Pittwater Online News

I wrote in my first article for Pittwater Online News about that time when life was hard.  (Issue 18 August 7 – 13, 2011)  Conditions then, with very limited social support, are probably unimaginable to many today in our largely affluent society.  This article largely is an edited version of that original article.

The call “Cloooothes Props” down the street is a lasting memory from the depression.  Before Hills Hoists sprouted in backyards, and when electric clothes dryers in the home were unimaginable, every house had a clothes line – a multistranded galvanised wire stretched across the yard - on which clothes were hung to dry.  When loaded with wet clothes the lines, unless propped up, sagged and clothes dragged on the ground.  The clothes prop was used to push the line up in the middle.  Men in ragged clothes, anxious to earn a few pence on which to live, trudged the streets with bundles of dry straight tree saplings on their shoulders.  The saplings were cut to leave forked branches at the thinner end which could be used to push up and support the middle of the clothesline.

Other men wandered the streets selling braces (pairs) of skinned rabbits.  Chicken was an expensive luxury item which few could afford – reserved for Christmas or for a really special occasion. A family could be fed a tasty but cheap meal of white meat from a pair of rabbits.

Supermarkets did not exist.  Food was bought in different ways.

The milkman came in a horse and cart. The decorated body of the cart was a tank holding the milk, with taps at the back.  The householder left a billy-can or a covered jug, in most cases with the necessary money, near the front gate.  The milkman used a measuring jug to draw milk from his tank and to fill the householder’s container.  Delivery of milk in bottles came very much later.

The baker, also with a horse and cart, came to the door with a wicker basket over his arm. Turning back a covering piece of canvas he displayed the breads in the basket to the housewife. This too almost invariably was a cash transaction.  During the depression every tradesman had to worry about being paid – yet communities, though poor, generally were honest and any cash left out for a tradesman was safe.  Shopkeepers often displayed a sign saying “ Please do not ask for credit as a refusal often offends.”

Items such as sugar, flour, salt, grains, rice were bought from a local grocery shop where the grocer weighed the requested quantity of an item from a bulk container into a brown paper bag. Virtually nothing was prepacked.  Butter was not prepackaged but was cut and weighed from a large ply-wood “butter box”.

In the absence of refrigerators ice boxes were relied upon to preserve food and keep it cold. These were small tin-lined wooden cabinets with shelves. At the top there was a large container into which the iceman delivered a precut block of ice from his cart.  As the ice melted it kept the contents of the icebox cold. Water from the melting ice was piped to a receptacle which had to be emptied periodically.

Television was yet to come.  Some households acquired the new-fangled invention radio – providing some entertainment.  On Saturday afternoons, children whose parents could afford sixpence (5 cents) could “go to the movies” where the matinee programme included cartoons, a serial (usually cowboys and Indians), a newsreel and a feature movie.

Toys were often made by family members. One of my treasured possessions, which has accompanied me throughout life, is a wooden money box made for me by my Uncle Con (my mother’s brother).  Made from ply-wood offcuts from a butter box (the lettering of which can be seen through the paint) it says Merry Xmas 1933 on one side and on the other;

“Little Georgie is no Fool.  He puts his pennies in his Stool.”

Some people grew a few vegetables in small plots in their gardens. They  watched for the tradesmen’s horses and carts to gather up manure as fertilizer.

The postman delivered mail twice each day.  Men arriving at work in the city in the morning to be told that they would have to work back could post notes to their wives (or mothers) to let them know – the note arriving in the afternoon mail.  Few people had telephones. Great reliance had to be placed on the nearest public telephone box in cases of emergency.  Rarely, if ever, were the public telephones vandalised.

There was a sense of community – you knew your neighbours – and in the shared adversity people pulled together. They could rely on a helping hand.

In a material sense so many of us are better off now – but have we lost something on the way?