Looks like Jeff disturbed this guy while he was getting his washtub bath, and he decided to toss the water out on Jeff rather than onto the herb garden . The artwork looks like around the mid 50s, but I know people who lived on farms outside of our town who didn’t have electricity – and running water – until well into the 60s.