Young people have their own types of difficulties that are very different from the ones their parents and grandparents endured. Many of the older difficulties were physical, whereas many these days are mental.
As a young wife and mother, I had cold, running water only on my back porch which, actually, was an improvement over the hand pump I grew up with and which my mother still used.
Upon a move, I had, glory be, running cold water in my house.
Then, somewhat later, a home purchase brought about more conveniences: hot and cold running water and a washing machine. (My two older children were out of diapers (washed by hand) by then. The machine was not the type commonly seen that had rollers where the wet clothes were fed through to squeeze out the water.
The washing machine sat in my small kitchen beside my apartment-size electric stove. The machine had a flat top, and, with a heat-proof large pad on top.
I used it as additional work space.
When I tell of my first washing machine, a Bendix, my listeners look at me as if I had finally lost it. They have never heard of such a contraption as this Bendix.
In retrospect, it does seem odd, even to me. What most find almost unbelievable is the tub of the machine did not spin; it shrank in and out, actually squeezing the water from the clothes.
It is the only machine like it I ever saw.
We also got our first telephone in that first-owned home. The phone was a heavy, black, cradled, dial-up variety. Milton had a “manned” telephone exchange in a residential-type house next door to the Exchange Hotel. That is how the hotel was thus named.
If I remember correctly, it was at that time we could just tell the operator with whom we wanted to speak, and the operator often could tell us if the person happened to be out at that time. It was also the time when two-digit numbers were assigned as the telephone number.
Young people have their own difficulties, but they have no idea the type of difficulties their parents or grandparents endured. Thank goodness.
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: How times have changed