At Home With My Grandparents
By Jabo
@jaboUK (64354)
United Kingdom
January 12, 2017 9:30am CST
Life for my grandparents was very different from how things are today.
When I was a child in the 1940s they had no electricity or indoor plumbing. The toilet was at the bottom of the garden and looked just like you see in the picture, and in the evenings light was provided by the hissing and sputtering gas lamps.
These lamps cast a yellowish light which never quite reached the corners of the room, and the flickering shadows from the coal fire seemed to make Granny's knick-knacks and ornaments wink and twinkle in the uneven light. This created a wonderful ambience for a small child like me.
Granny would be sitting sewing or knitting by the fireside, and she often produced a treat for us. This might take the form of a carrot on a stick, or something similar, as in England at that time there was strict rationing and sweet things were hard to get hold of.
Then there was Grandad, a benign figure ensconced in his armchair with his pipe and newspaper. He had a large walrus moustache and a hole in his arm caused by a bullet in World War One.
My sisters and I vied for the pleasure of sitting on his knee while he told us stories. Hearing his tales in the setting of that room made them seem magical.
My grandparents always seemed old to me, and I was amazed to realise that at this period that I'm talking about, they would have only been in their forties.
Do you have happy memories of your grandparents?
Picture from Pixabay
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49 responses
@Bluedoll (16773)
• Canada
12 Jan 17
This account would make for a good introduction for a story or short memoir. Life as child during the 40's regardless of the account would be an interesting read. You are an excellent writer. I found myself as a child wanting to look but at the same time being a little frightful of the hole in grandad. I wanted to know what it looked like. Hearing one of the stories told would be a delight and perhaps at some point in the memoir a trip to the outside house would be required. Pages.
3 people like this
@Bluedoll (16773)
• Canada
12 Jan 17
@jaboUK I meant your memories would go easily into a publication as well if you desired. I have some fond memories of my grandparents too and of times that were very different than what we experience today. It isn't easy to capture those moments but you have managed to do so here. Me grandparents were Irish so it would be very different.
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@fishtiger58 (29820)
• Momence, Illinois
12 Jan 17
What lovely memories you have. I have many fond and happy memories of my grandparents, I miss them everyday.
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@jaboUK (64354)
• United Kingdom
12 Jan 17
@fishtiger58 I'm glad that you enjoyed your grandparents too.
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@fishtiger58 (29820)
• Momence, Illinois
12 Jan 17
@jaboUK I am too I have many fond memories
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@shaggin (72240)
• United States
12 Jan 17
Life was so much more difficult for our grandparents. I loved the wonderful stories my grandfather used to tell me about his youth. His family was very poor and he grew up on a farm. I've used outhouses but would not enjoy having to use them due to not having indoor plumbing. In the winter would be brutal going out in the cold and snow to use an outhouse brrr. I have never heard of a walrus moustache I will have to go do a search.
2 people like this
@bunnybon7 (50973)
• Holiday, Florida
14 Jan 17
i do have a few of my moms side. never knew my dads side . he was much older then mom and his parents were already gone i think. i remember toilets like that from my childhood. my uncle had those that lived in the country. my cousins and i used them when i would be left at their house for a few weeks in summer.
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@bunnybon7 (50973)
• Holiday, Florida
15 Jan 17
@jaboUK yes good memories of her but just saying we started a lot bad habits together and thinking of the outhouse reminded me. even though we had fun together.
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@jaboUK (64354)
• United Kingdom
14 Jan 17
@bunnybon7 So you had the pleasure of using those toilets. Thank goodness for progress and modern plumbing!
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@LadyDuck (472114)
• Switzerland
13 Jan 17
Now that you say this, I realize that I always considered my grandparents "old", even if they were in their 60's when I was a teenager. I remember there was no telephone in their house, but there was electricity and water. The bathroom was not in the main house, but it was not a small outhouse as the one in your photo, it was in a detached area near the cellar.
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@jaboUK (64354)
• United Kingdom
13 Jan 17
@LadyDuck Your grandparents had it better than mine with electricity and water. The grandparents I'm talking about here did have access to water via a tap in the yard, but my other set had to get their water from a well.
I suppose grandparents always seem old to small children.
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@LadyDuck (472114)
• Switzerland
13 Jan 17
@jaboUK My grandparents had water from only a couple of years from my birth. Before they used the water from a well they had in the garden. I remember the well because I almost fall inside when I was very young and my grandfather condemned the opening. The electricity also arrived more or less with my birth, in the beginning of the 50's. I have found a photo of the house taken some years ago. The brother of my Mom bought it. You can still see the mark left from the water after the flooding of many years ago.
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@VivaLaDani13 (60794)
• Perth, Australia
4 Apr 17
@jaboUK My nan was telling me recently how their bathroom was outside and how much she hated it. It scared her going out there. And I don't blame her. Would freak me out too!
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@jaboUK (64354)
• United Kingdom
5 Apr 17
@Daljinder Not fun to have snakes near bare bottoms!
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@VivaLaDani13 (60794)
• Perth, Australia
5 Apr 17
@Daljinder oh wow I wouldn't have gone in there either! I don't want some snake biting my bit!
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@Daljinder (23236)
• Bangalore, India
4 Apr 17
@VivaLaDani13 When I went to see our ancestral home, I wouldn't go to use bathrooms. There was no toilet. It was a rural area so people went in the fields. I have never been at a place like that so I just wouldn;t go and then they mentioned that snakes roam around in the fields. Yeah I sure wasn't going anywhere. lol Even kept my legs off the ground the whole time I was there. 
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@rebelann (112969)
• El Paso, Texas
12 Jan 17
I remember my dads folks place, they didn't have indoor plumbing either but at least they had electricity so when we had to use that outhouse ... that's what they are called on this side of the pond ... we could see all the spiders and webs in the corners which scared the bagggeeeezaaas outta me. Grandpa simply said to be glad there was no snake in it when I had to go. And this was in the 1960s.
1 person likes this
@arthurchappell (44998)
• Preston, England
13 Jan 17
yes I loved visiting my grand-parents too - my mum's parents had their toilet down the bottom of their yard up to the 1980's
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@arthurchappell (44998)
• Preston, England
13 Jan 17
@jaboUK yes, and breaking ice in the cistern itself sometimes too
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@jaboUK (64354)
• United Kingdom
13 Jan 17
@arthurchappell No luxuries like a cistern for my grandparents - it was basically just a hole in the ground.
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@jaboUK (64354)
• United Kingdom
13 Jan 17
@arthurchappell Wasn't it a pain to have to go down the garden, especially in bad weather.
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@MarshaMusselman (38865)
• Midland, Michigan
13 Jan 17
When we're young anyone over twenty seems a lot older. I remember as I got closer to eighteen that I realized some of those I used to babysit for, the parents, weren't really much older than I was.
I spent a lot of time with my dad's mom and with cousins. We spend all holidays at her house with her four kids and all their kids until we all had families of our own and until my grandmother had a stroke at the age of about seventy. Then she was uprooted from her home and each of her four kids took turns taking care of her until she was able to live on her own once more.
When we were young, grade school and then high school me and my sister and cousins the same age would spend one to two weeks with my grandmother each summer. That was a load of fun.
I never knew any of my other grandparents as much as I got to know her.
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@jaboUK (64354)
• United Kingdom
13 Jan 17
@MarshaMusselman Those summers sound as if they were a lot of fun, and looking back I expect you realise that it must have been a lot of work for your grandmother.
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@jaboUK (64354)
• United Kingdom
13 Jan 17
@MarshaMusselman Oh yes, it was another world then.
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@MarshaMusselman (38865)
• Midland, Michigan
13 Jan 17
@jaboUK When we got together as a group all the aunts helped in the kitchen before and after the meal. When we got to spend time with her in the summers, I'm sure we helped carry her load. She let us do many things that my parent's didn't allow, but that was before the days of the internet, so we knew a different world back then.
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@jaboUK (64354)
• United Kingdom
13 Jan 17
@JudyEv The photo was the nearest I could find to what my grandparents outhouse looked like, though it looks bigger than they had.
I was trying to work out their ages, and I know that my Dad was only 21 when I was born, so if they were roughly the same age when they had him they would be in their early forties then. That would make them in their late forties during the time I'm talking about.
But they behaved 'old'. Gran really did sew and knit by the fire, and I hardly ever saw her without one of those wrap around pinnies on. And Grandad did have a pipe and moustache just as I've described.
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@JudyEv (342100)
• Rockingham, Australia
13 Jan 17
@jaboUK I actually meant a 'word picture'. :) My mother always knitted and sewed by the fire too and always had an apron on. I thought it was pretty amazing when Mum and Dad got to their 40th wedding anniversary and now we've passed that. I sometimes wonder if our boys are amazed that their parents are suddenly 70.
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@chrissbergstrom (10767)
• Banks, Oregon
25 Mar 17
I have so many happy memories with my grandparents, i love to hear my Grandma talk about her Grandparents it is so wonderful to hear about memories of a different time.
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@jaboUK (64354)
• United Kingdom
25 Mar 17
@chrissbergstrom Your brother has written quite a bit about your grandparents, and like you, I love to hear their stories.
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@jaboUK (64354)
• United Kingdom
25 Mar 17
@chrissbergstrom I'm sure you'd put a different slant on them, so don't worry.
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@chrissbergstrom (10767)
• Banks, Oregon
25 Mar 17
@jaboUK well hopefully I dont share stories about them he already has dont want to bore people by repeating family stories....
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@Daljinder (23236)
• Bangalore, India
4 Apr 17
@jaboUK I visited our ancestral home in Punjab a couple of years back. At that time, there was no electricity, no transport. It was a rural area with large fields of rice. It has developed a little now. I went with my Grandma and she showed me where her in Laws used to live. There was furniture and other little knick knacks still there like utensils, photographs etc.
I was amazed at the sight of the style of furniture. Large, high and sturdy are the words I would use for the wooden bed. The cooking utensils too were heavier than the present time utensils. Even the plates, spoons used for eating. I guess the materials in the past were made of pure metal than the alloys now.
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@jaboUK (64354)
• United Kingdom
5 Apr 17
@Daljinder How interesting DJ. I remember heavy wooden furniture too - I suppose that wood was the only material available in those days. I can't remember the pots and pans etc.
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@jaboUK (64354)
• United Kingdom
7 Apr 17
@Daljinder Yes, I'm afraid we live in a 'throw away' world.
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@Daljinder (23236)
• Bangalore, India
6 Apr 17
@jaboUK The quality of the old times cannot be matched at present. Mom was gifted an old pan which is working perfectly after 32 years. Meanwhile, there has been new 'branded' pans of present time that gets damaged pretty easily.
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@amitkokiladitya (171927)
• Agra, India
12 Jan 17
That sounds like a way old period that you are describing
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@jaboUK (64354)
• United Kingdom
12 Jan 17
@amitkokiladitya Yes, it would be 70 years ago.
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@amitkokiladitya (171927)
• Agra, India
12 Jan 17
@jaboUK that was what I was thinking
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@snowy22315 (182193)
• United States
13 Jan 17
Yes my grandparents were the best. Especially my mom's parents on the farm. We had many happy memories out there. It was so different from our day to day existence.
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@snowy22315 (182193)
• United States
13 Jan 17
I don't mean that our day to day wasn't good, it just was different!
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@jaboUK (64354)
• United Kingdom
13 Jan 17
@snowy22315 That was great that you were able to spend time with your grandparents on a farm - that's always a great environment for children.
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@SIMPLYD (90721)
• Philippines
13 Jan 17
Yes, i remember that kind of a toilet room that my grandparents by my mother side have . It's at their backyard . Though , they also have two more attached at the back of the house .
They are the grandparents we love more because the grandparents by my father side have favorites and were strict so we are not close to them .
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It's nice that you were close to your mother's parents.
@ridingbet (66854)
• Philippines
15 Jan 17
my late grandfather, mother's side, would prepare coffee (no electricity yet) and call us still asleep, "come, let's have coffee", and this served as our alarm clock to get up and prepare ourselves for school.
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@jaboUK (64354)
• United Kingdom
15 Jan 17
@ridingbet So your grandfather lived with you when you were a child, that must have been nice.
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@ridingbet (66854)
• Philippines
16 Jan 17
@jaboUK when i was already in college, my friend. he lived with us, with his daughter, my mother.
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@sunrisefan (28524)
• Philippines
13 Jan 17
Some of the things you mentioned reminds me of my childhood days, Janet :) No electricity, gas lamps that needed to be pumped at 6PM, early bed :)
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@jaboUK (64354)
• United Kingdom
13 Jan 17
@sunrisefan Funny how similar things were, even though we are on opposite sides of the world from each other.
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