Back from a simpler time

[DailyDi]

Power was out all evening. Just came back on at 3am. AM i Amish?

[willnotwill]

This led me to think what kind of diapers the Amish use, but it seems they've largely adopted the modern disposables.

I've got a generator, but the stupid telephone company doesn't have backup power at their facility down the street, so if the power is out over more than my neighborhood, I lose phone/internet.

Of course, a few years ago when my septic pumps died, the guy pumped my tank and told me I could go a few days while the replacement came in.   I decided that I'd forgo the toilet in favor of taking a shower.

[Little BabyDoll Christine]

Actually it was not a "simpler time". You would have to know how to use an oil lamp, tend a fire and make the embers last all night, or re-lighti it. treat even the slightest cut very seriously, store food so ibugs and pests did not get at it, maybe roast and grind your own coffee

Things got a bit better in the second third of the 20th century but you would not have throw-away diapers. Even so, your electric needs were not that much, mostly lights and lamps, one or two radios and usually one TV, washing machine and an iron. Until the late '50's your batteries were for flashlights and maybe one portable radio if you were better off. In the late '40's early '50's you would have an electric record player or even a "recordio" which was a kind of console with a radio, rocord player with the ability to make records, blanks of which you could buy and these were pretty good. Did my first reconrd when I was 6. It was nothing like the number of outlets you need today, but then too, everything ate tones mor current but the price was about $5/month for a "light bill" and about the same for water and maybe $10 for heating. Rent was collected weekly and about $8/wk in 1950. Times were by no means simpler. Most of what you do today is optional and not a matter of survival. Ask your grandparents what they heard from their elders (my grandfather fought in the Spanish-American War)

[Alyeskabird]

Oil lamps where for the folks that had money, if you where dirt floor poor you made do with tallow dips or oil candles. Your bathroom was a chair with seat busted out over a hole in the ground, or a couple planks serving the same function.

[DailyDi]

I actually thought about putting on a cloth diaper to enjoy my time in the past, but with high winds and trees falling I decided it was better to stay in ready-to-run mode. lol

I did have an oil lamp for a while, I wonder what happened to it.

[LGGrace]

These posts remind me of how vastly different my childhood was compared to the average 30 year old.

I grew up on a farm in the rural south. We grew all our own vegetables both summer and winter. We would can and freeze a bunch each year to get us through. Everyone was expected to be able to catch, hunt, clean and cook their own food. I only had athena TV with 4 channels. So Saturday morning cartoons and pbs kids were my only options. 

My family had a cabin on a lake in the middle of nowhere and I would spend summers there with no electricity or running water. The bathroom was an outhouse, water was hand pumped from a well, you cooked on a wood stove and used oil lanterns for lights.

To this day, I still have to catch myself from filling up the bathtub everytime the power goes out so that I have water to flush the toilet.😄

[ValentinesStuff]

Cloth an elegant diaper for a more civilized age.

[dondl2]

in the area I travel, I see a lot of the Amish homes will have diapers on the clothes lines, and if you stop in one of their dry goods stores they sell cloth diapers. 

[Little BabyDoll Christine]

What it all means is that SOME thngs were better and SOME things were worse. I've beaten cancer TWICE. In the 1960's you were lucky if you beat it ONCE. The quak bypass I had in '19 was impossible in 1956. It is a trad-off and is up to you to know what is better and what is not

[rusty pins]

I always have candles, flashlights and an oil lamp handy for when our power goes out.  It's bad in winter when the house gets really cold, also not good for the tropical fish or trying to sleep without my CPAP!  Seems our power is always the one that goes out!  2 blocks all around our house has power, it's always the block I live on that goes out!

[Little Sherri]

I had a taste of a simpler/more difficult lifestyle when my parents were developing the land that we eventually built our cottage on. We had no power up there for the first couple of years, so we heated the one-room cabin with a woodstove, and used honest-to-god oil lamps occasionally (kerosene actually), along with candles while we played cards at the table at night. We used a chemical toilet that was placed in a crudely-built outhouse, fetched drinking water from a local spring, and used lake water for washing. Everything was either cooked on the woodstove, or over an open fire. 

However, we drove up there in modern cars, town was a half-hour away if things got too rustic, and I was wearing modern disposable diapers - we did our laundry in a bucket with lake water so cloth diapers weren't a consideration up there. 

[TammyG]

Lived through craziness of the three day week and rationed electricity over here with different areas having fixed slots ofr availability during the 70's so that's relatable but rather than just accept there's no light, we hand candles with torches as back up and invertors to run a tv from a lead acid car battery and cooked on a camping stove simple meals.

I found growing up through it, you just adapted but sure, you can't cherry pick any one period as scientific and technical advances have improved treatments and even life itself.

We wouldn't of been on this site back then and a pocket sized computer just wasn't a thing.

 

[Crinklz Kat]

Speaking of rationing .... I remember the even/odd gas rationing back in the mid 70s.

[ValentinesStuff]

4 hours ago, Crinklz Kat said:

Speaking of rationing .... I remember the even/odd gas rationing back in the mid 70s.

I do too, and gas stations closed because they were out of gas. Locking gas caps because gas was 70¢ a gallon! It has always made me wonder when they talk about gas shortages these days.

[2sail2]

7 hours ago, ValentinesStuff said:

I do too, and gas stations closed because they were out of gas. Locking gas caps because gas was 70¢ a gallon! It has always made me wonder when they talk about gas shortages these days.

That reminds me of during Sandy when we had huge gas lines.  I tried siphoning gas out of a Corolla and a Cadillac for  the generator.  I just could not get the line past a certain point:  there seemed to be quite a few wiggles in the line.  Seems like they have anti siphoning design nowadays.  I was using a 1200 watt generator every couple couples to keep the refrigerator cold (1200 w seemed barely enough as when the fridge would call for power, I could hear the generator get quite a bit louder trying to provide the load requested)... 

After that experience we got a whole  house 13kw generator and remote  controlled gas fireplace (20,000 btu).  We always seemed to have power issues, but since Sandy it's been a lot better.  

 

[barnburner]

On 4/11/2024 at 4:28 AM, DailyDi said:

Power was out all evening. Just came back on at 3am. AM i Amish?

I am now having flashbacks to August 14 2003. (go on google it...)

[Crinklz Kat]

19 hours ago, barnburner said:

I am now having flashbacks to August 14 2003. (go on google it...)

Didn't happen here.   But I was in Hawthorne NJ (you gotta say as "harthorn" if you're from Joisey) in 1977 when the blackout happened then.   All TV stations went dead and my uncle jokingly said that it was probably a blackout.  Being young and gullible, we had to run out to the front porch and look eastward and sure enough the horizon was completely dark. 

[barnburner]

19 hours ago, Crinklz Kat said:

Didn't happen here.   But I was in Hawthorne NJ (you gotta say as "harthorn" if you're from Joisey) in 1977 when the blackout happened then.   All TV stations went dead and my uncle jokingly said that it was probably a blackout.  Being young and gullible, we had to run out to the front porch and look eastward and sure enough the horizon was completely dark. 

I was in the central business district/downtown of my city at the time it happened, I was trying to return a cable box to the cable company, I get there and there is a written closed sign due to power outage, Im heading back into downtown and the main public square was so full of people, I have never seen so many people in one place before.

 

Taking the train home is no-go due to it being electric powered and I could not for the life of me get on a bus headed in the direction of my place. I ended up going to a friends house in an opposite for the evening which was a good idea as there was battery powered radio and they ended up grilling food so it wouldnt go bad in the freezer.

 

I went home when things seemed to calm down that night, The power at my place came back on around 8:30 the next morning.