STREETCARS & COAL FURNACES

In the stone age, IE pre-1950. Life was a bit different. There was much less automobile traffic because there was much more public transportation. There was a streetcar line a half block from our house. Because of their electric propulsion, they were nonpolluting. You didn’t have to find a parking place for your streetcar and there were no gasoline, insurance and maintenance costs. It’s a damned shame that all of  that went away.

In the winter in Cleveland, after a snowfall, there were even streetcars equipped with snow plows. During those cold cold Cleveland winters, our houses needed to be heated. Back then, the primary source of heat was from coal. Every so often, the house had to be replenished with coal, which was bought by the ton. A truck would back up to the house , put out a chute and deposit the coal in your coal bin. When it got cold and in Cleveland, it got very cold, the man of the house would have to shovel some coal into the furnace. This was called “man’s work”. It was very rigorous physical labor. I am told that my grandfather died of a heart attack while shoveling coal into the furnace. At night, the fire had to be banked to ensure the presence of hot coals the next morning. Coal furnaces stunk up the entire neighborhood and caused severe air pollution. Coal smoke even caused many deaths in London after WW2 and because it is foggy in England that is where the term Smog was coined. By the early 1950s most houses’ furnaces were converted to gas heat.

In the late 1940s we had an ice box, not a refrigerator. Every few days the iceman would cometh and come right into our house through the back door and load a fresh block of ice into the box. We also had milkmen back then. Every few days a milkman would come up the driveway and put our order into the milk chute. Telephones only had seven digit phone numbers. If you wanted to make an expensive long distance call, you had to dial zero for a telephone operator and tell her where you wanted to call. She would then connect you to a long distance operator who would connect you to a local operator who would then connect you to your “party”. Speaking of parties, if you wanted to save money on the telephone, you could get a party line. A party line meant that there would be several other “parties” or subscribers on your line. You would have a distinctive ring to know that an incoming call was for you. The other party(s) could also snoop and listen in to your calls. The telephones had dials until the early sixties when “Touch tone” was introduced. My aunt actually had a phone without a dial. You would pick up the “receiver” and wait for an operator to come on the line and then tell her what number you wanted to call. When referring to operators, I keep saying her because, back then, they were all females.

All cars had stick shifts and none were air-conditioned. Half of the cars didn’t have radios in them and all of the radios in the cars were AM. The heaters in most cars really sucked and barely kept you from freezing to death. By the early fifties, a lot of the new cars had “two tone” paint jobs. You were really cool if your car had whitewall tires.

People didn’t stray too far from home back then. A vacation usually consisted of a less than two hundred mile trip in the family car to some crappy campground. Any trip of over twohundred miles was usually taken on a train and hardly anyone except the very rich flew on an airplane.

No TV until about 1948 when the neighbors bought a set with a six inch screen and there was nothing being broadcasted most of the time but test patterns. No TV dinners to heat in non-existing microwave ovens. We went to the movies a lot. There was a theater, The Rex, half a block away down at the corner. There was also a market down at the corner. Not a supermarket but a market which sold mostly canned food and had bulk Oreo and Fig Newton cookies out of bins. To buy meat, you went to a butcher’s market which were everywhere.

My dad worked at Republic Steel as a maintenance electrician and was paid on Fridays. We would go to the corner bar around the corner and across the street from my grandma’s house to cash his check. Friday evenings were fish fry night in Ohio and I still love the taste of fresh water perch which I rarely get on the West Coast. Bars back then could sell 3.2% alcohol beer to eighteen year olds and when I turned 18, it was a big thrill for me to have a few beers at a bar with my dad. Being I had been a regular customer, or my dad had, the bar tenders would slip me 6% beers sometimes.

When I was fourteen most of the boys in the hood had Whizzer moterbikes  or a motor scooter and when I got my Cushman a law was passed in Ohio that fourteen year olds could  get a restricted motor-driven cycle license which was limited to five horsepower. A round yellow decal had to be affixed to the rear fender to notify the cops that you were legal. Of course somehow a lot of cycles over five HP started sprouting the stickers.

Cleveland, to me, is like New York. It’s a nice place to visit but I’m glad I don’t live there anymore. Cleveland and ex-wives are wonderful fodder for jokes. All I have to say is it’s just like Cleveland or just like an ex-wife and I get some chuckles.