Status Updates From The Spencers of Amberson Av...

I know that time tends to make one forget the sorrows of childhood and to idealize the past, but even so the Spencers are so unanimous in their feeling about their early years that I know that their childhood was more than usually satisfactory. I do not mean that there were no punishments or heartbreaks, for when I try I can remember some of the tears that were shed. page 121

A dust sheet was a big calico square used to cover furniture when the maid swept a room. Before the days of vacuum sweepers, straw brooms were used to clean the wall-to-wall carpets tacked down all over the house. Dampened newspapers cut in strips were thrown on the floor to catch the dust, and the vigorous sweeping with a brown that followed raised clouds of dust, against which the dust sheets protected the furnitur

The bicycle was of utmost importance in our early years; without it we should have been confined pretty largely to the immediate neighborhood; with it we could wander relatively far afield. Late in the 1890s father had a bicycle shed built against the east side of the house Between the kitchen wall and the bay window of the dining room. page 7