Erik_Mag Ulrich Personal hygiene is a relatively recent phenomenon. 100+ years ago people didn't bathe daily, brush their teeth, and deodorant and other hygiene products were simply not available. The good old days.. bad teeth and horrible BO.. on trains and everywhere else. Lifebuoy Soap radio ads from the '30s were famous for the "B.O." foghorn, so the shift in personal hygeine was definitely taking place by 1930. I would suspect that air conditioned trains also helped as people weren't sweating as much in transit.
Ulrich Personal hygiene is a relatively recent phenomenon. 100+ years ago people didn't bathe daily, brush their teeth, and deodorant and other hygiene products were simply not available. The good old days.. bad teeth and horrible BO.. on trains and everywhere else.
Personal hygiene is a relatively recent phenomenon. 100+ years ago people didn't bathe daily, brush their teeth, and deodorant and other hygiene products were simply not available. The good old days.. bad teeth and horrible BO.. on trains and everywhere else.
Lifebuoy Soap radio ads from the '30s were famous for the "B.O." foghorn, so the shift in personal hygeine was definitely taking place by 1930. I would suspect that air conditioned trains also helped as people weren't sweating as much in transit.
In childhood, I recall a character in the Dick Tracy cartoon called B.O. Plenty.
https://www.google.com/search?q=b.o.+plenty&oq=b.o.+plenty&aqs=chrome..69i57.7976j0j7&client=ms-android-vivo&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#imgrc=fuz8Na8CH1ozgM:
The Chicago Tribune still carries Dick Tracy, and B O Plenty and his daughter Sparkle turn up every now and again.
Monday night! I typed in a 'researched response to one of the Forum Threads'...About three or four times! I'd type in the 'Enter' key, and the darn [***!@#$..}thing would disapper..... That really SUCKED!
So thanks for the 'explanations' ! I thought, I was the one, being singled out for a frontal 'Gremlin' attack ..
Personally, I'd love to see some of those IT 'Gremlins' take a ride in a really hot tub;installed in an AMTRK sleeper car, riding over a jointed rail territory at about top speed.... OR MAYBE, sittin' in an incenerator(?) As the ambulance chasers say: EQUAL JUSTICE!
CSSHEGEWISCH The Chicago Tribune still carries Dick Tracy, and B O Plenty and his daughter Sparkle turn up every now and again.
Incidentally, "Dick Tracy" must be stuck in time; seventy years ago, B.O. was not a young man. Are Junior Tracy and Sparkle still around? I have not see the strip for perhaps fifty years.
Johnny
Dick Tracy is still being published? I haven't seen it in many years. I stopped reading it when the characters were flying around in space in spacecraft that looked like garbage cans. The original strips done by Chester Gould could be pretty violent, sort of a comic strip version of Warner Brothers gangster movies of the 1930s.
54light15 Dick Tracy is still being published? I haven't seen it in many years. I stopped reading it when the characters were flying around in space in spacecraft that looked like garbage cans. The original strips done by Chester Gould could be pretty violent, sort of a comic strip version of Warner Brothers gangster movies of the 1930s.
It's Dick Tracy in name only.
As a kid, Dick Tracy was on the front page of the four page color Sunday comics in our paper. The cartoonist had great criminals in the strip.
York1 John
York1 As a kid, Dick Tracy was on the front page of the four page color Sunday comics in our paper. The cartoonist had great criminals in the strip.
I remember those full-page Sunday comics in the New York Daily News decades back, and "Dick Tracy" was one of them.
Chester Gould was still alive at the time, and he drew criminals the way he always did, all the criminals were ugly. Stood to reason, crime was ugly, and Gould didn't glamorize it. And when a villian was killed the last you saw of him was stretched out on a mortuary slab.
charlie hebdo 54light15 Dick Tracy is still being published? I haven't seen it in many years. I stopped reading it when the characters were flying around in space in spacecraft that looked like garbage cans. The original strips done by Chester Gould could be pretty violent, sort of a comic strip version of Warner Brothers gangster movies of the 1930s. It's Dick Tracy in name only.
As I recall, the strip" Gasoline Alley", was the only one I saw which had the characters aging.
Cookie Bumstead was born about 1941 or 1942--she and Alexander ("Baby Dumpling") are still teenagers.
There is a Canadian strip called "For Better Or Worse" that's carried by the Tribune in which the characters are aging.
CSSHEGEWISCH There is a Canadian strip called "For Better Or Worse" that's carried by the Tribune in which the characters are aging.
Wonderful strip! And it's actually in it's second go-'round. The creator, Lynn Johnston, wrapped up the first story line in 2008, then decided to re-boot not long afterward and do the Patterson family story again. And yes, the strip does place in "real-time" and the characters age.
CSSHEGEWISCHThere is a Canadian strip called "For Better Or Worse" that's carried by the Tribune in which the characters are aging.
She also sticks in railroad themes every so often since her husband was a model railroader!
Here's her page with the strip running each day. If you go back through the archives, you can find some of the model railroad strips:
https://fborfw.com/
Is Gasoline Alley still being published? It's funny how the characters age but still, Skeezix has to be over 100 years old and Walt has got to be about 130! If they are both still in the strip, that is. But Calvin and Hobbes never get old! Cripes, I miss that strip but I do have all the books and still laugh my head off.
"Gasolene Alley" is indeed still being published! I only get to see it when traveling out-of-state, the local paper doesn't carry it.
I sure miss "Calvin and Hobbes" as well, but I think it hit its zenith with...
"The Attack Of The Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons!"
Really! Now how do you top that?
Remember- "Snow goons are bad news." Words of wisdom!
Flintlock76 "Gasolene Alley" is indeed still being published! I only get to see it when traveling out-of-state, the local paper doesn't carry it. I sure miss "Calvin and Hobbes" as well, but I think it hit its zenith with... "The Attack Of The Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons!" Really! Now how do you top that?
Some of your favorite comics are as close as your computer.
https://www.gocomics.com/comics/a-to-z
https://www.comicskingdom.com
These two sites have many comics, including some no longer being produced and political comics. I have my favorites that I check everyday. I started using it after local papers dropped some favorites.
The gocomics site does have more than it's share of ads.
Jeff
The Far Side has finally made it to the web.
https://www.thefarside.com/
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Intersting, the gocomics site. I see L'il Abner and Alley Oop, but it doesn't list Pogo, Terry and the Pirates or Steve Canyon. The most important oversight is the first comic strip ever, Hogan's Alley by Richard F. Outcault. Hogan's Alley introduced "The Yellow Kid " to the world as the first real comic strip character in 1895.
54light15Also, regarding flush toilets- they were invented by one Thomas Crapper in England.
He didn't actually invent them, they'd been around for about 50 years. Crapper was apparently the biggest producer and installer of "water closets" in Britain, and he did make some refinements that made them work better than prior ones.
54light15: "Also, regarding flush toilets- they were invented by one Thomas Crapper in England."
wjstix: "He didn't actually invent them, they'd been around for about 50 years. Crapper was apparently the biggest producer and installer of "water closets" in Britain, and he did make some refinements that made them work better than prior ones."
This British company is still in business and highly sought after by people restoring fine houses.
https://www.thomas-crapper.com
As Tessio said, 'They have the old fashioned toilet, the box with the chain thing. We could tape the gun behind that."
54light15 As Tessio said, 'They have the old fashioned toilet, the box with the chain thing. We could tape the gun behind that."
I actually ran into one of those! About thirty years ago I was repairing a copier in one of Virginia Commonwealth University's offices, it was in an old mansion on West Franklin Street here in Richmond.
Finished the job and needed to wash up, went into a men's room and there it was! "Wow!" I said to myself, "Mom told me about those! They had one in the apartment she grew up in in Manhattan!"
Needless to say I didn't pass up a chance to experience a bit of history.
Hey, Teddy Roosevelt might have used that thing!
Remembering an old Bill Cosby routine about pull-chain toilets before I pulled the handle I muttered...
"Torpedo los!"
Living history, you can't beat it!
Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain! And don't forget to pull the chain!
Back in 1948, when I went to the wedding of one of my brothers, in West Virginia, I found, in the bride's home, one with a plunger that you pushed. The water was supplied through a ram a hill or two away. No, the ram was not one of the sheep that they raised.
DeggestyThe water was supplied through a ram a hill or two away. No, the ram was not one of the sheep that they raised.
Nor was it a Dodge truck with a pump belted to a raised wheel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_ram
My 1976 Eldorado had an analogue of this for its ride leveling: engine vacuum rprovided thrust for a simple reciprocating air pump. It could produce surprising pressure, if you gave it long enough to run ... until the little rubber dome diaphragm in it went bad.
Back to the original post/issue, I have to wonder if someone from c.1920 were brought into the present day, if they wouldn't be amazed at how sloppy and unkempt people are today. My parents were teenagers in the 1930's, and recalled how boys wore shirts and ties to schools, and of course girls only wore outfits with skirts. I was just reading where someone was talking about how in the 1940's his grandfather wore a suit and tie to ride the streetcar to his job as a steelworker. At the plant, he changed into work clothes, then took a shower and put his suit back on for the trip home. Many railroaders did something similar.
Schools taught classes covering things like manners and behavior. Our ideas of 'do your own thing' and asking your kids to pretty please stop doing whatever they doing wrong didn't exist.
Regarding steelworkers, I've seen in movies how workers didn't have lockers for thier street clothes but would hook them onto a chain thing and hoist them upwards to hang. Was that for real? Are there any places like that? Maybe it was in "The Deer Hunter" I saw that, I don't really recall but I did see more than once the chain arrangement.
In the movie, "I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang," near the end, Paul Muni is not just playing a criminal bum, but a tie-wearing criminal bum.
wjstixin the 1930's, and recalled how boys wore shirts and ties to schools, and of course girls only wore outfits with skirts.
I'm old, but not that old!
In the 1950s and early 60s, girls in my school wore skirts. On very cold days, they would wear pants under their skirts! If I remember high school, by the late sixties, girls had switched almost completely to pants.
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