Hello,
One thing you can still see in many of the flats are the stained glass on the top of the doors.They are or will be in greta demand.
THANKS for stopping by, I do my best to acknowledge when someone leaves a comment,you do not have to be a member here & everyone is welcome. Ps: This site is monitored but not actively posting on a regular basis. Mostly these are stories & some photos saved from a defunct site known as Verdun Connections which was on MSN Groups initially then on a social network called Multiply.
27 comments:
Another thing that is/will command high prices are the glass door knobs. I remember my parents changing these out for the shiny brass ones. Right now, the prices are going higher and higher on these glass ones, that is, when you can find them. Go figure!! Cheers.
I Remember those handles too,......generally there was always one in every house that would inevitably pull off in your hand ,and depending on which side of the door you were on,.....Either you ended up with the knob and shaft,and the other knob ended up on the floor of the other room...........hahahaha...........or vice-versa
....YIKES......................on ebay no-less..................hahahahahahaha
Hey Remember putting blamnkets down on the floor near the door,.to stop the draft.........hahahahah It was second nature to bang your boots outside the door,then come into the porch and "Close the Door" would be sounding ,.then you stepped inside and closed the second door ,and walked into the hallway right to the stove to warm up,,,,,,,,hahahahaha (and don't forget to kick that blamket back in place.....
Yikes Again,........The rest of you probably used Blankets,.....but apparently I used blamkets..................hahahahahaha
Does anyone remember the coal furnace in the
basements....In the hallways about halfway there was a grate where I would sit a
get dressed in the mornings. By the way..My father was the one who use to
deliver the coal...
sammie
I remember when: Socks and mittens were knitted by my grandmother, and we usually got these as Christmas gifts each year. Only trouble was they were 100% wool, not a synthetic blend like today, and when they got wet we used to lay them on the oil stove to dry out they usually shrank, and often smelled like .... what else......burning wool. But gotta say that not many of us needed humidifiers and for those really dry days, my mom used to put a kettle of water on the oil stove and problem solved. And we never heard of staying home from school because there was too much snow! We just recently had about 5/6 feet of snow here in the Valley and the kids all got "snow days" which means no school.........guess they wouldn't understand that this amount just meant a lot more fun for us. And snow forts were an art then, not sure if kids still make them. Cheers.
On some mornings it was difficult to open the front door b/c of a heavy snow fall during the night. I thought it was a perfect reason to stay home but my mother didn't.
Also Remember trying to look out the window,but it was thick with ice (nice looking patterns of ice& frost.........hahahaha) but it was still ice,.and you would press your finger against the glass to melt a spot ,that you could look out of........hahahaha There were very few days ever lost to snowfall,.....or sickness for that matter, I think every so many years we may have gotten a few days because of a strike........hahahahah but that's where it was handy to be a Catholic,.......we had holidays all the time,...(I think)........ In anycase we didn't get too many days off.........
As a very small boy I remember going down the basement to fill the coal scuttle. I had to lift it up one step at a time. After I got it there my Father would pour the whole thing on the fire to bank it up at night and say, "Go fill it for the morning." I remember sifting the ashes and putting them out with the garbage and the time the handle came off the old 'Dustless rocker sifter' half way up the stairs. A cloud of white dust filled the basement and my mother kept me home from school to clean it before my Father came home. Ed
Ed, That was my job also. After the Rocker/Shaker, the coals that were left had to be put out. We used to call them clinkers, they were like melted crap of some sort. I remember when my dad was away for a week or so, I had to help my mom shovel the coal into the furnace...remember there used to be a little door you could slide open to see if the fire was still going. I also remember when I was really, really young () convincing my sister that we were allowed to play in the corner where the coal was kept. I swear those clothes we were wearing had to be thrown out as the coal dust stayed in them forever. To be young again, eh?
I just had an epiphany.....the clinkers that were left after the dust was shaken out were recycled through the furnace again! Whew, didn't think we were so rich that we would throw out "good" stuff. Cheers.
Sammie, My grandparents lived on the first floor on 4th Ave just above Bannantyne. They had one of those grates min the hallway. My family lived on the 2nd floor on Riverview and we had a coal stove in the kitchen and an oil heater in the hall. Ruth
Linda, I was lucky. The ash sifying detail fell on my brothers shoulders Ruth
Oil, Coal , and later on Gas Furnace,...of course a lot of our houses had Gas Kitchen Stoves,......too ! and what seemed like a long hallway leading to our kitchen,......Everyone always gathered in the kitchen..........even though they were not big, and we had 1 phone for the longest time,...and it was almost always a Wall Phone,,,,,,,,,,,,(hard to have that private conversation............)hahahahah Sometimes you would stand outside with the door held closed over the wire so noone could hear you: then those fancy phones came along later.
I still remember our number PO6-4859
HE-3397 ~ then PO-3397 ~ then PO-7-3397. And ours was like this, and I remember the receiver being very heavy, not light plastic. Does anybody remember the Princess Phones. I wanted one so badly, but my dad nixed that idea as it was expensive to get an extension.
Yes I recall that table model too.........very heavy,....... Here's a picture for you Mom'45,.......... later on they called it a 'Contessa' same one just newer I guess,.I remember my sister having one. Checkout this 'direct link' to a Bell System Memorial Site,.all about Bell's History...etc etc ,...lots of pics,..but you will have to navigate around the site: http://www.bellsystemmemorial.com/telephones-princess.html
Bell Canada crew placing underground cables,at Saint Catherine & Union Streets,...... around 1930........ Some of you may have known some of te men working inn this photo: ? Here's some Bell Operators who filled Christmas Hampers around 1932
How's this the Bell Telephone Office in Saint Anne de Bellvue,1938 I would think this building must have been preserved,....maybe Jimmy (Kungfu) would know if it's still around ? It sure looks like a neat old building
Linda. Having worked and retired early from our local telephone company, I do remember the princess phone. It was one of the hardest phones to install on a party line. Any phone on a party line had to be rewired, and extra parts installed. The princess had very little extra room inside and seemed to take forever to rewire and try to get those extra parts inside. But the girls loved them. I stll have some extras around here somewhere, I think. Winston
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I bet we all heard the directive from Mom, to go out and bring in the sheets of the line,......(if you didn't 'hear' your Mother ask............you definetly 'heard ' your oldman re-phrase the directive)...........hahahahaha ...................Remember the stuff would almost crack,trying to stuff it in a Laundry Basket............hahahahahah .....and you would break a bunch of those clothspins & have to fix them by trying to slide that little spring back over the wooden pegs.........or the snow would have blown into the 'clothspin bag' hanging from the hook for the line............
Les. Starnge how we all have the same experience. Frozen clothes on the line in winter. Taking them off the line and "breaking them", putting them on the clothesline in the kitchen to thaw out. I don't know how many times I have told that story when the kids were growing up. Even repeat myself to this day. Of course the usual response is; "Didn't you have a dryer". Ya right, it was a good wind and a strong back, and someone yelling at you as you went out to take them off the line something about not heating the whole outside, or being accused of growing up in a barn. Oh yes.....The good old days....I remember them well.....For how long I don't know. Just the other day my son (29 years old) was watching me type on the computer, and I was hunting and pecking, and he said he could not believe I didn't know how to type. My response was I learned on a manual typewriter
on my own, they didn't even have electrical typewriters yet.. He looked at me like I came from another planet. Maybe we did. Winston Allison
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Speaking of coal dust Mom, do you remember cleaning stovepipes. It was necessary because the pipes running down the hall to the chimney helped heat the hallway and bedrooms. Dust inside acted as insulation and cut down the heat.When clothes got full of coaldust we used to beat them on the line like carpets before washing. Something my Father pointed out to me once, was the size of the men delivering coal. They were usually little fellows and I guess had to be to pass through those shed stairways with large bags on their backs. As a boy I worked with some of the Verdun fruit pedlars. They would go down the lanes with the horse and wagon hollering their wares. A woman on the third floor gallery would ask for two boxes of strawberries and it would be my job to run up through the shed with them and bring back the money. I did it because I loved driving the horse. Ed
Ed , I Remember well cleaning the stove pipes,.....they would get full of soot,..and need to be cleaned,......newspapers were laid out on the floor where you would take down sections of the stovepipe,...and empty them on the newspaper,......also every so often ,an elbow pipe would need to be changed ,.......also Remember the bailing wire stuff,that we twisted onto an eyehook and it held up the pipes.......Yup I Remember doing that job...........
My first phone number was Trenmore 2681 in the mid to late 40's. Then Pontiac 2681 and later PONTIAC-6-2681 Just shows how Verdun grew in less than 15 years in my growing up years. Ruth
Les_F I have forwarded the picture of the frozen clothes line to my brother who is doing the family history thing. How well I remember as a teenager of having to bring the frozen laundry in from the line on the back gallery. At the time it never made much sense to me for my Mom to hang it out on the line and freeze her fingers and then later in the day bring it inside and put some things on a clothes rack by the stove , socks were hung around the metal shield around the oil stove in the hall and larger things were hung over night on a line in the kitchen. As I think back nothing duplicates that outdoor dried aroma. Long before all that pollution that is now in the air. Ruth
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