Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories. With Marysville and Union County celebrating Bicentennial anniversaries in 2019 and 2020, respectively, these articles help depict what life was like in those early years.
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During the 1930s, our telephone was mounted on our dining room wall. It was a black metal box, about 12 inches wide and 15 inches high. A nickel-plated mouthpiece stuck out in front, and there was a gizmo on the left side where you could hang the receiver when it was not in use. There was no rotary dial or any kind of pushbuttons.
When you wanted to make a phone call, you just picked up the receiver and put it to your ear. The operator, who was located at the phone company on North Plum Street, would say, “Number please.” Then we would tell her the phone number we were calling, and she would connect us with that number.
I know that sounds pretty primitive today, but I can’t tell you how much I miss that old wall phone. In one respect, it was the best phone we ever had. You see, in all the years we had that phone, we never received a telemarketing call on it. Not a single one. You just have to love a phone like that.
But that doesn’t mean that there weren’t people trying to sell us things at home. Instead of phoning us, they came right to our house and knocked on the door. There were lots of them during the 1930s, for times were tough and jobs were scarce. They sold all kinds of things. I think the Fuller Brush salesmen were the most common. One of them would stop at our house every few months.
Those Fuller Brush guys all carried a big suitcase. When my grandmother asked them to show us their brushes, they opened that suitcase and began taking them out. I never saw so many different kinds of brushes.
There were toothbrushes and hairbrushes. There were brushes to shine our shoes. There was even a brush to scrub fresh vegetables from our garden. Plus, there was a brush with very short bristles to sweep breadcrumbs off the tablecloth after dinner.
Then, every few months, one of those Hoover vacuum cleaner salesmen would stop at our house. We didn’t have a vacuum cleaner. We had a carpet sweeper that kept the rugs looking neat and clean, but it didn’t get the dust out of the carpet’s nap. So every year when we did our spring-cleaning, my dad draped our rugs over a clothesline and beat the daylights out of them with a wire carpet beater.
One day when one of those Hoover salesmen knocked on our door, my mother let him come in and give us a demonstration. I think she really wanted to buy one of those “Hoovers.”
The man talked for a while about how good his vacuum cleaners were, and then he got one out. He had my mother run her carpet sweeper over the rug in our living room.
Next, he plugged in his Hoover vacuum cleaner and quickly ran it over the rug that had just been swept. When he finished, he emptied the contents of the sweeper bag onto a newspaper. Oh boy, you wouldn’t believe all the dust and dirt he got out of that rug. I believe that was the moment when my mother decided we would get a vacuum cleaner. And a couple months later, she bought one.
Those wishing to contact Bill Boyd can e-mail him at bill@davidwboyd.com