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popular professions made obsolete in Granpa's lifetime

B

buickanddeere

Well-known Member
How about a list of popular professions made obsolete or nearly obsolete since Grandpa was a boy. E.g somebody born in 1940.
Black smiths, well diggers,candle makers etc?
 
most milk delivery people are gone

around here with all the new geothermal HVAC systems being sold most people are opting for a well type system in lieu of a long loop tearing up their lawn - so well drilling is a good business here.....

BUT, there is a small time one here and there - but small scale welding, fix it and fabricating shops are disappearing.....

corn shelling and custom on farm feed grinding services are pretty much gone - but there is the occasional roaming hay tub grinder that has sprung up......

number of horse shoers and leather guys ahs dropped but still one around if you gotta have them

of course there a lot more occupations that have started in his llifetime also - airline, computer related and the eternal paper pushers - used to be 1 in a county - now, between gov't offices, city halls, utility companies, insuarnce stuff, medical stuff, credit card stuff, there is an endless supply of jobs that merely fill out forms and transfer funds.....

AND of course the ever eternal lawyers - a steady occupation for all times.....
 
and as my father has said many times -

What has disappeared are the mechanics - all we have left are parts replacers....none can FIX anything anymore

which is kinda true, and kinda not so true....
 
Actually windmill (turbine) repair is BOOMING!

"BISMARCK, N.D. -- With wind turbine towers popping up on the U.S. landscape at a rate of almost 10 per day, the need for people to maintain and repair them is reaching the critical point.

Community colleges in North Dakota and other states are jumping at the chance to help fill that need and develop a niche for themselves at the same time through wind tech programs."
Windy
 
(quoted from post at 12:00:28 06/26/08) and as my father has said many times -

What has disappeared are the mechanics - all we have left are parts replacers....none can FIX anything anymore

which is kinda true, and kinda not so true....
Click to expand...

Parts are not really made to be fixed anymore either though...
 
Rebuilding/reconditioning at most repair shops is a thing of the past while R&R has taken over..........that is due to economics though, it's not feasible for the shop nor for the customer to have, for example, altenators and starters rebuilt "in - house" or to have a full service machine shop to handle all engine machining requirements. If you take into account the mechanics wage, the cost of the specialty equipment needed to do those jobs VS the revenue that would be created from that equipment, the customer wouldn't pay the repair shop $150.00 for the mechanics labor to repair an altenator when a reman unit can be purchased for $100.00 nor would the repair shop ever recuperate their money for the expensive machining equipment(some peices well over $100K) when they only put through 20 engines a year.............

Other components on vehicles are simply not repairable, just throw away items..........

I wouldn't say mechanics cant "fix" anything anymore, otherwise there'd be WHOLE lot more parked vehicles/equipment sitting around this country..........but I think I know what you were trying to say.......
 
Well diggers still exist, water and oil.
And.....Blacksmiths are now called machinists and toolmakers, CNC programmers.

Trade is different not gone.

Trades that are almost gone are boat builders, boats carved out of a tree, carpenters that make their own door jams and doors. (homedespot sells em too cheap to make em)
 
My grandfather was born in 1874 and my dad 1918, so there's been a lot of jobs lost. Threshers are a lost occupation--at least the way it used to be done. Working with an adz, barn building with timber and logs, ice cutter, butter churning, wheelwrights, wood fork/tool makers, rail splitters, team drivers--except the Amish and some loggers, steam engine repair men, steam engineers, and quarentine wardens.

Larry in Michigan
 
I hear ya, too many do-gooders out there that silence the hangman by saying--"he is a victim of society"
 
1 Shoe repair shops
2 family owned general stores and hardware stores are fast in their footsteps
3 Village coffin makers was still going on in my grand fathers lifetime.
4 the old, local ice houses and the cider presses that you could take your freshly picked apples to are gone
 
My mother's father had his own printing shop and was a typesetter by trade. He used to have rows and rows of drawers of individual letters of different sizes and styles made of lead that he'd have to put together in sentences, paragraphs, stories, and pages and mount into a cast iron frame and mount that into a huge printing press...and away he went. Had a couple of those huge presses and even a huge hand wheel worm gear driven paper cutting machine done by hand. As a kid I'd go out into his shop with him and tinker around in those drawers, getting letters and stuff out of place, but he was pretty good natured about it. The stuff...smithsoneon material these days. I found an old black and white photo of him standing out in front of his shop all inked up from the 40's, scanned it, put on my mother's computer as a surprise. She was a little girl with button up shoes back then. Don't know about my father's father. He and my father's brothers didn't survive WWII in Poland.

Times sure do change, don't they?

Mark
 
I don't know of many professions that have disappeared, what's changes is how the profession is done. Well Diggers-hand vs machine====Grave Diggers- again machine now instead of by hand====Blacksmith-a good farrier is are still a blacksmith, plus just about any kind of welding or fabrication is technically blacksmithing and the Railroads still have a blacksmith rating====Mechanics-there are still some of us old time mechanics out there working but we're having to learn the "technical" electrinic/computer controlled side of things now too, in order to keep up with the newer machines====Steam Engineers-power plants still use steam turbines, Nuclear powered ships are actually steam powered====Starter/alternator/generator Repair shops-still many in business. Throw away and replace might work in automotive applications where the parts are small but you can't justify it for the big 40 and 50MT starters, the BIG alternators they use in fire trucks and busses, etc. I know of two good shops here locally that stay covered up with work.=====Milk men-granted they have been replaced by the stores but places like Swans, etc that still sell their wares door to door are basically the same profession just selling different products====Coal delivery-their are still train and truck loads of coal moving around daily to power plants, etc and with some of the coal burning furnaces I bet you can still get it delivered to you if you lived/look in the right place. I believe there are still people out there that can do anything that needs to be done. The difference between now and 50 or 100 years ago is that back then there were hundreds of people in a certain specialized trade and nowdays there might only be a few. With that reduction in competetion the price to have that particular "specialized" work done is going to be alot higher so that person can still make a living doing a smaller amount of jobs than others in a "not so specialized" trade would typically do.
 
Fireman on a locomotive. Per the union, they may still be aboard, but don't actually have a job. (grandpa shared this before he passed a few years ago.)
 
Granddaddy Howell (1898-1961) was a cotton farmer, worked the boiler at the cotton gin, and ran traps and traded fur (skunk, possum, mink, coon, etc.). Played dominoes at the domino hall and talked politics.

Granddaddy Chestnutt (1894-1954) was a railroad hand driving rail spikes and cutting firewood for the steam locomotive. Played the fiddle and 'spun' tales.

Real men - hope one day that I can 'measure up' to either of them.
 
Radio repairman and I made house calls for $4.50. Used to be some monster radios and combos. Don't see no lawnmower and saw sharps either.
 
I'm thinking newspaper stuffers (inserted ads by hand into newspapers middle of the night, when papers rolled off the presses) & people (at least around here) who would bring food to your car on a tray at drive-ins (Carhops).
You folks are so creative with your questions & answers!
 
Office automation has done away with stenographers and clerk/typists.

My father-in-law worked as a model maker his entire life. There used to be thousands of model makers in Detroit alone. I don't know if there's any left today.

How about keypunch operators? It took armies of them to create data entry for the mainframe computers. I'd be surprised if there's a functioning keypunch machine left in the country, unless it's in a museum.

What do all these professions have in common?

1. They were very specialized jobs.
2. Automation did them in.

By the way, candlemaking is alive and well. There's a candle factory two miles from my house!
 
Milkmen, door to door McNess products salesmen, whitewashers, harness makers, stablemasters, stableboys, lamplighters, railway postmen, cobblers, lightning rod salesmen, mineral feed salesmen, door to door vacumn salesmen, doctors who made house calls, tramps, -- I'll think of about 80 more after I sign off.
 
Tool and die makers. I used to do aerospace machine work with a guy that could lock a loupe in his eye, put a number 60 drill to a 8" grinding wheel and sharpen it until it would cut either a .001 inch over the #60 size or .001 under the #60 size now that's doing something. A true master at his art. Now he's dying from lymes disease because BCBS wont pick up the tab on a 2 month run if iv antibiotics. I bought a 1 month run for him last year and he got better for a while, can you believe $2800 for a few bags, ports and sailene?
 
I know a few tool and die makers, (I am one of them) The other ones that I know are old timers, one is in his 60's and the other one is 79 now, he is still working.
 
a friend of mine found some 1946 newspapers, and we was looking through the classifides. I'd screw it all up now, but it was kind of fun to learn what things cost back when. Decades from now, someone will find the classifides and say something like "People hauled copper for $3 a pound?!?!? What a waste of your life!!" or "That car was only 30K??? I make that in a month!! That things worth 400k now, gee!!" I wonder what inflation will be like 60 years from now.
 
Stable masters and stable boys are doing a land office business boarding riding horses just a mile from here.

Gerald J.
 
Hey Gun Guru. I too am a retired machine repairman machinist. Worked in the trade for 41 years. I now have a small shop at home to work on my tractors. Pretty well equipt. There used to be a trade called "Master Mechanic". That trade dissappeared in the 50s I think. Not many wheel rights around anymore either. rw
 
Yeah. My neighbor is setting up a riding school. Put up a big indoor riding arena. They are making a comeback. I was thinking about all the stables in town where people who came in on the train rented their horses and buggies just like we rent cars nowadays. Given the price of gas, who knows?
 
The Local paper, circulation around 40,000 a day still uses newspaper stuffers. They have adds in the paper every now and then looking for help.
 
The true professional portrait photographer is on the endangered list. At least for the no talent bums on the lower end of it. Like most professions though, it is not very crowded at the top.
 
Telephone Switchboard Operators at businesses. Still have operators at the telephone companies for directory assistance, etc. but few businesses today have someone whose sole job is to answer the phone and direct the call.
 
Hi Nancey Howell
As a retired railroad locomotive mechanic, I
remember when the railroads were fighting to
eliminate firemen on diesel locomotives, and
the companys said, "A fireman on a Diesel
locomotive is like a cowboy on a Chicken Ranch"
 
Not the common man. I think he's talking about the common man. If you make $30,000 a month you ain't the common man.
 
Just a comment on a couple of other posts.

Our family doctor retired several years ago. He's been a deer hunting and water skiing buddy of mine for close to 40 years. Up to the day he retired, he continued to not only make house calls but to do them on a motorcycle, weather permitting.

I recall another time I had an appointment with him, and the nurse told me he was running a few minutes late because he had to go home and let his dogs out.

Come to think of it, small town doctors, operating as independent professionals, are becoming history, what with HMO's, Medicare, etc. Our local setup is now structured so that if a doctor wants hospital priveleges he has to join "the corporation", and at that point he becomes nothing more than a corporate flunky.
 
(quoted from post at 16:32:52 06/26/08) My father-in-law worked as a model maker his entire life. There used to be thousands of model makers in Detroit alone. I don't know if there's any left today.
Click to expand...

They are still around, everyonce in awhile they will pop up on TV doing some concept car.

Computers are obviously easier to model and change stuff, but somethings you just can't tell look weird unless it is sitting there in front of you.
 
Punch card programers.....

when I was in college and took my first computer class, I carried my program around in a shoebox full of punchcards- remember those?

now, kids carry enough software on those pendrives to luanch the space shuttle.
 
Hello Jose bagge.
You meen the 80 hole cards with one corner nipped?
I think i remember them.
Guido.
 
HELLO buickanddeere.
How about a TOWN CRIER!, we had one in the town i grew up!
Guido.
 
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