Door Number 8: Harking Back to the '40s: One Middle-of-the-Night List

For some reason, when I awoke in the middle of the night recently, I began thinking about those three-lane highways we had back in the '40s. This was before the interstate highway system was built. Roads, especially in the countryside, often had a middle passing lane. No restrictions as to who used it--you or an oncoming car. One family member related how a friend sometimes used that middle lane for passing on a curve, quipping that no one else (including an on-coming car) would have the nerve, so it was quite safe.

The open road then, though not one with three lanes

As I lay in bed waiting to get back to sleep, I began to make a mental list of things we took for granted then. Here's what I came up with.

If we were sick, a parent phoned the doctor who soon showed up at the front door with his little black bag.
Before penicillin came in, we took sulfa drugs.
Gas stations provided ready attendants (now called fuel transfer technicians) who pumped your gas, checked your oil, and washed your windows.
On trips, we passed signs shot up with rusting bullet holes.
And Burma Shave signs--six small consecutive signs posted along the highway advertising shaving creme.
On a car trip, we children sat in the back seat where we sometimes tickled each other. No buckled booster seats.
We'd pass steam trains with lots of smoke. (See below)
And, on the outskirts of the Southern California town where we lived, we'd pass a hobo camp by the tracks where we could see the smoke from their cooking fires.
Our toys were made of wood or metal. No plastic ... or molded plastic. There weren't even any plastic bags.
We children amused themselves by playing Robin Hood with bows and arrows, or riding a tricycle on the sidewalk (see below), or attaching metal roller skates to our shoes.
There was no television! (Heaven bless us.) We made up our own amusements.
In town, we sometimes stopped off at a drug store where we'd sit on stools at the soda fountain and order a chocolate ice cream soda or a lemon or cherry Coke. The Coke came out of a dispenser with separate dispensers for the flavorings. To make an ice cream soda, the soda-jerk (as he/she was called) put ice cream in a tall glass, a few squirts of chocolate sauce, some fizzy soda water (from yet another dispenser), and whipped cream on top.
Relatives drank beer (never wine) and smoked.
No one had heard of pizza. And there were no fast food places. The first I remember was McDonald's where a hamburger cost 15¢. But that was in the '50s.
Women wore skirts. Hats in town sometimes. Stockings and high-heeled shoes.
Clothes needed ironing. No double knits or drip-dries.
New clothes often shrank during their first washing. Or they bled colors into the laundry. Especially red things which turned the entire laundry pink.
Houses had one bathroom.
Movies were always double features. We listened to the Oscars on the radio.
We played 78 RPM records when we wanted to listen to music. Because they could break (or crack), if a chunk was missing, we'd have to set the needle down in the middle of the record.
To calculate numbers, my father pulled out his slide-rule.
With no such batteries then, wrist-watches had to be wound each day.
Maybe a week or two before Christmas, the postman came twice a day.
Most of Southern California's iconic orange and lemon groves were still extant.