Had You Lived Then - Life In A Midwestern Small Town 1910

A woman recalls her childhood in a typical midwestern small town in the period just before World War I. It was a comfortable, peaceful life, with many of the old, simple ways of the 19th Century, but with new inventions that made life easier for the housewife, and expanded the horizons of the whole family. Bread-baking and home preserving were important skill which a girl learned from her mother. Both boys and girls helped with chores before and after school. School was held in one room for all ages, and the basic textbooks were the McGuffey’s Readers. Mother had a washing machine she cranked by hand, but dreamed of having an electric one. Ice and milk were delivered to the house. Almost everything else was bought at the general store, which was also the post office. The climax of the day was the arrival of the train at the local station. A few people had automobiles, but Henry Ford’s assembly line was bringing down the cost of cars and starting a revolution in the way the people lived. The phonograph had succeeded the music box; now the stereopticon was far less exciting than the new “moving pictures” which provided drama, comedy, and glimpses of such events as the San Francisco earthquake and early airplane flights. The family went together to get their first automobile, and then drove to the photographer’s shop to be photographed at a happy moment in the life of a closely-knit family.