I Remember When

March 26th, 2008 | webmaster | Memory Lane

Now that I’m “old” I sometimes reflect upon the differences in how things are today compared to “the good ole’ days.” The following are some of the more vivid memories I have of growing up in what was certainly a different day. A few of these might be nice to go back to but I think we are all glad that most of them are in the past! - Kelly Baldwin

“I Remember When”

By Kelly Baldwin

A soft drink cost a nickel. (All but Coke were twelve ounces, too! Coke was bottled in the classic seven ounce, green, hourglass shaped bottle. All drinks were in glass; plastic was in its infancy and no one had yet thought to put drinks in cans.) All were “high test” too; no Splenda, no Sweet-n-low. Drinks were delivered in sturdy wooden crates. People found all kinds of uses for the drink companies’ crates. They sometimes even used them to hold up an old car while they worked on it! And everybody liked to use them for a seat around the old filling station.

“Nabs” were in square packages containing four of the crackers instead of the current six. A nab cost a nickel.

Stores carried a sweet cracker, or cookie, called a “Johnny Cake.” Johnny Cakes were kept in a large glass jar on the counter and cost 2 cents each. Both nabs and Johnny Cakes were wonderful with a nickel Pepsi. You could also buy a little package of salted peanuts for a nickel. Lots of people would pour the peanuts into their Pepsi and eat them as desired when they flowed out with the drink. The salt from the peanuts seemed to enhance the flavor of the Pepsi. You probably couldn’t do that today as it would be “politically incorrect.” I’m sure the government wouldn’t allow it because somebody might become choked on a peanut! How did we ever live to grow up?

Candy bars cost a nickel. A nickel Baby Ruth was a lot bigger back then than one is today that costs a dollar.

You didn’t have to lock your doors or take the keys out of your car.

If you ordered orange juice at a soda fountain the guy squeezed it from fresh oranges right in front of you.

“Coke” referred to a cola drink or else fuel for a blacksmith’s forge; not an illegal drug.

TV hadn’t yet been invented. I remember very well the first television I ever saw. It was in the store window of Mr. Abel Warren’s general store in Garland, NC. I was there with my granddaddy to pick up my aunt at the train station. I was around ten years old. I never lived in a house with a television until I was married! Some friends of my wife gave us an old television when we got married. Up until then, I listened to the radio. Radio back then carried a lot of serial programs with dramatic readers, etc. I loved programs like Roy Rogers, Tom Mix, and The Lone Ranger.

We didn’t have telephones. Nobody (in Abbottsburg where I grew up) had them. They did have phones over in Bladenboro. We finally got phone service when the Rural Cooperative, still called Star Telephone, came in. I can’t remember just how old I was, but I believe I must have been in high school. When we did get phone service it was on a “party line.” There
would usually be as many as five families sharing the same line. When you wanted to make a call you had to pick up and listen to see if anyone was using the line. If they were you either had to wait until they finished talking or else break in and ask them to let you use the line. (I’m told that there were telephones in Abbottsburg before I was born, but apparently the
company went out of business. It had been owned by Samuel Alexander Long Johnson and his son, Theodore, operated it.)

We didn’t have a refrigerator. When I was little, we had an old ice-box. An ice-box looked a little like a refrigerator, but it had no motor and no wiring or compressor. It consisted of an upper compartment into which you placed a small block of ice and a lower compartment for your food. An ice truck ran a regular route about twice a week and you told the man how much ice you wanted. He would cut it off a large block using an ice pick. I think the large blocks weighed around 300 pounds. They were carried on a truck with a special home-made wooden body. We always got a piece that weighed around 35 pounds and, as I remember, cost around 35 cents. The ice box had a tube running down from it through a hole in the floor for the dripping water to escape. People who couldn’t afford an ice box simply dug a hole in the ground. They would line the sides of the hole with boards and put their block of ice down in this hole along with their food and cover it all with whatever they could find; boards, canvas, etc. and this became their “refrigerator.”

Most people didn’t have electricity. We did at my home, but my granddaddy didn’t. I remember that he once bought an elaborate Carbide light system. It consisted of a metal tank buried in the ground. Inside this tank, you placed a dry chemical powder into a tank of water. A chemical reaction took place and produced Carbide gas. The gas was piped
through ½ inch iron pipe into the house and to each room. The pipes ran to a ceiling light fixture which you could light up. They even had a Carbide refrigerator at one point. The system apparently didn’t work too well for I don’t think they used it very long. Pretty soon the “REA” came through and brought electricity to the countryside.

We didn’t have an indoor toilet. My daddy was one of the few around who had indoor plumbing (running water) but he didn’t have a toilet. I remember when my mother hired Cook Brothers Plumbing Co. in Elizabethtown to come over and install a toilet. I remember an old man digging a hole right by himself for the septic tank. I thought that was a tremendous accomplishment for one man to do by himself. (He was digging in “gumbo” clay; the kind that sticks to your shovel until you scrape it off.) There was no such thing as a back hoe. Up until that time, we used an old wooden “out-house.” I well remember how awfully cold it would be to have to go out to that old out-house in the cold of winter. We do not know how to appreciate the wonderful conveniences we enjoy today without so much as a thought to what went before. Toilet “tissue” usually consisted of the old Sears or Montgomery Ward catalog. . . On the farm people sometimes used a corn cob! Gross? Well. . . .maybe – but it was a fact!

Police cars had red lights instead of blue. Fire trucks and ambulances also had red and it was difficult to know which was coming. They later discovered that, scientifically, blue light is easier to see at a greater distance, so they changed.

A first-class postage stamp cost 3 cents; a post card a penny.

There were no charcoal grills. (Let alone gas grills!)

There were very few washing machines (and no dryers) and the few there were had the old timey “wringers” that you passed the clothes through to press out most of the water. People typically washed once a week, usually on Saturday. They used a “wash pot.” A wash pot was a large cast iron pot that would hold about fifteen gallons. You built a fire under it, heated up the water, and literally boiled the clothes. People used a green wooden stick to stir the clothes and to eventually lift them out of the hot water. They used “lye” soap, too. Lye soap was home-made. Every country woman knew the formula and the technique for making this soap. I have seen my grandmother make it many times. She used lard and lye, along with water. I cannot recall the exact procedure, but I remember that she cooked it in a wash pot. It became a thick, light-brown slurry which she poured into a large flat pan and allowed it to cool. Just before it solidified, she would cut it with a knife into little blocks, or bars, just like you would cut a sheet cake at a birthday party. (I still have my family’s old wash pot!)

There was a steam powered passenger train that made a daily trip through Abbottsburg and Bladenboro from Hamlet to Wilmington and back. The train also carried the mail. Being an old railroader himself, my daddy once arranged for me to have a ride on the steam engine with engineer Mr. Arie Edwards. I climbed aboard at Abbottsburg and my folks picked me up at Clarkton. Mr. Edwards gave me the royal treatment, letting me blow the steam whistle at every crossing along the way. It was a memorable experience for a little boy. I must have been six or seven. That’s another thing you couldn’t do today because of all the insurance regulations. I doubt if they even had insurance back then. . .

The first diesel-electric engine came along pulling the passenger train. Compared to the old steam engine (which was angular and had lots of little details and piping all over it) it was very streamlined and aerodynamic. People nicknamed it the “Boll Weevil” for whatever reason, probably because of its streamlined outline, sort of like a beetle. Locals would say, “Is it
time for the Boll Weevil?” (Most people didn’t enunciate correctly and called it the “Bo Weevil.”) The twice daily arrival of the train was quite a social event in Abbottsburg. The train carried the mail in those days and people would congregate around the Post Office awaiting the “putting up” of the mail so they could see if they had received any. While they waited,
they would get caught up on all the latest gossip! My mother was the post master and I spent lots of time around that old post office.

Doctors made house calls. Back then practically no one had a car. Doctors did. It was more practical, therefore, for the doctor to come to the sick than the opposite. My mother was attended by Dr. Dewey Bridger, on a house call, on the occasion of my birth! C. A. Shaw went with him to drive. C. A. has told me many times about this.

There were no tractors. I remember when my uncle got his first tractor. It was a Farmall Cub; a tiny little tractor with nine horsepower. But back then, that was a big deal. My granddaddy was what they called a “two horse farmer.” He had two mules and tended about twenty acres.

People carried their own corn to the “grist” mill and had it ground into corn meal. I have helped my granddaddy do this chore many, many times. We would go to the “corn crib” and select only the best ears. We had to shuck them, then shell the corn and bag it up. There were two mills in the area and we sometimes went to one, sometimes the other. The miller
earned his living by taking a “toll” of the meal. He would dip three or four scoops of meal into our bag and one into his bag, etc. He would then sell his share of this meal to people who did not have corn of their own, thus earning money for his work. In my lifetime I have carried my own corn to Mr. Lon Thompson’s mill at Abbottsburg and had meal ground.

There were no power lawn mowers. Most people didn’t have any kind of mower. Those who did would have a handpushed reel mower. Since they had no way to control the grass, many people kept their yards completely bare of grass. They did this by judiciously chopping down any grass with a hoe. They would “sweep” the yards about every week using a
“brush broom” made of a bundle of twigs. My folks had a grass lawn and a push reel mower. When I was little, I would try to push that old mower and the exertion would invariably make my nose bleed. My granddaddy had a bare yard and no mower. People also often had large shade trees around their homes. The shade was wonderful in the hot weather as they
didn’t have air conditioning either. That same shade also helped keep the grass down. Later, in winter, when the leaves were off, the sun could reach the house and help warm it. We need to give lots of credit to folks of old for their ingenuity.

Houses had no insulation. I can remember, at my old home place in Abbottsburg, the house was so open that, when the wind would blow, (through the cracks around the door.) The linoleum floor covering would puff up and make a rocking chair rock gently!

People would “scour” their floors using lye soap and sand along with a scrub brush made out of corn shucks. They would have a little drain hold drilled through the floor over in the lowest corner for the water to drain through. My grandmother would do this about twice a year; I have seen her do this many times.

We received world news from the “newsreel” at the movie theater. Few people had telephones, there was no television, and no satellite. World news was, at best, weeks old. When you went to the movies, they would come on with a “newsreel”, then a cartoon followed by the previews, then the feature.

Most people raised most of their food. Almost everyone canned all the food they could during the growing season. For many years, the local agriculture teachers operated “canneries” to which people could bring their foods and have them safely canned and hermetically sealed in tins. There was one of these at the Clarkton school. Others, like my family, canned at
home using glass jars. There were no freezers. Farmers raised, slaughtered, and cured their own meat. My granddaddy was known far and wide for his ability to cure meats.

There were no supermarkets. You went to the grocery store and either gave your list to the grocer or called it out to him and he would gather up the items for you. The Bridger Co. Store was the last store of this kind in our area. It was in the building most recently occupied by the Traxx Restaurant.

There were no interstate highways. The first time I went to Kansas City, Missouri (to attend the National FFA Convention) we had to drive on two-lane roads. The trip took about three days one way. Now we can easily do it in a day and a half.

There was no daylight savings time.

There were no jet airplanes. My wife and I used to enjoy going to the Raleigh Durham Airport just to watch the old gasoline powered Eastern Airlines airplanes arrive and take off. When they started up one of the old radial engines, there would be a lot of belching of black smoke. This always worried me for I thought it looked unsafe!

School busses had benches running lengthwise rather than seats as we know them today. When the driver braked hard, everyone slid down to the front.

Milk came in glass bottles. You returned the bottles to the store for credit. They had little cardboard caps that were pressed into a little groove around the inside of the lip of the bottle. At school, we were given little half-pint bottles. Once in a long while, they would give us chocolate milk. That made for a good day! At home, you got milk in a quart bottle. Creameries
ran regular milk routes and the “milkman” delivered right to your door. What you did was to place your order (regular order) and they would come by and set your milk on the steps. You would then receive a monthly bill just like any other service. My wife just reminded me that the milkman came around five thirty a. m. and would usually awaken the babies!

Dimension lumber was larger than it is today. A two by four used to measure one and five eighths by three and five eighths inches; today it measures one and one half by three and one half. Imagine how much fun this causes it to be when you remodel an old house and try to make a wall work out flush with this new smaller lumber. A two by four ain’t necessarily a
two by four!

Gasoline was dispensed from a hand pump. you pumped the desired amount of gasoline from an underground tank up into a ten gallon graduated glass cylinder mounted atop a lighthouse-shaped pump housing. If the customer wanted three gallons, you simply pumped until the gas in the cylinder rose to the three gallon mark. (The pump was controlled by a long handle mounted on the side of the housing.) Then, you inserted the delivery nozzle into the car’s tank, squeezed the delivery valve in the handle, and let the gasoline flow by gravity into the tank. I used to enjoy pumping gas for my uncle at his old country store. I was reminded of this recently while driving north along highway 421 in Sampson County. We passed an old station in front of which was one of these old pumps; painted to look like a lighthouse! These are very rare nowadays because people snapped up all of the old glass cylinders when they ceased to be used for gasoline in order to make homemade aquariums from them.

There was quiet. Sometimes, you could pause, and listen, and hear nothing. Try that today! A few years ago we vacationed at the Grand Canyon. There, they are taking steps to preserve the natural quiet. They have banned aircraft from flying over some 47 square miles of the canyon and are doing other things to preserve the quiet and to try to improve the air quality. At my home now I can very seldom identify a time of absolute quiet. Too bad; this is something you never think about missing until it is gone.

Schools were heated by free-standing pot-bellied coal stoves. The old school at Abbottsburg had a big coal pile out back and you had to keep going out and bringing in buckets of coal in the winter. The teacher had to come early and build a fire each day. I have brought in many buckets of coal as I went to first grade there . . . The teacher used a “Hectograph” to make copies to hand out to us. The Hectograph was a wooden frame filled with a half-inch thick layer of clear gelatin. They had “master sheets” on which the teacher wrote, or drew, whatever she wanted to copy. The master sheet was in two parts. After writing on it, you separated the two parts and pressed the master firmly onto the gelatin. (The other part was covered with a blue carbon material, some of which would come off onto the master when it was written on.) That carbon dye was then absorbed into the gel. Then you would press a clean white sheet onto the gel and a copy resulted. These could only produce about thirty or forty copies before all the dye got used up. My maternal greatgrandmother used a slate at school when she was growing up; they didn’t even have Hectographs in her day. I still have her slate. It is amazing to reflect upon how much the knowledge base has escalated in just a hundred years.

It was a rare thing to see a white-tailed deer in the wild and there were no Beaver.

You had to build a fire every day in winter if you wanted to keep warm. (Or at least give the fire enough attention to keep it from going out.) We didn’t have thermostats, etc. During the 1970s and 80s when we heated our home with wood I used to keep the same fire, without letting it go out, for as long as a month. When I was growing up in the 50s and 60s we heated our home with an upright coal stove. We would “bank” the fire at night (close the dampers and pile in some coal) and next morning, we would open the damper and shake the grate to remove the ashes and the fire would then come roaring back to life. To me, there is no better warmth than that of backing up to a roaring fireplace fire or to a hot coal or wood space heater!

Wages paid for harvesting tobacco were 35 cents per hour.

Babies wore gauze diapers. When you changed a baby you had to go to the toilet and jiggle the diaper until the bad stuff came loose, then wring out the water and put the thing into a diaper pail (with a lid of course) until you got enough of them to justify washing a load. We got along, but it sure is easier now with the super absorbent stuff they use in disposable diapers. Another thing . . . you had better wash them in Ivory Snow or else the baby’s bottom would break out; then you had a battle to fight about that.

Many people used a mule and wagon as a primary means of transportation. Few had automobiles.

It was a long way to Fayetteville!

Courtesy was the rule of thumb on the highways. People actually would honor a red light. They wouldn’t pull right out in front of you, causing you to have to brake hard, then turn off in a quarter of a mile.

Farmers had only two pesticides they could use: Arsenic of Lead and Paris Green. Today there are many hundreds if not thousands.

There was no air conditioning. Few people even had electric fans! Funeral homes would place cardboard fans in all the churches with their business information on one side and a peaceful religious scene on the other.

We didn’t have Fire Ants. The Imported Fire Ant is slowly moving northward. We first began to see them in this area probably around the late nineteen seventies. In Bladenboro, they were first observed at the “Horse Show Grounds” on Highway 242 north owned then by Asbury Taylor.