Copyright © All rights reserved. Made by Dr. Joseph P. Kawoski.
Curtains had to be pulled and stretched and pinned to curtain stretchers, which were wooden frames with hundreds of pins all around the frame. This was a time consuming task that left you with sore, pricked fingers.
Many women did their own dry cleaning in the summer, any article that could not be washed in water was dipped in and out of a large pan filled with gasoline till clean, then hung dripping over a clothes line till dry, and this was an unpleasant and dangerous job.
Most people had non-electric ice boxes. The ice man delivered the ice in different size pieces. The ice was placed on the upper shelf, there was a pipe that went down through to the floor. As the ice melted, the water went through the pipe and into a pan which had to be frequently emptied, or it would go on the floor. In the winter we had window boxes. They were just an ordinary wooden box covered with sheet metal, with the opening toward the window so all you had to do was raise the window to remove or place the perishables. If the temperature happened to rise, the food would spoil.