[Dixielandjazz] "Good Old Days"

[Phil Wilking]

"Good Old Days?" Hmmm, let's think a moment.

For most, that phrase connotes their grandparents' early adulthood, as they 
imagine it. So, that's about 75 to 100 years ago, or - roughly - 1913 to the 
middle of the Depression.

What did we have in 1913? Well, the Balkans were at war, as usual, but they 
politely kept it to themselves. China was a rat's nest of feuding fiefdoms 
of warlords, but what else was new? Latin America was another rat's nest of 
coups and dictators, again, what else was new? The Russian Empire was as 
ramshackle as ever, as was the Ottoman Empire. The last of the colonial 
conquest of Africa had just been completed, with Germany the 
Johnny-come-lately. And World War I would start in a year, complete with 
poison gas, deaths in the millions, and the fields plowed, tilled, and 
planted for World War II. New Orleans had just experienced a yellow fever 
epidemic a year or two before, but Dr. Reed had finally proven that 
mosquitos were the yellow fever vector, so mosquito extermination efforts 
were beginning (barely).

In medicine, there was a vaccination process for smallpox, which was still a 
world wide disease, and a treatment for rabies, IF you started the treatment 
before symptoms appeared (the same as today). Aside from that, there was 
Salvarsan for syphilis, and not much else in the way of "miracle drugs." At 
least there were sterile operating rooms and ether, but operating for 
appendicitis was a major procedure. Women still routinely gave birth at 
home, where the cleanest thing in the house was the daily newspaper IF the 
household received it, so the paper was spread under her and my paternal 
grandmother STILL died of puerperal fever (childbed fever). Doctors made 
house calls, but all of medicine was carried in that little black bag: 
paregoric and laudanum (tincture of opium) for pain, syrup of ipecac to 
induce vomiting, and tincture of iodine for antiseptic. Cocaine, opium, 
morphine, and heroin were available over-the-counter at a pharmacy. You 
prayed your children would get mild cases of mumps, measles, and several 
other diseases while young, because they usually recovered and were 
thereafter immune.
Polio was a feared annual summer epidemic, although not quite as feared as 
later. Polio has been called a "disease of the clean," and the world of 100 
tears ago, even in the best North American household, was a filthy place.

Thinking of "at home:" housework was a never-ending, all day, every day 
business. No vacuum cleaners; no mechanical, much less electric, 
dishwashers; no air conditioning (and fans were expensive); no electric 
washing machines (READ the lyrics of "Coney Island Washerwoman"); no 
electric refrigerators (Has any of you ever wrestled a block of ice into an 
icebox, or had an icebox drip pan drain stop up and make a flood? I have.); 
very little electricity of any kind, "electric light" meant single conductor 
wires on drum insulators nailed to the rafters and a 40 watt bulb on a drop 
cord from the center of the ceiling; cooking was on a "range," and has any 
of us ever tried to use a wood or coal fired range? The range never went out 
because it took too long to reheat, so the kitchen was the only warm place 
in the house in winter, and a hell-hole in summer. Oh, that cabinet looking 
thing raised above the body of the range at the back is not a spice rack, it 
is a water heater, IF you had indoor plumbing, which was expensive, with the 
sewerage dumped into a cesspool or (untreated) into the nearest stream.
No sanitary drinking water piped in, even with indoor plumbing. Intelligent 
people boiled all drinking water, which often came from rain water cisterns. 
You had to put a cheesecloth strainer over each tap to catch the mosquito 
larvae, and some went so far as to put small fish in the cistern to eat the 
mosquito larvae. (You just didn't think about the fish and mosquito poop in 
the water.)
No radio, no television, no motion pictures as we think of them, no daily 
bathing (see above about indoor plumbing).
Men, have you ever used a straight razor? I have; there is a reason the 
British call them "cut-throat." King Gillette was only just beginning to 
sell safety razor blades.
Ladies, have you read the ingredients of some of the "beauty" products of 
the day? If you wanted to lose weight, you could buy tapeworm eggs in tablet 
form. And they get worse.

In the public arena, a huge boost for union labor in general, and the 
I.L.G.W.U. in particular, was the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire in New 
York City. Read up on it; it was not unique, merely better publicized than 
most. It was this sort of thing which finally resulted in the beginnings of 
public safety code enforcement. Without the trade unions, workers' safety 
enforcement would have remained left up to those who had to pay for it. 
Guess how well that works. Don't forget that R.M.S. Titanic had sunk only 
the year before, with the loss of more than half the occupants, because the 
Admiralty regulations did not require enough lifeboats to hold everyone 
aboard. And no, White Star Lines never claimed it was "unsinkable;" some (as 
usual) ignorant newspaper twit wrote that and White Star let it stand 
without comment.

By the late 1930's there were sulfa drugs, and penicillin was under 
development, along with several other drugs and vaccines. But penicillin was 
restricted to the military during World War II, and the rest didn't begin to 
come on line until the very late 1940's and 1950's. I still remember my 
first injection of cherry red Salk polio vaccine in the early 1950's.

And so on.

With only very rare exceptions, these are the "good old days."

Jazz content: the "Jazz Age" was in this period. The doughboys had just come 
back from saving the world and they knew it. They knew they could do 
anything they put their minds to and their music shows that.

Phil Wilking - K5MZF
www.nolabanjo.com

Those who would exchange freedom for
security deserve neither freedom nor security.

-----Original Message----- 
From: Charlie Hull

I'm also trying to remember what was so good about the Good Old Days.