Yes, it was. I know that from my parents and grandparents. During the Depression, people used salt or baking soda for tooth powder. Mom was quite poor as a child, so they didn’t go to dentists.  If a tooth got really nasty, you washed your mouth out with alcohol or witch hazel water or vinegar, then grandma pulled it with string and pliers. You just did without.

As for SSPX Masses, I will go only if I can reasonably find out about the ordination status of the priest. If an unknown priest shows up, I’ll ask around a little bit, maybe check online if there’s information to be had. Normally, there isn’t much time to do this. If I’m uncertain and I can leave without a disruption, that’s what I do. I’ve become accustomed to not having Mass or Sacraments. I had neither for nearly three years during Covid. The one Mass I could physically access was no longer an option because one had to have proof of the “safe and effective sickness 💉 to enter.
My health is not what it once was, so I can no longer work from 6:30-4:00, drive two hours, go to Confession, Mass, and adult catechism, eat dinner, drive another two hours, circle around 45-60 minutes in search of a parking space, walk home, go to bed at 1:00 AM, get up at 5:00 AM, and go to work the next day.
If you have regular access to a certainly ordained traditional priest, Mass, and Sacraments, don’t take it for granted. Go as often as you can because the time may come when it is taken away. 

Oh, wow!  This makes me wonder if tooth powder was originally more common and toothpaste a more modern thing.

This is very dangerous, these bills.  It should be in every state, no sex education.

65. Another very grave danger is that naturalism which nowadays invades the field of education in that most delicate matter of purity of morals. Far too common is the error of those who with dangerous assurance and under an ugly term propagate a so-called sex-education, falsely imagining they can forearm youths against the dangers of sensuality by means purely natural, such as a foolhardy initiation and precautionary instruction for all indiscriminately, even in public; and, worse still, by exposing them at an early age to the occasions, in order to accustom them, so it is argued, and as it were to harden them against such dangers.