Penny in the slot gas

When I was a girl (yes I know, here she goes again) we had penny in the slot gas.  We used the gas for cooking and heating the hot water for our baths.  Needless to say we were not rolling in money, so cooking was a sort of athletic sprint race.  How much could one cook for a penny when a penny is all you had?  I don't think we ever did a roast except if we won the lottery (that of course did not happen.)  As this was an exceptionally long time ago I don't remember eating uncooked food.  In fact, the way Mum cooked our meals were hard grey meat accompanied by soggy vegetables.  I do remember Mum tutt tutting when the gas started to sputter though.

Then there was the problem of the gas bath heater.  Washing was less important in those days; well it was for us.  We did have baths but how often they happened is lost in the mists of time.  I do believe that sometimes the baths were not as hot as they needed to be.  So the outcome of the bath saga is that if you didn't have the pennies for the slot then you did not bathe.

Although it may appear that I am going off the subject, everything came down to pennies when I was young.  A penny was the difference in how you cooked, how you bathed and also how often you went to the toilet. An old message scratched on the doors of the public toilets said, "Here I sit broken hearted, paid a penny but only farted."  At the Adelaide Railway Station the toilets were penny in the slot.  It was possible to put a penny in the slot and find that someone was inside.  Mum needed to make sure that she did not waste a penny so I was always dispatched to look under the doors for an empty loo.  I was only little at the time so I guess people did not take much notice of me.  I just peeked under and if there were shoes the toilet was taken.  Ladies had to pay a penny and men did not.  Staggeringly unfair!!!!!!!!!

In the fifties, pennies were the difference between the haves and the have nots.  Probably the well off had accounts for their gas usage.  I don't know.  I never lived anywhere but in the poorer parts.  So if you had a penny or two you could cook to your hearts content.  You could bathe every day whether you needed to or not.  You could visit the public toilets to fart or not to fart.

These days it is hard to pay the gas and electricity bill and one does have to ration the amount of time that the heater is on in the winter.  However, it does not come down to having a penny or not.  A penny made all the difference back in the fifties.  I am now on the pension but I do not consider myself as poor.  I have money, not a lot but enough to pay my bills, I have somewhere to live and I even run a car.  So the penny in the slot life is not the life I live now and I am eternally grateful for that.