How the World has Changed-Marilyn Ruesch Schneider

How the World Has Changed Since I was a little girl-by Marilyn Ruesch Schneider

First  let me describe my kitchen.  When I was very small we had a refrigerator with a coil on top of it.  It was run by electricity.  Some of the people I knew still had iceboxes.

We had an oven run by gas, but it didn't have a pilot light, so each time we used it we had to very carefully light it with a match.  A few times I wasn't careful enough and Wow!  What an explosion!  No eyebrows!  and very short bangs.

Our washer (for clothes) was a wringer type.  That meant that you put the soap into the open tub, then put the water in by using a hose attached  to the taps on the sink.  Another hose drained the dirty water out the bottom when you pulled out the plug.  The "machine" part was some paddles that beat the clothes back and forth to get them clean.  After you washed the clothes, you put them through the wringer with one hand while turning a crank with the other hand to get some of the water out.  Then we put them in a basket and carried them outside to hang dry.  Towels and sheets dried very stiff and scratchy, but they smelled wonderful-of sunlight and wind, earth with its flowers.  We ironed just about everything, since there was not yet polyester to make clothes wrinkle free.

We didn't have heat in every room and no one had air conditioning.  We had one heater in the living-room and one in the hallway by the den.  The bedrooms were cold.  I can remember standing over a grate in the floor to get dressed in morning.  Pretty soon my legs would be so hot they would itch, while my fingers were still so cold that they were shaking and clumsy.

Cars were for vacations.  At least that was what my father thought.  He rode the bus to work everyday-it was less expensive than driving a car.  The rest of the family also road buses, bikes or walked to church, to go shopping, to school, doctors appointments-whatever.  The first freeway was the Arroyo Seco.  We used it to go to the Rose Parade and the Rose Bowl Game.

Little girls ALWAYS wore dresses when I was a child.  We were even sent home from school for wearing pants or the wrong kind of shoes.  Shoes had to have heals and laces.  Boys had to wear long pants no shorts.