What changes have you seen in technology?

(Indoor plumbing, water, telephones, computers, cars, etc.)

From: Gail Goodrich

I would like to tell about running water. Of course there was running water all around us growing up but we didn't have it. When I got married I carried two pails of water in, heated them and took a bath in the square wash tub. I told Don all he had to do to please me is give me a home with running water and a bathroom. Our first house had one bath, the second a bath a half, the third two and a half, and then all of a sudden I had 65 bathrooms. I said "enough, enough". Our cottage complex in Maine grew from 19 units to 60. I cleaned all the bathrooms. Now I have it right with 3 bathrooms and I complain about cleaning them. Go figure!

From: Heidi MacDuff

Now the plumbing thing and technology....I can clearly remember using the outhouse in the garage at great grandma’s house. Now on a day like today (-10 degrees below zero) it is a wonder the pee didn't freeze on its way out. But as a child I can remember it being so exciting to use the outhouse. Mom would get annoyed and say why don't you just use the pot in grandma’s room? Sometimes that was the better choice and it would be a full pot to say the least. But we never paid much attention; it was the way things were done.

And then to think of running water. Wes and I would fight over who would go out and fetch a pail of water at the pump/well for grandma and Grandpa Harris. This was a very important job. I have to say I treasure the modern conveniences of home. It must have been so hard to live that way. I feel special that we were exposed to that way of life.

From: Joyce Eggleston (written by Heidi)

My mom wanted to share a few things with you about technology. In the winter up at Grandma and Grandpas they would close the pantry door at night. Because it got so cold at night the water would freeze in the buckets. The kids would have to break the ice to get water to warm up to get washed up and brush their teeth. As mom says that is mighty hard living.

Mom said they didn't have a telephone till the kids were older, when Grandma Harris got a job. Grandpa (Marshall) made it very clear he didn't believe in having a phone. So, when they needed to use a phone they would go into great grandmas to use her phone. Also Art Harris would come every now and then to use great grandma’s phone. He would hold the phone away from his ear and holler as loud as he could into it to talk. I guess everyone would get a kick out of that.

Great Grandpa (LeRoy) didn't believe in having indoor plumbing. He didn't want anything changed in his home. He was set in his ways I guess!

From: Lois Rotella

I remember when I was growing up in a tenement building in NYC we didn't have a private bathroom and steam heat. We shared a toilet with the next door neighbor and the tub was in the kitchen. The only heat was the stove in the kitchen. Our air conditioner was a huge chunk of ice bought from the ice man who carried it up 4 flights of stairs and put it in a huge pan and we would turn on the fan to cool off the room. That is the most vivid memory I have of plumbing in my life time.

From: Philip Harris

When I was a lad we had no running water. It was my job to bring in pails of water each day for drinking, washing and laundry. We never did have running water at our home in Harrisena. We thought we had arrived when the old outhouse was replaced by a chemical toilet in the woodshed.

From: Connie Olsen

Guess my choices would be the TV and computers. When I was growing up we had all the rest of the things you mentioned. I was raised in Mpls, Mn. in the 40's, and 50's. I was about 10 or 11 when I remember seeing my first TV set in the appliance store window in our neighborhood where I grew up. It would he turned on around 4:00 in the afternoon. Myself, as well as many other children and lots of adults, would stand there in front of that store window and wait what seemed for hours for the first afternoon program to come on. That was at 4:00 everyday. We watched that test pattern it seemed like for hours. Then the first show came on. Everyone cheered as the test pattern changed to people talking. I remember it being the Howdy Dowdy show. So some were talking puppets. We were all in awe. I remember talking myself blue in the face trying to convince my father to by one of those things called TV’s. I was 13 when he finally brought one home. We were the hit of the neighborhood. Parents would come over to get their children for bed and end up staying watching with them the NEW invention, eating ice cream with us. It was a small 5" black and white screen made from mahogany a floor model too.

Computers didn't enter my life or my husbands until 1997. He had lung cancer and was house bound I was caregiver for him and my mother who also had cancer. So it was a blessing for him. My mom wouldn't have a thing to do with it. But would sit back and watch while we were on it. He learned to surf the net, and he loved to play the solitaire games that came with it. Neither of us knew how to turn one on or of in the beginning. The grandchildren taught us much about them. When he passed away in 1999 the computer helped me pass time away and kept my mind occupied doing our families genealogy. It was a life saver for me. I'm still doing mine and his history. I find what I can on the web. I'm not able to make it to the FHC, as the closest one is about 180 miles round trip from me. So people who also are researching my surnames have been a real help to me with my information. I thank them all they are genealogy angels in my eyes. Connie From the Frozen Northern Minnesota County

From: Lucy Welden

One of changes that I have seen is to have indoor plumbing as a child growing up in 40's and 50; s, we had no running water in the house my mom had to carry water from the penstock for drinking and laundry. Water had to be carried in for baths.

Another change was to have a furnace to heat our home, we had a wood and coal stove in the kitchen for cooking and heat and a stove in the parlor which we would sit around in the winter. My mom used to do a lot of baking; it was a lot different than to day now we have mixes to use.

We used to use cardboard to slide down hill; we spent more time out doors in winter and summer.

From: Carol Higgins

Indoor plumbing - Just sitting back and thinking about it today gives me great joy for when I was growing up we had no such thing. We had to get our water from the well; spring, summer, fall, and winter. In winter we would have to prime the well then pump and pump till water came. We filled our pails and carried them back inside. We had no water to flush the toilet for we only had chamber pots or the outhouse. We’d fill the dishpan and rinse pan with water to do dishes. We’d take a bath in a galvanized tub or sponge baths in a wash basin. When I got married the only thing I wanted was indoor plumbing…..which I got.

From: Connie Farrington

One change in technology that I have appreciated is the rotary cutter for cutting fabric. It's like a pizza cutter and will cut through several layers of fabric at a time, with no shifting of the fabric. This has speeded up the quilting process, a wonderful thing for those of us who worked full time and wanted to quilt by dark of night. And it changed the kinds of quilts some of us had time to make. Quilts with small pieces and rather complex looking blocks could be made much more quickly than our great grandmother's made them with scissors and a cardboard template. I found one of my great great grandmother's small cardboard hexagons in her sewing box (along with a box of cholera pills), and I used it to make a Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt (the cardboard template, not the box of pills). It took me five years of my spare time. Now with a lot of luck, a burst of energy, and someone else fixing my lunch, I could probably cut out and partially assemble a full size quilt on a weekend. Isn't that a wonderful thing?

Just for the fun of it, here's another response. This is the story of the power lawnmower as a significant technological change.

As soon as I became tall enough to push Dad's hand mower, I was allowed to mow our lawn in Harrisena. That lawn was very large in every direction, with plentiful, thick grass, and went around lots of bushes and trees. I was probably about 10 years old when I started, and received the grand sum of ten cents each time I finished the whole lawn. If the grass was deep, the job included raking the grass and carrying it away. All for ten cents, paid promptly by my father. To my knowledge, my sister never mowed the lawn, nor did anyone else once I learned the fine art of lawn mowing.

A couple of weeks after my 16th birthday, I graduated from high school. For the summer I had a full time and a part time job. This meant I had to give up my lawn mowing with that old hand mower.

To my total amazement, Dad immediately bought a brand new posh-looking power mower. He then hired Jimmy Dumas of Jenkinsville to mow the lawn, offering to pay him $6 every time he did the job with Dad's mower. Aghast at the injustice of it all, I went to my Dad and said: How come you paid me only TEN CENTS to do that huge lawn for 6 years, and the minute I have to quit you buy a spiffy power mower and hire that scary looking kid with a mohawk hair cut to mow the lawn for $6? And Dad calmly replied, why should I have paid you more when you were willing to do it for a dime?

There must be a lesson to be learned there. Maybe: Don't do anything for ten cents that you could do for six dollars. Or: Never judge a guy by his haircut. Or: There's a fine line between parsimonious and cheap.

It was a lucky thing for the Town of Queensbury that Dad was the shrewd businessman that he was. He never let any grass grow under his feet. And after the great Power-Mower-Event, I never let any grass grow under mine.

From: Renee Zamora

I can remember using Grandma and Grandpa Harris’ chamber pot. Every time I went to visit I had to make a visit to the chamber pot in their bedroom. I remember that every time the power went out we would go up to my Grandparents home to stay. There was something to be said for getting water from a pump and no indoor plumbing. When the power went out you could still function.

The change I remember most is our party line when I was little. You could pick up the phone and listen to others talking. I never heard anything good but it was just the idea. I guess also the thrill because Mom would have killed me if she caught me doing that. I also remember we used to give out our phone number as RX3-1214. The first two digits were given as letters. I think when we had our own line and not the party line we stopped giving out our phone number that way.

From: Brenda (Harris) Olszewski

I can remember at Grandpa and Grandma Harris's house on the hill (Ridge Rd) they had no running water or bath room. We would go to the "Outhouse" to go the bathroom. We thought it was fun. (Winter was not FUN!) I also remember that we would help bring in water from the well too. I'm glad I went back home to running water and a warm bathroom!

I also remember the age of computer's. We did not have them in high school but everything is computers now! We e-mail instead of calling everyone. Also when my kids were in school in the 80's, Pagers were the new thing. Now they are just about obsolete and everyone has Cell Phones. At work when people go on breaks all you see are cell phones everywhere. What’s next?

From: Linda Smith

I have many times commented to my children about some of the things that I have seen change over my lifetime. One of the first things I remember and comment on is the ballpoint pen. When I was in the fourth grade, and we were allowed to start writing with a pen, I was excited to go downtown to the only stationery store in town and purchase a fountain pen and a bottle of ink. By the time I entered the 7^th grade, ballpoint pens were just being introduced and were "the" thing to have. I got a Parker click-top ballpoint pen. When you ran out of ink, you went to the store and purchased "refill cartridges".

From: Amy Freeman

I can think of so many! Growing up we listened to records and now we have cd's. You can hardly find cassette tapes anywhere too. Cell phones is another one. I have to admit, I'd love one, but can't afford one right now. It amazes me when I see 12 year olds using these phones. I remember seeing these on tv and they were these huge foot long things, and now they're about 6" high (if that). Computers I think are the biggest change by far. You can store anything on them and the graphics are amazing. They get smaller every year too, but then you can take them anywhere instead of being kept at home at the desk.

From: Marie Zamora

Computers, DVD's and CD's....see number 6.

From: Jenny McMurray

Well I have seen advancements in computers, telephones, VCRs and DVDs.