Oh, Those Good Old Days!

by Dr. Paul Loatman, City Historian

Pop the meal into the microwave; sit back in the lounger and pour yourself a fresh drink with cubes from the frost-free refrigerator; turn the air conditioner on "energy saver"; and push that "remote" button on the VCR so you can tape one show while watching another. Just one more day at the beach in the late 20th Century, right?

How about our ancestors? How good did they have it? We often envy them from a historical distance, supposing that they were freed from the worries of our fast-paced lifestyle. Judging from a promotional brochure advertising a "Grand Fair" sponsored by local businessmen in 1899, people were not quite as demanding in their expectations as they are today. For instance, local coal dealer W.P. Smith told his clients that " a coal bin filled with our coal gives the housewife a comfortable feeling." Try telling your Mrs. today that one today if the oil man shows up a day late in January!

W.S. Lee, a Park Ave. butcher, told his patrons that "WILD BEEF has not got the rich flavor of the 'farm' grown cattle .... We make it a point to get home raised beef." Remember - Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders had just returned from Cuba six months earlier, and this was still the era of the "Cowboys and Indians" West. Apparently, people preferred eating a sirloin from a critter they had once looked in the eye rather than one shipped a thousand miles in a refrigerator car. The taste for "corn-fed Iowa beef" had not been acquired yet.

George Wheeler promised his customers that he sold nothing but "pure lake ice" while employing "only careful men to fill your boxes." The lake in question was Round Lake, and as for refrigerators and ice cubes, they were far off in the future. Stones-Confectioners offered candies at 10 cents and 50 cents a pound, while nearby on Park Ave., Kiernan and Hickey aimed their "K and H" hand-rolled cigars at serious smokers. All of the candies and smokes, by the way, were made here in Mechanicville.

D.C. Lee told the ladies that "it's a fast to fit the feet" at his bootery, but variety was not considered a virtue, and women all wore highbutton shoes under their ankle-length dresses. The exposure of any skin except the hands and the face was considered risqué at the time. The wildest imagination in the world could probably never have predicted anything like "X-rated" movies or MTV.

Men could get a "physiognomical hair cut" from Gardner, Kenny, and Eddy who told their customers that "each barber is an artist, each artist a star."

Before you run off to the dictionary, that $100 adaptive implied that these artistic stars could actually improve your personal character by the way they cut your hair.

E.J. Bush's Livery rented carriages for weddings, parades, and funerals, but you had to provide the horse. To ride in style, you could stop by George Cook's shop on Main St. to purchase blankets, whips, and horse boots - whatever they were. Presumably, the whips were used only on the horses.

If you didn't want to leave town by horse carriage, you could always take the trolley; one left for points north and south 26 times each way on a daily basis. And, if your friends from afar came to visit and you couldn't put them up, they could stay at one of Mechanicville's four hotels at the going rate of $2 a day. Those who boarded at the Grand Central Hotel got the additional advantage of having a house doctor on call.

Businesses had not yet specialized as they have today, so no one would find it peculiar that D.S. Dickinson offered shoppers German canary birds, hats, corsets (50 cents, 75 cents, and a dollar), ladies' notions, and his "celebrated ice cream." However, Shook's Restaurant on Park Ave. had only one claim to fame, that it was "the only place in town for Shell Oysters." In another vein, H.B. Mace sold furniture and coffins, while doubling as an undertaker.

But as the century drew to a close, hints of change were in the air, pointing the way to the future. A few local businesses listed their phone numbers, two digits being all that was required to ring them up. And Mirza Bross (how could a man with that name fail?) offered to wire your home and do all kinds of electrical work. Of course, supplies of current were limited, to say the least, and only a few months earlier, the Mechanicville Transmission Co. sent DC current for the first time in history over power lines to Edison Electric, G.E.'s forerunner in Schenectady.

Still, the era of a fast-paced world of instant communication, power at the flip of a switch, and climate-controlled environments could only be faintly discerned. How much slower the pace of life was at the time my be suggested by George Thomas, The Baker, on Park Ave. Today's advertising gurus tell us that consumers' attention spans are about five seconds long. Mr. Thomas expected a lot more from his clients when he told them:

Never saw you things more delicious
Nice white bread and rolls nutritious
New fine cakes with fruit and frosting
None so nice and so little costing
Nectar-like creams and candies pure
Nigh every dainty at Thomas’ sure
Now we have told you where they are made
Never go by without Stopping to trade.

Shakespeare he was not, but Thomas gets credit for trying. I could go on with more about the last century, but I just heard a "beep" from my microwave, so I'll end the nostalgic mourning for "the good old days" right here.