bjgreen
By Betsy J. Green
Last year, I wrote about an ad for an electric iron that suggested that housewives should plug it into a lightbulb socket. (You can see more about that in the April chapter of “Way Back When: Santa Barbara in 1918.”)
This month, there was an ad from the local electrical company that told people to “stop climbing chairs or stepladders to connect up your electrical devices … install electrical outlets that snuggle close into the baseboard, wall, or floor … Every new home, these days, if planned by a thoughtful architect has ample outlets. Every old home should have them.”
Imagine standing on a chair every time you wanted to plug in your iron!
(Image: Santa Barbara Morning Press, March 22, 1919)
Betsy’s Way Back When book — 1918 — is now available in local bookstores and at Amazon.com. This is the fifth book in her series of the history of Santa Barbara, one year at a time. Learn more at
New “gadgets” coming on the market all the time. My grandma used to take in laundry from the guests at the Miramar. She had to use one of those heavy irons heated on the wood stove.
Hi Flicka – those heavy irons that your grandma heated on the stove were called “sad irons.” According to my 1913 “Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary,” one of the definitions of “sad” meant “heavy; hard.” Today, we generally use the word “sad” to mean “mournful” or “unhappy.” It’s interesting to see how much language can change in just 100 years. I sometimes wonder what our language will be like 100 years from now.
Thanks for the information, Betsy. I use Grandma’s old irons for door stops, now I know what to call them.
I ate a quart of ice cream yesterday and today I feel sad 🙂
There’s an expression to “put (one) through the wringer — To subject one to some ordeal, difficulty, trial, or punishment; to force one to undergo an unpleasant experience.” But not many people today know what a wringer is.
It’s a pill that your doctor tells you to take if you don’t have enough.