Remember?
October 14, 2011 (Friday)
The weather forecast for the next week calls for temperatures no higher than the 80’s. Houston’s weather blogger in the Chronicle says there will be no more days this year when the temperature rises to 90 or above. We’ll see. I hope they are correct. I love warm weather, but the heat this year has been extraordinary.
I have one of those “smart meters” that tells me how much electricity I am using on a daily basis. After viewing the report on the computer for several days, I gave up. It was the same every day. It says I am using a lot of juice, and they are sending me bills that match the graphs. Remember the good old days when the “light bill” was like, $2.40? Oh, wait, we did not have air conditioning then. Nope, not the “good old days” after all.
I well remember those days when the wiring was two wires strung on the walls and ceilings of a few of the old houses I lived in as a child. The light was a bulb that hung from the ceiling, and the biggest user of electricity was the radio. The bathroom in those old houses was usually a back porch that had been converted to an “indoor” bathroom. The bathtub that was a “stand alone” affair, and all the pipes were exposed. Cold water only. Hot water for the tub was heated in a kettle on the stove. A tank for the toilet hung on the wall about six feet above the floor and was flushed with a handle that hung from a chain. Much better than an outhouse, though. I always dreaded visiting our cousins out in the country during cold weather.
I hear preachers talking about how much worse off the world is these days, but some things are much better. Just ask anyone who can remember washboards, boiling pots in the yard, bluing in the clothes, wringing by hand, hanging with clothespins, starching and ironing. And lye soap. Don’t forget the kerosene kitchen cook stove and the wood burning pot belly stove that tried to heat the whole house. Ah, those were the days. The “good old days.”