A Glimpse Into What Life Was Like When I was a Kid

When I was a kid the world I lived in was very different from the world my grandkids live in today. In my world there were a lot more people involved in our daily lives – and many of those people were almost like members of the family.

It is important to understand that the following people didn’t just come to our house daily or at least several times a week, they knew our house and our neighborhood. They knew the families and looked out for them too. If something looked wrong or out of place, they would check to make sure things were OK.

The first person I will tell you about came to our house several times a week. He came when mother put a sign similar to the one below in the bedroom window that faced the street.

The number that she put on top told the iceman how many pounds of ice to deliver. The ice was a big block. We would be sitting at the kitchen table eating breakfast when the backdoor would open and we would hear “Iceman!”

He walked in with the block of ice thrown over his shoulder and go straight to the icebox. Ours was like the one below.

See the open door on the top left. That is where he put the block of ice. It was how we kept the food cold in the icebox. The ice would slowly melt and water would drain into a pan at the bottom. I can still smell the odor that escaped when the door to part where the block of ice was kept.

Every day another man came by our very early in the morning, usually before we even got out of bed.

 The milkman delivered fresh milk in glass bottles. He would place the bottles on the front porch close to the door. Mother would put the empty milk bottles out at night and he would take them away.

Every full bottle had a cardboard top that looked like this.

We would collect them and play like they were coins in games we played. Another man that came to our house six-days a week was the postman.

See the big bag the postman above is carrying? Our postman would park his mail-truck at one end of the street, get out with his bag bulging, and start down one side of the street. Everyone had a mailbox on their front porch that looked something like this.

The mailman would check and see if there were any letters in it that needed to be mailed and take them. He would then put the day’s mail in it. He would go to the end of the block and then crossover to the other side of the street and work his way back to the mail-truck.

There are two other people I want to tell you about that caught my attention in the spring, when the focus was on gardening. The first is Mr. Ferguson. He lived a few houses down the street from us. Dad hired him every year to plow our field before we planted the garden. This is how he plowed it.

I would walk behind him in the freshly plowed dirt and listen to him talking to his horses as he worked. He would make this sound or that sound and they would speed up, slow down, turn right, turn left, or stop – often without him pulling on the reins. The smell of freshly plowed dirt is something I will never forget.

The last person I will introduce you to today is Mr. Bevils. He had his own horses and plowed his own garden. He raised a lot of vegetables and early in the morning he would load a wagon that looked similar to the one below.

He would drive his wagon downtown to the Market Square and stay there until he sold everything. I would hear the empty wagon and the clopping of the horses hooves coming down the street and run out an wave at him.

One last memory that I will share is about our old green army truck. I was a kid right after World War II and my dad bought an old army truck at an Army auction that looked like the one below.

It was always exciting to ride in it. You couldn’t get it stuck and it would have pulled an army tank if needed. When it was time to go somewhere, mom, dad and I piled in the cab and took off.

Well, that is the world I grew up in as a kid. It was full of people who did jobs, most of which no longer exists. There were so many local jobs that anyone that wanted to work could usually find one. 

I hope you enjoyed the journey.

Jim Myers