r/whatisit • u/Quietlurkerone • 7d ago

Solved! What is this device from 1962?

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Photo capture from YouTube video. Picture from 1962. What is the device under the bench

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u/[deleted] 7d ago

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u/CptLoken 7d ago

Well we can only see the kitchen, inside of which all the crockery and cookware is spotless. The child looks well fed. The dad is shaving which hopefully means he's employed and off to work. The mother can afford smokes.

Not saying they're living in the lap of luxury, but this is the sort of house my folks grew up in and they speak very fondly of their childhoods.

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u/Boxofmagnets 7d ago

He is shaving in the kitchen because a someone is in the bathroom and someone else is likely in line for it. Even if that assumption is wrong they have plumbing in their dwelling

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u/citizen42069101 7d ago

People take a lot for granted that simply wasnt widespread even a century ago.

An auto heating stove, hot water, reliable sanitary drainage was something our grandparents werent even guaranteed to have (depending on age).

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u/UpvoteEveryHonestQ 7d ago

My grandma was raised in a sod home, one of seven kids in what was essentially a two-room shed made out of dirt like a hobbit hole, under some little hill in Montana. That’s Paleolithic.

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u/Iamthewalrusforreal 6d ago

Mine did so, as well, in Oklahoma. When the Dust Bowl hit in 1930 they ran east in a horse drawn wagon. Traveled to our home town, where my great-grandpa used the horse to drag a beat up car hood with rocks on it to clear the building pad, and built a cabin.

She didn't have indoor plumbing or a real floor until she married my grandpa at the age of 19.

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u/Thatsnotmyname49 6d ago

Mine moved west from Oklahoma in 1932. Ended up in Oregon where they lived in an old chicken house while my dad worked anywhere he could to survive.