Regarding the old days things were better. Most women stayed home taking care of the kids. A guy could work in a factory and make enough for a house, car and vacations. I know I lived next to an embroidery factory. Entire blocks of family would go to church. People owned guns but no one ever thought about being an active shooter. It was a better time.
These things are all true of times past. It is also true that middle class people bought or rented much more modest homes and in general had much simpler lifestyles.
Compared to today, automobiles were mechanically and technically very simple. Also many, if not most families got by with owning just one vehicle.
Groceries were less expensive too, but the selection was limited only to what was locally available. We sometimes had fresh trout from the fish market. And yes Oldtimer, milk was delivered to the door on weekdays.
One of the advantages of stay at home moms was that some of them did a lot of things people today pay others to do for them. My mom cooked and cleaned the house. Sometimes she'd knit a sweater for me. Most of them would have fit a 300 lb. 7 ft. giant, but I wore them anyway. She didn't sew or darn socks. Mostly she laid out by the pool reading books. Before we had a pool, she and I would drive to the beach every weekday, weather allowing. State Beach in Santa Monica, CA was less than a 30 minute drive.
Dining out was a special and infrequent occasion. Chinese and Italian restaurants were the most common places to go for a fancy dinner. Maybe once a month, my dad would drive over to Barone's restaurant in Studio City and bring home one of their iconic rectangular pizzas. Each of us would eat two slices, three if we were really hungry. If you can believe it, Barone's is still there in the exact same location 60 or so years later. The family owned restaurant started in 1945.
Instead of smart phones that do everything but wipe our butts, we had a single landline outlet with one black rotary dial phone connected to it. Later we had snazzy Princess phones. Many folks contended with party lines which might be busy just when you wanted to make a call which was kept very short.
In 59' my parents bought the fanciest television available. It was in a blond wood double door cabinet with a ginormous 27" screen and a remote control that was housed in a matching end table with wires that ran under the rug to the back of the TV. There were something like three channels which went off the air a little passed midnight.
My step-dad was a self employed painting contractor, so his income varied with how many customers he had at any given time. As a result, my mom and dad often borrowed from the bank. There were no credit or debit cards, just checks. Sometimes, when a customer failed to pay at the conclusion of a job, my mom would float a check for food or to pay utilities in hopes that there would be money in the bank to cover it by the time it was deposited, which was usually many days later.
I remember only two big vacations with my mom a stepdad. I remember two vacations. In 57' we drove up the pacific coast on highway 101 to Vancouver, BC. This trip lasted just long enough to drive there and back, maybe five days total. In 59' my parents rented a beach house south of Santa Barbara for two weeks. My dad worked during the week and came up on the weekends. The place and the rent was shared with my parents' best friends, who had three kids.
Looking back at those times, it would be accurate to say my parents lifestyle was above average and sometimes beyond their means. They spent all of what my dad made keeping up the facade. Unlike a lot of families we had two vehicles, my dad's truck and the family car, which was usually a late model Cadillac or Lincoln. This was their drive 57'
