 | Faye Graves, a native Wichitan, attended school at Friends and Wichita State, concluding at Midwestern Theological Seminary. He has been active in media for many years with Channel 12, KIRL, KFDI, KOOO AM & FM (Omaha), KFRM & KICT 95, as an owner, manager, producer, director and announcer. He has served as President of the Haysville Board of Education. He has also served on several national boards of the Southern Baptist Convention. Faye currently serves as Executive Pastor and Director of Administration and Education at Immanuel Baptist Church, 1415 S. Topeka, Wichita. You may contact Faye by e-mail fmgraves@amenibc.org, or by phone at (316) 262-1452. |
Nostalgia
2009-12-01 10:17:00
Remember...
Answer: I often think about the younger readers of this column and how things I write about, have to seem unbelievable to them. They grew up with forced air furnaces and air conditioning in the home, car and business…and back then…we had nothing like that. I would imagine it would be pretty hard for me to believe if I were them.
I think back about the small town in eastern Kansas where I grew up. We used coal oil to light our lamps. We also used coal or chopped wood to heat the house. Then, schools and businesses and many homes went to the boiler type furnaces. Can some of you remember how it sounded when the pipes clacked? This was also the time of having to use only snow shovels at your homes and businesses. Smaller towns did not clear the streets. The larger cities would plow the main streets, many times with a horse drawn plow, but the neighborhoods were not touched by the plows many times even in the 40’s because the town or city did not have the equipment or manpower to do more than the major streets.
Much clothing was, and still is, the best way to keep warm. Men all wore hats or stocking caps, scarves and topcoats, that were then called overcoats. They wore several layers of clothing using sweaters, vests, suit coats and long underwear. Then on came the wool socks and goulashes. Boys wore aviator caps with goggles and ear flaps (yes, no kidding). The ladies wore fur coats, if they could afford one. Nearly all ladies wore hats for both dress and casual and not slacks, but heavy dresses, sweaters, wool coats, scarves and their overshoes and boots.
January to me as a school boy meant walking to school. Parents many times went to work early in the morning and were unable to take their children to school…so we walked…many times in deep snow. As I would walk to school, I have a vivid memory of hearing the old cars try to start and listening to the grinding of the starter. Just before all of this time, I can remember the actual crank starting the engine and continually having to change the choke position, like you have to do with some push lawnmowers today. There were the various shelters that people constructed to put their car under a roof. I also remember the various kinds of snow tires in later years, the permanent ones that you actually installed and the snap-on ones that just went on the outside of your tire.
Downtown…each of the merchants cleaned their own sidewalks and windows in front of their store or business. January has always been cold and snowy here, but the snows seemed to me to be deeper back then. Maybe, because I was a child at the time I am writing about, and wasn’t as tall then as I am today. Piles of snow seemed huge back then.
My advice is to dress warm, stay well, and look ahead to the great weather that will come to Wichita in the spring.
Have a happy and safe New Year!
