Anachronisms

[susandennis]

A while back, machupicchu and I saw a movie that had a fair amount of it set in the late 60's/early 70's. The sheets on the bed were chocolate brown. I called wtf. Maybe it was just my house and my friends in college and the people I knew, but no one - absolutely no one - had sheets that were anything but white. Maybe there was a bit of embroidery on the hems of pillow cases but I remember the first time I bought colored sheets and it was at least the 80's and they were pale blue.

But today, in The Help, set in the 60's, the writer - making $80 a week - kept talking on the phone to an editor in New York from Mississippi. Once from a maid's house. Er. Doubtful. In the 60's Long Distance telephone calls were still a BFD. And I'll betcha those maids did not have phones. But even if they did, one would not have picked up the phone, in a house not her own, and call someone long distance.

In the 60's we still have Person-to-Person and Station-to-Station. Person-to-Person was way more expensive but you didn't pay a cent until you were actually talking to the person you were calling. Station-to-Station was still expensive but charges started the minute someone answered. All Long Distance required an operator to complete the call.

It is possible that the writer may have talked to a potential editor on a long distance call but not that likely and certainly not as often as in the movie. It was jarring.

I couldn't spot much else out of context. They did do a good job.

Comments

[lolleeroberts.livejournal.com]

I had sheets with a green fern pattern by the mid 70s so I know they were out there. I lived in Texas, hardly a cutting edge of fashion. (This was a bright spring green pattern, nothing sedate. Just fyi.)

As for the long distance, yeah, by the early 70s there was direct dialing but I don't think it was there by the 60s. I was thinking about person to person vs station to station dialing recently myself...there was a period where you dialed 1 for a direct call and 0 for an operator assisted call - such as collect or person to person. Direct dial calls were automatically station to station.

[dizzdvl.livejournal.com]

I have some sheets from the 70s. They are the softest most loved sheets ever. And they are brown, orange, harvest gold and white. Hideous. But so soft and worn in. I love the pillowcases because they stay cool. They are probably some industrial polyester but I don't care.

[geordie.livejournal.com]

When we are watching old movies we often find ourselves wondering why they don't just use their cell phone.

[kittymistress.livejournal.com]

I moved out of my parental home in the last 60s. My sheets were floral pattered with yellow and orange flowers--very ugly but they served the purpose.

Movies always take liberties and usually change things from the book version for convenience's sake. The book was very good and I'm hearing a lot of positive things about the movie.

[rsc.livejournal.com]

My mother certainly had patterned sheets as early as the early 1960s.

Person-to-Person was way more expensive but you didn't pay a cent until you were actually talking to the person you were calling.

Did you ever use the trick of calling person-to-person for yourself as a coded message that you had arrived safely?

[lolleeroberts.livejournal.com]

Yes and I was once told that the phone company knew about that dodge but didn't make a big deal about it because it was so hard to prove, and it was usually kids calling parents. (This was a phone tech when I was working for Western Union and we were swapping war stories.

[dietcokewithice.livejournal.com]

After long trips to/from somewhere - nearly always relatives now that I think about it - my mom would call whomever we were leaving/going to see 'person to person', and ask for a family pet name, have the call declined and that was that.

My mom would call her folks P2P and there was a code name she would give that meant "please call me on the house phone, I need to talk to you, but I can't afford the call myself".

I left home after HS, and they offered the same of me when I needed something, I could call P2P and ask for myself, have the call refused, and they would call me back. :)

yay for free cell to cell minutes now, eh?

I was there...

[jblindsight.livejournal.com]

While white sheets were the norm, I remember "girlie" sheets with small flower prints. And of course, there were the "LSD" sheets of the counter culture - Peter Max stuff, psychedelia.

But dark brown sheets? No way!