Waddell’s – The Wonderland of Televisions and Appliances

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• Very interesting. Does anyone know why Waddell's ceased to be? It looks like it grew quite rapidly between 1948 - 1952, when this ad was placed in the paper. 52 employees and 13 (!) trucks on the road. This guy didn't mess around.

• i'm willing to pput down money thay says somewhere in windsor, one of those fridges is still running in some old ladies basement, or in some dudes garage for beer! check out that "simpicity" washer!!! how cool is that?! i'm not sure why they closed john, but this city will be hard pressed to find service like this ad claims again.

• My parents bought our first television from Waddell's and I remember going with them to pick it out. Several years later they bought thee oh so new high fidelity stereo system from them and got a selection of ten long playing records for doing so. What was really cool, was if something happen to your TV, you could bring in any one of the tubes if it appeared burned out and check it at the counter and get a new one or a service person would come out and do they same thing. And yes, I remember those wringer washers and my mother spending most of every Monday doing the "wash!"

• Urbanrat - do you know if you mom actually seemed to find that washer more of a conveinence or burden from.....a washboard i'd imagine? lol i'm not to up on the evolution of the washng machine, so i don't know what came before the one featured here.
  just looks like a pain in the butt to me....cool, but a pain.
  weird that i could've got a TV on a chassis that delivered strikingly superior pictures anywhere, but nowadays i'm lucky to find one that doesn't mount to a wall and isn't 52 inches wide. i suppose most every room in a modern home has it's own TV though. no need for wheels i guess.

• Corner of Janette and University Ave? The only things on that corner are an apartment building, a nice house and Bubi's. On the corner of Caron and University there is a small apartment, a house, and a printing shop.

  Is there a typo as to the location?

• According to the address it should be the corner of Cameron.

• Aaron, thanks for the invite to tell a story of wash day way back when! In the early fifties and for much of them, most moms were stay at home moms and Monday was the traditional wash day. So if us kids needed something special for school the week ahead, it had to come down on Monday, there were no extra wash days! Until...one late Tuesday I need a clean white shirt for school for something or other, I to learn and to do a whole laundry, you just couldn't waste the water and electricity to do one shirt, I ended up doing all that had to be done (four hours of laundry)

  Hubby and kids were off to work and school, my mother would gather up every thing that needed washing, sheets from all the beds, a week's worth of soil clothing from everybody and anything else that needed washing.

  Down to the basement she went and started sorting everything into colour groups, whites, colours, darks. First fill the tub of the washer with hot water,detergent and Javex, start with my dads white shirts, blouses etc., start the cycle and wash in soapy water for fifteen minutes, stop washer, start the wringer mechanism, put shirts through wringer into a clean galvanize tub, set aside. Adding just a bit more hot water and soap, start on all the linen sheets (no perma-press then!), this might take four loads, wring out each load and set aside. Now do the colour items adding soap and hot water if needed, wring those out and set aside. Now lastly the darks, our jeans etc. repeat wash and wring cycle.

  Now empty tub, wipe clean and add new hot water with some vinegar (cuts the soap) proceed to start process of rinsing and wringing all over again, first with shirts/blouses etc and on down the line, tub by tub.

  As each load is rinsed and wrung, carry upstairs and put on clothes line(s), wait to dry. Take clothes off line, fold, iron and put away.

  There were only five in our household in the east end but most families had more children, four, five and six and one family 12 (laundry every day as I described it above).

  It was almost an all day chore not including lunches (dad and us kids came home for lunch) and then dinner at night at 5:00 (a hot basic full course meal!)

  And if you look at the left of the add above, you will see that new fangle machine ...the refrigerator! Iceboxes were the norm in the early fifties and I can remember when my mom got one of them and was first on the block! I also remember the joyous day when she got her first automatic washer and dryer!

  But you also have to remember that back in those days, people didn't have as many clothes then as they have today and you wore many clothes many times before they got to the wash. No changing clothes twice or five times a day.

  It was a convenience Aaron, the wringer washer but there was really no consumer choice otherwise to do laundry. I can remember my great grand mother and grandmother using scrub boards to do laundry though and the whole day it took to do it!

  Also in those days, people did not bathe every day ...yes I was alive before the shower became a household item, but would wash the essentials and hair was done once a week!

• D'OH! I meant Cameron. Where the bingo is/was.

• Thanks for the story Urbanrat.

• I meant to say "wash the essentials daily, feet, crotch, arm pits, face and hands in the sink!" A pigeon bath in other words.