Items Of Interest About the '40s and '50s

Living in Alturas in the '40s and '50s was very relaxed and friendly. Some facts I remember: the doctor made house calls from Bartow and milk was delivered twice a week. It was in glass bottles with cream on top and a paper pull tab lid. The white children went to one school and the African American children went to another. African American women were our ironing maids and cleaning maids. 

Kids would stay out and play all around town and in the woods all day. Everyone looked out for each others children. Adults in town were allowed to correct your children if they were seen in trouble and to send them home. It was so safe. A lot of times, we would go off on walking trips in the woods with a lunch and a wagon. Daddy taught us how to be careful of snakes and how to recognize danger. We were street smart for the woods and back roads of Alturas. Daddy had twelve or so workmen on the grove. He always told them to help look after us if they saw us out and about. If they hurt one of us, Daddy told them he would shoot them.

If you went into Bartow, you could leave your car windows down and the keys in the car.  No one bothered the car. Cokes were a nickle. Candy bars were a nickle or penny. The movie in town was 25 cents. You could come in and see the movie over and over. It ran continuously all afternoon and evening without stopping. You only got put out of the movie if you made too much of a fuss. There was always a news reel and a continuing serial, cartoons and then a movie or two. 

I remember the War of the Worlds. It was one of the first science fiction movies. There were a lot of cowboy movies and musicals in those days. The musicals were so pretty and nice. When I was little, the movie did not show sex or brutal things nor were they too scary. That wasn't allowed. Girls were not allowed to wear shorts or pants to school. Girls wore dresses and skirts and blouses. You dressed out to play PE and then shower and get dressed again. Everyone played an hour outside at school everyday, and we would play other schools at volleyball and softball. I really liked  both. 

We were given vitamins and castro oil by the school nurse at school. Sometimes iron pills. Our elementary school had rich kids and very poor kids. The school had a nurse on duty and could help the sick kids who couldn't afford a doctor. You could get your shots for school at the nurses office too. 

In the third through the sixth grade, we had a school cafeteria and the meals they cooked were really good. You could smell the noon meal cooking all through the school. Daddy raised chickens for us to eat and he would buy 1/2 of a beef cow and have it cut up and put in a frozen food plant in Bartow. We could go in there and use our key and get meat when we were in town. We didn't buy beef or chicken from the grocery stores. Daddy had a garden every year and mother would put up the vegetables in the freezer. We always had good food to eat.

When you would go into Bartow on Saturday, we could go by the drug store to get medicine and to get a milk shake or a soda fountain coke. They would mix the coke from bottles of syrup. We would go by the newsstand and get comic books, magazines and the Sunday newspaper.   Sometimes, Daddy would get a girly magazine. 

Once a year mother would take us to Lakeland to see the family doctor have a yearly check up. His name sort of sounded like Bowwear. One time, Connie got the flu and had to be put in the hospital with IV's. She couldn't stop throwing up. Children could die from the flu in those days. Their fever would get very high and fluids had to be put in. They slept in really big baby beds. 

Daddy had to have a back operation one time. He stayed in Orlando for weeks after the operation. He would cry when we would come to see him because he missed us so much. Finally he got to come home. 

One day after the operation, Daddy and I were out in the grove where they were pulling orange trees out with tractor and chains. I was sitting in the truck, while Daddy walked out to inspect what the men more doing.  All of a sudden, behind Daddy's back, which was still in a back brace, a tree was rolling on the ground hooked up to a tractor. It rolled over to Daddy and hit him in the back and in the head. He came back to the truck hurt, with his right ear hanging down where it had been torn almost off. I guess he was in a state of shock. Bleeding and in pain from the tree hitting him in his back, he drove home. He went inside and got on the bed and told me to go tell mother he was hurt and to call the doctor. She was so shocked when she saw him. He had to have his back operated on again. The tree broke it right where it had been fixed. I couldn't believe he could drive himself back to the house. He was hurt so bad.