I was born in Appalachia in 1946. I grew up in Kitzmiller, Maryland, a small town on the North Branch of the Potomac River.
My father was a coal miner. My mother was a part-time schoolteacher.
My recollections are clouded by the years and, at times, disjunctive, vague and occasionally contradictory. However,I will try to convey that time in an unbiased manner. So much has changed since Planet Earth has revolved the millions of miles since that time. Here goes!
My family lived right by the Potomac River. There were several floods during my childhood. One, brought about by Hurricane Hazel in 1954, flooded our first floor up to about one metre. It was quite a job to clean up the mess. The cellar was pumped out, the mud, debris and trash was removed from inside and outside the house. Our water well had to be bleached to clean up the water. At that time, 1954, we did not have running water in the house. Instead, there was a hand pump in the kitchen.
A bath was taken in the kitchen in a wash tub. My mother heated water on the gas stove, transferred it to the tub and you scrubbed up sitting in the tub.
Family clothing was washed in a wringer washer on the back porch with the clothing put on a clothesline to dry.
While we had electricity, some of the families in the area did not. For those without this benefit, kerosene lanterns were used for illumination.
The toilet facilities were about 100 feet from the house in the back yard. The toilet was a wooden building with two hole inside: one for sitters and one for standers. Toilet paper was rare.
Usually a large mail order catalog was used for wiping. From early youth, you learned that the automotive section made for a better wipe than the slick, color clothing pages up in front of the catalog.
People wore clothing that contained mostly natural fiber. Hence, in the summer, clothing became wrinkled after a few hours wear. In those days, most clothing had to be ironed-there was no wash-and-wear.
Most people had a radio. There were two television sets in town in the early 1950s. My dad purchased one in 1953 for $250. That's about $3,000 in today's money. The set got one channel using an aerial beside the house.
Most men wore a lot of grease in their hair. That oily look was in style. There were manifold preparations sold at that time. The crew-cut took off in the mid to late fifties. One could buy a wax concoction to make the hair stand up.
Women's hairstyles were usually permanents. It's hard to describe these styles today. It was sort of like a hardened curl look. The hair was arrainged in curlers that held the hair in oblong rings for several weeks.
Deodorant was not as popular as it is today. Some people used a product called Five-Day which gives you an indication of the hygiene that was going on at the time.
Automobiles were present although most were gas guzzlers. I am amazed today that these devices are still around to transport humans.
However, transportation was easier than today. We had a railway station about one mile away. One could go north or south every day. A bus came through the town twice a day. All these conviences are now gone from the area where I grew up.
Grade school was as confusing then as it is today: The Gulf of Mexico borders the United States, the Gulf of California borders Mexico, and on and on.
There seemed to be less crime in the 1950s than today. Our house was usually unlocked even when we were gone. Really sick crimes were occuring in another place, another group of people, and far, far away.
Most boys carried a pocket knife to school. No one was stabbled. Occasionally a teacher would request a knife from a student to use in a project.
Entertainment usually meant the local movie
theater. In 1952, the theater installed the wide-screen process. However, the decline of population of the town in the 1960s closed the theater forever.
In many ways, it was a simpler time. However, the improvements in race relations, the status of women, the conces of today had not occured. You, the reader, who won't retire for forty years, will probably have a story to write to other readers in another time. It probably will appear as strange as my recollections today.