​Remember when Clark Kent needed a phone booth to turn into SUPERMAN?   Where does he change from mild-mannered reporter into the caped superhero now? 

The Todd County Historical Society received a donation of a historic phone booth a few years back.  The phone booth that stood for decades in the lobby of the Reichert Hotel is now in the Historical Society building at the fairgrounds.   It is a popular attraction for young and old alike; a curiosity for the young, a reminder of youth for the old.
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Seeing that phone booth conjures up images of mild-mannered Clark entering a nearby phone booth and emerging as Superman.  Phone booths were plentiful back then.   He’d be hard pressed to find one today!   Our phones now are touted as “smart” but I doubt even they are smart enough to transform normal people into superheroes. 

In the same era as phone booths we had party lines, rubbernecking, even your own ring-tone - 2 short one long perhaps.   Some of these terms no longer exist in our current vocabulary.  “Rubbernecking” is now defined as “craning one’s neck to see a traffic accident!”    Wikipedia does describe “Party Line” as “a local loop telephone circuit that is shared by multiple subscribers.” 

Our “land line” phones came with very short cords, which tethered you to a specific spot in the house.  If you saved your allowance you could purchase a longer cord that might stretch to the closet – for privacy.

When the Christie family first got telephone service, in September 1900, they paid 77 cents, and around $2 per month thereafter.   The phone “company” was owned by a local individual.   Eventually the number of customers grew, and individual enterprises were taken over by larger and ever merging phone companies.  ($2 in 1900 is the equivalent of $56.77 today)
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My fondest memory of party lines came at my grandmother’s house.   They had short and long rings for many years and if someone dialed Grandma by mistake her answer was always “They don’t live here anymore.”    

Remember when the county fair was the highlight of the  year?  Eagerly awaited by young and old alike.  Merry-go-rounds and Ferris wheel, swimming ducks and cranes for the kids.   Peep shows for the gents, and competition galore for the ladies!   

My grandmother and mother exhibited baked goods at the county fairs.  (I did too when very young.) 
I remember waiting in long lines to get checked in and shelves and shelves full of every kind of cookie, cake, or pie you could think of, row after row of flowers of every color and variety, and garden produce to no end.

​The judges had to have an iron stomach and a sweet tooth to sample every single entry!  Choosing the Blue Ribbon winners is no easy task.   The day after the judging was completed everyone flocked to the display cases to see who won.  Did your baked goods rank higher than your rival?  Who was going to have bragging rights at every event throughout the year - until the next fair and another competition?

​The 1903 Long Prairie Variety Cookbook had pages of cookie and cake recipes, but they consisted only of lists of ingredients.   You know these ladies were competing against each other at the fair and probably had a secret ingredient or special way to mix and bake those delicious cookies and cakes that they didn't share with anyone! 

The men competed, too, with the tallest stalks of corn and the biggest shocks of grain, or their prize bull or heifer.  The county fair was something everyone stopped for.  You came in from the fields to meet your city neighbors and enjoy a night off.  

​The 1912 Todd County Fair featured an airplane show!  Sulky racing was also popular "back then."  (The Todd County Historical Society has a sulky in their building at the fair - amongst other treasures.)  

​This year, when you attend your county fair, remember it with the wide-eyed wonder of childhood.  Remember it as the place to meet your neighbors and remember.

I've been toying with the idea of a blog for some time.   Today is as good a day as any, right?
This blog will be for people of a "certain age" who will see the post and say "Oh yes, I remember it well!"

​The Christie Home Museum and Todd County Museum are treasure troves of our past.  It never ceases to amaze me that I always see something new each time I'm in either of them.  (Something old that's new to me.)  
The Christie Home is a snapshot in time - name your time - from 1884 - 1976.   Because of the Christie family's meticulous records, each year we're able to feature a display of what happened 100 years ago.   This year our featured displays for 1918 are WWI and the Spanish Flu.   

​What prompted me to finally begin this blog is that I ran across another treasure today -  some of the children's schoolwork.   Little Edith passed away in 1902 at the age of 8, so this was done before that.  She was obviously a smart little girl as she got 100 on every test!

​I remember typing class, on manual typewriters.  My, what strong fingers you had to have.  (Actually, we had both manual and electric typewriters in our class. I'm not that old!)  

​These finds brought up my big concern that the current generation will be forgotten.  School kids today don't use paper books, nor do they write on paper or learn "cursive."  Everything is done on "tablets" with all information stored "in the cloud."   100, 200, or 10,000 years from now, what will be left?   Paper books have proven the test of time, barring floods or fires, we have scrolls and books that are many centuries old.

​Teach your grandkids to write!  And print out some of those digital photos and keep them in an old fashioned photo album (but be sure to caption them for future generations!).    Let's not lose our history!

​We've gleaned a ton of information from the Christie's checkbook registers.   Take a look at yours - what will someone 100 years from now learn about you?

​Lorna