Relics

 

In this sad and violent country, parents even have to worry about finding baby formula. Homemade is a big no-no, but it wasn't in the 1950's when I was born. Commercial formula existed but was too expensive for most people and breast feeding really discouraged.

This is the recipe they gave my mom for homemade infant formula:

3 tablespoons Karo syrup
13 oz. water
15 oz. evaporated milk
Additional Foods: orange juice

Bottle feed baby on a strict 4 hour schedule.

It was commonplace to give meat, cereal and salty condensed soup to infants only a month old. Somehow we survived, in fact I have a cast iron stomach to this day.

Another relic-- the bill I racked up after TWO DAYS at the hospital just to have a small foot cyst removed. Goodness, now they send people home right after major surgery.

So "board and nursing" at the Quakertown Hospital came to $50. General anesthesia (I'll never forget the nauseating smell-taste of ether) was a pricey $22.50. Lab fee, $10. Surgical supplies (a full plaster cast!) $1.20.  And twenty cents billed for "drugs." Mind you, $83.90 was a big bill for our parents. 

These are from my childhood scrapbook. Most girls and many women once kept scrapbooks. My mother helped us start ours with with the letters, cards, photographs, programs, school records etc. she carefully saved. She loved family history, and thought it was important to preserve a record of who were were. Especially, where we came from. I'm sure my sister and I get our archival tendencies from her.

BTW, scrapbooks are wonderful, but a paper conservator's worst nightmare. The archive at the Museum of History and Industry had hundreds. The acidic, brittle paper, crumbling clippings, glued on photographs, pressed plants and random mementos of all sorts of materials. 

The fussy professional method would be to scan each page to preserve the content, then throw the whole mess in the trash. Acidic paper, mold and dust can actually harm other things stored in the archive. But I like this one the way it is, just handle with care.