Lift drivers and other lost things (Part One)

 

Do you remember when lifts had human beings operating them? My favourite were the lift people in department stores announcing what was where: “Fifth floor, Manchester, sixth floor Ladies’ Fashion …”

So many jobs and “things” have simply disappeared in the brave new world of the twenty-first century. Take the telegram, for instance. In WWII telegrams often brought news of death in combat but also then and later, good news. Could it be that overseas telephone calls were too expense and telegrams cheaper? I think that telegrams were sent to your local post office then delivered to the house by a postman, but I’m not sure. Certainly there were telegrams sent with good wishes on a wedding day, usually messages from relatives overseas and read out traditionally by the best man. I understand that now there are gorillagrams and singing telegrams but I think the bog-standard telegram is in the past.

Speaking of postmen, when my family of orientation lived in a house we would leave out something for the postie at Christmas and also for the garbos, usually a slab of beer. (A family of orientation is the one you come from; the family you establish with spouse and children is your family of procreation; cute, I think)

Personal letters are fading into the past, replaced by email. No more thank you notes after a party or dinner; thanks are now delivered by computer. I cannot remember the last time I received a letter or wrote one and had to buy a stamp. Post offices are places you go when you need to send back an item purchased online. They are also retail precincts for a bizarre assortment of things. My daughter came home the other day after a visit to the post office with a rubber strap for backscratching in the shower, a special foam ball which you put in the dryer with your damp washing which apparently helps to eliminate wrinkles and a very large lint remover.

I’ve mentioned before the disappearance of guys in garages. They would come to your car and fill it with petrol then pump the tyres to whatever their pressure should have been. I’m not being sexist about “guys in garages”; I don’t recall ever seeing a lady doing the job.

There were charm bracelets, a kind of ante-diluvian Pandora bangle. Charms were usually symbols of where you’d been or what your interests were: a piano or violin if you played an instrument, an Eifel tower for France and I frankly don’t recall any others, but you could accumulate a whole wrist-full of them, attached to the original bracelet’s links, not threaded on a bangle in the Pandora style.

When I worked with my grandsons during lockdown, I discovered more things missing. I couldn’t see any evidence, for example, that they used plastic maps of Australia around which you would draw and then fill in the outline with information such as principle crops and the like. I also never saw the big boy use a compass or one of those dinky half circles with angles marked called, I think I recall, a protractor – or its companion triangle. And where have Derwent pencils gone. I remember the utter joy of being given a huge collection of Derwent coloured pencils, stored in tiers in a box which opened out to show you the whole wondrous collection. Of course the grandchildren have collections of coloured pencils and textas but nothing as delicious as the Derwents.

Also missing is Dressing Up To Go To Town. I recall putting on my best clothes (and I think gloves) for the train trip to the city, but I think this was past the time of wearing hats to town.

My mother and I would often go to Mark Foys, a rather gorgeous department store in the building on the corner of Elizabeth and Liverpool Streets which is now law courts.

However this paled into insignificance compared to another department store, Farmers (now Myers or Grace Bros), where there was a Penny Lady. She stood guard over the small resting room attached to the conveniences for which you had to pay a penny; hence the expression “to spend a penny” for “going to the loo”. My cousin Penny and I were so overwhelmed by the queenly magnificence of this woman that we decided we would be Penny Ladies when we grew up. (Penny’s name was not regarded as a problem as she would just be Penny the Penny Lady.)

 

Quote of the week, from Chambers Dictionary of Modern Quotations;

American educator Robert M. Hutchins: “Whenever I fee like exercise, I lie down until the feeling passes.”