Originally Posted by
Fileytyke
Turning the electric light on for the first time in the 1950s. I lived in Wath-on-dearne opposite the Manvers main pit where I used to work before joining the Royal Navy.We only had gas lighting and the house was 2 up 2 down with one cold tap in the kitchen and the toilet down the yard.The only entertainment was the radio which was worked by a accumulator which was a battery as big as a car battery which we had to take to the garage about a mile away in a barrow to be charged.Our bathroom hung on a nail outside,it was a tin bath and us kids had to get in one after the other hoping that the ones before you had not peed in the bath.The first TV I saw was in London when my Dad took me to watch Barnsley play Arsenal in the FA Cup which we lost 4-0,Skinner Normanton was taken off on a stretcher in the first 15 minutes after a foul by the Arsenal hard man which I think was Jimmy Logan.We went to my uncles house in London for tea and that was where I saw the TV for the first time,it was a great big cabinet with a 9 inch screen.Our playground was any spare bit of ground where we could play football or cricket failing that it was in the back street with coats for goalposts and a dustbin lid held up by a house brick for wickets when we played cricket. I think we had a better childhood than the kids now a days because there were no drugs,mugging or thieving because we had nothing to pinch and you could go out without locking the doors knowing that nothing would be missing when we got back.These were the “Good old days”when people had nothing and sometimes we went hungry but we were safe.