Boomers Did Garden Chores By Hand

According to Mister Boomer’s thoroughly unscientific research — namely, asking other boomers — he has discovered that most boomers were required to do chores around the house. For boys, like Mister Boomer and Brother Boomer, that meant outdoor work throughout the year. Some boomers were paid by their parents for completing tasks, others were not. Mister B and Brother Boomer were not paid; their work was expected. In the summer, the outside work included everything from painting the house to mowing the lawn, plus, weeding and lawn edging as well.

The Boomer Brothers were given the tasks by the time Mister B was eight years old. Brother Boomer, being three years older, had first pick of the jobs he wanted to do, and left the rest to Mister B. Most of the time, the jobs were shared. For example, Brother Boomer mowed the front lawn, while Mister B did the back; never mind the back was larger. When it came time to paint the house, the brothers had two sides each. For the most part, Mister B didn’t mind too much, with the exception of weeding and edging the lawn. Both of those tasks were physically demanding and often accomplished in the late morning, as the sun heated up the surrounding concrete sidewalks.

Weeding meant pulling weeds along the backyard fences, as well as in between shrubbery and the flowers Mister B’s mother was growing. On both the front and back lawns, there were dandelions, crabgrass and other weeds to pull. The Brothers were given a hand tool that supposedly made the job easier. Trying to grasp a weed with pre-teen hands and successfully dislodge it from the ground without breaking the root was difficult if not impossible. Often the weed was so entrenched that the boys didn’t have the brute strength needed for a clean extraction. That’s where the tool came in.

The weed puller, as the Brothers called it, had a wooden handle on the end of a metal shaft that was bent in an exaggerated “s.” At the end of the shaft was a flattened area that was split to form a two-pronged fork. The idea was to get down on hands and knees and plunge the pointy fork end into the ground next to the weed target, with the goal of setting the main root between the two prongs. Then, when it all worked according to plan, pushing down on the handle would dislodge the weed from the ground. It could then be completely pulled out as one plant unit. Remaining clumps of dirt that clung to the roots could be removed by a slap or two to the ground. For Mister B, that scenario was the ideal that more often than not, he did not achieve. If a root was left in the ground, the weed would quickly grow back, and that meant future work. So Mister B found himself digging into the lawn with the tool’s fork end to remove as much of the root system as possible. The result was a lawn that looked like it had been attacked by groundhogs, with filled patches of bare earth dotting the lawn space.

An even worse job for Mister Boomer was edging the lawn. The Brothers were not required to perform the job every weekend, so it became more difficult than it could have been. For this chore, there was another hand tool. This tool was the size of a shovel or hoe, with a long wooden handle that was fastened to a sharpened metal, multiple-edged star-shaped wheel. Attached next to that was a rubber wheel. Its use was deceptively simple: slide the sharpened metal edges of the star wheel into the edge of the lawn, using the sidewalk as a guide, and push it forward and back to clip grass that grew over the sidewalk, and form a groove to denote the lawn’s edge. The rubber wheel was meant to remain on the sidewalk. If the operator had the strength to push the contraption, it would work. However, the summer ground was often hard and brittle, and Mister Boomer acquired many callouses on his fingers and broken skin between his thumb and forefinger while using the apparatus. In addition, trying to keep cutting a straight line was not as easy as advertised. Often Mister B would push the thing, only to have it veer off into the lawn, away from the sidewalk. For these reasons, it was Mister Boomer’s most hated summer chore.

A quick search online shows these tools are being sold as vintage lawn and garden implements, but a hand lawn edger that boasts two rubber wheels is still being manufactured and sold. The one Mister B used may have had two wheels, but he remembers it having only one rubber wheel. He has to wonder if having an extra rubber wheel would have made a difference in his ability to control the thing.

How about you, boomers? Did you have chores to do outside the house during your summer vacation?

Boomers Didn’t Know the ABCs of SPF

It’s summertime. While the living may or may not be easy in your neck of the woods, if you spend much time in the sun, it is advisable to wear sunscreen protection. That wasn’t a major concern in our boomer years. Back then, the main objective was to limit sunburn, especially in children. The degree to which your mother applied any sunscreen product was probably proportionate to how susceptible you were to getting badly sunburned. However, there was a parallel course of action being followed by teens and adults, and that was purposely accelerating the sun’s effects to get tanned instead of actively fighting the effects of the sun’s rays.

The pendulum of beauty has swung back and forth through the centuries when it comes to the color of summer skin. Pale skin was prized in many cultures as a symbol of class and status; it meant you were not a laborer toiling in the hot sun. Forms of sunscreen using zinc oxide and titanium oxide were used in the 1920s and ’30s to block the sun’s rays and UV radiation, while at the same time fashion icon Coco Chanel was extolling the aesthetic virtue of bronzed skin. By the late 1950s, when boomers were coming of age, the pendulum was on the side of tanning. Despite scientific knowledge of the effects of the sun’s radiation for decades, these effects were not widely known by the general public.

Sunscreen was not a new invention during the boomer years. Some form of sun protection was used as far back as recorded history. The ancient Egyptians used a paste made of plants, grains and herbs, while the ancient Greeks tried olive oil. Flash forward a few millennia and you’ve got boomers on beaches slathering on baby oil. Yikes! Somehow the words “oil” and “heat” don’t add up to anything good. To confuse matters more, there were three basic types of out-in-the-sun products: tanning lotion or oil; sunblock; and sunscreen. Together they ran the gamut from little-to-no sun protection to the best available sun protection for the time.

Two of the the most popular brands of products sold during the boomer years were from Coppertone and Bain de Soleil. Both companies got their original formulation from a Navy airman who created his substance in 1944 to protect soldiers fighting in the hot sun of the Pacific during World War II. Nonetheless, Bain de Soleil actually began selling its “orange gelĂ©e” in Paris in the mid-1920s, building a business on the first-adopters of wealthy Europeans and celebrities visiting the beaches of the French Riviera.

The Coppertone Company officially came into being in 1951, adapting the original formula to be perfectly poised to take advantage of the burgeoning baby boom. The iconic image of the puppy pulling on the little girl’s swimsuit bottom to reveal her untanned skin first appeared in 1953.

Bain de Soleil brand began selling a product line in the U.S. after the War. Ownership of both companies changed hands multiple times through the years, but as of 2014, both brands are owned and marketed by the Bayer Corporation.

One thing that was invented during the boomer years was the Sun Protection Factor (SPF) system. It was developed in 1962 and appeared on some products, like Bain de Soleil, by 1964. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) adopted sunscreen labeling standards in 1978, using SPF as a way for consumers to know a specific measure of how much of the sun’s radiation was reaching their skin. An SPF of 20 indicated that fractional amount (1/20) of the sun’s UVB burning radiation reaching the skin. In boomer years, SPF products were available labeled from 5 to 20. In the 1990s, the range increased to 15 to 50+. The FDA guidelines of 2012 proposed 50 as the upper limit since there is little evidence that higher SPF numbers equate to more protection. Currently, both the U.S. and Europe suggest using a sunscreen labeled as broad-spectrum for protection against both UVA (“a” as in skin aging) and UVB (“b” as in burning).

How about you, boomers? Did you use tanning oil (or baby oil), sunblock or sunscreen on your family picnics, vacations and beach outings?