Old Timer Stories

Another thread made me think of this and to not hijack the thread I am starting this one. What old timers stories do you remember being told?

 

My wife's grandma told us how they were so poor they made underclothing out of the old cloth flour sacks. They just didn't want the one made with the companies name-"Occident". They were worried people might see that and think they were wearing it because they had accidents.

 

Many flour sacks were actually printed with patterns because of people using them for clothing. They knew if the price was the same, the shopper/seamstress/tailor would select the one with the nice pattern.

 

It was also common, at least in this area, for people to wear breadsacks inside their worn out shoes as an attempt to keep their feet dry and warm.

 

Dad was around 18 when the depression (1st one) started. All his life he would save things for re-use later in some form. A lot of things. Most everyone did if they wanted to survive. He told of riding the SR &RL 2 foot gauge railroad to basketball games. That experience today would be incredible. Back then, it was just how you got there. Unless by horse and carriage. Here is a pic I've posted before of Dad getting Blackout ready to go at the farm...

 

My grandpa told how in winter so he could go to school he stayed with an old relative in town and only on bitter cold would he fire up the coal stove to save money. He woke many mornings and his glass of water was frozen. To stay warmer in bed his old uncle told him to collect old newspapers and line the mattress under the sheets. He claimed it was remarkable how much warmer he slept.

 

My grandarents burned a coal stove back in the 50's (only because of a picture I have somewhere)
and I think that is the only heat related comparisson I can make with them. I'll have to dig
through the albums to find the shot. It was a parlor stove and there was a small door on the side of
the house where coal was delivered and poured into a bin in the basement. In my early days of being
their grandkid I would come up from the basement with black soot on my hands.

It's not really an old timers story like the thread is asking for but more of a memory of mine
that involved a stove and a coal bin

 

My Dad grew up in Chitcago. Both he and his brother slept together in a twin bed on the unheated porch when they were young, as the older brothers and sisters had all the indoor bedrooms. They both wore head covers to bed and used a heavy "feather tick" as a blanket/cover. Dad still swears that feather tick weighed about 100lbs. and once under it you couldn't move!!! They'd wake up on the porch in the winter mornings and there'd be frost on the porch windows from the moisture in their breath freezing on the inside of the windows overnight.


My Mom grew up having to use an "outhouse" and a "bed pan" until they got an indoor terlit in the early '50's.

 

I believe it! Great story MW

 

One of the funniest is why my great grandmother wouldn't eat boneless pork chops. Seems here dad was a butcher. Of course going through the depression you ate what you could get. One day her dad brought home boneless pork chops. Only thing was she heard him telling his brother they were sliced hog balls. Said she hadn't eaten a boneless pork chop since she heard that.

 

Not so much a story I heard as one I was involved in. We lived in a fairly populated area with some office buildings and a gym very close. The old man (great grandpa) had a big garden that groundhogs kept getting in. He got the idea to cut a hole in the shed and let me shot them with a .22. We waited til Labor Day when everything was closed to do it. I asked what we were gonna do if anyone called the cops. He said you play young and dumb and I'll play old and dumb. Killed 2 that day with no problems.

 

"He said you play young and dumb and I'll play old and dumb"... ... works for me ...

Would have liked to have met your Great Granddad.

 

Best man I ever knew.

 

I once heard that the people in Maine were so tough they would sit in nothing but their shorts in lawn chairs drinking their beers in the snow. I thought, what a bunch of bull___t!Then, I joined FHC. Ya learn something new everyday.

 

... we juz like to have a little stoooopid fun once n' a while, s'all...
Here's cousin Biff enjoying his new flannel lined Fruit Looms... he said they were wicked warm.

 

Mom, what's for supper????

 

The guy on the left is my grandfather, his brother is in the middle and the guy on the right was a mechanic. This pic is from 1923 or 1924. They ran a Plymouth dealership in a small town . Gramps was always telling stories of times at the dealership.

 

During the depression, people used to walk the train tracks for any amounts of coal that had fallen off the cars. They would also get out to the potato farms after harvest and before the ground froze for any leftovers in the fields-usually very small ones. And of course, lots of wild game.
My BIL always says they were so poor that his Mom and Dad couldn't agree on his one gift from them. One wanted to give a toy, the other some clothes. They compromised and gave him a pair of pants with the bottoms of the pockets cut out!

 

The old man got caught playing dice behind a bar once. Well he swore he wasn't playing but I think otherwise. Said he was laying on the bilco doors to the basement sleeping when the cops showed up.