By Martha Morgan
Some time ago I bragged about being old enough to remember silent movies and challenged readers to see if they could match my antiquity.
Quite a few old-timers took up the challenge. Here are a few of the things, now long gone, that they remember.
Their (and my) children, now approaching retirement age themselves, may remember some of them too, like The Saturday Evening Post, and the two photojournalism magazines Life and Look but not Liberty which died in 1950.
It was second to the Saturday Evening Post in popularity and sold for just a nickel. All of them succumbed to television – the Post in 1969, Life and Look in 1972.
People began to lose interest in magazines when they could watch live action on the tube.
A reader from the Lindsay, Ont. area mentioned snow apples. I have never seen them since moving to Saskatchewan, but they were my favourite apples as a youngster in Ontario.
They were a medium-sized rosy apple with very white flesh – utterly delicious.
On going to that source of all information, the Internet, I found that they are now classified as “trees of antiquity,” pre-1824. Hey, I’m not that old!
Another Ontario reader, scheduled for an ‘old duffer’s’ driver’s test, remembers his first one in 1943, when all he had to prove was that he could start, stop, and park a car.
Compulsory testing was not required before 1937 and early tests were simple compared to today’s.
A lady from Victoria remembers, as well as sad irons, curling and crimping irons, which were also heated on the kitchen stove.
Another item, recalled by several, was the carpet beater. They were a great way to let off steam if you were mad about something.
You’d hang the rug over the clothesline and pound the life out of it. When it came to channelling aggressive feelings, I’m sure it worked better than today’s violent video games.
