This was sent to me today thought i would share

[sg4356]

One hundred years ago.
What a difference a century makes!
Here are some statistics for the Year 1910:
************ ********* ************
The average life expectancy for men was 47 years.
Fuel for this car was sold in drug stores only.
Only 14 percent of the homes had a bathtub.
Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.
There were only 8,000 cars and only 144 miles of paved roads.
The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.
The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower !
The average US wage in 1910 was 22 cents per hour.
The average US worker made between $200 and $400 per year ..
A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year,
A dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.
More than 95 percent of all births took place at HOME .
Ninety percent of all Doctors had NO COLLEGE EDUCATION!
Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which
Were condemned in the press AND the government as 'substandard.'
Sugar cost four cents a pound.
Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.
Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.
Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used Borax or egg yolks for shampoo.
Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from entering into their country for any reason.
The Five leading causes of death were:
1. Pneumonia and influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4. Heart disease
5. Stroke
The American flag had 45 stars ....
The population of Las Vegas , Nevada , was only 30!!!!
Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea hadn't been invented yet.
There was no Mother's Day or Father's Day.
Two out of every 10 adults couldn't read or write and
Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school..
Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at the local corner drugstores.
Back then pharmacists said, 'Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind,
Regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health'
( Shocking? DUH! )
Eighteen percent of households had at least one full-time servant or domestic help ....
There were about 230 reported murders in the ENTIRE U.S.A. !



Try to imagine what it may be like in another 100 years.
IT STAGGERS THE MIND

[Itoldyouso]

Ah, the good old days.

Don

[ford2custom]

That’s interesting for sure. My Grandmother was 93 years old when she died. The local paper did a story on her about the changes she had seen in her lifetime when she was 92.

Richard

[vara4]

I hear you Richard, I remember talking to my great grandmother about how her and her husband used to drive their horse and buggy thru town. They owned a motel were they had a lobby with a restrant in it. My grand mother would cook and make pie's with my great grandmother there. My grandmother had to move in with her Mom and Dad after my granddad was killed when he slid on some ice in front of a train.
My mother was 3 at the time and her brother 2 so grandmother did what she could to suport the family. A couple years later she met the only granddad I ever knew.
And they lived in to there 90's, 6 months after my grandmother died granddad went too.
Great grandmother was 102 when she went, I don't think I will be able to last that long.
HE! HE! HE! But the things they must have seen.
Out houses, horse and buggy's,Cars, Electric, indoor plumbing,radio's, TV, airplanes, micro wave ovens, Jets,atom bomb's, computors. WOW what a life. My Granddad was also a pow and held by the Japenees. He never got to meet my son in law who is Japenees. Not sure how that meeting would have went, since he was not treated good as a pow.
Kurt

[ford2custom]

Kurt, I didn’t mention how old I was when my Grandmother was 92 and the local paper did a story on her, she died a year later at 93. I was 5 years old. I was born in 1946 so I figure she must have been born around 1859 and died in 1952 so the changes she must have seen would have been unreal. I will have to see if I can find a copy of her story.

If they could see what’s going on today with the electronic age we live in. A picture phone would be one example. A trip to the NHRA with a 4 second dragster would be a big change from the horse and buggy.

Richard

[vara4]

I would like to read that storie Richard.
Both of my grandparents died last year and
my great grand mother died in 1981.
I am a little younger then you I was born in 63.
Kurt

[Stu Cool]

Next year, if she was still alive, my Mom would be 100. I think of the things she saw in her lifetime and in my estimation the 2000th century was largely the era of transportation. Think about it, from horse based travel to automobiles, and think of the advances they have achieved. Heavier than air flight, we think nothing of hopping in an airplane to travel hundreds and thousands of miles in a few hours time. And that does not even address travel into space. I submit that the current and coming era is communications. Modern electronics have truly made the world a small place. Just on this forum we have made friends around the world. When my Mom was born it was a big deal to know someone in the next town or county. Think of the advances that have come in just the last 10 years in cell phones and computers, it truly is amazing. Changes happened pretty fast during the 20th century, but in the 21st they will come way faster. People need to accept that the job they have or the things they do to make a living will need to change several times in their life time if they wish to keep up. Education will be increasingly important as more and more manufacturing and labor will be done by machines. It's an exciting and scary time ahead.

Pat

[ford2custom]

I would like to read that storie Richard.
Both of my grandparents died last year and
my great grand mother died in 1981.
I am a little younger then you I was born in 63.
Kurt

Kurt, I'll see if one of my sister's has a copy and if I can get one I'll post it here.

PS I signed up for the Army the last of 63' I was 17 years old.

Richard

[Itoldyouso]

If you look at even the advancements that have been made in the past 50 or 60 years it is amazing. I remember when our very first tv showed up. My Mom was so entranced by it all day that my Dad was mad when he got home and she forgot to cook dinner.

Our telephone was a party line with 2 other families on it. You had to listen for the number of rings to know if the incoming call was for you or for someone else on the line. They would also pick up and evesdrop on your conversations until you yelled for them to get off the line.

My first job out of high school in 63 was pumping gas at 80 cents an hour. I got a 10 cent raise after a while and thought I was rich. I also remember hitchhiking all over the place when I was a teen, and people would actually stop and pick you up with no fears that you were Charles Manson.

My Uncles home had a hand pump inside on the sink for pumping water out of the well, you had to prime it with a little water first. They also had an outhouse. We were considered the rich relatives because we had pressurized water and real toilets. Those were very simple times.

Don

[ford2custom]

Yeah Don, times sure have changed. The old party line would sometimes get people into a heated debate about how long the person had the line tied up.

If you lived in a house with a few kids and had a T.V. the youngest would be the one to move the Rabbit Ears, the picture would roll up, be at an angle, have the screen full of snow as we called it. We spent more time adjusting the picture then we did watching it.
American Band Stand was a good show when the T.V. was working. Rt.66 was my favorite along with Alfred Hitchcock, The Fugitive plus other great show’s from the late 50’s early 60’s.

My first job was at a gas station also in the early part of 63’ but I only made 60 cents per hour. The owner must have seen more potential in you.

Talking about outhouses reminds me of the first BB gun that my brother and I shared. Remember how guys would refer to a good-looking girl as being built like a brick s--- house. The well to do people had lights on their outhouse, my brother and I plus another hoodlum went out with our BB gun shooting the lights out. A lady was in one when the light went out and she could be heard from a great distance. We were caught and we had to do light duty….. cut grass, wash cars, whatever they decided since our Dad gave them the option and we had to replace the lights.

The thumb was the means for transportation plus a good pair of walking shoes. There were not too many heavy guys in our teenage years because of all of the walking we did out of necessity. If a “pervert” (not what we called them back in the day but trying to be politically correct) would pick you up as they did from time to time you could just say stop the car and let me out. That does not happen today.

It would be nice to keep this thread going with stories from back in the day as they call them today.

Richard

[Itoldyouso]

Hehe, I forgot about me being the one who had to get up and change channels (there were only 3 in those days) and to adjust the rabbit ears. After a while we got a Rototenna that had that control on top of the tv that spun the antenna on the roof around to pick up stations better. And I also remember tin foil on the rabbit ears to try to get better reception.

One girl I dated had two tv's........one sitting on top of the other. The sound went out on one and the picture went out on the other, so they stacked them and listened to one and watched the other.

Don

[Rrumbler]

This made me think what my Grandparents saw in their lifetimes. The youngest of them was born in 1892, and they all were "of age" by 1910. They had parts in the change and growth of civilization, started out in the day of horse drawn transport and walking to get where one needed to go, to taking part in, and seeing mankind break free of the Earth and set foot on the Moon. They were business people, nurses, technicians, even did some farming, and logging. Two of them were instrumental in the development of the telephone system and it's spread across the country and the world, and had a small part in the completion of the first trans-continental long distance telephone call; my Grandfather was a switchroom wireman, on duty that day, and the switchboard operator who plugged the call through the switchboard in the Oklahoma City central office, was to later become his wife, my Grandmother. The same man built and flew a mono-plane before anyone else thought it could be done, but he crashed it, and having used up his funding, left the pursuit to others, and took up building power systems and electrifying the southwest. When I was a kid, he was working at Caltech, and had a hand in development of many of the systems that led to the development of space technology, and was on conversational terms with many of the esteemed scientific minds who roamed the Arroyo Seco facility in Pasadena, California.

The changes that occurred in my parent's lifetimes were no less dramatic in many ways.

Many of us on this board have seen vast, dramatic changes in our civilization. We were born and grew up in the era of steam locomotives and saw the change to diesel-electric, the time of piston engined aircraft and the move into jet powered and rocket flight, and the beginnings of the true exploration of outer space. To list the engineering, social, and cultural changes many of us have seen in our lifetime would require a book or two.

In our childrens lives, they have seen the wild growth of electronic and computer technology and space technology, and many of them are now taking part in the next phase of the forward movement of our civilization.

What will our grandchildren see in their time?

[jerry clayton]

Over my life span I've driven everything from a mule team to B-777s---even with a dog sled in Alaska thrown in back late 1980s----

[hotrodstude]

vara4 i think you need to edit your post being born in 63 and joining the army in 63 is quit a short childhood.

[Itoldyouso]

He was part of a secret Government project.......Baby Paratroopers.

Don