It's perennially interesting to me to learn "modern folk's" perceptions of life "back when".
I don't mean to argue the points, Henry, they are what you deem impossibly onerous as you see life in that distant past. Those who lived that life are mainly responsible for the "romantic" notions some of us hold, and it is true that "days that are gone seem the brightest."
For example, your item #1 - no tractor "My grandfather worked his 20 acres with a team of mules."
When I was small, we had a neighbor who still worked a team on his place. I clearly remember his conversation with my grand-dad about "the old days" - he said:
"We had a nice life years ago - we grew most of what we needed, and we got a little money from the crops. We were comfortable. Folks always seemed to have time to visit, if nothing else, you'd meet your neighbor on the fence line, you had to stop and blow the horses anyway. Then we got a tractor, and I guess that was nice, you didn't have to worry about it pulling up lame, but it would break down. You didn't have to feed it when it wasn't working, but, see, it took another 40 acres to support the tractor, and that's the rat-race we've been running ever since."
That much personal satisfaction obtains in the training, working, and caring for equines is borne out by the rather impressive number of folks who take that up as a "hobby" nowadays . . . or, perhaps the Amish don't feel especially put upon. Fun for some, not for all.
As for personal hygiene and household maintenance, when the "Saturday night bath" was the order of the day, people were much more meticulous about "washing" thoroughly between full baths. That pumping water and heating it in double boilers was laborious, there's no doubt. The house wife's tasks certainly involved a lot more physical activity than is necessary with today's labor saving devices, and convenience; however, most women were "house proud" and beyond the usual regimen of preparing meals, doing laundry and keeping house, found time to preserve food for storage, sew most of the family clothing, make quilts, and participate in social gatherings. However hard the ladies worked, they realized their husbands and fathers worked much harder still. Division of labor in the nuclear family was clear-cut, and if any offspring had confusion over their sexual identities, it never seemed to be an issue.
So far as maintaining a wood stove for home heating and cooking, or kerosene lamps for lighting, neither is particularly time-consuming nor difficult. We've lived that way for years - by choice.
Telephones, radio, television ?? People wrote letters, sent telegrams if there was urgent news, and read newspapers. By the time telegraph and rail had spanned the continent, communities did not live in an information vacuum. News of Custer's defeat was transmitted throughout the nation in less than a week.
No recreation ?? If the measure is today's possibility of "recreating" most of one's waking hours (as in the average 3-4 hours daily - spent watching TV) then I suppose the necessary imposed "busy-ness" of life in the old days would indeed have shortened that. However, living memories and histories alike relate how recreations of all kinds were abundant and especially enjoyed, from the family circle to church congregations to whole communities. Agricultural existence made for long periods of "down time" when crops were laid by, and certainly on long winter nights.
If one wishes to consider an especially somber downside to bygone days, perhaps the most notable would be "no antibiotics" which meant regular loss of life from many ailments, particularly typhoid, diphtheria and pneumonia, and diseases we don't even give much thought to. Infant mortality was high, and many women succumbed in child bed. Loss of livestock could be catastrophic to a family's ability to provide. There was no federal income tax, but there were taxes, and the actions of "robber barons" could definitely turn a working man's difficult financial situation into an impossible one when banks (unregulated) and railroads arbitrarily raised their rates. These pressures were above and beyond having to deal with the vagaries of the marketplace and the weather.
Yet life's pace was slower, and as a nation, people were generally in agreement on ethics, morals and societal values. Somehow our great-greats survived in spite of a lack of computers, and their grit and self-reliance made what we perceive now as a golden age.
