Guy's Books and Thoughts

I talked to someone who spent the first part of his life in Germany.
He told me that he lived 10 years ago in a house that did not have
running HOT water. Yes, the house, which was over 100 years old, did
have running water, but not running hot water. He said that at the
kitchen was a cold water tap plus another tap which had cold water
which went into a container which heated the water by electricity. For
the bath cold water had to be run through a furnace to be heated. I
found such a situation unbelievable. But I talked to some people at
church. This one lady from Germany remembers heating the bath water
in the morning in order to take a bath later in the afternoon. She
told me something to the effect of �You don�t know how spoiled you
are.�

I also talked to someone in his 70�s. He remembers neighbors, who not
only did not have running HOT water. They didn�t have running water.
His neighbors had to go to a pump outside the house to get the water.
Fortunately for this person, his father was a clever person and rigged
up a system using water pressure to get both running cold and hot
water. This person said that it was after World War II that we have
had all these modern conveniences.

I also met a senior couple who did not seem surprised by people living
in such circumstances. The husband said that he would go to his
grandfather�s place which had a well with a bucket. Not a pump, but
a bucket. This seems like something like LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRARIE.
The husband also said that when they were dating in San Francisco, he
would escort her home and then walk for an hour back to his home,
which was seven miles. That surprised me. How about the bus? Or what
about a car? He did not seem to think it was a big deal to walk for
about an hour.

Maybe the earlier generation was made of sterner stuff. Of course I
don�t think those times were necessarily the good old days.

In a way the past 140 years is not too far removed from us. The WALL
STREET JOURNAL (May 2005) did an article about CHILDREN of American
Civil War veterans who were still living. I was surprised when a
retired professor told me his grandfather fought in the Civil War. I
think I was even more surprised to find that there were children of
these veterans who were still alive. I showed the WSJ article to a
neighbor who belonged to a Civil War group. He told me that he had
met one of those people. I believe the last widow of a Union soldier
died in 2003 and the last Confederate widow died in 2005.

Books and written records can be good resources. But I think someone
who can connect you to the past, by their stories can bring history
alive.

Guy