Additional information
by Bill Schroeder (Author)
This book was written as an archive of the Schroeder Family's history from 1900 to 1959. It is not intended to appeal to other than family members and a few close friends.
It is hard for some to picture a time when only a few people had a telephone. It was an expensive luxury, hard-wired to the wall and located in one room of the house. New cars came with the options of radios and heaters. Gasoline was under 20 cents a gallon and a dollar-an-hour was a living wage. Until the late 1950s, if you had a TV set it had a snowy black and white 12-inch screen, with a selection of three channels.
College educations were limited to school teachers, doctors and lawyers ... usually the children of comparatively well-off families. WWII and the GI Bill of Rights changed our world, making social mobility available to virtually everyone. Taking over my father's gas station would have been my likely life option.
In this book I have tried to illustrate that pre- computer life was interesting and worth living. There are few places you will find the first-person narration of daily life in the 1930s through 1959.
Part Two deals with aspects of modern life my children and grandchildren will find more familiar. Personally, life became more interesting and rewarding after Pat and I were married. Our children lived more than average lives, parts of which I will illustrate in Part Two.
Enjoy your trip through time.
