What It Was Like Growing Up

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by deMolay, Jan 19, 2019.


  1. deMolay

    deMolay Monkey+

    I like this article. It was the way I was raised starting out on the mountain farm where I was born. Not everything was exactly like the article but very close. We had no power, we had a dc battery radio which could be run on a car battery, big old wooden thing. We did have running water of a sort, it was pumped to a tank with a hydraulic ram, learned how to prime one of those fairly young. The valve's had leather seats, it was a huge cast iron deal. We called it the Billy, don't ask why cuz I don't know. Anyway some would thing I had it tough. I wish I had never left that life. It was a good life. Entertainment was watching my older brothers in strength contests, with 12 lb sledge hammers and 75-100 lb anvil tosses with the local boys, or somebody showing up with a guitar for a house party and a game of cards, and maybe a little dance. What Would It Really Be Like To Have No Running , Sewer, Newspaper Or Internet? No Supermarket Or Fire Department Close At Hand?
     
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  2. duane

    duane Monkey+++

    Been there, done that, but in Minn it was all gone by 1950 or so. Schools consolidated, milk trucks started to pick up every day, roads plowed and up graded, horses replaced by tractors, jobs available in cities and cars to get you to jobs. Now almost all the country is the same, Walmart, Subways, McDonald's, Tractor Supply, etc, go anywhere in country and they are all the same, TV and internet and national tests for education so all teach to same rules.
     
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  3. deMolay

    deMolay Monkey+

    Seems so long ago now. But could do it again if the shtf it is a mindset. When you don't have all the modern time wasters you have time for real things.
     
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  4. HK_User

    HK_User A Productive Monkey is a Happy Monkey

    Or watch your Dad dig the septic tank pit by hand and welding two 55gal steel tanks together. Then learn how to connect clay pipes using hot lead and jute packing as the field line output.

    Of course that was the modern version of an out house in the 50s.

    No test for the drainage , no gov requirement, no certificate of approval and then 5 years later do it all over again when the Cow Pony stepped through the top of the tank.
     
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  5. duane

    duane Monkey+++

    No it can't be done again easily. We had horses, horse equipment, blacksmith equipment, lumber and wood soaking in oil for bearings, dry lumber for use for repair parts, shaving horses, froe, axes, to make shingles, handles, loom parts, spinning wheel parts, adze, hand saws, auger bits,to build a house from scratch, everything needed to shoe a horse, make a harness. prepare, spin, weave, and sew cloth, butcher tools, smoke house, curing containers, to process and store meat, shoe repair equipment, etc, and knew how to use them. If things collapse and the government tries to control and take your supplies for the common good, with very few of the old tools or knowledge of how to use them now available, the desperate hungry and those that are willing to kill or destroy you in order to maintain their gimi dat lifestyle, including a lot that now have resources in the millions of dollars as well as our so called public servants, the ability of the average person to keep his supplies and tools and survive until a new equilibrium is reached is doubtful. That and the large number of us elderly with our limited ability to do physical labor, those dependent on modern medicines, those having no usable skills, and with the present population being several times what could of been supported by the technology present in the late 1700's, a stable population would likely be a small fraction of our present 340 or so million..
     
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  6. Thunder5Ranch

    Thunder5Ranch Monkey+++

    My guess would be about 15 million would be the sustainable population with 10 million pretty much wholly dependent on 5 Million for the most basic needs.
     
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  7. Dont

    Dont Just another old gray Jarhead Monkey

    Take hart! There are those out there that do much of those things as simply as they are able.. They are the ones searching the stalls at the flea markets or hanging on at those estate sales poking through the piles of old tools and other "junk" for those gems of yore..

    Remember, the industrial revolution did not happen because of computers, satellite communication, nor even the electrical grid.. Steam power! Steam was the reason for the decline of draft horses on the farm and an increase in the production on those farms. Whole factories were driven by steam. Factories that produced tools and goods.

    As long as there are those that have the curiosity to look for how things are made and develop the those skills, well, civilization will keep plodding along.. Oh and don't forget about those people that are learning and practising those "Home making" skills. And occasionally they will share what it is they learn with the rest of us.
     
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  8. deMolay

    deMolay Monkey+

    It is one thing to own all these artifacts, it is quite another to master them. Many of the things we take for granted and seem simple enough take a lot of skill and effort when we have to make them by hand. Let's take a good quality double cut bastard mill file as an example. Files of good quality are essential to working metal by hand and in many other processes. How many can make a high quality file by hand. Yah I thought so. Maybe a handful of masters in all of the USA if that number could even be found. How many could make a complete rifle from a lump of steel stock. Now that is giving you a lot to begin with the lump of steel stock. Even nail making. Nails were so valuable in the early days of America, that when a family moved on, they burned down their old dwelling and sifted the ashes for the nails. So much of that lost knowledge is one thing. Lost skills is even a bigger issue.
     
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  9. Dont

    Dont Just another old gray Jarhead Monkey

    Skills must be learned and practised. Any and all skills. No one is born with an innate ability, well, most are not. Thing were manufactured before electricity or precision measuring instruments and can be again if one wishes to search for that knowledge and practice the skills required.



    woodwright's shop - YouTube

     
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  10. oil pan 4

    oil pan 4 Monkey+++

    By all accounts that's what my mom and dad were doing in the late 70s before I was born. Then they decided to go get a real house and shit when my mom got pregg with me. I would have been good with the farm life.
     
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  11. deMolay

    deMolay Monkey+

    How files were made. File Making by Hand and Machine
     
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  12. deMolay

    deMolay Monkey+

    DHS is saying worst case scenario if Terrorists take down the grid. That the country could be without the grid for 18 months. 3 months, heck 3 months would be an extinction level event. DHS Says Americans Need to Start Prepping for up to six months without electricity!

    I agree, think back to Great Grandpa's day. When food has to be produced strictly by muscle power. Animal and human for the modern world we would have arrived at a New Dark Age. Made worse by mountains of rotting flesh, disease and packs of feral dogs running wild.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 20, 2019
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  13. arleigh

    arleigh Goophy monkey

    Born in a suburb with all the modern conveniences of the day, electricity and plumbing, telephone, and a solid home dad built in the late 1940s .
    Then later 1960 moving to the mountains to a place that was built in the 1920s knob and tube wiring and a hand dug well and bat and board cabins . I loved it so much more I wished I had spent my whole growing up there, In fact I raised my family there .
    We were never rich, never went on vacation but we had work all the time ,dad was a carpenter brick layer amongst other things,
    I was his helper.
    Watching him I learned to fix things and worked on antiques he'd bring home ,I guess he knew I had it in me to learn how things worked on my own . I had to repair the plumbing and chop the wood for the fire pace and take care of the other needs of the home and the vehicles pretty much on my own with minimal tooling you learn to make do, make shift, improvise ,
    We had challenges and economic distress and weather events but nothing was insurmountable ,we got through ,
    I did not think of my life as hard, still don't . did not have TV ,but we had radio, a wire recorder and records and I had a stack of 78 a 33-1/3 and a few 45.
    My favorite music was is long haired (Beethoven) and stuff from the 20s, 30s and 40s . Still have a wind up record player , still works .
    Free time I spent fishing on the lake or hiking the woods with friends exploring natural boulder caves and mines .
    A friend taught me how to tame the grey squirrels enough to let them climb my pant leg and feed than out of my hand .
    I learned to respect the wild life and let things be that meant no harm , and this was trait one of my uncles had for hunting,, becoming safe for the small critters and the larger critters were less afraid of getting close.
    Then you could get a better idea of the game most appropriate, then stalk them out in a whole different area ..
    He taught my dad how to hunt/track bees for honey and go collecting it from time to time .
    We didn't have honey bees in the mountains , but if we did I might have tried it.
    Though my grand father had blacksmithing skills ,dad was not able to tell me much about the process but what he did was get me a big pedestal grinder and with that I sharpened tools and made a few knives for my self ,nothing spectacular . Blacksmithing was a lost art by then , and the few farriers I knew didn't do much more then modify pre made shoes. Sad state of affairs I tell ya.
    Socially the hippies were the rage then but I had nothing to do with them, a bunch of doped up bums far as I was concerned .
    I had friends in school, but my preferred company was the older folk that would share what life was like for them growing up..
    Most didn't see it of much value , but dad cultured me in what life was like for older folk , so I gleaned what I could .
     
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  14. Dunerunner

    Dunerunner Brewery Monkey Moderator

    My parents lived literally from hand to mouth, paycheck to paycheck. They had little savings and no company health, dental or vision coverage. All medical and dental bills were paid over time to the physician, or dentist on a plan established by the individual provider. One step above his or her taking a pig or drop calf in payment. My dad had worked for many companies and changed jobs and companies often. Although we always had a roof over our heads, running water and indoor plumbing, we moved fourteen times in my 12 years of school and twice before I started school. My folks sacrificed for my sister and I to have a better life than one of War and an Economic Depression to live through, but they taught us the value of education, saving, and being self reliant and self sufficient. For a kid, this was a life of adventure, emotional pain and social observation. Things that have guided me in my adult life.
     
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  15. STANGF150

    STANGF150 Knowledge Seeker


    Arleigh, wth are you doing in California? You sound like you would be more at home in Tennessee, the eastern side!!
     
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  16. HK_User

    HK_User A Productive Monkey is a Happy Monkey

    Don't know, but I'm more prone to check in at High Point NC as I like the Piedmont Region.
    And my folks, some any way come from there.
    My last name is even pronounced differntly in that there regen.
     
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  17. STANGF150

    STANGF150 Knowledge Seeker

    I'm in the foothills of NC in Rutherfordton, NC. Well, Rutherford County is between a couple mountains' toes really. I just think Arleigh would fit in with the mountain crafts of Eastern TN better than in Cali!!!
     
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  18. HK_User

    HK_User A Productive Monkey is a Happy Monkey

    For sure.
     
  19. STANGF150

    STANGF150 Knowledge Seeker

    Of course I may be biased. As I think too much of many of my fellow monkeys to ever wish upon them what I see as the horrors of living in Commiefornia. As a free southern raised countryboy I find the thought of living there very terrifying.
     
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  20. HK_User

    HK_User A Productive Monkey is a Happy Monkey

    Have a few friends there from the Mil I have offered them refuge when needed. 'Nough said
     
    Last edited: Feb 1, 2019
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