Life Without Electricity
Living Without Electricity
Life Without Todays Conveniences
You walk into your house today, flick a switch, and you expect a light to come on. You press a button on the remote control and you expect the TV to come on. There are many things you depend on electricity to do each day, from running your well pump if you live in the country to washing and drying your cloths. So, how did people get by before they got electricity?
If you wanted a light you would get a match, go over to the kerosene lamp, lift the globe off, strike the match, light the wick, put the globe back on and adjust the flame for the best light. There was a little knob on the side of the lamp that you could use to raise or lower the wick to adjust the amount of light the lamp put out. After several days of use the wick would get crusted over and would not burn very well. You would then have to roll the wick up higher and take the scissors and trim the crusted part off. This was known as trimming the lamp.
If you went from one room to another, you would take the lamp with you. This kept the family together. This may also be where the term “Family togetherness” originated.
Now, I will allow that some people had more than one lamp and could spread out over the house, but we didn’t.
For entertainment we had an old hand cranked victrola, or a record player as it would be called today. It was spring operated and you would wind it up and put your record on, release the brake holding the turntable, and listed to the music. The 78 rpm records were the only records around then.
We also had a battery operated radio that we listened to some. You could not run the radio too much or you would run the battery down too soon. There were not very many radio stations then and most of them were at very distant locations. Dad had extra tall posts, about 12 ft, in each corner of our front yard with a wire running from one to the other and then into the house to the radio
Life Without Todays Conveniences
You walk into your house today, flick a switch, and you expect a light to come on. You press a button on the remote control and you expect the TV to come on. There are many things you depend on electricity to do each day, from running your well pump if you live in the country to washing and drying your cloths. So, how did people get by before they got electricity?
If you wanted a light you would get a match, go over to the kerosene lamp, lift the globe off, strike the match, light the wick, put the globe back on and adjust the flame for the best light. There was a little knob on the side of the lamp that you could use to raise or lower the wick to adjust the amount of light the lamp put out. After several days of use the wick would get crusted over and would not burn very well. You would then have to roll the wick up higher and take the scissors and trim the crusted part off. This was known as trimming the lamp.
If you went from one room to another, you would take the lamp with you. This kept the family together. This may also be where the term “Family togetherness” originated.
Now, I will allow that some people had more than one lamp and could spread out over the house, but we didn’t.
For entertainment we had an old hand cranked victrola, or a record player as it would be called today. It was spring operated and you would wind it up and put your record on, release the brake holding the turntable, and listed to the music. The 78 rpm records were the only records around then.
We also had a battery operated radio that we listened to some. You could not run the radio too much or you would run the battery down too soon. There were not very many radio stations then and most of them were at very distant locations. Dad had extra tall posts, about 12 ft, in each corner of our front yard with a wire running from one to the other and then into the house to the radio