Some things us old farts remember…
And you want to talk abou COLD, try using this in the winter…
And how many rolls of these did you go through playing Cowboys and Indians?
Back in the day, you had NO idea who was actually calling! And you had to answer EVERY phone call, because your parents told you to.
Anybody remember the old butcher shops? And getting your meat wrapped in this?
Using the outside house at 50 below zero…
There’s a reason I migrated south for most of my life, until I wound up in Texas!
When I graduated in 75 from HS my folks showed me the door as I had grew up poor/lower middle class with my family and my older sister and brother who were already gone (8 and 6 years before).
I paid my way through college working for the phone company and lived. The first year was replacing old phones like that and the hard wire with plug in ports so that the next person would have an easy time when changing the phone. Due to the work I ended up installing phones and pole climbing due the lack of people but I did not go to the company’s school until my second year and was taught by my boss. This was mid 70s in the Mexican slums of East LA for the first year.
And the phone would ring until you answered or until they hung up. No going to voicemail. I remember heading out for some college break and calling a roommate who’d left already. Then set the phone on my desk and departed. That phone rang all weekend, driving the remainders insane. I think they may have finally found a custodian to let them into the room with a master key.
Ring, Riiiing, Ring
Hello?
Other Hello?
Son, it’s not your call.
Oh, sorry.
Pay attention to the rings, son.
Damned party line.
My parents had a party line for as long as the phone company had them. I think we started out on an 8-party line, then 4, then 2 that we shared with my grandparents. I still remember that our ring was 2 shorts and a long. They didn’t go to touch tone service until the early 90s when my work gave me a pager.
And more than once, I had to walk the mile round-trip to tell the neighbors “Hey, your phone ain’t hung up all the way- we can hear you arguing”.
We still have one of those ‘phones — and it still works! More reliable than any other the others. But — the ‘phone company says they are going to put in fiber optic and cut off the service…
The privy is still there, in the barn, but it doesn’t have a fancy white seat like yours.
I don’t think I have any more rolls of caps, but my pearl handled revolver is around here somewhere.
And Glotzer’s is long gone. Fmding a decent butcher is tough.
That is an upscale outhouse. It has a real toilet seat.
And I remember department stores wrapping purchases in similar paper and having a large spool of twine to tie them with. The experienced salespeople knew exactly how much paper and string a purchase would need with no waste.
And wrapping packages and twining them shut to mail them. Can you imagine a tied-up package now???
Went out to the woodshed, took a roll of those caps and set it on edge on the anvil, then hit it with a sledgehammer. Mom came out and made some cryptic remark, but I couldn’t hear it as my ears were ringing.
The bad part about outhouses wasn’t using them in the winter.
It was shoveling them out in the summer.
Had a guy in the range the other day who had what looked to be a small bed sheet hanging downrange. Turns out he had bought a roll of butcher paper to use as target material – he said he often needed big targets to zero his rifle – I told him about bore sighting …
Using the outdoor hooter in the heat was just as bad due to the smell. You did your business as quickly as possible and got out of there.
In Alaska it is not uncommon to see an outhouse seat that is carved out of a 2″ slab of styrofoam beadboard. It is such a good insulator that the seat feels warm when you sit on it (personal experience).
Yep! That’s what we had, and it was nice and warm to sit on. And keep the roll of toilet paper in a tin with a lid.
We went to Germany in Feb ’98. My bride reported that the stainless steel toilet seats in the seemingly unheated rest areas on the Autobahn were memorable…
Jim_R
Same in Austria, in December. Cold snap – high was 20F in the greater Vienna area. I’m not sure if I sat or hovered. I did NOT loiter!
And now the green asshats are attacking the use of plastic in meat packaging because paper is so much better or something for the environment (I remember when plastic was better for the environment because it didn’t require the cutting down of trees.)
Funny how their precious vegetables and fake meat all come in plastic bags and containers but you can’t have a plastic shopping bag that uses a quarter of said plastic than their fake meat packaging. And you can’t use a plastic straw but they buy all their weird drinks in plasticized containers and that’s A-Okay (oops, forgot we can’t say that or sign that because that’s supposed to be raaaaayyyyycist. Hey, 4Chan dudes, don’t you know the left has no concept of sarcasm or humor??)
A toilet seat over the hole? Y’all musta been rich.
Ugh, I have used that in the winter, in the dark in rattlesnake country. It wasn’t cold enough to keep them from slitherin
I used to Inspect privies for the Health Department (they had to meet fly tight standards). Once I found a small copperhead coiled neatly on the seat of one. When I whacked off his head, the body dropped into the pit but the head was still there snapping at me. Gotta lot of respect copperheads! …and still miss being Chief Privy Inspector.
I went to Thunder Ranch in Texas years ago, and part of the range briefing was to check the outhouse for rattlesnakes before entering. That was a bit disconcerting.
I keep coming back here expecting that someday you will have some antiques to show us.
When I first joined the Navy, those black Bakelite dial phones where everywhere. One morning at 0-dark-thirty, I was tasked with doing a wake-up call for the MAA in his little office/bunkroom. I woke him up and then at his direction, I turned on the light. On his desk was one of those black telephones and THE BIGGEST COCKROACH I EVER SAW!!. I screamed like a little girl and that critter ran for cover and tried to hide under the phone. He was too big! His ass hung out one side and his antenna the other. Of course the critter wasn’t a cockroach at all. It was a palmetto bug. (Looked like a big-ass cockroach to me!) Don’t ya just love the tropics.
All- Thanks, for the comments! 🙂 And that wasn’t my grandmother’s outhouse, hers just had the boards… sigh
Roy- ROTFLMAO! And they FLEW too…
I have a black Bakelite phone in my office. The ringer catches before the other phones in the house, and it is nice and LOUD. The insides were replaced to allow for touch-tone dialing.
Ya’ll had an outhouse and toilet paper? You musta been rich!
TXRed- Nice! And a weapon too!!! 🙂
Free- LOL, again not ours… Although I DO remember having to carry a roll with me to use it.
My granddad was a meat cutter (don’t call him a butcher). Had one of those paper dispenser/cutters everywhere he worked. Thanks for the memory.
My father’s home was the last house on the party line. Urgent messages for properties further up the gully were carried by an eight year old boy, on a pony, in the dark, if necessary.
That same 8yo was trusted with a rifle to go hunting g rabbits with his two younger siblings.
I can recall using the outhouse in a hunting camp up in the hills. No door, but the view was marvellous and completely white with frost.I wS absolutely certain that I was the first person to use it that morning, because so was the toilet seat!
Youtube: re privy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULjxheaFpB4
Ref rotary dial phone, we still have one working on Verizon Fibre system.
Plastic is bad! Local fast food companies started to return to paper un coated straws. Don’t last long. Back to plastic. Waiting for an old fart to remind implements industry of waxed paper straws.