The Nostalgia Page
This is the Nostalgia Page.
If you have any memories about the way things used to be that you’d like to share we’d love to know about them.
I’m going to start with a couple from some of my earliest memories being raised in Australia in the 1950′s but regardless of where in the world you were raised or lived please feel free and welcome to share.
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I remember when we were very young kids, both the bread and the milk were delivered by horse and cart.
The mikman used to come around with a horse drawn cart which contained big stainless steel milk vats. He would take a long thin ladle which he would dip into one of the vats and then pour the milk into a big jug which he would then tip into a smaller jug held by my mother. This would then go into the “ice chest.”
The ice chest was an upright sort of insulated cupboard with 2 sections.
The bottom section had a swinging door and was where the food was kept on wire shelves while the top section had a loose lid which was removed when replacing the ice which was also delivered by horse and cart in big blocks. The idea of course was that because cold air drops, cold from the ice would keep the bottom section and its contents cool.
The bread man and his horse and cart was always a treat when he came around the neighborhood because during the school holidays he would let a few of the kids ride up on top with him on his delivery run. If you were very lucky he would let you “steer” by holding the reins. Of course the horse knew exactly where it was going anyway but we didn’t know that at the time and it was a great thrill to pretend we were driving a “Cobb and Co” stagecoach through the outback of NSW or Victoria avoiding bushrangers such as Ned Kelly and Mad Dog Morgan.
Depending on which breadman was doing the run, they would usually find half a loaf of freshly baked bread still warm from the ovens for us to feast on or even a tea cake left over from yesterday’s run which always had thick pink icing on the top that made your fingers stick together so that you had to lick it off.
I wonder what health and safety authorities would say about that now!
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I remember…
I remember when I was growing up that we would be sent to the corner shop to buy ice cream. It came in a rectangular, cardboard box, which the grocer wrapped in newspaper, to keep it cool. A few years later, the ice cream started to be sold in round tins, which my mother used as cake tins. The fruit and veg man would come around every week and the housewives would go out into the street and select their produce. The back of the truck was covered with a canvas top, supported by a metal frame. People used to come around selling wooden pegs and ‘props’ for the clothesline and every year we used to look forward to the boronia sellers, going door to door. An ice cream cost 6d and going to the pictures cost 2/6d. It cost 3d for an icy pole. The only fast food was fish and chips and the occasional hamburger. The bread was delivered and the milk. Sunday meant roast dinner and Monday was always washing day.
I remember growing up in the 50′s and did not have televsion. We went to the Drive-In Theater in the car for entertainment (when the family could afford it), hooked up the speaker to the window and us kids would be in the back seat in our pajamas. For free entertainment my father would drive us to the airport and we would watch the planes land. I remember as children we all used our imagination when playing with each other and would make up stories and act them out. It was so much fun. There were no video games, cell phones or computers. We learned to interact with each other fact to face. I miss those days.
Yep, and here we are all those years later complaining because our software won’t work properly.
In those days my brothers and I would look forward to going to the hardware store and I remember the 3 of us saving our pocket money to buy the brand new electric drill our Dad always checked out as a Christmas present.
He still had that drill up until 2005 when he passed away and now my brother has it and it’s still working as well now as it did then.