" HAD YOU LIVED THEN ... AMERICA AROUND 1800 " EDUCATIONAL FILM ABOUT 19th CENTURY USA 43924

I’m one of those that lived without electricity or running water as a child. We didn’t get electricity until I was fourteen. I’ll be 96 in a few months and I remember very well what it was like at that time. Of course I’m very thankful I don’t have to go outside to the bathroom anymore, but at the time we didn’t know what it was like any other way. And I have some beautiful memories. We lived on a farm and grew all our own food. About the only thing we bought was sugar, flour and salt,etc. we cut ice on a lake nearby and stored the blocks in sawdust in a shed. In the summer after we did the milking and the chores were done we would make ice cream in a hand turned ice cream maker, and we would have homegrown strawberries on it. That was the highlight of my day! Another favorite thing in the summertime was to lay on my back in the evening after dark and look at the stars, pointing out the North Star and little and Big Dipper. It was so beautiful and now, you can’t even see the stars because of all city lights. I miss going bare footed and going down to the creek and catching polywogs, I could go on and on.

When my great grandmother ( 1887 - 1977 ) passed away I was 18. I'll never forget her telling us how much she loved seeing all the new inventions during her lifetime. From horse and buggy to cars, from the Wright Brothers to the landing on the moon. Her saying with a big smile, " I got to see all of it. "

I wish I could send this to my dad. He loved stuff like this. I miss you daddy. Day 48 without you and it sucks.

As a person born in the early 2000's, i really want to time travel to different centuries to see how people used to act and live

It’s crazy to think that people back then probably thought they were at the pinnacle of technological advancement and felt bad for their “primitive” ancestors 100 years before. Remember— everything is relative!

As I watch this on my laptop lying on my bed in my air-conditioned house with food I bought from the store, I would just like to say how grateful I am to be alive in 2021.

The adults in older times were full of innovation. I was born in 1970. Me and my cousins would visit my great grandmother in the hills of Coffyville miss. She use to put clothes in the bathtub and make us have a stumping contest. It was fun. We didn't realize we were washing clothes. She was born in 1895,and passed in 1979. Miss you big mama.

To Shirley Christensen: I am only 82 but I remember a few of those things. What a great trip down memory lane with this little video and your comments below. I remember my mom making lye soap and I'm so happy to finally see how it was done. We lived a very modern life though as we had an indoor bathroom in Denver, a coal bin for a coal fired furnace (floor grates to stand on if you were cold and it felt so good with that heat coming up...but woe unto you if you accidentally stepped on the floor grate barefooted...you'd get a pattern of squares burned onto your foot. I remember the milkman coming with glass bottles and placing them on your front porch. Sometimes, during winter, the milk would still freeze...even in the milk box that was there to help prevent that...and the cream, which had separated and risen to the top of the milk, would push the little cardboard cap up and ooze out of the top of the bottle. I remember the Helms bakery truck coming every so often and all six of us kids would run out, pick out a donut or whatever and our single mom would pay him for our "breakfast." Of course, there was cardboard in the bottom of your shoes if you happened to wear a hole through the sole of the shoe. Ah, and who can forget the old wringer washing machines when you'd pull clothes out of the washing machine and feed them through the rollers above the machine, hoping your hand didn't get caught between the rollers. My sister got her hand stuck there once. There was an emergency release on the top of the rollers just in case but I'm sure she was petrified. I wasn't there when it happened. And who can forget hanging clothes on a clothesline in the backyard to dry...made them smell so good...except in winter when they would freeze~ Oh, and the big wooden ice box to keep food cold. The ice man brought big chunks of ice that went into the top of the ice box where the air would cool and flow down through the shelves and keep the food cold. Next, the water pan at the bottom would overflow and flood the floor with melted water. We were so lucky when we got our first electric refrigerator ...with the big circular cooler on top. Or was it gas? I remember having a Servel refrigerator at one time around then. Summertime was always spent down at the lake swimming. You either wore your boxers, or, if you had money, you wore Speedos! Yes, that brand was around back then, and everybody wanted them because the Olympic swimmers wore them, and they helped them win the races. Of course, in those days they were much larger and made out of bulky wool which the local YMCA didn't like because they carried a lot of dirt and would sluff off wool strands that messed up the pool filters ..so, at the YMCA you thru swam in the buff. And nobody thought much about it...Skinny dipping wasn't a bad thing back then...in fact one of the Disney movies opened with a scene of boys skinny dipping in a river! No big deal back then. We had a car but since dad worked for the railroad (Denver and Rio Grande) we always got cheap tickets to take the train to our relatives in Utah and we even got to sleep in an upper berth on the train...how exciting were those old steam locomotives! I remember when, in 4th grade, we had a class field trip to the train yards and got to actually walk in the repair pits under a diesel locomotive and see the giant electric motors that made it go. (Hey, I was at a train museum a few months ago...do you know what's in the nose (under the hood) of the diesel locomotive? I didn't either...it's a BATHROOM!!! for the two engineers. Makes sense but who would have thought...!) Even though we lived in the city we still raised rabbits and chickens for Sunday dinner, and I remember the chickens, the hatchet, and the block of wood for chopping the poor unfortunate one that got chosen for Sunday dinner. Dad also skinned the rabbits and turned it inside out and put it over a stretcher to air dry them and then sell them to who knows for whatever they did with rabbit skins. Thank you, Shirley, for bringing back so many memories and I hope you weren't' bored reading some of my memories. Marvin W...San Diego now

Back when the blacksmith was the most important member of the community and family effort was critical to survival. This was a terrific film.

Never in a million years would I think of combining ash and kitchen grease to make soap. Truly incredible!

I know this is kinda weird but this is one of my comfort videos I like to watch when I get sad

Props to the cameraman for going back in time and bringing us this footage.

This was not unlike the life my grandparents were born into in the first years of the 20th century. Grandma often told me about life on the farm without electricity, running water, movies, phones, radios or cars. She told me about the one-room schoolhouse with all grades in it, her mother making soap, the doctor arriving by horse and buggy to make house calls, the long walks to school during winter, the sleigh rides with stones warmed by the fireplace wrapped in towels around their feet. She told me about the barn dances, and helping her older sister Caroline prepare for parties by lacing her corset as tightly as possible. Truly it was another world. Grandma left the farm in 1925 for a job in the big city, where she later met my grandfather. They divorced and she got jobs at GM, Chrysler and finally Ford, from which she retired in the early '70s. Her Saturday visits were pure joy for me and when we sat on the porch and a plane flew overhead, she'd say "look at that! There was nothing like that when I was your age!" And I'd reconsider these things I took for granted as the modern miracles they were.

Teaching manners and morals at school...imagine that.

Watching stuff like this makes me realize how good we have it. We complain about the most minutely simple things

The fact that the film itself is really old just makes this documentary feel all the more special.

My grandparents never had an electric or gas stove; they cooked everything on a wood burning stove. Many summer hours gardening, chopping and sawing wood. It was sweet. They also never had a car. I remember their smiling kindness.

"welp, time for bed." yawns. stretches. shoves the baby under the bed before blowing out the candle.

You see that children that was public transit in the 1800's.. What a marvel Of ingenuity.

Life was tough, but it brought meaning, and each person were assigned their individual roles, bringing the family and community together in harmony. Now, we have everything we desire, but the families are broken, we are isolated amongst ourselves, and we have little to no meaning.