shortbow
Practically Family
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- british columbia
One with dynamite-coke with ammonia! What in blazes? Is this what you served a lousy tipper? Wouldn't that get you arrested?
BegintheBeguine said:I read somewhere, or was told, that Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho was the movie that definitely put an end to this. Makes sense, when I recall how shocked I was before the picture was even halfway over that first time I saw it in the 70s.
shortbow said:One with dynamite-coke with ammonia! What in blazes? Is this what you served a lousy tipper? Wouldn't that get you arrested?
Viola said:Heh, my maternal grandfather wore his wedding ring, his Masonic ring, and I want to say maybe a class ring (not all at once on the same hand!) and this was not uncommon in Philadelphia, at least among the "ethnic" population of Jews and Italians. That's leaving aside wristwatches and necklaces with religious medallions and stuff on them as well.
Plenty of old, well-dressed men (the kind who are eighty and wear fedoras and suits to go to the corner store) still wear sometimes several pieces of jewelry at once, as in wedding ring, one extra pinky ring, watch, chain. More than that is considered gaudy. lol
I was especially fond, as a small child, of old men who'd sit out by the pool in summer wearing swim trunks, sandals, and a big honkin' gold chain with a pendent nestled in their white chest hair.
LizzieMaine said:Coca-Cola with *aromatic spirits of ammonia,* which isn't the same thing as the stuff in the bottle under your kitchen sink. You'd put maybe three drops of the stuff in a six-ounce glass of Coke, and the result would be a highly-stimulating beverage that its users swore gave them energy they didn't even know they had. It was basically the Red Bull of the thirties.
Bill Taylor said:During the 1930s, many households did not have a telephone. I remember quite a few people who did not have a phone. And never, except in the direst of emergencies, did you make a long distance call. I kind of think it was sort of in bad taste to make a long distance telephone call. It just wasn't done. If you wanted to contact someone, a letter was written, or a telegram sent. I recall in the late 30s and especially during the war in the 40s, my mother took us to our grandfathers place about 50 miles away at least once a month, and she always wrote in advance when we would be coming. Never telephoned. Also, from 1942 and on during the war, you could not get a new telephone installed unless defense need could be proved. Sometimes, if there was a telephone in a vacated house, all sorts of things were done by those moving in to keep the phone already installed. Usually, if not always, unsucessfully. It was one of the prices paid for the war effort.
Also, during those days, most, if not all houses only had one telephone. We had a pretty large two story house with six bedrooms and one telephone, in the downstairs hall. It was often a race to get to the telephone before it stopped ringing. We had a somewhat weird situation, as we had a phone at the farm and one in town, but they were sort of on the same line. In town, our telephone number was 217J, on the farm 217W. (no dial, operator had to connect a call).
Bill Taylor
H.Johnson said:In European chemistry this is a crystaline mineral called Sal Ammoniac and used to be a constituent of many drinks and confectioneries - as Lizzie points out, it was felt to have an invigorating effect. Although less used than it was in the 1930s, it is still used to make sweets in some countries.
H.Johnson said:Until 1960 my father's telephone was the only one in our village. There was a public phone box a half mile away, but people in our street use to knock on our door and ask to use our phone. They would pay him, of course, but he always insisted that they write down in advance the 'gist' of what they wanted to say, so that no words were wasted! The idea of gossiping on the telephone was complete anathema to my father's generation.
Letters and (in emergency) telegrams were the order of the day. People had much less to say and, dare I say it, thought more about what they were saying?
BellyTank said:Scandinavian and N. European salt liquorice.
Very salty, very salmiak-y.
Some kids just eat the salmiak, without the confection.
Maybe they smoke it too...
B
T
H.Johnson said:I keep hearing my mother's voice. 'Stop wasting money, there are starving children in ....'!
These are basically my thoughts too; I feel that a telephone conversation should usually be short.H.Johnson said:...I still can't break the habits my father instilled into me. In a way, I'm glad these things continue. I don't use a mobile 'phone or computer at home, I write down a list of points I want to make before using a 'phone and I cringe when I see people with 'phones stuck to their ears. Apart from the fact that they seem not to notice what is happening around them (in clear breach of Boy Scout training and completely against what we were taught by the I-Spy books) I keep hearing my mother's voice. 'Stop wasting money, there are starving children in ...'!
Foofoogal said:As a child our mother used to let us go to movies on Sat. We would sit all day watching the movie over and over. A chicostick and maybe some iced pickle juice and we were good to go. lol We could not even see when we came out as sitting in the dark all day we had to adjust our eyes. lol
As far as the gasoline I remember this also. My mom would wash my dads khakis with this as spotclean and/or cocacola. Got the grease out.
One thing I sort of wish was still used but not as not good is creosote around houses to kill termites.
A bit off topic as the OP asked for things in movies. I will be watching and report back.
Hal said:With respect to your last sentence - the strongest telling-off that I received from my parents in my childhood (during the 2nd World War) was when I threw a crust of bread on the fire. That was a dreadful thing to do, and I find the amount of food wasted in the contemporary western world also dreadful.
LizzieMaine said:Great stuff. My grandfather wore a wedding ring, but most of the other men I knew from his generation did not. Jewelry on blue-collar men was considered both effete and potentially dangerous if it got hooked on moving machinery.