"Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan."

I can still hear his somber voice as I read that line.

Lou
PS. I can't even remember what I had for breakfast this morning.... never mind trying to remember what I was doing that day!

...I wasn't alive yet and neither was my mother. ;-)

Hi
Since my birth was 9 months into the future feel certain was not listening to the radio?? I suspect, though I don't remember mostly serious cell division?? lol
Mother became rather famous (not from my birthlol) but the first confirmed case of polio within the county.
Ah the "good old days"?? gary

Well Lou, looks like we are the only 'old-timers' around here ! Gary, I remember the Iron Lungs for people with Polio, it was a terrible scourge... FDR had Polio and couldn't walk but they kept that a secret from the public, but that didn't stop him at all.. if we don't remember our past we will repeat our mistakes in the future, it is so important that our young people know and remember our history because they are our future.....sally

Sally,
There are other 'old timers' out there quietly reading this, but they are in denial about their age.

Polio seems to be the last disease that was actually cured. Now all the meds seem to only mask the effects of a disease and keep it in remission rather than cure it so they can keep selling their pills to you forever. Heaven forbid they should actually cure something and lose that monthly income!

Lou

I was only 3 1/2 then, but I do have some memories of that day. Two of my youngest aunts were just married. One to a solder station at Pearl and the other to a Marine headed to the Pacific. Of course I didn't know that at the time, but I knew everyone was really upset. The most vivid memory though is going with my father to drive his youngest brother and my favorite uncle, to the Army Enlistment Center. I'll never forget that. They and all the other uncles and cousins that went off to fight came home alive.
john

sally
If you don't mind my asking just how old are you??lol
gary

Sally's old enough to remember the horse & buggy, the steam locomotive, the trolley cars to get city to city (some were pulled by horses), the knife sharpener's push wagon that came around every few months and he sharpened knives & scissors, home delivered milk in glass bottles with cream on the top, Sears and Roebuck (and their catalogs that had a second use in the outhouse) Montgomery Wards, the ice man that came around to deliver ice for your ice box (now called refrigerators), The drip pan under the ice box (heaven help us if we forgot to empty that!), electric lights (when they finally ran the electric poles out to our farm, no more kerosene lanterns!). the crank telephone (our telephone number became 32 when it got automated, prior to that the operators name was Ruth and everyone was first name basis), the gasoline engine powered washing machine, our kitchen sink had a hand pump to get water (heaven help the kid that drank the glass of primer water!) and the biggie! getting my drivers license at age 14 (day light only until age 16), These are a few of the things I remember as a kid and I know she would remember some of those.

Lou

Lou,

You forgot the party line, glad you didn't forget the use for the Sears catalog ;-)

Tom

Tom,
We didn't have the 'two party' line at our house. Some people did, we didn't. My daddy had a reason for not having it but it escapes me now.
Because this is a garden forum I probably should have also mentioned me plowing the little garden plot behind the team of horses while dad ran the tractor plowing the big garden acreage.
It took a few years but all the ink is gone off my butt now from the sears catalog ads. LOL

Lou

Gary, I'm forever 39..... remember Jack Benny ??? Yes Lou.. the drip-pan under the ice-box ! and the milk-box on the back step ! and you left your back door unlocked so the ice-man could deliver the ice ! and the kerosene stove to cook on.... When I was growing-up in Miami, there was one telephone in the neighborhood, the rich neighbor, and he was nice enough to let others use it, on occasion ! ...when I moved to Canada there was the crank-telephone, where we lived in Ontario they had the last private-owned phone Co, ( Caradoc Phone Co. ) in Ontario....it was a big wooden box on the wall with a hand-crank. they did sell out to Bell after we left.. our # was 323-ring 2, and if your phone rang it rang for everyone down the line so you had to listen to the rings, and of course everyone down the line listened-in, the reception got gradually weaker and if you couldn't hear the other person, you had to yell at the people listening-in on the line "HANG UP" ! oh yes....I had a wheel-cultivator for the garden, we built a root-cellar out back and filled it for the winter, my hubby dug down abt. 6 feet and built a timber-roof up and then piled dirt on it abt. 3 feet deep, we could walk down the steps and stand up down there.... we had a kerosene lamtern to use down there, I pulled cabbages up in Oct. and re-planted them in the root-cellar and they were fresh all winter... we filled the shelves with carrots and turnips and apples and 'taters, etc. etc. My hubby ran a snare trap-line out in the woods, and we had rabbit all winter for dinner... delish..... quite a different life indeed...... sally

Was not alive. Neither were my mom or dad. lol

Tropicalfreak

I wasn't alive, but my Dad was in the Navy in WWII, my Uncle was a Marine at Iwo Jima, another uncle was in the Bataan death march and my FIL was a medic in the Army. I learned more about WWII from the series about it on History Channel than I ever learned in school.
Sally you are absolutely right. It does sound like a grim reminder. I know kids who don't even know what happened on 9/11! I have a son in the Army. We need to remember the past so we don't repeat the mistakes in the future.
Julie

I wasn't born til the end of the war and I never really understand people's feelings about Pearl Harbor until 9-11.

Hi
I grew up in an Amish community of 1500 most still have horses and buggies no telephones and coal stoves lol
Still have a "blacksmith" but the "icehouse" is gone.
No TV,radios, indoor plumbing to my knowledge lol
Though born in the 1940's I grew up in the 1880's lol
have no knowledge of what life is like now as all my direct relatives have passed away and nobody in my generation still lives there.or are members of the Amish church. You must drive through the town to get to the city where my parents lived and you can still see "Hex symbols and outhouses, but looks like the houses are wired. Stll a "buggy" lane on one road .
They have added a store front along the highway where they sell quilts and "Shoo fly pie"lol
Had one uncle who did not fight the draft but was shot in the foot during training so was discharged but he did get a purple heart.!! Guess I'll give it to my eldest grandson gary

Great thread here. I do remember the milk lady and the party line. Once I answered the phone and told my Mom I didn't know who they were asking for. She yelled at me that it was not our ring and I shouldn't have answered it. LOL
I pray every night that peace be brought to the world.

Sally,
Your root cellar story reminded me of ours. We had a half cellar at one end of our house where the cast iron coal furnace lived along with the coal bin under the cellar window. I remember me & dad digging out a root cellar under the other end of the house. We put a door in the storage closet that led down to the root cellar. I still remember my momma yelling at me & dad for tracking dirt through the house as we were hauling the dirt out in buckets as we dug. Finally when finished one side had wooden bins, some filled with pebbly sand where we would bury the root crops for winter storage, potatoes, beets, turnips, etc. The other side had shelves where momma put the mason jars of canning she and grandma did all summer. Braided onions hung from nails on the joists. We had hit an outcropping of bedrock about half ways down this long hall of a root cellar and momma finally tied some old pillows around the house main beam carry timber so we wouldn't gonk our heads on it when we were sent to fetch something. Us kids never lit the lantern down there, we'd just gonk our heads every time. There was only about 5 foot clearance bedrock to beam. We'd strike a wooden match to read the mason jar labels, select the correct jar, match would burn out, we'd head back - gonk our heads and haul the jar back up rubbing our noggins.

Lou

I have really enjoyed reading all of your stories. It puts my difficult childhood in perspective.

Growing up with only three television stations, and, as the youngest child, being used as a human remote control was a true character building experience. ;-)

TV?? --- It wasn't invented yet. My grand daddy showed me how to make a crystal radio. We wrapped magnet wire (enamel coated copper wire) tightly around a cardboard mailing tube with no overlaps. We used an automobile points file to clear the enamel off a top strip of the wrapped wire the length of the tube. He drilled a hole in one end of an old broken ladle handle, screwed it all to a little board, the other end rubbed across the cleaned part of copper wire wrapped tube. We then went out to the gravel bar in the river and looked for a certain type rock called a galena crystal (I learned later it was crystallized gallium arsenide). He mounted it on the board and also mounted a safety pin to the board where the point of the safety pin would touch the galena crystal. We stretched a long wire between two trees and brought the end into the house and tied it to one end of the wire from the mailing tube. He hooked up earphones to it and after scratching around on the galena rock with the pin IT WORKED!!! I could tune stations by moving the ladle handle across the tube. Really cool to a kid let me tell you... that project led me later on in life to become an electronics engineer working on the U.S. going to the moon and also in the guided missile weapons industry (Hawk, Patriot, Sidewinder missiles, etc.). Now as a grandpa myself I try to stoke up interest in the grand kids to many different projects when they come to visit.

Teach your children well, spend time with them, your knowledge whatever it may be, is amazing to them, as my grandpa's was to me.
Lou

This is GREAT ! Everybody has such a wonderful story to tell.. each person is different and unique, and nobody else has the same life-experience as YOU.... It seems that most of the older folks have a bit of Agricultural background, and the younger folks seem to be trying to emulate that... what with all the modern gadgets that are supposed to make life 'easier' we seem to be working harder than ever, if only to keep them all working the way they should.... but I would sure not want to be back when they didn't have a lot of them, things like running-water, and electricity, and indoor-plumbing.... when my hubby and I moved to the country we started to build our house, we lived in a trailer, and before we got the electric-pole put in we had a hand-pump outside, in the winter you had to heat water on the stove and carry it out thru' the snow to prime the pump... laundry was done with a tub and scrub-board and the clothes froze solid out on the clothes-line.... it was a test of one's fortitude and made us work all the more feverishly to build that house ! In Canada the electric was called the 'hydro', the Troopers were the 'Provincials', and 'schedule' was pronounced 'shedule', and everything was accompanied by 'eh'....and we all had a hockey-rink in the back-yard, at least during the winter.... sally

I was born after WWII but lived in a glorious but quite remote place in England. We had no car, no bathroom or hot water, no power supply and only propane gas lighting in 2 rooms, candles for the rest. We eventually had a propane gas 2 burner stove that supplemented cooking on the open fire and in the oven heated by the fire. We had dripping, rather than running, water. No telephone or TV of course! The first TV I ever saw was built by my uncle. There was one channel that broadcast only a few hours each day.

With no heating other than open fires the house would be pretty cold in winter. My brother used to dare me to put my bare foot on the frosty windows so that we could look out on the winter wonderland! Baths were taken across the yard in a 'wash house' (where laundry was done). Water was heated by burning logs in a grate beneath a vat-like 'copper'. My mother made the wash house cozy with rugs on the stone floors and curtains at the windows. The bath was tin and placed on the floor. I remember our glowing faces after all that warmth and then a quick run in bathrobes and slippers through the deep snow in the yard. My father made me some snow shoes so that I could get to school though the deep snow drifts. School until I was eleven years old was about 2 miles from home.

Summers were blissfully spent catching rabbits (by stalking) and trout (by tickling) though never harming them, and picnics. I wandered at will with no thought of danger and spent day after day helping our farmer neighbor with his animals or crops. My mother could see us from our windows, the old farmer and his little buddy, side by side on his tractor as he plowed, singing at the tops of our voices!

Conditions were hard, the life was wonderful. Our family was close and laughter and conversation were endless. We were never bored, our home was filled with books and the outdoors provided more entertainment than we ever had time for! Happy days!

I was three months old and had pneumonia and my mother's youngest brother had gone, amid tears from all the family, to join the RAF.

Man, looks like I just missed all the fun! My childhood was more like saintpfla's, growing up in the 50's. Not only did we have to get up and change the three TV channels by hand, all the stations went off the air by 1:00 A.M. and didn't come back on until 5:00 or 6:00 A.M., that was just traumatic as a child ;-)

Tom

Younger 'modern' kids have difficulties and problems today but just different and perhaps more deadly than we 'old geezers'..... we didn't have to worry abt. drugs or drive-by shootings, or AIDS, ... I think kids today have more pressures than we did years ago..... We didn't have to keep our doors locked or be afraid walking down the street on the way to school, or be wary of strangers, or watch out for so many dangers prevalent now.... and the pressure put on kids by the Media, movies, TV with so many programs extolling sex and deviant-living, and so-called 'Celebrities' with their degenerate life-style.... I could go on-and-on, we never had this when I was growing-up.....sally

Hey everybody and Sally, It is very good you brought it up. I agree that younger people have to remember our past. It is our country history. I was not alive , my mother was just born, but our whole family including my kids know and remember June , 22 1941 and the speech of Vyacheslav Molotov and announcement of the war on a radio that day ( I am from Ukraine). We are very grateful to the United State who helped us to Win in that terrible War. Nobody even knows the exact level of casualties. I hope it will never happen again.

Helen