Do You Remember

[Jebber]

I was a war time baby, so some of your memories apply more to my sons born in the sixties.

Our school milk was brought inside out the of the sun in the summer. I liked milk, so swapped my empty bottle for full one from a classmate who hated it. There was trouble if we got caught.

Polio vaccine hadn't been invented, I had Polio. The ‘nit nurse’ was never part of my school life. 

The house we lived in until 1948 had an outside toilet, but we also had an indoor one upstairs. We had a Ewbank carpet sweeper, a vacuum cleaner came into our house some years later. Two  luxuries, a telephone, I still remember the number 323, my father needed it for his job. We also had a car for the same reason, a 1936 Morris 8 (BRU641). I remember it in the garage with the wheels off and up on blocks until the war ended, so it was a good ten years old before I got to ride in it.

My mother never had a washing machine, it was the washboard and mangle. (Not sure why you needed a mangle with a twin tub, the whole point of the twin tub was the spin drier that did away with the need for a mangle). My first twin tub was similar to the one illustrated, my first machine was a single tub with an electric mangle attached.

I remember my mother ironing  with a flat iron. After we moved house it was an electric iron plugged into the light socket as per you illustration.

In your second school photo, the lederhosen remind me of those my sons had when we lived in Germany.

How different our lives are today.

[magnacarta]

A large spoonful of malt given regularly at school, I thought it was delicious and can still remember the taste.

[Top-of-the-hill]

  Like Jebber, I never saw a "nit nurse", and never had nits. I wonder if they had been partly eradicated by the 50s, at least in small country schools. They were back by the time my children were at primary school!
   I had the polio vaccine, but having read on here of people lining up for it at school, I wonder why my mother and I had to traipse into Canterbury on a cold, wet winter day to some sort of clinic? (On the far side of the town!)

Added - no malt at my school either.

[Jebber]

A large spoonful of malt given regularly at school, I thought it was delicious and can still remember the taste.

I had my malt home, I also loved it, I also had the cod liver oil and the orange juice (Which I liked undiluted).

[lydiaann]

Oh my goodness, I've just been transported back to Lancashire.  One of my memories is the pie shop at the bottom of the street.  Dad was in hospital, dying; mum was running the shop (groceries, haberdashery etc), looking after 3 under 13s and also visiting every day. Saturday lunchtime was our favourite - eldest (13) went to the pie shop for S&K pie or pudding while middle (9-10) and I went to the chippie round the corner. We had a small back yard in which to play (older brothers having to look after young sister while mum went to the hospital) - not much bigger than a patio today - if the weather was nice, otherwise it was books in the living room.   Saturdays were particularly busy and we all had to do our bit with the housework (at 6, I'm not sure how useful I really was!). Sunday mum would do the laundry (washtub, boiler and board in the washhouse) and run around with the Ewbank on top of preparing the shop for the coming week. All in times of rationing too!  How did she do it?  And how come my memories are all good?  Happy days!

PS:  My schools (primary) had a nit nurse in Lancashire and in Lincolnshire in the late 40s-very early 50s!

[Treetotal]

A large spoonful of malt given regularly at school, I thought it was delicious and can still remember the taste.

I had my malt home, I also loved it, I also had the cod liver oil and the orange juice (Which I liked undiluted).

Clinic Orange Juice and Cod liver oil...My cousin had Cod liver oil and malt from a spoon, my Aunt used to give me one too, we didn't have it at home...maybe two expensive with four children.
We had an outside toilet, you could see the stars at night as there was a couple of slates missing off the roof. At night I always sat with my legs off the ground in case there was any spiders.
Our water was drawn from and outside tap which used to free in the winter and had to be thawed out with lighted paper. our bath was a tin one that hung from a nail on the backyard wall.

Carol

[Erato]

Our milk came in red and white, half-pint, waxed cardboard cartons.  It was kept cold.  It cost three cents for those whose families were above some poverty line.  Lunch cost 25 cents if you were above that line.

As for outdoor toilets, I never had one until I was in my 30s and then it was just a hole in the floor of the [quite spacious] outhouse.  I lost a top-of-the-line Swiss Army Knife down that hole.

[chiddicks]

I am loving some of these wonderful memories, these are conjuring up memories that I had forgotten myself, thanks for adding these, it's a very nostalgic run-up to Christmas now.

Talking of Christmas memories, I remember buying the decorations in Woolworths which had an amazing parquet flooring. I remember the lights never working and Grandad spending hours testing every bulb, I remember nan baked everything, so the kitchen was always the hub of the house, I'm sure she baked enough mince pies to feed a battalion. Every boxing day all the family came to nans house for a party. I remember stockings filled with fruit and nuts and a selection box. Lots of happy memories.

[Jebber]

No lights for us, a seven foot tree in bay window with clip on candleholders with candles, lit only briefly with buckets of sand and/or water on hand in case the tree caught fire.

Table decoration, a car inspection lamp on a meat platter, under a glass dish covered in coloured Christmas paper, I still have the glass dish my mother used.