WHAT A DIFFERENCE A CENTURY OR SO MAKES

This is a Ford model R. Based on the Model N. I didn’t know they existed. Ford made 2500 of them. After readers identified the bee smoker and the berry pickers, I again thought of so many items out there that defined life a century or so ago. They are startling, ingenious or not,  sometimes funny. This picture came in an email with a bunch of statistics which I’ll share with you.  We stopped in Spokane for Jim to take an eye test for his driver’s license. We parked just west of Spokane at a little place called Airway Heights for the night.

The Model R was built in 1910 and here are some statistics from 1910:

The average life expectancy for men was 47 years. Fuel for this car was sold in drug stores only. Only 14 percent of the homes had a bathtub. Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone. There were only 8,000 cars and only 144 miles of paved roads. The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph. The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower ! The average US wage in 1910 was 22 cents per hour. The average US worker made between $200 and $400 per year .. A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year, A dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year,and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year. More than 95 percent of all births took place at HOME .. Ninety percent of all Doctors had NO COLLEGE EDUCATION Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which Were condemned in the press AND the government as ‘substandard.’ Sugar cost four cents a pound. Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen. Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.. Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used Borax or egg yolks for shampoo. Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from entering into their country for any reason. The Five leading causes of death were: 1. Pneumonia and influenza 2. Tuberculosis 3. Diarrhea 4. Heart disease 5. Stroke

Pretty amazing.  In my travels, I’ve visited many old schools.  Check out this shocking document:

Telling a woman how many petticoats she could wear seems bizarre as do most of these rules.

This is the Brooklyn Bridge in 1886. Doesn’t look like they were overwhelmed with traffic.

A hunting camp in 1893. Railroads, and logging camps used to hire hunters to feed the men who worked far from cities. It took a lot of meat but the meat was plentiful.

And this phone is a telephone for the blind and deaf. It works like a teletype.  It turns the words into braille. Ingenious.

You think of a prosthesis of today, titanium, comfortable, athletes can climb mountains, ride bike, run marathons and play basket ball after losing a foot.  I’m sure this gentleman was grateful to be able to walk at all. I always thought peg-legs were the province of pirates.

We’re on our way for a stay on a pretty lake at Coulee City near the Coulee dam. But, it is a play catch-up day, with nothing planned. My email does not work in or out even after two hours on the phone with AT&T last night. It worked last night when I hung up the phone, (isn’t that trite?  We don’t “hang up” anymore.) but not this morning. Dang.