Because I am 71, I knew people who were in their prime of life a hundred years ago (1918) and there were definitely things that they did easily and routinely that are rarely done today:

• Baking bread and caramel rolls. My grandmother learned it from her mother but did not pass it on to her daughters, probably because sliced store bread had essentially taken over.
• Writing cursive and writing letters. I have saved some of my grandfather’s letters. For a person with an eighth grade education, he wrote simply but beautifully.
• Sewing and mending. My grandmother was not wealthy, but she was capable of producing wonderful pajamas for all of her grandchildren on her trusty Singer. My generation has lost the ability to create heirlooms.
• Gardening and canning the things they grew. In an era when you were not going to see fresh fruit or vegetables in stores after growing season, people developed great preservation skills. Things like pickles, berries, tomatoes were canned as were peaches and plums when in season. I do not remember kale or zucchini, however, and that was also a blessing.
• Memory work. I grew up with great uncles and aunts (all born about 1900) who had memorized massive amounts of poetry and famous speeches as well as scripture. Rote learning was fairly normal in their education, so they did group memorization. We loved to hear their recitations.

I miss those folks. They just slipped away one at a time between the seventies and today.