What common household items of its time did your childhood home not have?

[Spinneret]

Subscription TV
A Garage

 

[DDuckSouthBend]

Color TV or Air Conditioning.

 

[TippyThomas]

Electricity, television, telephone, washer, dryer. We did have 12 volt batteries and an ancient cell phone kept in the barn for emergencies though. Just couldn't have it in the house.

 

[barkley]

i guess dishwashers were pretty common but the house i grew up in was'nt designed to facilitate it without an entire kitchen renovation. same with in-house washer and dryer. houses built in the 50's MIGHT have been plumbed for them but it was generaly located in the garage (and ours was not attached by a door to the house so i remember my mom going outside to enter the back door of the garage to do laundry-i would hope whoever owns that house now did a renovation to correct this).

 

[NYCgrrl]

A television, a car (nationwide it was common but still not so much in my area of the region), Barbie and a telephone. Actually we did have a phone but it was not for everyday use.

 

[NannyBeBe]

bathroom
running water
mail delivery to the house

 

[Tink3815]

dishwasher , I love my dishwasher....

 

[tvguy]

Electricity, television, telephone, washer, dryer. We did have 12 volt batteries and an ancient cell phone kept in the barn for emergencies though. Just couldn't have it in the house.

LOL. Not sure how old you are, but hard to believe ANY cell phone was ancient when you were a kid. I was the first on my street to get one in 1990.

 

[DisneyOma]

My husband's family did not have a TV. This was in the 1980's!

 

[TippyThomas]

LOL. Not sure how old you are, but hard to believe ANY cell phone was ancient when you were a kid. I was the first on my street to get one in 1990.

I guess I went beyond the "kid" stage with that one. Just something I remember about my life back in the day. And, I was considering the type of phone I have now to compare with.

 

[tvguy]

I guess I went beyond the "kid" stage with that one. Just something I remember about my life back in the day. And, I was considering the type of phone I have now to compare with.

Yeah, time flies. Hard to believe that the 9-1-1 system is relatively new too. When William Shatner's "Rescue 911" TV show went on the air in 1989, a lot of U.S. cities did not have 911, you still had to dial either Operator or a 7 digit number to get help.

 

[lanejudy]

a lot of U.S. cities did not have 911, you still had to dial either Operator or a 7 digit number to get help

That was us! And to this day, I still remember both of those 7-digit numbers - police and fire/ambulance.

We also had pull boxes on a telephone pole about every couple of blocks that could be pulled for a fire emergency. The fire whistle would sound and could be heard all over town; the number and length of the blasts would indicate the location (we'd look it up on a list kept in the kitchen cupboard).

 

[maxaroni]

That was us! And to this day, I still remember both of those 7-digit numbers - police and fire/ambulance.

We also had pull boxes on a telephone pole about every couple of blocks that could be pulled for a fire emergency. The fire whistle would sound and could be heard all over town; the number and length of the blasts would indicate the location (we'd look it up on a list kept in the kitchen cupboard).

We had that type of system for fire as well. My dad was on the volunteers (we had paid & volunteer) and thought it be nice to get what we called “clanger” in our house. What this meant was that those blasts would also clang in our house. My mom would look up in the book and needed to call other volunteers to let them know where the fire was. She called the full list at night, partial list of who was available during the day. This thing would clang and I’d wake up with my heart pounding.

 

[easyas123]

Cable TV...it was channel 6, 10 & 12 (hello Philly!) and that's it.