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Algernon Moncrieff

(5,780 posts)
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 12:24 AM Oct 2015

23 photos from the '30s and '40s that prove your grandparents were so much more badass than you.

LINK to full article

1. Your grandma, doing her laundry by hand in a metal bucket on top of a rickety wooden barrel



Oh, it's so hard to schlep your clothes all the way down to the basement? Well, here's your grandma in Dust Bowl-era California washing your dirty socks by hand in the middle of the street.

So, you know. Keep complaining.

Most likely, your grandma stuck it out in the cabbage fields until the beginning of World War II, when she and your grandpa found better paying industrial work that allowed them to move to the big city. Though if she was one of the thousands of the mostly Latino and Asian migrant workers who stuck around, there's a good chance she was part of one of the biggest workers' rights victories of all time two decades later, when many of California's agriculture laborers successfully agitated for their rights to unionize behind Cesar Chavez and United Farm Workers.

Either way, total badass.


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23 photos from the '30s and '40s that prove your grandparents were so much more badass than you. (Original Post) Algernon Moncrieff Oct 2015 OP
both my grandmothers marym625 Oct 2015 #1
My grandmother cooked on a wood stove and milked her cow by hand Ex Lurker Oct 2015 #17
Bad ass! marym625 Oct 2015 #19
My four grandparents all came from large families Ex Lurker Oct 2015 #20
yes, thank goodness people have birth control now marym625 Oct 2015 #48
my paternal grandmother had 14 children and a husband. My dad was the 7th one. SummerSnow Oct 2015 #54
Wow! marym625 Oct 2015 #55
I know what you mean ,I miss them too. They were the salt of the earth . SummerSnow Oct 2015 #57
. marym625 Oct 2015 #58
Almost anyone who could had gardens and chickens back jwirr Oct 2015 #39
we sure have marym625 Oct 2015 #47
Yeah I cannot imagine anyone asking a total stranger to jwirr Oct 2015 #49
same with my grandfather and the milk marym625 Oct 2015 #50
No. My dad took the excess from his garden every time he jwirr Oct 2015 #52
what a kind man your father was. marym625 Oct 2015 #53
Great pics-- for a lot of us, that's "your mama" and "your papa~~!" Not gran and gramps! nt MADem Oct 2015 #2
Yep 840high Oct 2015 #5
That's true newfie11 Oct 2015 #22
I remember my mom doing this in a dirt basement Omaha Steve Oct 2015 #3
and every Saturday KentuckyWoman Oct 2015 #14
Lehmans can replace the wringer washer for you SoCalDem Oct 2015 #42
"Oh, it's so hard to schlep your clothes all the way down to the basement?" pacalo Oct 2015 #4
I can remember my grandma slaughtering hogs tularetom Oct 2015 #6
This is awesome! Thanks! nt Mojorabbit Oct 2015 #7
we had a ringer washer and yes, you can get your hand caught in the roguevalley Oct 2015 #8
I still have a wringer washer zalinda Oct 2015 #11
Our wringer didn't have a pump. 1939 Oct 2015 #24
I have a scar on my thumb from getting it caught in the wringer newfie11 Oct 2015 #23
You ain't lying! forest444 Oct 2015 #9
It takes real ingenuity to be poor. notadmblnd Oct 2015 #26
My grandparents were moving to a new farm they rented jwirr Oct 2015 #40
What memories. That's how this country was built. forest444 Oct 2015 #41
My grandson is in charge of our small family farm today. We jwirr Oct 2015 #46
I ran a horse ranch beyond the phone and electric lines in the 80s.... Spitfire of ATJ Oct 2015 #10
This message was self-deleted by its author Snobblevitch Oct 2015 #12
I used to visit my aunt in the Catskill Mountains Yupster Oct 2015 #13
My grandparents were well off compared to most of those photos Warpy Oct 2015 #15
Switchel: bemildred Oct 2015 #16
Thanks! I was trying to remember what that was called ... eppur_se_muova Oct 2015 #33
One of my relatives rescued if for my family. bemildred Oct 2015 #34
6 year old babysitting baby Liberal_in_LA Oct 2015 #18
HA! my grandparents saved the old family cottage's wood stove for their 1967 cottage. used it til pansypoo53219 Oct 2015 #21
This one could be me. brer cat Oct 2015 #25
Shoot! My mother had a wringer washer until I was about 9. leftofcool Oct 2015 #27
Hehe.. loved this one. notadmblnd Oct 2015 #28
I remember that flash mob. Here's my pic from the same event Binkie The Clown Oct 2015 #38
Great pics, the interpretation is sometimes telling HereSince1628 Oct 2015 #29
When my first child was born, LWolf Oct 2015 #30
My hard-working immigrant grandmother thought I was badass frazzled Oct 2015 #31
This, right here. Brickbat Oct 2015 #32
I think many would feel the same as your grandmother... Phentex Oct 2015 #36
I remember one way that women tried to find a better way jwirr Oct 2015 #44
lots more MowCowWhoHow III Oct 2015 #35
Choose your state for more photos OxQQme Oct 2015 #37
My grandma came to Oklahoma around 1907 - in a covered wagon LongTomH Oct 2015 #43
My great-great grandparents came to central Idaho from Missouri IDemo Oct 2015 #61
Great photos, too bad the idiotic captions and text diminish them whatchamacallit Oct 2015 #45
My grandma did her laundry in a washing machine with that ringer thingy on top, then Cleita Oct 2015 #51
I already knew my maternal Grandma (RIP) was a badass. She was white; Grandpa full-blood N/A. cherokeeprogressive Oct 2015 #56
my paternal grandparents homesteaded in Saskatchewan... grasswire Oct 2015 #59
My grandparents Mendocino Oct 2015 #60

marym625

(17,997 posts)
1. both my grandmothers
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 12:32 AM
Oct 2015

Fed the whole damn family, and usually some more, during the depression, with very little. My maternal grandmother had a dairy bottling business in the basement and my grandfather sold the milk, often taking nothing in payment. And after she sterilized the bottels, filled them with milk, capped them and packed them in the truck, she cleaned houses for wealthy people. With 10 kids. My paternal grandmother fed 7 kids and her little brother with almost no money coming in.

And they both often has food for the homeless that came knocking at the door for a meal.

Bad ass!

Ex Lurker

(3,808 posts)
17. My grandmother cooked on a wood stove and milked her cow by hand
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 03:24 AM
Oct 2015

She was a college graduate and a school teacher, but lived in a rural area, and that's how things were done until the late fifties. My grandfather cut crossties in the woods as a young man. He gashed his foot with an axe when he was 19 and had to ride a mule into town to have it sewed up. He had the scar all his life.

Ex Lurker

(3,808 posts)
20. My four grandparents all came from large families
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 03:43 AM
Oct 2015

My grandparents and all their siblings-and there must have been 25 or more altogether-all left the farm as soon as they could, either for formal education or blue collar jobs in the cities. It was a hard life. In later years they reminisced about the good times, but they were never sentimental about how difficult it was, and they didn't miss that part.

marym625

(17,997 posts)
48. yes, thank goodness people have birth control now
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 04:08 PM
Oct 2015

My maternal grandmother was the 5th of 11. My maternal grandfather was the 3rd of 13. My mom was the last of 10 and my dad was the third of seven.

SummerSnow

(12,608 posts)
54. my paternal grandmother had 14 children and a husband. My dad was the 7th one.
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 04:52 PM
Oct 2015

She said she never used a washing machine , she said she cleaned all the clothes by hand in a huge tin pail. Bless her soul.

marym625

(17,997 posts)
55. Wow!
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 05:01 PM
Oct 2015

My maternal grandmother started having kids in 1915 at the ripe old age of 25. She had 10 kids between then and 1938. She and my paternal grandmother still had that old wringing type of washing machine in their basements when I was little.

I remember how much my paternal grandparents and maternal grandmother loved and respected each other. Man I miss those beautiful people.

My maternal grandfather died before my parents were married. But I often heard the story of dinner in there home, my maternal grandparents I mean. She would say, in her beautiful Irish brouge, "how was it Da?" And he would respond, "As sweet as the hand that fed it to me."

SummerSnow

(12,608 posts)
57. I know what you mean ,I miss them too. They were the salt of the earth .
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 05:10 PM
Oct 2015

Hard working and never too tired to show you love. Gosh I miss those syrup sandwiches grandma use to make me.Oh and the homemade ice cream she would make and get from the first snow. Those were the days.

jwirr

(39,215 posts)
39. Almost anyone who could had gardens and chickens back
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 03:07 PM
Oct 2015

then. I was visiting a cousin one summer when this guy showed up at that door. I later learned that he was a hobo who had been stopping at their home since the early 40s to get something to eat and have a safe place to sleep in the hay loft in the barn. In return he sharpened their knives.

We have lost a lot of the skills they had.

jwirr

(39,215 posts)
49. Yeah I cannot imagine anyone asking a total stranger to
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 04:10 PM
Oct 2015

stop by for dinner and sleeping anywhere on their property today. Also I was impressed by the old man when he insisted on doing something in return.

marym625

(17,997 posts)
50. same with my grandfather and the milk
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 04:21 PM
Oct 2015

There were many customers with children who couldn't afford to pay. He couldn't afford not to be paid but he forgave the debt anyway. But more often than not, something was given in exchange. Can you imagine any corporation doing that now?

jwirr

(39,215 posts)
52. No. My dad took the excess from his garden every time he
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 04:34 PM
Oct 2015

went into town and stopped a every home he knew were having trouble. There is such difference today from then. They worked very hard for what they had yet they had a generosity that was unbelievable.

The same generosity that was so apparent in the politics of FDR. That is the heart of Bernie's platform today. Lord, I hope we can learn to love again.

newfie11

(8,159 posts)
22. That's true
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 06:20 AM
Oct 2015

I remember my mom washing like this. Heating the water in a bucket to add.
When wringer washers were available everyone was thrilled.

Times have changed for better in the laundry area.

KentuckyWoman

(6,666 posts)
14. and every Saturday
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 02:41 AM
Oct 2015

the little kids had to sweep the dirt floor and clean the cob webs out of the outhouse.

I live in that house now. The floor has concrete now and we added indoor plumbing and full electric.

I'm still using that same wringer washer but if it breaks again not sure where I'll get the parts. I have a modern gas dryer but mostly only use it for towels. Still have clotheslines all over the basement for the wintertime but most of it goes outside the rest of the year.

Monday is still wash day around these parts.....

pacalo

(24,721 posts)
4. "Oh, it's so hard to schlep your clothes all the way down to the basement?"
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 01:04 AM
Oct 2015

That reminded me of a Ralph Kramden line to an exhausted Alice: "If I've told you once, I've told you a hundred times -- make two trips instead of one!"

tularetom

(23,664 posts)
6. I can remember my grandma slaughtering hogs
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 01:21 AM
Oct 2015

Once she accidentally chopped off her own finger cutting firewood, wrapped a towel around her hand, picked up the finger and rode five miles on horseback to the doctors office to see if they could sew it back on. Of course they couldn't, but she loved to tell the story.

She was the oldest of 12 kids, born in Switzerland to German speaking parents and went all the way to the fourth grade. She was a dead shot and an accomplished musician, and she played the organ in church (with 9 fingers). She didn't suffer fools gladly and she got pissed off at we kids when she thought we were whining or feeling sorry for ourselves.

I can't remember her being sick a day in her life (at least she never fessed up to it). She was the most positive and optimistic person I've ever known, a major influence on my siblings and myself and the only grandma I ever knew (my dad was an orphan).

She lived beyond 100 and died of Alzheimers in Kentucky shortly before the end of the last century.



roguevalley

(40,656 posts)
8. we had a ringer washer and yes, you can get your hand caught in the
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 01:41 AM
Oct 2015

ringer. Ask my mom. I still remember it like it was an ibm computer.

zalinda

(5,621 posts)
11. I still have a wringer washer
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 02:16 AM
Oct 2015

and use it. I've taught my son to use it too. We used it for about 2 years until we could save to buy a used automatic washer. The only problem with it was the pump was shot, so we attached a hose to it and used gravity to empty it, that took a long time. I'll never get rid of it.

Oh, and my fancy brand new front load washing machine, that cost $700, lasted about 5 years, then I couldn't open the door anymore. Cost more to fix it, than my used machine I just got. New things are not necessarily better.

Z

1939

(1,683 posts)
24. Our wringer didn't have a pump.
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 06:57 AM
Oct 2015

You attached a hose to the faucet of the laundry sink to fill the washer. When you drained the washer, there was a hose attached to the side that you unhooked from a bracket then lowered to the basement drain to empty the washer. My job was to use the hose attached to the laundry sink to wash the residue of the suds down the drain and get them off the basement floor. I also held the clothes pins while my mother hung up the wash either in the back yard (summer) or in the basement. All of thge bed sheets just hung there in the basement and took forever to dry.

newfie11

(8,159 posts)
23. I have a scar on my thumb from getting it caught in the wringer
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 06:26 AM
Oct 2015

Luckly my mom go it stopped but had to go for stitches. The doctor told her he saw lots of kids that got the whole arm in it.

forest444

(5,902 posts)
9. You ain't lying!
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 01:49 AM
Oct 2015

My great-grandparents on my mother's side were dairy farmers, and guess who took care of the deliveries? My 5 year-old grandpa, circa 1923, on a horse drawn buggy as he went from house to house. Once the horse balked and overturned everything - butter, milk bottles, grandpa, and all. He salvaged what he could, and kept going, apologizing to the customers whose deliveries he couldn't meet that day.

I doubt his childhood was very different from the childhoods of most DUers' grandparents. Survival itself was a real art form back then for most people. It's sad that the Bushes and Koches of the world are hypocritically trying to push society back to that state - not because it wasn't virtuous (it was, and it wasn't), but because we wouldn't survive. Our elders were a hardy, resourceful lot; we, for the most part, are just not.

jwirr

(39,215 posts)
40. My grandparents were moving to a new farm they rented
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 03:24 PM
Oct 2015

and my dad who was 12 years old was put in charge of moving the animals (beef, dairy, pigs, sheep, goats). He road a horse herding the animals all the way for 20 miles. I cannot imagine our kids being trusted to do that today.

Not necessarily that they could not do it today but that we have grown to believe that they couldn't.

I was born in the early 40s and I remember a lot of what was in those pictures. I actually cooked on a wood stove, heated with wood, washed clothes with a Maytag washer and hung them out to dry. Helped my grandparents to garden and gather eggs. I was little but I experienced much of this up to the mid 50s and even into the 60s. My daughter was born in 1968 and she was a baby when I was still cooking on that wood stove.

forest444

(5,902 posts)
41. What memories. That's how this country was built.
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 03:29 PM
Oct 2015

We're all as progressives absolutely opposed to child labor, of course (unlike many of our right-wing friends - http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/14/944565/-Now-Republicans-want-to-repeal-child-labor-laws).

Nevertheless, keeping kids today in touch with the earth is probably more important than ever. No matter how far we've come it's always good to go back to nature.

jwirr

(39,215 posts)
46. My grandson is in charge of our small family farm today. We
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 03:51 PM
Oct 2015

try to grow as much of our own food as possible and he lives on the farm (40 acres like my dad started out on) and does most of the care of the animals. He loves it. But unlike my grandfather he still has to go to work 8-9 hours a day to be able to afford today's lifestyle.

Our gardens are spread out on all our home yards so all of us take part in that.

 

Spitfire of ATJ

(32,723 posts)
10. I ran a horse ranch beyond the phone and electric lines in the 80s....
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 02:16 AM
Oct 2015

The nearest place to do laundry was 11 miles away. The first 5 over a single lane dirt road winding down a mountain from an elevation of 6000 feet.

Lights were candles, oil lights and a 12v system powered by old car batteries.

Response to Algernon Moncrieff (Original post)

Yupster

(14,308 posts)
13. I used to visit my aunt in the Catskill Mountains
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 02:37 AM
Oct 2015

She had an outhouse.

The thing I remember about it most was the spiders.

We rebelled at about age 8-9 as all we did on our vacation with our aunt was work.

One more story. One night I heard a fairly large animal running around my bedroom in the middle of the night. I told my aunt and she told me I was imagining things. Later that day I walked by and noticed my aunt had the bed pulled away from the wall and was shoving big rocks into a hole in the wall.

Raccoon? I don't even want to know.

Warpy

(110,913 posts)
15. My grandparents were well off compared to most of those photos
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 02:46 AM
Oct 2015

but my paternal grandma had a mini farm complete with chickens in her urban backyard and I remember her wringing them, then cutting the heads off once they'd stopped moving (and it was less messy) and hanging the chickens on the clothesline for the blood to drain into the garden soil. The garden soil was coal black and fantastic stuff.

My maternal grandma and my mother lived on oatmeal 3 times a day during the worst of the Depression, but they kept their home and didn't take in boarders, something which would have been a horrible comedown to her. When my mother was old enough to get her first lousy job, she said her big treat was a fried egg sandwich for lunch every day, cost a nickel in NYC.

Both of them did the wash with wringer washers in the cellar, state of the art for the time. My paternal grandma made her own brown soap and the stuff would take the skin off you if you tried to wash with it. She made white soaps for the bath, dyed some of them with food coloring so that the suds would be that color, too, fascinating to a little kid.

I remember the old houses didn't really have closets, they had wardrobes with pegs, and even my well to do grandparents only owned 3 or 4 dresses--and a lot of aprons. The Sunday best was silk, georgette for one and crepe for the other.

But yes, they were badasses in their own way. So am I.

eppur_se_muova

(36,227 posts)
33. Thanks! I was trying to remember what that was called ...
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 10:11 AM
Oct 2015

although I thought honey was used, not maple syrup. Probably varies depending on local availability.

ETA: I think I read about it here, not sure: https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Food_of_a_Younger_Land.html?id=kCRVWMcNPEwC&source=kp_cover&hl=en

bemildred

(90,061 posts)
34. One of my relatives rescued if for my family.
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 10:18 AM
Oct 2015

But I found that on Google.

It's a bit tart, but it really does work. Great for electrolytes too, though I don't suppose they would have put it that way back then. I remember when I worked in a sawmill when I was young, they had salt pills for us, but I think switchel is better.

pansypoo53219

(20,906 posts)
21. HA! my grandparents saved the old family cottage's wood stove for their 1967 cottage. used it til
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 05:09 AM
Oct 2015

my grandfather passé. I COOKED ON IT. i LOVED that stove. more than the electric.

brer cat

(24,402 posts)
25. This one could be me.
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 08:27 AM
Oct 2015

I loved to play in the gutters with leaf "ships" after a rain.



My sister and I would draw house diagrams in the dirt to play with our dolls. Without a good imagination, there would have been very little to play with.

leftofcool

(19,460 posts)
27. Shoot! My mother had a wringer washer until I was about 9.
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 09:06 AM
Oct 2015

There was a time in this country when people worked really hard.

notadmblnd

(23,720 posts)
28. Hehe.. loved this one.
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 09:25 AM
Oct 2015

Your grandma, rocking out on a giant guitar



Here she is in her Salvation Army bonnet, bringing much-needed relief to the poor and needy in San Francisco. Though the Salvation Army hasn't looked quite so good recently, leading up to — and during — the Depression, the organization was omnipresent, feeding and housing what is technically referred to on the American West Coast as "hella" people. The Salvation Army also tried extra hard to make them Methodist, which, depending on your perspective, was likely either miracle balm for their eternal souls or annoying as hell.

These boys are all like, "Yo! Play that Woody Guthrie, Miss!" But your grandma just frowns and keeps rolling with the church music. Eventually, they like it. They always do.



She reminds me of that Kim Davis woman. Do you see the resemblance?

Binkie The Clown

(7,911 posts)
38. I remember that flash mob. Here's my pic from the same event
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 02:43 PM
Oct 2015


Notice granny on the right hand side, behind the other singers.

HereSince1628

(36,063 posts)
29. Great pics, the interpretation is sometimes telling
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 09:36 AM
Oct 2015

about how much we've lost regarding how the world once worked.

LWolf

(46,179 posts)
30. When my first child was born,
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 09:56 AM
Oct 2015

I was dropped off, without a car, at my grandmother-in-laws little rural place while my husband left to work out of state.

She explained calmly that her old washing machine couldn't handle diapers. She set me up out in the yard with a bucket and a washboard and a hose.

I was there for 3 months.

frazzled

(18,402 posts)
31. My hard-working immigrant grandmother thought I was badass
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 10:08 AM
Oct 2015

And I'll tell you why. My grandmother slaved all her life, coming to this country early in the last century with nothing and knowing not a word of English, and eventually owning and running a little corner grocery. She scrubbed and cleaned and laundered and butchered chickens and made sausages to sell in the store and stocked and ran it and then in her spare time rolled out strudel on the kitchen table and sewed. I don't know when she was able to sleep.

When we were newlyweds my husband and I moved to go to graduate school an hour or so away from where she lived. We'd go to visit her occasionally, always unannounced so that we wouldn't put her to any trouble, and yet she'd always have six giant pots of food on the stove ready for us. (How did that happen?).

Once, we brought her to our little apartment and made dinner for her. After dinner, my husband got up to clear the table and began doing the dishes. My grandmother was amazed. That is wonderful! she announced. How did I teach him to do that? It's just the way we do things now, Grandma, I told her. She then proceeded to ponder aloud on how much burden had fallen on her (and other women) in her time. She regretted, she said, that she'd never thought to ask my grandfather to help. She liked the new equality. She was proud that her granddaughter was getting an advanced degree and had found a partner who shared equally in the chores.

Let's not romanticize the hard lives our grandmothers lived. They certainly didn't. And they would have traded places with us gladly.

jwirr

(39,215 posts)
44. I remember one way that women tried to find a better way
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 03:41 PM
Oct 2015

of doing some of those "women's" chores. Grandmother and my mother and all the other women in the family often did the canning together. They would go to one of the homes bringing all their produce and jars and equipment. Then they would set up kind of an assembly line to do the job.

This did not involve the men until it was time to bring the full jars home but it did make the job more enjoyable and I think easier.

MowCowWhoHow III

(2,103 posts)
35. lots more
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 10:28 AM
Oct 2015
https://www.reddit.com/r/OldSchoolCool/

A policeman judges an ankle competition in England (1930)


Dude girls from the American west (1920s)


Stunt performer jumping across two embankments in El Paso, Texas, ca. 1920


OxQQme

(2,550 posts)
37. Choose your state for more photos
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 10:33 AM
Oct 2015
http://photogrammar.yale.edu/map/

Born in 1940 in Los Angeles. Lived in San Fernando Valley/Burbank.

I checked out this map and found out something I had no knowledge of.

Federal Subsistence Homsteads ---> http://photogrammar.yale.edu/search/results.php?start=0&search=&pname=&lot=&van=&state=California&county=Los%20Angeles&city=&year_start=1935&month_start=0&year_stop=1943&month_stop=12




My left hand fore finger got permanently damaged when I, at 6 years old, as an inquisitive youngster, got crushed between the gears at the end of the wringer rollers of 'Mom's' electric Maytag.

LongTomH

(8,636 posts)
43. My grandma came to Oklahoma around 1907 - in a covered wagon
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 03:41 PM
Oct 2015

I didn't find out about this until her funeral. She and grandpa moved from Arkansas to the new state of Oklahoma when she was 18.

IDemo

(16,926 posts)
61. My great-great grandparents came to central Idaho from Missouri
Sun Oct 11, 2015, 08:45 AM
Oct 2015

They are pictured here at the family homestead with a number of other people. My grandmother, who lived 106 years, is the small girl in the center of the picture:

~original

Cleita

(75,480 posts)
51. My grandma did her laundry in a washing machine with that ringer thingy on top, then
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 04:33 PM
Oct 2015

she hung it on the line. She did benefit from Social Security when FDR initiated it so she was able to live in modest retirement. My mother had an automatic washer but she still hung her clothes on the line. I helped. My mother, a stay at home housewife, enrolled in business classes in community college, which were tuition free back then, when I grew up and left home, and she went to work for the first time in her life at the age of 46. She didn't live long enough to retire. Ironically, it's me who often does laundry in the sink much like that woman and hangs it in the bathroom. Even though I have access to washer and dryer, I don't always use it. I also struggle to survive on Social Security myself these days because the COLAS have not kept up with the actual cost of living. It seems we have gone full circle and are back at the beginning of a new Great Depression.

 

cherokeeprogressive

(24,853 posts)
56. I already knew my maternal Grandma (RIP) was a badass. She was white; Grandpa full-blood N/A.
Sat Oct 10, 2015, 05:07 PM
Oct 2015

They were married in 1946 in OK. It was what then qualified as an interracial marriage and they had to move to CA to get away from the discrimination.

My Grandma gave birth to my Mom in the hospital in Hanford without another human being in the room. Something happened and they all had to leave while she was in labor. When she told me that I was in awe. I always wonder how many women have given birth while they were alone.

Her and my Grandpa worked in the fields picking whatever was going at the moment and in order to keep from losing her job she had to take my Mom along in a basket AND keep up. She went to night school and learned office type stuff and became a Secretary at North American/North American Rockwell/Rockwell International working on Apollo, B-1, Skylab, and Space Shuttle programs. Retired from Rockwell after 25 years.

She had this huge scar on her quadricep that was from one of her brothers throwing a hatchet at her.

She died from Alzheimer's. It was like 20 years after she lost her wits that she passed. 20 years robbed from all of us. I fucking hate that disease.

On top of everything else, it's my personal belief that she was gay. I've tried and tried and can't think of a single solitary thing that was even slightly feminine about her. Nada. That's not to say that I didn't love her with all my heart and wouldn't give my soul for one more day in her company.

grasswire

(50,130 posts)
59. my paternal grandparents homesteaded in Saskatchewan...
Sun Oct 11, 2015, 12:55 AM
Oct 2015

....in the early 1900s. I do not know how my petite grandmother did all of that work and provisioned for a family of 6 on that cold barren prairie.

I believe my maternal grandparents' greatest challenge came when they sent all their children off to WW2 and their oldest son was a prisoner of war of the Japanese Imperial Army from the time Corregidor fell until the Philippines were liberated -- years later. He weighed 96 pounds when liberated and he had his leg sawed off by an Army surgeon in a tunnel there after it became gangrenous due to an injury suffered in the bombardment. He lived to be nearly 90. That's badass, too.

Mendocino

(7,431 posts)
60. My grandparents
Sun Oct 11, 2015, 02:05 AM
Oct 2015

Paternal Grandfather 1887-1966

Born on a farm oldest of seven boys and two girls, dropped out of school after 6th grade, worked full time on farms, carpentry, lumbering, construction. Joined army at the age of 30, shipped out to France. Served in an engineering unit, often building entrenchments, underground bunkers and bridges. Wounded twice, once by artillery, the other from an airplane straffing. Spent the rest of his life as a cabinet maker and farmer.

Paternal Grandmother 1898-1992

Born in an actual log cabin. The youngest of four boys and three girls. They moved to a more modern house at the age of 6. Father was a farmer and justice of the peace. Took in laundry, midwife, cook, seamstress. Maker of the worlds best pancakes.

Maternal Grandfather 1901-1990

Born in Germany, had two sisters and two brothers. Both the sisters, one brother and both parents died in a two year period from 1918-20 due to the worldwide Spanish flu outbreak and basically starvation in the post war. He served as a 15 year old policeman in wartime Germany. He left for the USA in 1924, getting a good job here working for a railroad, despite hardly speaking a word of English. Became mayor of a small town in Ohio in the 50's. First person that ever took me fishing.

Maternal Grandmother 1899-1985

Also born in Germany, the sister with two older brothers. Came to America alone in 1923. Had an uncle in PA. He took her in, she worked as a nanny for a while. Grandpa and Grandma had known each other in Germany, they were able to reconnect here. Her parents remained in Europe. She only saw her father once after immigrating here, when they visited here somewhere around 1935. He died just before the war started. Her mother moved here in 1948 and died in 1954.

Far different times.




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