Pneumatic Cashier

[W. Gray]

How about cars with windshield wipers that would stop when you pushed heavy on the "foot feed."

We would be in a heavy rain going up hill and could not see a thing until the car got over the hill and the wipers started working again.

It also seems to me that before electrically operated windows on cars, they had windows that went up and down at the push of a button but they were pneumatic or oil operated. Our only accessories, though, managed to be radio, clock, and whitewalls.

The clocks in the cars were wind up. After we got an auto, we would set our clock if we went on a trip but other than that no one ever remembered to wind it.

Also, tires with tubes. Seems to me that on a 400 mile round trip to Howard we averaged one flat each time.

[larryJ]

Ah, tires with tubes. Driving around the back roads going to the hay fields or some girls house out in the country.  I kept the tire store in business all by myself.  My buddy and I used to have contests to see who could change a tire the fastest.  

Nutria pens-----------my cousins and I used to call them big rats.  We probably ran into each other back then, because the highlight of my day was to go over to Bill's house and sit on the edge of the pens and wait for him to wake up so I could hang out with him.  That is, until he found some excuse to send me home to Granny's house.  

Does anyone remember hanging water bags on the front of the car to keep the radiator cool while driving in the desert?  Or maybe it was to have water available in case the radiator overheated.  Or, those metal canisters that were filled with water and ice and hung on the passenger side window, yesterdays version of air conditioning?  There was no such thing as FM stations in the 50's, was there?  

Larryj

[Diane Amberg]

Daddy had one of those evaporator water bags when they moved here. Wouldn't work though because our humidity is too high.

[W. Gray]

From what I have been able to find, FM was "patented" in 1933 and commercial broadcasting authorized in 1941 in the U.S.

I recall that in 1949 my folks bought a Firestone brand console AM-FM record player combination all enclosed in wood with one huge speaker. It was not even "hi fi." It was a piece of furniture that adorned our living room for many years.

However, it would only play 78 rpm records (the ones made of shellac that would fracture into a hundred pieces if you dropped one). I think 45 rpm records might have come out about that time also but this one would only play 78s and it soon became obsolete as far as record playing. However, I remember laying in front of that radio most every day during the summer listening to the Mutual Broadcasting Company baseball Game of the Day.

I recall asking what the FM was for and no one seemed to know. That console would not pick up a station on the FM band until, probably, in the 60s. By the late 60s, my folks replaced it with a super console that had a large color TV, three speed record player, and AM-FM. I don't believe the FM was stereo capable. They got rid of it in 1989 when they moved back to Howard.

I always thought those bags hanging from the front of automobiles were extra water for the radiator when going through the desert. That would be back when cars did not recycle radiator water like they do nowadays.

I made a trip west in 1966 and there were still a number of cars with them on the front end.

[Ms Bear]

I do remember the bags with the water, just can't remember what they were called.  I grew up in the desert and we never went anywhere without one.  They didn't hold enough water for the car so we usually had water in old cans for the car.  The water in the canvas bag was for drinking and it was cooler than the water in a jar or can when it was really hot.  I don't know how it would cool it because it always had so much dust on it that it couldn't breathe.  All the men would put them on the front of the tractors for drinking water.

In 1957 and 1958 we lived about 60 miles northwest of Phoenix and most of it was dirt road, when it was hot the 1949 Ford we had would get us about 30 miles from home and then it would vapor lock, we would stop and let it cool off and then finish our trip to town.  Going home we would get to about the same place and it would do it again.  Someone told my father to put a clothes pin on the fuel line and it would not do it.  He laughed at them but tried it and it worked.

We were so glad when my father decided he wanted to leave that ranch we would have gone anywhere.  His next job was with a custom wheat harvest crew and we went everywhere.

[Diane Amberg]

The one I remember was some kind of burlap that you soaked first.That made the fiber swell. I guess that helped it hold the water without leaking completely out but allowed for evaporation to cool the water. I was pretty little, but I do remember it.

[Sarah]

Steve is driving my dad's old 60's pick up which still has nylon tires with tubes in them.  And my mom and dad still have one of those phonographs in their house.  Still works too.  :-) 

I don't remember ever seeing the tube things.  Must have been before my time.   

[W. Gray]

Soaking the outside with water first was like the canteen I had at one time in the Boy Scouts. Immersing it in water was supposed to keep the water cool.

An aunt and uncle of mine were supposed to have driven from Elk County to California and back with a tube showing through the tire. You were lucky in those days if you got 15,000 mile tread wear. As late as '67, I bought a new car and had to replace the tires at 17,000 miles.

[Diane Amberg]

Al had one of those canteens too. It had flannel on the outside. I guess that's what you wet down?

[Wilma]

Farmer's working in the fields used to carry a burlap wrapped jug of water.  I don't know what kind of a jug it was but the burlap was soaked to help keep the contents cool.  It also had a cork instead of a cap.  Then along came the thermos bottles and jugs.