Did and Didn't

[LizzieMaine]

Here are some things that *did* exist in the Era -- they might not have been everyday things, but they positively did exist -- and some things that definitely *didn't.*

For purposes of discussion, this post defines the Era as *ending* with the close of World War II.

DID EXIST before 1946

Women in Congress
African-Americans in Congress
Window Air-Conditioning Units
Power Windows
FM radio
Integrated schools
Television
Solid-state diodes
Unleaded gasoline
Blow dryers
Synthetic detergents
Automatic washing machines
DIshwashers
Fast-food hamburgers
Sodium street lights
Bathroom hand dryers
Postal zones
Synthetic rubber
Take-out pizza
Latex-based wall paint
Interracial marriages
Turn signals
Federal prohibition of forced flag salutes
Seamless stockings
Vinyl
Over-the-counter spermicides
Tampons
Self-sticking wallpaper
The phrase "rock and roll" applied to African-American-influenced music
Soup in an envelope
Partially-hydrogenated vegetable oil
Skim milk
Top income tax bracket of 94 percent
Enriched bread
Polyester fiber
Pre-cast concrete construction
Paper milk cartons
PVC pipe
Self-service "Super-Markets"
Stainless-steel sinks
Celebrity strippers

DIDN'T EXIST before 1946

Fat-free milk
No-fault divorce (except in the USSR)
Designated hitters
FItted sheets
Hair spray
Area codes
Scientific marketing
ZIP codes
Polycarbonate lenses
Self-winding watches
Direct-dialed long distance telephone calls
Dominion theology
High-fructose corn syrup
Consumer advertising of prescription drugs
All-news radio
Residential microwave ovens
Clad coinage
"Yield" signs
Revolving credit plans

 

[Bushman]

Neat list! I had no idea zip codes didn't exist before 1946.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Neat list! I had no idea zip codes didn't exist before 1946.

Introduced in 1963, and weren't mandatory for bulk mail until 1967. They expanded on the "postal zone" system introduced in 1943 -- "New York 19, New York" became "New York, NY 10019"

You can still send first class mail without a zip code, but you will greatly annoy the postal clerks.

 

[Fading Fast]

So I'm reading this list out loud to my girlfriend and she said, "how did the film stars (and regular women) of the '30s get their hair to stay in those very elaborate styles of the day without hairspray?" I said, I bet Lizzie will know - Lizzie, any thoughts? Me, personally, I was just excited to see that they had take-out pizza.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Some hairdressers would apply a light coating of lacquer, using an atomizer, but it was more common for ordinary women to simply pin their hair up and hope for the best. The curls were created using setting lotion, which tended to set them in place. But if you look at the photos in the Everyday Women Of The Golden Era thread, you'll see that sloppy hair was a lot more common than movies would lead us to believe.

Pizza was quite popular in the Northeast by the mid-thirties, especially in Southern New England. New Haven, Connecticut was probably the pizza capital of the period, but it was being sold take-out at small Italian groceries as far north as Lewiston, Maine by 1937.

 

[tonyb]

I recall pizza being regarded as something of an exotic novelty among the working-class folks of mostly Northern European descent in the upper Midwest of my early years -- late 1950s and early '60s.

But then, I remember yogurt being a "new" food, too. When did that become a staple of the American diet?

My recent move from the Seattle area to the Denver area brings into focus certain regional differences in cuisine. You can get teriyaki here, but you may be in for a bit of a trek. In Seattle you can't go more than a few hundred feet without seeing at least one teriyaki joint.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Yogurt was popular in Armenian neighborhoods around southern New England as far back as the twenties, but it really didn't go mainstream nationwide until the '60s, when health-food advocate Adele Davis promoted its use.

As far as pizza goes, one of my favorite family photos shows my grandfather, a man who had several colorful terms for Italians in his vocabulary, sitting at the kitchen table with an Appian Way make-it-yourself pizza kit box clearly visible next to him. Clearly the deethnification of the product was thoroughly complete around our neighborhood.

The pizza sold in the take-out stores in the thirties tended to have thicker crust and less cheese than what's common today, and meat toppings were uncommon. It was often sold under the names "Italian Pie" or "Tomato Pie also called Pizza"

 

[Fastuni]

The pizza sold in the take-out stores in the thirties tended to have thicker crust and less cheese than what's common today, and meat toppings were uncommon. It was often sold under the names "Italian Pie" or "Tomato Pie also called Pizza"

That's Sicilian style. The thinner, cheesy type is Neapolitan.
I'd guess it is connected to the origin of the Italian immigrants.

 

[Fading Fast]

I recall pizza being regarded as something of an exotic novelty among the working-class folks of mostly Northern European descent in the upper Midwest of my early years -- late 1950s and early '60s.

But then, I remember yogurt being a "new" food, too. When did that become a staple of the American diet?

My recent move from the Seattle area to the Denver area brings into focus certain regional differences in cuisine. You can get teriyaki here, but you may be in for a bit of a trek. In Seattle you can't go more than a few hundred feet without seeing at least one teriyaki joint.

Taking the thread just a touch down a side road - the one regional thing that most places in the country get wrong is NYC bagels (which is not an ethnic food in NYC as someone who is not Jewish can attest - everyone eats them and argues over where the best ones can be found*). When I've tried them outside the city, they are usually just rolls baked in the shape of a bagel, but a real bagel is boiled first and then baked (or something close to that), but that "double" process gives a real bagel a very crunchy / hard outside but a soft and chewy inside.

Before anyone comes screaming in, I'm not saying there aren't other places in the country that do bagels right (I'd be surprised if there aren't), but I've been in probably twenty or more states, but New York and some places in NJ are the only place where I've had a real bagel (and I've tried them in most of those states).

Does anyone know when bagels at least started to spread throughout the country - while really only rolls shaped like bagels - I don't remember finding them everywhere say in the '70s as one does today?

* A great moment in American Pluralism - when I worked for a large financial firm in the early '90s, we use to get bagels on Friday morning for the trading desk and we would have people with Irish, Italian, German, Swedish and other surnames arguing about where the best, "most authentic" bagel in NYC came from. (I've slightly altered the names for privacy) Jim Kelly, Robert Kautzman, Paul Datalico, Peter Sorenson and others would argue passionately about the where to find the best bagel - God love America when we get it right.

 

[Panadora]

[video=youtube;hrJ1zpJGrfA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrJ1zpJGrfA[/video]

 

[LizzieMaine]

Taking the thread just a touch down a side road - the one regional thing that most places in the country get wrong is NYC bagels (which is not an ethnic food in NYC as someone who is not Jewish can attest - everyone eats them and argues over where the best ones can be found*). When I've tried them outside the city, they are usually just rolls baked in the shape of a bagel, but a real bagel is boiled first and then baked (or something close to that), but that "double" process gives a real bagel a very crunchy / hard outside but a soft and chewy inside.

Before anyone comes screaming in, I'm not saying there aren't other places in the country that do bagels right (I'd be surprised if there aren't), but I've been in probably twenty or more states, but New York and some places in NJ are the only place where I've had a real bagel (and I've tried them in most of those states).

Does anyone know when bagels at least started to spread throughout the country - while really only rolls shaped like bagels - I don't remember finding them everywhere say in the '70s as one does today?

Lender's Frozen Bagels were common in the Northeast by the early '70s. We didn't know what they were all about around here, and called them "them hard donuts."

Bagel jokes were being made on radio as far back as the early forties, which can be laid to the fact that a disproportionate number of radio comedy writers were Jewish New Yorkers.

 

[Fading Fast]

Lender's Frozen Bagels were common in the Northeast by the early '70s. We didn't know what they were all about around here, and called them "them hard donuts."

Bagel jokes were being made on radio as far back as the early forties, which can be laid to the fact that a disproportionate number of radio comedy writers were Jewish New Yorkers.

Lenders were insanely bad - haven't thought of those in three decades.

My girlfriend's parents live in Michigan - one year for Christmas, we got their dog a squeezy toy that looked like a bagel with cream cheese as, what we thought would be received as, a kitschy NYC gift.

When we gave it to their dog, they thanked us, kinda chuckled as they saw us chuckling, but in their best Mid-West WASP didn't say anything else. Then, and this is how it works in WASP homes (as an American mutt, I only learned this code after many years of being in her family), when we asked them about the "bagel" the following year, they told us they thought it was a doughnut with the filling coming out - they said they thought it was "an odd gift."

When we explained it to them, we all laughed and still chuckle about it to this day, but there had to be that year in-between before we could discuss it.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Lizzie, i hate to be the bearer of bad news but I'm fairly certain the turn signals still don't exist. Especially on higher end cars found in the city.

 

[Wally_Hood]

Here are some things that *did* exist in the Era -- they might not have been everyday things, but they positively did exist -- and some things that definitely *didn't.*

For purposes of discussion, this post defines the Era as *ending* with the close of World War II.

DID EXIST before 1946

Women in Congress
African-Americans in Congress
Window Air-Conditioning Units
Power Windows
FM radio
Integrated schools
Television
Solid-state diodes
Unleaded gasoline
Blow dryers
Synthetic detergents
Automatic washing machines
DIshwashers
Fast-food hamburgers
Sodium street lights
Bathroom hand dryers
Postal zones
Synthetic rubber
Take-out pizza
Latex-based wall paint
Interracial marriages
Turn signals
Federal prohibition of forced flag salutes
Seamless stockings
Vinyl
Over-the-counter spermicides
Tampons
Self-sticking wallpaper
The phrase "rock and roll" applied to African-American-influenced music
Soup in an envelope
Partially-hydrogenated vegetable oil
Skim milk
Top income tax bracket of 94 percent
Enriched bread
Polyester fiber
Pre-cast concrete construction
Paper milk cartons
PVC pipe
Self-service "Super-Markets"
Stainless-steel sinks
Celebrity strippers

DIDN'T EXIST before 1946

Fat-free milk
No-fault divorce (except in the USSR)
Designated hitters
FItted sheets
Hair spray
Area codes
Scientific marketing
ZIP codes
Polycarbonate lenses
Self-winding watches
Direct-dialed long distance telephone calls
Dominion theology
High-fructose corn syrup
Consumer advertising of prescription drugs
All-news radio
Residential microwave ovens
Clad coinage
"Yield" signs
Revolving credit plans

LM, you pepper your vistas on the vintage with some remarkable data.
Next you'll be saying Pelagius settled in Belllows Falls, Vermont, after immigrating from Britain...

 

[Stanley Doble]

I don't think hair conditioner existed before 1970 either, or it wasn't something you could buy in any drug store or supermarket.

 

[LizzieMaine]

It was originally called "creme rinse," and it was around by 1952 or so, but it wasn't widely used until the sixties. Some brands of shampoo prior to 1952 contained conditioner-like ingredients, but the idea of conditioner as a separate product was definitely a postwar innovation.

Failing the presence of conditioners, it was considered rather a good thing to have an egg shampoo once in a while. That's exactly what it sounded like, a raw egg crushed into your hair and then rinsed out. The egg white had conditioning properties and made your hair manageable.

 

[jamespowers]

DIDN'T EXIST before 1946

Fat-free milk
No-fault divorce (except in the USSR)
Designated hitters
FItted sheets
Hair spray
Area codes
Scientific marketing
ZIP codes
Polycarbonate lenses
Self-winding watches
Direct-dialed long distance telephone calls
Dominion theology
High-fructose corn syrup
Consumer advertising of prescription drugs
All-news radio
Residential microwave ovens
Clad coinage
"Yield" signs
Revolving credit plans

Actually, John Hardwood invented the automatic wrist watch and pocket watch in 1922. He got a Swiss patent in 1924. Rolex didn't realize he did either. They had to put together this ad as atonement:

 

[Panadora]

Turn signals: http://www.secondchancegarage.com/public/history-of-turn-signal.cfm

 

[HudsonHawk]

While the designated hitter become rule until 1973, the idea has been around for over a century. Connie Mack was an early proponent prior to 1910, and the National League discussed experimenting with it in the 20's.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Indeed. But they all had the good sense not to use it for real until Charlie O. The Mule pushed it thru. He also thought a three-ball walk would be a good idea.