Re: yesterday
I was born in 1938 and raised in south St. Louis in the 1940s. I remember when my mom and I would ride the streetcar to visit my aunt. They would send me over to the mom and pop grocery across the street with two pennies for two cigarettes. Not two packs. Two cigarettes. They couldn't afford a whole pack.
Old men would go to the local bar after work with a sort of covered stainless steel (at least I think it was stainless steel) bucket and bring home a bucket of draft beer.
The knife and scissors sharpening guy would come through the neighborhood on a bicycle with a grindstone mounted on the front and driven from a belt from the back wheel. It worked like this:
http://tradesmansbike.wordpress.com/1940s1950s-knife-sharpener-gundle/
Women would hear his cry and send down or bring down their cutlery to be sharpened.
The rag man would come through buying rags. And sometimes junk. The ice man and produce vendors came through once or twice a week. Some times these guys had trucks but as often as not they used horse drawn wagons.
My dad developed pneumonia one winter and was in bed for about three weeks. The doctor came to the house to see him every day or two. I think he treated him with sulfa drugs. Going to the hospital wasn't even considered. As soon as dad was able to get out of bed, he went back to work.
We kids collected junk during the week and hauled what ever we had been able to beg, borrow or steal in a coaster wagon the twenty blocks or so to the junkyard where the owner cheated us unmercifully. Hey, we were just glad to take whatever he offered. Besides that, he didn't ask any questions.
