"Although she was a respectable driver, she hated to operate anything mechanical more complicated than a safety pin: folding lawn chairs were a source of profound irritation to her; she had never learned to ride a bicycle or use a typerwriter; she fished with a pole."
She fished with a pole as opposed to what? I live 60 years in the future, and the only other way I'm aware of fishing (even on an industrial scale) is with a net, which certainly isn't mechanical.
[Discussing the car] "Power steering? Automatic transmission?"
I legit didn't know they had those in the 1950s! We didn't have a car with power steering and automatic transmission until the mid-90s!
To me, this sounds like she had to pay to send him to public school. Quoi?
"His father had left his mother soon after Henry was born, and sh worked night and day in her little crossroads store to send Henry through the Maycomb public schools."
Anyone have any insight on any of these?
(If you have spoilers or want to discuss the book, please wait for my eventual post following up on my speculations after rereading Mockingbird.)
4 comments:
Fishing: she didn't use a reel.
Paying for school: After Brown v. Board of Education, a lot of public schools in the south closed and reopened as private schools.
I never knew there was such thing as a fishing rod without a reel! How do they pull the fish in?
Pre-reels, and still for poor people who fish for food (as opposed to sport), there is a pole, string, and hook. The fish is yanked up and out of the water. People probably fished like that for millennia.
Also, I was born in 1961 and my family never owned a car with manual transmission or without power steering. My mother often said she learned to drive on a car with stick shift and non-power steering, which would have been around 1950. So these things must haveen a 50s improvement. At least in the US.
* Never owned in my lifetime.
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