Vintage Things That Have APPEARED In Your Lifetime

[Fading Fast]

In the planing phase since 1910 - 1910!!!! - the first section of NYC Second Avenue Subway opened today and we rode on the first ride out of the 72nd street station (four blocks from our home).

Pictures from day one below. I have never, ever been in a cleaner NYC subway station (and probably never will).

The escalator down to the platform:


The ridiculously clean platform:


Never, ever has a track looked this clean (nor garbage, no rats!):


Signage:

 

[tonyb]

Vintage things that have APPEARED in my lifetime?

Well, I DID look in a mirror this morning.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Take another photo of the trackbed tomorrow and see how much trash has accumulated.

As for me, rotary-dial telephone service came to my hometown in 1965. Put my mother out of a job.

 

[tonyb]

Take another photo of the trackbed tomorrow and see how much trash has accumulated.

As for me, rotary-dial telephone service came to my hometown in 1965. Put my mother out of a job.

Y'all got indoor plumbing in -- what? -- 1973?

 

[GHT]

As for me, rotary-dial telephone service came to my hometown in 1965. Put my mother out of a job.

Our first phone, back in 1968, first phone as a married couple that is, was a rotary dial. We still have it, and still use it. Because it doesn't have touch tone technology we can't press one for the money, two for the show and all that. but it still works and is the source of much amusement to younger visitors.

In the UK one of the most iconic, easily recognisable pieces of street furniture, is our early phone booths. Cell phone technology has all but rendered them redundant. But some communities have put them to other uses. One of the most creative is that of a place to house a defibrillator.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Y'all got indoor plumbing in -- what? -- 1973?

I knew people who still had a two-holer in the shed in the seventies. Not "off the grid" types, just people who lived in an old house they couldn't afford to upgrade. It was quite the thing to have the two holes in an attached shed rather than out behind -- made winters much more bearable. And bareable.

 

[Fading Fast]

...As for me, rotary-dial telephone service came to my hometown in 1965. Put my mother out of a job.

A story as old (and, really, much older) than John Henry and the "Steam Hammer."

As long as man is going to be free, he's going to invent and many inventions are labor saving, job killing, industry destroying, etc. That said, if we did away with all inventions, we'd all be back either hunting and gathering or tilling the soil (with someone ready to invent a labor-saving improved till).

I have - without an ounce of exaggeration - had my career and skill-set made obsolete by technology twice in the last three decades. Since stopping people from thinking and inventing doesn't seem likely or logical, I just accept that I am going to have to constantly evolve and learn new skills if I want to remain employed. I fully get that my career will not be either smooth or always upward sloping.

Unfortunately, I think everyone - or nearly everyone - is in the same boat with me whether they realize it or not. The coming advances in robotics and artificial intelligence are going to make a lot of jobs - both blue and white collar that seemed "protected -" obsolete in the coming years.

And to your other point, I bet the trackbed already looks much worse than it did yesterday. The other thing I didn't mention in my post was how the station didn't have the heavy odor of a normal subway station - a combination of dirt, mold, human sweat, human excrement (unfortunately, yes, many homeless use the subway platforms that way), etc. - it was noticeable by its absence in the new station.

 

[tonyb]

I knew people who still had a two-holer in the shed in the seventies. Not "off the grid" types, just people who lived in an old house they couldn't afford to upgrade. It was quite the thing to have the two holes in an attached shed rather than out behind -- made winters much more bearable. And bareable.

If memory serves, I last used a genuine, hole-in-the-ground outhouse 20 some years ago, at a rural public park in Wisconsin.

The last "residential" outhouse I recall using was at a relative's dairy farm, a solid half century or more ago. A two-holer, it was, complete with Sears catalogs.

 

[ChiTownScion]

In the planing phase since 1910 - 1910!!!! - the first section of NYC Second Avenue Subway opened today and we rode on the first ride out of the 72nd street station (four blocks from our home).

Pictures from day one below. I have never, ever been in a cleaner NYC subway station (and probably never will).

The escalator down to the platform:


The ridiculously clean platform:


Never, ever has a track looked this clean (nor garbage, no rats!):


Signage:

Wow, they finally opened it, didn't they? They've been promising that one since the Third Avenue Elevated was torn down in the 50's- correct?

 

[ChiTownScion]

If memory serves, I last used a genuine, hole-in-the-ground outhouse 20 some years ago, at a rural public park in Wisconsin.

The last "residential" outhouse I recall using was at a relative's dairy farm, a solid half century or more ago. A two-holer, it was, complete with Sears catalogs.

When we last toured Abe Lincoln's house in Springfield- about 1993- the backyard three seat privy was the feature which most impressed my then- 3 year old son. My understanding is that when they were restoring the home, "archeologist" types went through the pit, quite literally with the proverbial fine toothed comb to glean insight into the daily lives of the future 16th President and his family. The bones of rabbits that had fallen victim to the family dog were, at that time, the apparent equivalent of finding the Rosetta Stone.

If as they say, "the family that prays (or 'plays') together stays together," I'll leave any similar implications regarding a three seat privy unspoken and left to the imagination, gentle reader..

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^
Such sites are archeological gold mines. Many a pistol has been discovered in what were the receiving ends of old comfort facilities.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I always used to wonder about multi-hole accomodations -- perhaps it was the pre-industrial way of telling the neighborhood that You'd Arrived.

 

[Fading Fast]

Wow, they finally opened it, didn't they? They've been promising that one since the Third Avenue Elevated was torn down in the 50's- correct?

Yes - you are correct, but as noted, it was first on the planing board in 1910. And how's this for efficiency, the "completed" subway is only one-third done. There are two more phases which, IMHO, will take at least three decades to do as the first one took ten years, the second one isn't scheduled to start until '18 (at the earliest) and the third phase - the hardest one to build - is still in the dreaming-about-it phase.

 

[vitanola]

I always used to wonder about multi-hole accomodations -- perhaps it was the pre-industrial way of telling the neighborhood that You'd Arrived.

Multi-hole privies are designed so that they need to be cleaned less often. Natural dessication and decay have a much greater effect on the waste in a multi-hole privy, with its greater surface area. Of course, the privy's users do need to "distribute the gems" appropriately over time.

 

[GHT]

If memory serves, I last used a genuine, hole-in-the-ground outhouse 20 some years ago, at a rural public park in Wisconsin.

This is definitely a case of; too much information. But it is funny, and although I have posted it previously, it was a while ago, and certainly not on this thread.
One of my shift managers, asking us what we were all laughing at, as he reported for duty, was told some lavatorial joke. He shared a reminisce of his first posting in The Royal Navy. His ship had docked at Malta. The ship's company would be starting a war games exercise the next day so the only chance of recreation was shore leave that evening. My Shift Manager, who at the time, was just 19, was as keen as any of his cohorts to get ashore. So, there he was, in his tropical 'whites,' going ashore with his shipmates.
"Trouble was," he confided in us as he told his tale, "I should have gone to the lavatory before starting out." "AND!" We all said, almost knowing where this was leading. "It became urgent," he explained, so seeing some public toilets he made a dash for it. Once inside, he thought it was just a male urinal, as he recounted: "I'd never seen those shower tray style crappers in my life." "So," he went on, "I gingerly dropped my pants, got my feet onto those foot stands in the lookalike shower tray, held the bar, and crapped...................straight into my summer white pants." He hadn't gotten them out of the way as he pulled them down.
The look on his face as he told the tale was priceless, he was almost 19 again and back in Malta.

 

[tonyb]

Multi-hole privies are designed so that they need to be cleaned less often. Natural dessication and decay have a much greater effect on the waste in a multi-hole privy, with its greater surface area. Of course, the privy's users do need to "distribute the gems" appropriately over time.

Having never lived with such accommodations myself (although, as already mentioned, the rural relatives certainly did), I'm left with only others' accounts and my own imagination to inform me of how such systems work.

I had assumed that once a depository reached a certain load, it was retired, its remaining capacity filled with dirt, and the outhouse structure itself moved to a "fresh" location. Provided the structure was still sound, of course.

I also imagine that differing climates and soil conditions would make a significant difference in how the system works, how long it would last, etc.

No?

 

[ChrisB]

I also imagine that differing climates and soil conditions would make a significant difference in how the system works, how long it would last, etc.

Indeed, I recall the outhouse at the Harvard cabin on Mt Washington in January. Aside from the usual unpleasantness of using such facilities, you had to deal with a frozen stalagmite that daily inched its way towards the surface.

 

[LizzieMaine]

That would be a good place for a three-holer.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

In my South Texas boyhood I hated the outhouses on relatives' farms and ranches not because they were primitive, but because they always featured black widows and scorpions for your amusement. I never encountered a rattlesnake but I was assured that they favored outhouses, too.

 

[tonyb]

In my South Texas boyhood I hated the outhouses on relatives' farms and ranches not because they were primitive, but because they always featured black widows and scorpions for your amusement. I never encountered a rattlesnake but I was assured that they favored outhouses, too.

^^^^^
Reminds me of that old joke ...