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Good old days


DarkAnts

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Two little girls selling newspapers on the street. At least they were wearing dresses as they did it, as god intended them to do.

I always feel like going ape shit when fundies talk of the good old days. Mostly, they're talking about wealthy Victorian families and nothing more. Because, you know, that's all that mattered; the rif-raff of the rest of the country (and world) were just unsaved heathens, no doubt, and all their suffering was punishment for their sins.

As long as the women wore dresses and were doing what their husbands/fathers told them to do, it was all good and godly and right.

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dawbs, those pictures of your grandma are fantastic. She must have been kick ass! :mrgreen:

My aunt gave us an oral list of the things that she went through as a kid that her grandkids will never know, Thank God (her words)

1. Typhoid fever

2. Measles, mumps, rubella, whopping cough (almost died from the last)

3. Worms

4. Rickets

5. Burns from the outdoor oven, permanent scars

6. True hunger pangs because the meat was running out and the spring greens were not ready for harvest yet

7. Two friends whose mothers died in childbirth

8. A polio epidemic

9. Listening to her mother beseech God every night that her father and all the other men in the locality who had gone to sea to feed their families not drown or die. When she did hear of death, she beseeched God that they were buried with the customs of of our people.

Oh yeah, what a wonderful time to be a child. :roll:

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You mean the good ole days of tenaments with sky-high infant mortality, of TB epidemics, of young girls working in factories where industrial health and safety were ignored so that they would die in fires (google triangle fire new york), of husbands abandoning families and leaving them destitute, of children born out of wedlock being used as virtual slave labor (see http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/specia ... 43895.html).....

Growing up, we got stories about the "olden days", but not the "good ole days".

My grandma does have some good memories of her time with an underground pro-communist group in the 1950s, but somehow I don't think that counts for these people.

Those were also the days when people had more children, but that was mostly because not only did they need the help on the farm or to work, most children died before they were teenagers from diseases that we have vaccines for, or antibiotics that work, as long as they're taken as directed, even when the person starts feeling better. Even the 1% wasn't able to escape mortality from diseases that are now treated with antibiotics, or mostly prevented by vaccines. My great grandpa was one of the lucky young adults who survived the 1918 flu epidemic, while many people around his age died.

Even as late as the 1950's the polio epidemic was still a scary thing, and as a result of it, my parents were in favor of vaccines, and instilled the importance of them to my brother and I.

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When my ancestors settled in south western Ontario, they cleared the forest by hand, cutting boards from trees six feet in diameter in order to build homes. They cleared the land to build houses and barns, and fields and gardens. I am not envious of their life one single little bit. The good old days indeed... :S

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These are the types of stories I think of every time I hear my Jehovah's Witness inlaws talk about how any current event is a "sign of the times" and clearly the world is becoming a worse and worse place to live with unparalleled evil, or whatever else. I want to scream, really? Compared to when, exactly? WWI? WWII? The holocaust? The depression? And that's just some of the crap that has happened in the last century, never mind the centuries previous. But to hear them speak, everything was Pollyanna before the 90's.

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http://www.shorpy.com/

I love this website for historical photos. There are some wonderful photos of families 100 years ago, very poignant.

Thanks! I'm not going to be sleeping at all tonight - I love old photos!

My great-grandmother was shipped overseas, from England to Canada, when she was a young girl in the early 1900s. She was split apart from her siblings; I can't recall if they were orphaned or destitute, I'll have to ask Grandma. She was brought over with a pile of other kids for the express purpose of being a servant. She married to have her own life apart from servitude, and wound up giving birth to 21 kids, and raising them in a 3 bedroom house, before she died a very early death attributed to "natural causes". A lot of women died of those same natural causes at a young age - now we call them "overwork", "stress", and "complications related to pregnancy and childbirth".

I admit, I absolutely love the romanced aspects of the Victorian era - but that's exactly what they are. Romanced. I was raised mainly in mild to extreme poverty (it varied), and had to do far too much adult work as a child, so that my parents could work. We suffered lack of medical and dental care at times, lack of food, etc. but I'd take that any day over poverty in the Victorian era. It's amazing how not having much money can seem more bearable when I look back and see what we DID have - emergency medical care that WORKED, when shit got real, along with sanitary water and plumbing. Those few "minor" things kept us from whining.

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My Gran has told us many stories of the good ole days. Her father was shot and killed for unknown reasons (she was 6 - rural West Virginia). Her mother died of appendicitis when she was 8. Her older brother died from polio around the same time (he was 16) and her baby sister, who never had a name more than Baby Girl, died at birth. Gran was born in 1926, so this was right on time for the Great Depression. Her older brothers were taken in by family, as they were able to help on the farms. Gran and her two sisters were sent to the Masonic orphanage.

She's never spoken much about the orphanage, except to say that she is grateful her father was a Mason. I do know that they only got new shoes once every other year. My siblings and cousins and I had more shoes than we knew what to do with growing up as a direct result.

Gran was fortunate enough (!!) to go to school, and was accepted at Brown. She retired the first time in 1985, went right back to work, as my grandfather had cancer and huge medical bills. She finally retired again two years ago because her body is simply tired. She also had to declare bankruptcy when she finally retired. After 60+ years of work, she couldn't afford to pay off the medical bills, etc. (For context, my Papa died in 1990. That's some hella medical bills)

All that, and she still feels guilty that she declared bankruptcy. We live 8 hours apart now, and talk everyday. If I haven't called my Gran by 8pm, she calls me to check on my boys and me. I clearly remember being 7 or 8 and praying that I could win the lottery so Gran wouldn't have to worry. I still wish for that 25 years later.

Good ole days, my ass. I'm grateful to have been born later.

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Guest Anonymous

My ancestors were fairly well off. It was all exclusive public schools and long silk gloves for them! My great-grandmother had a bullshit pretend job (playing with pretty ribbons at a family-owned haberdashers). We even had a few pith-helmeted Empire types around somewhere.

I think the fundies would quite like my family's past, but they'd be delusional to think that kind of thing was the norm.

Edited: wording

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Grandma B recalled the first parsonage she and my grandpa lived in as having an outdoor tap. She remembered that house, but not fondly. Something about having multiple kids in diapers at the same time, and no disposables, and no hot water. Almost dying while having her tonsils taken out was not so good, either. (Turns out she was allergic to ether.)

Grandpa B and his siblings all got malaria growing up in China. Great-grandpa B got some intestinal illness of indeterminate origin that rendered him very frail. (I've seen his diaries. He talked a lot about what he could eat, and what he couldn't.) He was also under house-arrest during a Japanese occupation of Hunan, and was separated from his wife and kids for at least a year. That was not so good, either.

Great-grandma B had what was possibly untreated clinical depression and cried inconsolably for the last two years of her life. It probably didn't help that she was used to working, and good at it, and couldn't anymore. She might have benefited from therapy, or meds, or both.

Grandma J was a factory worker after her husband died. She had no prior work experience and couldn't drive, but she had three kids to raise, and she was not about to sit on her butt and pray for a new husband to rescue her when there were good jobs a bus ride away. Even with the job, money was tight. Her daughter (my mom) so thoroughly absorbed the eleventh commandment, "Thou shalt not waste food," that she fairly regularly makes herself ill eating leftovers that are into the sketchy stage.

Grandpa J was a machinist. Worked hard, died young. I expect he would have liked to live to see his kids grow up.

I like progress.

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My aunt gave us an oral list of the things that she went through as a kid that her grandkids will never know, Thank God (her words)

1. Typhoid fever

2. Measles, mumps, rubella, whopping cough (almost died from the last)

3. Worms

4. Rickets

5. Burns from the outdoor oven, permanent scars

6. True hunger pangs because the meat was running out and the spring greens were not ready for harvest yet

7. Two friends whose mothers died in childbirth

8. A polio epidemic

9. Listening to her mother beseech God every night that her father and all the other men in the locality who had gone to sea to feed their families not drown or die. When she did hear of death, she beseeched God that they were buried with the customs of of our people.

Oh yeah, what a wonderful time to be a child. :roll:

Sadly some of those things still exist. I've had students loose their mothers in childbirth. I may be exposed to more people than the normal person as a teacher. And a lot of my students have military parents, so they still hear the prayers and the fear of their parent(s) or siblings dying in war.

My mom had mumps right before it was common to be vaccinated, and my grandpa's cousin has two different length legs from Polio. (apparently there was an incident where he broke a leg and his wife had to tell them to NOT try to make his legs even.) Those are things we're not likely to face unless the anti-vaxxers get their way.

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These are the types of stories I think of every time I hear my Jehovah's Witness inlaws talk about how any current event is a "sign of the times" and clearly the world is becoming a worse and worse place to live with unparalleled evil, or whatever else. I want to scream, really? Compared to when, exactly? WWI? WWII? The holocaust? The depression? And that's just some of the crap that has happened in the last century, never mind the centuries previous. But to hear them speak, everything was Pollyanna before the 90's.

I had a crazy neighbor who tried to tell me that the world was worse than it had ever been. I looked at him and said that people always said that but it was no better or worse than before, just different. He tried to argue it with me, and his girlfriend (now ex) changed the subject. Then he tried to tell me that unions were the root of all evil. (I'm a union member) his ex changed the subject again, and I continued the hike to the mailbox. (we were snowed in so it was a hike to the highway.)

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Everytime I load the dishwasher at 11pm, after teaching for 12 hours and switch the load of laundry I started in the morning before I left...I say thank goodness I live now!

I couldn't imagine coming home an handwashing dishes, washing dirty diapers (which I did up until a few months ago, by choice), washing a load of clothes,then have to get up at 530 the next morning!

I am so happy I live in these terrible days! :lol:

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In many ways, the people that the good old days were good for were abusing the rights of even more people, for whom the good old days were really quite crappy.

This is what Romney and the Republicans want to return to. Forward bullshit. Those folks want a time machine to make it 1912 again.

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Fundies are peculiar with their ideas of how "wonderful" the good ol' days were. The most ridiculous fantasy is this leisurely lifestyle they picture for themselves. Those 'tea parties', the "lady of the house' who graciously invites guests over and oversees her children's education.

These fundies never acknowledge that having clean water, medical care, indoor plumbing, washing machines etc makes it possible for them to have the lifestyle they do have. They ignore the fact that the good ol' days meant handwashing every article of dirty clothing, including diapers. It mean having friends who will die during childbrith, children who will die from disease, husbands who will die and leave them destitute. Honestly, every time I visit the old country, I am grateful for every single modern invention we have.

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I wonder what leads fundies to this false nostalgia? Is it a revolting ignorance of history, or did they simply have no older relatives who talked about the past realistically?

My grandmother lost her father during the Depression, when he died from an injury he received while working for the Works Progress Administration (WPA). That left her mother to raise three kids on what she could make as a diner cook/waitress in Nebraska. "Destitute" would have been a fair descriptor, I think.

My grandfather's family fared a little better, as their farm produced enough to feed them all (barely). He lost a brother to a flu outbreak, and his mother nearly died of TB, which meant he had to drop out of school to do the work she usually did around the farm, and look after his mother and younger siblings since he was the oldest chid still at home.

As a couple, my grandparents were usually the first on their block to buy the newest convenience or appliance, and were huge fans of whatever new wonder medical science offered. Spina bifida killed their first son. Medical science managed to keep their youngest daughter, who was born with it ten years later alive for 40 years. They embraced modernity whatever its downfalls, because they knew what the alternative looked like.

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I can't say I know a whole lot about my family's history, but I do know my paternal grandfather, born in 1925, was the youngest of four boys, though only three lived to adulthood. The oldest, Jack, died sometime around age three or four, before my grandfather was born, of diphtheria, I believe. Grandpa's family was fairly well off, as his father was a plant manager in Toronto, and then in Trenton, New Jersey, but then the Great Depression happened, and his family was one of the hardest hit. Grandpa is convinced that if it weren't for FDR's social programs, his family really would have starved, but he won't tell me any details. Grandpa was also the first in his family to attend college. His ex-wife, my grandmother, was walked out on by her mother as a toddler and was raised by a school teacher aunt (no idea if she was born out of wedlock or something), but this led to her having life-long emotional issues that were never addressed.

My mom's side of the family is Armenian, and her grandmother fled the genocide at age 13 with her older brother, and had only a sixth grade-ish education; they went through Russia under the auspices of the Japanese Red Cross, and then immigrated to California when she was 17. She then worked long hours in a Nabisco cookie factory to put her brother through medical school. Her husband (not at the time she fled, but later, though they grew up in the same village) was from a sort of "gentleman farmer" family and had gone all the way through high school (maybe even some college), and fled the country at age 20 after seeing his parents shot on their front lawn. They did eventually open a corner grocery store together that was very successful, have three children, and sent one (my grandmother) all the way through college, but they lost their firstborn and only son in WWII. All the kids and my great-grandmother worked at the store when they could, not just my great-grandfather.

My grandmother divorced her husband when my mom was three (in 1957), and raised two kids on her own without help from her ex (he was flaky and kind of philander-y and really shouldn't have been a dad in the first place), working as a blood analysis technician at a local hospital. She didn't make enough money to support her family fully, so until my mom was ten, she lived with her grandparents. In my mother's high school graduating class, she was the only one with divorced parents.

Now, even this portrait, a portrait of middle class people, is less rosy than my future. They worked hard so that my grandparents, parents, and even me could have a good future. I realize this. I would NEVER want to be my grandparents, to live in their era.

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Unless you were a rich, white, healthy man - the "good old days" were not so good. I would never want to go back to that. Hell I would not even want to go back to the 60's. When I got into medical school/residency in the 80's and 90's I did not have to jump any more hurdles than the men did - but women in the 60's and 70's who wanted to be doctors got put through the ringer. I worked with the first woman who graduated from the general surgery program at my medical school. The stories she told about her days in medical school shocked me. She was routinely marginalized and sexist behaviour was the order of the day. One of my friends had a mother who was got pregnant while she was a medical resident in the 60's (in England) - the rule at that time was if you were pregnant you were kicked out of medical school/residency. So my friend's mother lied about her pregnancy and wore really baggy clothes just so she could finish her final year of training. I'd be happy to take a time machine ride to the past to study the history of the period but no way would I ever want to live in the past.

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Fundies are peculiar with their ideas of how "wonderful" the good ol' days were. The most ridiculous fantasy is this leisurely lifestyle they picture for themselves. Those 'tea parties', the "lady of the house' who graciously invites guests over and oversees her children's education.

These fundies never acknowledge that having clean water, medical care, indoor plumbing, washing machines etc makes it possible for them to have the lifestyle they do have. They ignore the fact that the good ol' days meant handwashing every article of dirty clothing, including diapers. It mean having friends who will die during childbrith, children who will die from disease, husbands who will die and leave them destitute. Honestly, every time I visit the old country, I am grateful for every single modern invention we have.

For most people, of course, "tea" was just a meal, what we might call "supper," with just family around the table and plain, filling food eaten off of stoneware with steel or tin "silverware," while they sipped strong tea from mugs. I wonder if ignorant graduates of the SOTDRT don't understand this. Ladies who gave tea parties were always upper-class or aspiring to the upper class, and they had servants. An ordinary middle-class family would still have at least two servants, according to Cre-Fydd's Family Fare (1867). Upper-class families might have two or more servants per household member. A list can be found here: http://www.thecooksguide.com/articles/v ... ondon.html

Basically, those ladies who gave tea parties didn't have to dress themselves, do their own hair, clean their own houses, prepare their own meals, nurse their own babies, sit up at night with their own children, teach their children anything, wash or mend their own clothes, do their own shopping, write their own grocery lists, adjust the heating and cooling systems in their own homes, open their own front doors, lift anything heavier than a purse, drive themselves anywhere, or even pour their own tea--unless they felt like it.

Nowadays, of course, instead of acknowledging the reality behind their fantasies, the Duggars and their ilk just make their underaged, unpaid, and poorly trained daughters do all the work.

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The past wasn't better for women in any way; I really don't understand how fundies don't see that. For one thing, the mortality rate of women in childbirth was ridiculously high. Far too many children died at a very young age, too.

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ooh ooh, can I add a family one?

It's not a 'sad' picture, but, it shatters the whole 'keeping the home' thing

4kagxs.jpg

See that woman wearing jeans, pumping gas? Wearing not just pants, but JEANS?

that's grandma in the late 1940's/early 50's

My gramps ran a gas station. My grandma worked there because she said that's what people do...they do the work that needs to be done, regardless of gender.

She was also a baptist Sunday school teacher (she bought into the patriarchy of church more than I'd like to admit), kept an immaculate house, and was a wiz in the kitchen.

In fact, when she was a SAHM for a short while, between jobs, her kid would go out into the neighborhood and would find salesmen and lead them home because 'mommy is bored'. ;)

So, once the gas station closed, they needed the money and grandma needed the stimulation of working.

so this is grandma at her next job in the 50's and into the 60's:

ry%3D400

Yep, that gold star is the real thing. (She was assigned more 'female' work, but she still had her badge and gun and was called on to hold her own when things happened...transporting prisoners, jail riots, shootings at the courthouse-those are the stories she told me) .

Still while teaching baptist Sunday school.

They can pretend that 'good girls' didn't ever work, but folks like my grandma told me that you what needs to be done, never-mind whether you wear skirt or pants.

Your grandmother was amazing!!!

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I did a little family digging and uncovered some inormation on my great aunt. In the late nineteen-teens and early nineteen-twenties she was able to get into college and worked to get a Master's degree in math. She wrote once saying how she wanted to quit college because she was the only girl in the class and how rude and mean spirited the other students were to her.

Her father said she had to see it through so she did. After she got her degree she left the college and never had anything to do with mathematical jobs. She said she couldn't do it because she hated the way people had treated her.

The past wasn't better for women in any way; I really don't understand how fundies don't see that. For one thing, the mortality rate of women in childbirth was ridiculously high. Far too many children died at a very young age, too.

My great-great grandmother was a midwife for a long time. She said she had to stop after her best friend died in childbirth having her ninth baby. After that great-great grandma started writing saying women needed to be in charge of their own bodies.

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Your grandmother was amazing!!!

Thanks! I think so!

She did also know the bible better than any non-clergy person I have ever met.

Her memory may contribute to why I still attend church at all.

Actually, after our other running tomorrow, my daughter and I are going to go put mums on her and gramps' graves.

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I have this great book called The Compleat Housewife by Eliza Smith (circa 1727). I think that if any of these fundies bothered to look at 'women's work' from the early 18th century, they would be shocked. Most of the book is on how to make your own booze, and there is also quite a few entries on how to deal with STIs, and even one on how to induce abortion. There is a particularly interesting remedy to prevent miscarrying that calls for 'the weight of two barley corns of ambergris'. I wonder if Michelle and Kelly would have issue with taking something made of whale puke.

If they think that women had it good, or that none of the evils of today existed, they are SORELY mistaken. Being a woman back in the day didn't mean sitting around with a pretty kitchen, it meant working 16-18 hours a day doing bullshit work.

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