How is life different today compared to when you were a child
Totally different in many aspects. When I was a small child in the middle forties, although I live in a city, in my house there was an icebox instead of a refrigerator and a mule cart came daily to deliver a block of ice; we used coal to cook (no heat was necessary in Havana) and likewise another mule cart delivered coal periodically. Later on, still in the forties, my father bought the first small electric refrigerator and a kerosene stove.
There was a tube radio, but no TV until 1950, when my father bought one black-and-white small TV with a round screen. We never had air conditioning in Havana, neither at the house nor in the cars, although some people did, it was beginning then. Throughout the fifties and sixties, TV programming ended no later than midnight, after which you saw only the test pattern of the station until morning programs began; stores were closed on Sundays.
Airplanes were propeller-driven, DC-3 with two engines for short hops, DC-10 Superconstellation with four engines for long ones. It was a big deal when turbo jets began and Cubana Airlines promptly bought Viscount two motor aircrafts for their short routes. It was another big deal when jets began and became ever larger and faster. When I lived in Havana, round trip flights to Miami were $43.05, to Key West, $20. Tariffs were fixed, no competition between airlines.
When we opened our first insurance agency at 20 60 E 4th Avenue, Hialeah, in 1972, all we had to buy were desks, chairs, filing cabinets, shelves and adding machines. There were no calculators, answering machines, faxes or computers. Since there was no internet or computers, we had "fire cards," a collection of 3x5 cards that contained the fire ratings for each commercial building in the Greater Miami area. All computations were made by hand, using the adding machine, i.e., to multiply 24 times 4, you would enter 24 in the machine and pull the lever four times; to multiply times 24, you would then ad a zero and pull the lever twice.
Life was simpler, most families lived with one salary, did not have, nor want, many things we now take for granted. One TV and one telephone land line per household. When we first rented a three-bedroom one-bath house in Hialeah in 1960, the rent was $80 a month; when my parents bought their first three-bedroom one-bath house in 1962, they paid $11,000. We bought our Kendall house at 11520 SW 115 Terrace, Miami, in 1976, we paid $80,000 for a 4-bedroom, 2-½ bathroom, two-car garage, pool house on a half-acre corner lot.
Gasoline in 1960 was about 23 cents a gallon, I sold many policies of health insurance that covered $35 daily for semi-private hospital room accommodations, the prevailing rate then. Established doctors that were in demand charged $20 a visit.
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