ProetryPlace Blog 72 Slow Food, Street Cars and Other Relics of the Past
Someone forwarded an email to me recently entitled “Slow Food.” I do not know the original author. Here are the opening lines (slightly paraphrased and rearranged).
Someone asked the other day, “What was your favorite fast food when you were growing up” I informed him that we did not have fast foods when I was growing up, “All food was slow. Mom cooked every meal. We ate at a place called home.”
The email went on to list a number of items from bygone days that have disappeared: The party line telephone (attached by wires to the wall), Newsreels before movies in the theater, home delivery of dairy products with milk in glass bottles with two inches of cream floating on top, 45 RPM records, etc. All this prompted my own reminiscence which I report briefly here, as well as I can recall.
Mom was a marvelous cook and baker. I remember more than the slow food when the family gathered around the small kitchen table for supper after Dad walked home from work at about 5:30 or 6:00 in the afternoon. There was always conversation, usually about school, often with some amazing discovery revealed by older sister, Audrey, by far the most talkative. The three boys were more interested in food than talk, but it was good entertainment, uninterrupted by television playing or cell phone texting. Neither of these electronic miracles existed then.
Seconds were usually available from the pots or pans on the four-legged Roper gas stove that stood next to the table, but we all wanted to save room for the homemade desert—Lazy Daisy, Devil’s Food or Pineapple Upsidedown Cake, e.g.. The leftovers never went to waste though, even though microwave ovens were years in the future. They might appear the next day as a meal of gravy bread (one of my favorites) or hash.
Holiday meals were taken in the dining room. It often featured a fat stuffed roast hen from Bill and Lillian Boldt’s farm in Hales Corners along with lots of fresh vegetables. Clean your plate or miss out on desert was a rule we all understood. Never a problem for me. We were all stuffed by the end of the meal, though I wonder how Mom fed a family of six with a single bird.
Walking, bicycling or public transportation were the usual means of getting where you were going. The old family car rarely came out of the garage except on weekends. Street car tracks ran down both sides of the major streets in Milwaukee. Be sure to ask for a transfer, so you did not have to pay another nickel when you got off one line and onto another intersecting one. Sometime around the mid to late 40’s the tracks were covered over and quiet, comfortable trolley buses replaced the clanging street cars.
There were no school buses. I walked to Auer Avenue grade school and Peckham Junior High regardless of the weather, uphill both ways. Washington High School was a bit further, and I had a little income then, so I bought a bus pass for about $1 a week and rode in comfort.
I had a great one-speed, balloon-tire Schwinn bicycle that my dad had bought used from a neighbor and older brother Ron rode before it came down to me. It carried me all over the city. My friends, Dave and Roger rode to Bradford Beach on Lake Michigan in the summer. The best part of the ride was the race at breakneck speed down the steep, curving hill that ended at the waterfront. On the way home, we raced the trolley buses through traffic. Idiot teens with no sense of danger.
The Anderson children did not get an allowance, although we all had assigned daily and weekly household chores. Mom or Dad did finance a few things like a dime for the Sunday matinee, but there was never extra for popcorn and such. So, earned income was a goal each of sought at an early age.
My first paper route was near home with 50 or 60 customers. It was close enough to walk. The Milwaukee Journal shack was just up on the corner next to Koepsel’s drugstore. I picked up my papers there after school, rolled them (for throwing from the sidewalk to the front porch) and walked the few blocks through the route. There was an optional Sunday paper that was delivered at daybreak, so I could make as much as twenty-three cents per customer. Now I had some money of my own, a most satisfying situation.
Later, I bought a larger route for the promise of more income, but the route was much further from home. I lugged the daily papers in a big canvas sack over my shoulder, leaning over on my bike at thirty degrees to balance the weight while I pedaled from 23rd and Hopkins Street to the route at 35th and Capital Drive. The Sunday paper was much too heavy to transport by bicycle, so I dragged a rattling coaster wagon the same route. The Wisconsin winter weather was sometimes a challenge, but with over 100 customers, I was in big bucks.
Most customers paid with exact change, so on collection day I filled a big sack with coins. The neighborhood butcher (before the days of supermarkets) welcomed the change and he became my favorite banking center. With some folding money in my pocket, I almost always bought a fine, fresh wiener with the remaining loose change. Eating it on the walk home, I relished the taste and feeling the satisfying crunch of the natural casing with each bite. Best wieners I ever had. Can taste them still.
The wieners were my only fast food for most of my growing up years. There were some White Castle Hamburger joints in the city, though I never had occasion to dine there. The first pizza place, Pete’s Pizzeria opened when I was in high school. The only other time I remember “eating out” (other than picnics) was after a Memorial Day parade when I was eight years old. I was rewarded for carrying the American flag the whole distance of the parade (probably just a mile or two) with a balogna sandwich served in a booth of a drugstore somewhere along the way. Funny the things one recalls.
I remember our first telephone looking somewhat like a tall black daffodil. You talked into the flower piece and lifted the receiver to your ear from a hook attached to the stem, a two-handed operation. Luckily, you did not have to dial. Just tell the operator what number you wanted (after making sure no one else was on the line).
Listening to the radio was often a family affair. Maybe the togetherness was as much an attraction as the programming, but it was a special, enjoyable activity. A big console model radio stood in a corner of the living room unless that space was needed at Christmas for the tree. I tuned in to Superman, Dick Tracy, the Lone Ranger and Tonto, etc. on school days before supper or homework. The Shadow, with the power to cloud men’s minds, and other thrillers like Suspense and Sam Spade were family listening on Friday nights. Sunday afternoon symphonies were my introduction to classical music.
I was in high school, working after classes at Real Radio and Television when we got our first TV, a beautiful 17-inch, black and white model Dad got at a discount, and they threw in the matching stand.
Finally we could watch Uncle Milty (Berle) and those newcomers, Martin and Lewis, without going to visit more progressive friends. The station (there were three, ABC, NBC and CBS, if your rabbit-ears antenna could find them all) went off the air around 11PM with pictures of Old Glory waving in the breeze and the National Anthem playing.
These memories seem now like a lifetime ago. Well, I guess they were.
Richard Allen Anderson, The Ides of March, 2015 http://richardandersonblogs.blogspot.com
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