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Edith, I just remembered something else from my childhood: The seltzer man! He used to deliver a case of seltzer (club soda) in pressureized bottles, and different flavors of syrup, I remember Fox's Ubet chocolate syrup, and strawberry, were my favorites. This was in the New York City area (Jackson Heights). We lived in a 4 story apartment building and every night about 6 o'clock there was a loud buzzer followed by loud bumping and scraping sounds of wood against concrete. Can anyone guess what this was? ..............The superintendent of the building was operating the dumbwaiter, a miniature elevator run by ropes and pulleys, that stopped at each apartment to collect the garbage! The building was built in the early 1920's most other buildings had a metal door outside the apartments where the garbage was dropped into a chute which led to an incinerator, much more modern than our dumbwaiter! We also had radiators for steam heat, that were almost 4 feet high, and although they got painted with silver colored paint every few years, were really ugly, and often made hissing and clanking noises when the pressure built up. My father built a wood enclosure with a woven metal grille to hide the radiator in the living room, it looked like a loudspeaker from a HiFi system. We also had a genuine antique bathtub, just like the claw foot ones you see in antique stores for hundreds of dollars, except for NOT having the feet! We always heard talk that it was going to be replaced with a "modern" tub, but we moved away and it is probably still there! In New York many families kept an apartment for at least two generations, the reason is simple: RENT CONTROL" I think that started around World War two, when apartments were scarce and it amounted to freezing the amount of rent a landlord could charge, just about indefinitely, I think it is still a hotly debated issue in the area. If improvements were made the rent could be raised slightly, for example a new set of kitchen cabinets might bring a $2 a month rent increase. When we left the apartment in 1958, the rent for a large 3 bedroom apartment in a nice building was up to $70 a month! It was the apartment originally designed for the building's owner, with separate marble steps up to the door, from the lobby and it was on the ground floor, which is very nice in a building with no elevators! Every day the superintendent would polish the brass fixtures in the lobby and clean the glass in the doors. I used to think he was a very particular person. Looking back, I believe it was his excuse to chat with all the ladies! I was lucky as we had two "Candy Stores" nearby, one across the street, another one block away. I used to buy a Donald Duck comic book, and a candy bar for 15 cents. I remember eating plenty of Mello Rolls, a strange ice cream cone with a rectangular top. The ice cream was shaped like a log and was rolled out of a paper covering onto the cone. You could also eat lunch at the candy store, a very large cheeseburger, french fries and a LARGE Coke was 50 cents, add a nickle and get a Three Musketeers candy bar big enough to rot all your teeth in one sitting! That bar was actually three sections that COULD last three days......or I could have shared it with my sisters, but WHY? LOL! Ken B