Radio Script #1318

Little Talks on Common Things
June 13, 1982

When we talk about the good old days, we think of a happier, less complicated time. What we forget are the things that made the old days not so good. So today let us consider some of the things folks used in bygone days that have now been long forgotten.

First let us note the plight of the housewife. Washing and ironing were once chores that consumed most of two days every week. At one time, before common use of metal containers, both tubs and buckets were made of wood and would always spring leaks, to say nothing of their heavy weight for any woman’s lifting. Hot water was prepared in big boilers on top of kitchen stoves. Clothes had to be scrubbed on crude washboards. Today everyone is aware of clothes lines, but what has become of the old clothes reel? It was a handy device that enabled the housewife to stand in one place and hang the clothes while she turned the reel. Clothes once had to be ironed by very heavy, solid irons with handles attached. Some relief came with the introduction of detached handles, but irons still had to be heated on the stove Because for church and other dress-up occasions, men wore stiff-bosomed shirts, many a home had a bosom Board for ironing those shirts. Some of those old bosom boards may be found in museums and the homes of collectors today.

What a change has taken place in clothes. Women no longer wear two or three petticoats under their skirts, and gone are their high button shoes. The shirt waist is now as obsolete as bloomers. Imagine today’s basketball team clad in the bloomers of 1910. Pajamas were once unknown. Men, as well as women, wore long cotton nightgowns in summer and flannel ones in winter. Then think of some of the things that gave a measure of comfort to hardworking people. There.was the barrel-stave hammock. Hammocks were of course made from knitted cloth or canvas; but a cheaper way to have one was to make it at home out of old barrel
staves, connected by stout rope run, >through holes in the stave ends.

One was kept warm on a winter ride by a buffalo robe, and it was truly made from genuine hides of the prairie buffalo. When the old, high-wheeled bicycles gave way to the modern bike called the safety, with both wheels the same size, it was soon followed by the tandem bicycle on which couples toured the countryside.

There is one very useful object that few people now living have seen outside a museum. It is the device for shoeing oxen, called the ox-sling. In it the ox was hoisted and his legs tied to permit the blacksmith to put on the four shoes that the ox must have if he were to do the necessary work.

In the early 19th century families in the country were often snowed in for days at a time. It took many hours of backbreaking work to get enough snow off the roads so that a team could travel on them. Then came the snow roller, very common in Maine. Instead of clearing the snow off the road, it was packed down by a heavy roller drawn by four horses. The result was that, while it made the road passable, if the right runners of a sleigh slipped off the hard-packed snow to the road shoulder, the vehicle was almost sure to tip over in the looser snow.

Do you remember the bridle chains? They were hooked around a rear runner of a double-runner logging sled to act as a brake down hill, and what a deep rut they made in the snow. And speaking of double runners, have you forgotten those big bobsleds on which we used to slide as children? In larger tOtros people enjoyed many old time things that country people only saw when they came to town. Such were the horse cars that
preceded the electric trolleys. That was the first public transport between Waterville and Fairfield. As a small child. I had my first horsecar ride on the line that ran from Fryeburg Village to the Chatauqua grounds on the Saco River.

And how we miss the old fire engines drawn by galloping white horses. with bells ringing the alarm rather than today’s screeching siren. Cement and asphalt put an end to the wooden sidewalks through the cracks of which we were constantly losing coins. The days of flint and steel to start fires were very long ago; but some of us do remember the old. vile-smellings sulphur matches. Those in Maine were largely made by the Portland Star Match Co. They came wrapped in long packages s in which were twelve tissue wrapped smaller packages of four cards eachs with each card or strip having a dozen attached matches that had to be pulled apart for use. Those matches were very inexpensive. My father’s Bridgton store sold them for eight cents for the big package. The problem was to light them.

Often a person would break off three or four heads before he could get one to light. Pipe smokers often carried a small piece of sandpaper for lighting the matches. Speaking of pipes leads to mention of tobacco. In 1900 finecut tobacco was seldom seen. Tobacco, both for smoking and chewing, came in plugs broken apart by a tobacco cutter in the store. Men prepared it for their pipes with a pocket knife. Think of the containers we used to take to the store to be filled. Then no one had ever heard of a bottle of vinegar or molasses. Big stone jugs holding at least a gallon. were used for both. That was when one could buy a whole gallon of molasses for 40 cents and a gallon of vinegar for 20. In the villages one did not even have to take the jugs to the store. The grocery clerk would pick them up when he drove his team to your door to take orders several times a week. and he would deliver the filled jug the same afternoon. The method was also true of kerosene oil cans. from the one-gallon can to the more common five gallon one, and the occasional big one for ten gallons. Yet, when we were earlier speaking of the housewife’s chores. we neglected to mention her especially irksome task: cleaning the chimneys. trimming the wicks and filling the numerous kerosene lamps.

Before the days of trading stamps, the first store premiums I can remember were for tobacco tags. After accumulating a quantity of those tags that came attached to every plug of tobacco, one could get a variety of prizes.

Gone today are colorful figures that every Maine town once saw during the summer; the tramps and the gypsies. When the word spread that gypsies were coming, people would hide their valuables and be on their guard. The victims were the Yankee horse traders, and the gullible housewives. The gypsy women were notoriously slight-of-hand regarding money, and people were warned not to cross their palms with coins when having one’s fortune told.

Most homes would give a tramp food. The underworld communication soon informed tramps of especially generous homes, and they equally came to know the places that kept a watchdog. Very early the people learned not-to give a tramp money, which was likely to go for alchohol. Occasionally a tramp would offer to work for a meal, and the lucky householder would get some wood sawed and split.

Before the days of the automobile a big benefit to people was the livery stable. It not only accommodated the villager, but also the traveler who could get his horse stalled and fed (they called it baited) by the liveryman. The stable furnished teams for commercial travelers, the numerous drummers who visited the country stores for city wholesalers. It provided rigs for pleasure driving and for funerals. Often the stable operated a stage line, and it invariably had a four-seated buckboard for parties. In such a buckboard I rode with our high school baseball team to play Norway High.

Long ago replaced by electric refrigerators was the iceman with his tongs and his leather apron. Boys followed those wagons to pick up small pieces of ice to suck on hot days. There was the rag man with his one-horse cart, shouting “Any rags, any bones, any bottles today?” His cart was hung with tinware which he exchanged for rags. Gone also are the umbrella man and the scissors grinder. The former replaced the torn cloth and broken ribs in umbrellas and the latter sharpened knives, scissors and shears. They were the last vestige of every sort of artisan that used to call at rural homes, including the shoemaker and the dressmaker.

The extract peddler was a welcome sight. Like Bennett Strout in my boyhood town, he often bottled his own vanilla, lemon, peppermint, wintergreen and other extracts. The first widely known wagon conveyor of foods was the Grand Union Tea wagon, which at first carried only tea and coffee, but soon took on other foods.

Peddlers of clothing were common. Such early in this century, in Waterville was Harry Vose who sold both men’s and women’s garments throughout this rural area. At least once each summer every country village was visited by the medicine man who parked in the public square, stood up in his buggy, and extolled the all-curing virtues of his patent medicine. He usually had a stooge or shill who was the first to step up for a purchase.

More legitimate was the locally known man, with his gaily painted wagon and his neat appearance, who sold his own patented sarsaparilla or opedildoc.

Do you remember when automobiles were put up for the winter, often lifted onto blocks? When I became a resident of Waterville in 1923, the only automobile I recall seeing in the winter was Dr. John Towne’s. There may have been a few others, but Dr. Towne, with runners placed under the front wheels, kept his going.

And to some of us, most cherished of all recollections were the winter sleighrides, behind a fast trotter and with the jolly sound of sleighbells. One has missed a great deal who never had a ride in a one-horse’ open sleigh.

And with that we must say goodbye for today.

Year: 1982