Appliance company Home Economists???

[retromania]

Hans,

When my grandparents built their retirement home in 1946, it was outfitted with all Hotpoint appliances. Since my grandmother's orientation was with an oil stove and a wood stove and since she had never used an automatic dishwasher, a home economist from Duke Energy (Duke Power then!) came out to the house to give her demonstration.

 

[norgeway]

Oil and wood!!!

Can't you see these girls today cooking on kerosene or wood!!!LOL! The fire departments sure would be busy..

 

[iheartmaytag]

My mother was one of 17 kids, old Missouri Hillbillies. She learned to cook on Kerosene and wood stoves. Then in school Home ec class they had electric which she says to this day electric cooks much like wood, you just don't have to stoke it.

Mom said when they moved to the city in 1950, a lady from Western Auto came out to show her how to pack her new deep freeze to get the most savings. Deep freezers were the new post war rage at that time. Home economist were in big demand as demonstrators at department stores to show how to get the most from their modern conveniences.

 

[joelippard]

Hahaha, Oil and Wood

No way would these young girls do the things my Grandmothers and Great Grandmother used to do in order to run the house.  It used to be a woman's thrill to get a new Hoover for Christmas, even my mother felt this way.  Now it's grounds for divorce.  Let's don't even get started on what they would do if they had to mess with wood or kerosene!

 

[westingman123]

Wood and kerosene

Grandma cooked on wood and kerosene right up to the time she came to live with us in her late 70's. Mama learned at her side, and so did I. I never minded the wood stove, but that damn kerosene iron--the FUMES!

I still think some things cooked better that way--gravy comes to mind--although it took so much longer.

Simpler times, but harder work. It did stiffen our spines, I think.

 

[retromania]

Hans,

LOLL- Sirens squawking all over town!!!

 

[retromania]

Talking about a deep freezer...

We eventually moved into our grandparents house after they passed away. The freezer on the back porch was the stand-up kind, a Hotpoint left over from my grandparents. My mother eventually replaced everything with Frigidaire. I had friends that had the deep freeze or chest style freezer. I guess you always want what you don't have, but anyway one of my friends, his parents had a chest freezer on their back porch that was the size of a coffin. I'm not kidding. It had a little rust growing on it and it was creepy looking. It was a little bit rounded on top like a coffin. They had some property on the outskirts of town that they farmed. Their freezer was always slammed with fresh frozen produce and they would always send me home with a bag of squash or something. Always wondered why they didn't can like other people around. My mother never canned because she was afraid of pressure cookers so she blanched and froze everything.

 

[neptunebob]

I would like to comment on the women using their maiden names. In the Tupperware special, the narrator mentioned that Brownie Wise had men with her because "Bankers did not talk to women". One thing I have noticed all 3 of my sisters is that once women get married or even engaged the husband because the most important person in their life and the rest of the world can go to hell. I used to be able to talk to my oldest sister until she married Jupy (the doctor who talks real loud and smells) and now all she does is complain about him. How does a woman relate to her coworkers, clients and customers - half of whom may be male if the husband is "always in the way"? No wonder businesses don't take women seriously, everything has to go through hubby!

Oh, and I remember an article about Jane Cricks, the home economist for Duquesne Light. She said that she "saw the writing on the wall" in 1984 when DL was planning to move to a new building that did not have a home ec lab. Shortly after the move, she retired.

 

[retromania]

A Good Example

I saw that ETV special about Tupperware. Poor Brownie Wise. Too bad she didn't own a little piece of the company, but that is a good example of a woman in a man's world and especially back then. I wonder if she was a home economist. No, I believe she had a business sort of background if I remember correctly. I would love to have been a home economist. A dream job for me!!!

 

[neptunebob]

I would love to have been a home economist. A dream job for

Did you ever tell that to your guidance counselor? They might have told you to go major in business administration instead.

Brownie Wise was more of a saleslady starting with Stanley Home Products - Be Wise, Stanleyise. Of course, back then someone could be in sales and not have the college degree that so many people have now.

IHeartmaytag, something like that happened at a hospital I worked at. There was a story in the newsletter about a cafeteria worker was awarded for helping a visitor who could not figure out how to make toast or pour coffee. It turned out that his wife was in the hospital and she did everything for him and he was even lost in a hospital cafeteria. I'm glad he was helped but how could someone be so unindependent?

 

[retromania]

Actually....

I did major in business administration and minored in accounting. That's how I got my job at DSS that I have been at for 25 years. I started the year before the state computerized and I was hired because I could do a spread sheet. We had to manually rebudget all our cases each month. 200 cases per month per worker. And that was just for our county which is considered one of the larger ones.

 

[norgeway]

RE Kerosine stove..

Believe it or not, a distant cousin of mine used a oil range up until about 10 years ago, they also had an outhouse! not that they could not afford to modernize, they just did not want to, this I will say, she could bake as pretty a pound cake in that thing as you have ever seen.Now a wood stove, if you learn how to fire it, bakes BETTER than anything,but you really have to know what you are doing or you will have a mess!

 

[retromania]

Hans,

That is correct. I made the mistake once of saying to my mother that the cakes that were baked in the wood stove at the house she grew up in must not have been all that great and she said I was wrong that some of the best cakes and breads she ever tasted came out of that old wood stove. She said as much that you did that one had to know how to bank the coals, etc, etc. I was telling her today about this website and about how I relayed the information that a home economist from Duke Power came out to the new house to show Grandmama how to use the new appliances. She said that is was true our grandmother had never cooked on an electric stove, but by the time they built the new house the old kitchen had three stoves in it: The wood stove that was still in use until they moved. The oil stove which grandmama no longer used and a fairly new gas stove that grandmama used some of the time. Seems there were certain things she liked to cook on one stove, but not the other. I left out the gas stove.

 

[retromania]

Bob

What is that behind you in your profile photo? Looks like a central vacuum unit.

 

[paulg]

Irma Harding and some other stuff

" Irma Harding" was the alleged " Home Economist " for International Harvester.
Now... I JUST WONDER about the following:

A) How long did it take International Harvester to find a home economist whose initials just happens to also be I and H?

B) How do you tell a prospect that they have no chance at getting the home economist job if their name doesn't start with I and H?

Of course I am just being silly. I am sure Irma Harding was as real as Betty Crocker.

I'm surprised HAMILTON didn't have a home economist named " IMA DREYER "

Regarding Hotpoint's Virginia Francis. I don't know if she really existed or not. Dad isn't around to tell the tale.
I was in the test kitchen at 5600 Taylor Street and I DO KNOW that the home economists would bake things sending really great smells throughout the area. WHO did the work I do not know.
I was very young at the time. I recall that it was very little, almost like a galley kitchen. Something the size of a motorhome sitting on the factory floor. Had to go up ramp or stairs to get to it. Inside it was a cool 1960's modern, which was about the time I was there.

And as for me, I have worked with a home economist for a major appliance company. It'll be interesting conversation when we all meet in person some day. Overall rewarding and a bit challenging at times.

 

[hydralique]

Ima Dreyer . . .

I am laughing my tail off at that one!