When I was born in September of 1920, we lived in a two-story house in Belleville, Illinois. We got our first telephone when I was four. It was one of those old jobs that hung on the wall in the dining room. It was black and had a crank on the side that we turned to ring up the operator. When she came on the line, we told her who we wanted to talk to, and she connected us.

Some people sent telegrams, but with the telephone we didn’t bother. The only time we sent a telegram was if somebody needed money. Then we went to the Western Union office, handed over money to a clerk, and told him to wire it to whoever wanted it.

Dad bought our first radio in 1925. It was one of those box jobs about eighteen inches long, seven inches high, and five inches deep, with huge tubes powered by dry-cell batteries that sat on a shelf below the radio.

Back in the ’20s, most houses had gas lights. When electric lights first came out, people didn’t think they would ever replace gas lights. So when my dad bought our house he had it piped for gas. He never turned it on, but all the rooms had a gas pipe sticking out of the wall.

Our house had ten rooms–five down and ten up. My family lived downstairs, and my grandparents lived upstairs. The kitchens were one above the other and both had water. The connection to the water meter was through a lead pipe. Back then we never even heard about lead poisoning. .

Our only heat was from coal-fired heaters. They did a pretty good job, but the bedrooms got darn cold. When I woke up winter mornings, the window in my room was frosted over.

We didn’t have a shower. We did have a bathtub downstairs, but we couldn’t use it in the wintertime because it was too cold. So we took a bath once a week, on Saturday night, in Mother’s laundry tub that we filled with hot water heated on the kitchen stove.

My brother and I soaped up with Ivory soap. Mother gave us a quick rinse, dried us off, and we put on clean clothes. Then we drug the heavy tub over to the sink and bucked out the water. It ran down the drain, out of the house, underneath the sidewalk, and into a ditch on the street.

We had an outhouse in the backyard. It was one of those jobs with a cesspool underneath, Every couple years, the “honey dippers” cleaned it out. They drove a team of horses that pulled a waterproof cart they backed into our backyard. Then they moved the small wooden building, dipped long-handled ladles into the holes, lifted out the waste, dumped it into their cart, and drove away.

During the wintertime in Illinois, it was so cold you didn’t dare stick your nose out the door, let alone pull down your pants and bare your butt. You did your business in a china bowl that was stored under the bed. In the morning somebody dumped it.

My grandmother had an oak potty chair upstairs with a real pretty flowered bowl underneath. I don’t know who emptied her bowl. But I do know that potty chair ended up being a valuable antique, worth lots of money.