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GROWING UP ON A FARM
Memories of Anna Cecelia Felber Robins
Daughter of Francis Peter and Mary Elizabeth Felber, sixth child of eight children.
WHAT WAS IT LIKE GROWING UP ON THE FARM??????
It was the happiest time of my life and I wish every child could have that experience. I can't remember much before I was five years old. I was one of the eight children, five boys and three girls. I was sixth in line. Everyone had their chores and work to do, but we always had time to play when the work was done. Some of the time even the work was fun as we usually had someone to do it with.
There were enough of us so that we didn't have to go to the neighbors to find someone to play with. We three youngest, Bertha, Ikey and I played together, often playing house. Sometimes Bertha and I treated Ikey badly; we wouldn't let him play with us because he was a boy. He felt left out a lot as he was too young to play with the bigger boys and had none his age.
However, there were lots of things we did with the bigger ones like going sledding together, building houses in the snow banks in winter and playing in the hay mow in the barn. We would play hide and seek in the hay. We also had a sack swing to swing on and jump into another pile of hay.
Evenings in the summer time we all played baseball in our big yard. Even Dad joined in sometimes, playing "batter up." (I think that is what it was called.) Everyone had a chance at the bat, from the biggest to the smallest. And how I loved playing in our little creek! It was only a small stream fed by a spring. Bertha and I would build a sand dam across it to form a little pool and pretend we were swimming in the shallow water. There was one place in the creek we were forbidden to play. It was a place where one of the horses got in a mire and had to be pulled out.
The whole farm was our playground. I loved wandering through the wooded areas, playing in the trees, admiring and picking wild flowers. It was like being in another world those lazy, carefree days.
The farm where we children were all born and grew up was a "timber tree" claim of our Grandpa Daniel and Grandma Anna Felber. There were three groves of trees. One was mostly cottonwood, elm and whatever. It had elderberry bushes in it and we kids were sent to pick enough elderberries to make a pie. One grove was prickly locust trees. Next to that grove was a garden and beyond it were apple and plum trees. In the garden we grew luscious strawberries, vegetables and had a bed of asparagus on one end. I remember my brother Raymond trying his luck at growing peanuts there too. It couldn't really be considered a success as he started digging around them before they were mature enough to harvest. Anyway, we got to see how peanuts grew.
The third grove was of catalpa trees, apple trees and others where wild-flowers grew. There was johnny-jump-ups, violets and sheep shower. It was fun to suck on the sweet stems of the sheep shower.
Those memorable Christmases as a child! We always had a Christmas tree. We decorated with strings of popcorn and cranberries and although we had no electric lights (as there was no electricity), we did have candles clamped onto the tree branches with tin holders that clamped on like clothes pins. The candles were green and red and a thing of awe Christmas morning all lit up.
We children did not get a lot of toys like children do these days. Usually one or two things each. When we were small, we girls got a doll most every year as last year's doll was usually loved to death by that time or left out in the rain to fall apart. We also got a much loved set of dishes and cooking pans and such. We could set the pans on a space on the back of the heating stove and pretend we were cooking. On that space was also kept a shiny lidded silver pitcher of water to keep moisture in the room. That heating stove dominated the living room in the winter and was a thing of comfort and beauty in this girls eyes and I can still see it in my minds eye. Every once in awhile I run across one similar to it in an antique store and the memories flood back. Our stove had fancy metal fenders we could put our feet on to warm them. It had isinglass windows in the front door and sides to see the flames inside and a fancy metal dome that turned aside for Dad to add a bed of coal at night. On cold mornings we all gathered around it to get dressed. When Mom washed there was often a three-sided clothes rack around it with wet clothes hung on it to dry. In the winter most clothes were hung on a line outside and left to freeze dry as much as possible before being brought in to finish drying. Imagine washing and drying clothes for a family that size in the Nebraska winters.
Mondays were usually wash days. I remember sometimes coming home after school when Mother was still washing with a machine that she had to push a lever back and forth to run a dolly inside that moved the clothes to wash them. Of course, the wringer was turned by hand too. You can guess we kids often got our turn at it. Later, we had a gas engine powered double tub washer, one of the first in the neighborhood, I'm sure.
This also reminds me of churning butter. Mother saved the cream until there was enough for the big barrel churn we turned by hand. This was a job for us kids. Often it seemed like it took hours. Then we had to drain off the buttermilk, wash the rest of the buttermilk out of it and all that was left was a nice big batch of golden butter. I wish I could say I loved a cold glass of buttermilk, but I never did acquire a taste for it. Churning butter was usually a Saturday job when we were home from school.
Tuesdays were ironing days. When we grew old enough, it was Bertha's and my job. In the summer it was a very hot and tedious job. First we had to keep a good heat in the cook stove as two sets of flat irons were heated on it to iron the clothes. In those days dresses and men's shirts were starched and had to be ironed, no polyester wash and wear. There were 6 men, each with at least one white shirt to be ironed. Then we had to brush their suits and press them. It was an all day job.
What else did we do for fun?? We kids had a wagon we pulled each other around in. There was not much sidewalk, but we did have enough to play hopscotch and marbles. We also made pogo sticks to walk around on. Then there was the swing under one of the two big pine trees that lined the front walk. That walk ended in a swinging gate as the yard around the house was fenced in to keep out the chickens and such. Evenings, especially in summer, the family would sit out under the trees to keep cool and gaze up at the moon and stars. We would try to identify the various clusters of stars, the milky way, the big and little dipper, etc. And sometimes there would be the howl of a coyote off in the distance.
As a family, we all loved to dance. Saturday night dancing was a tradition. For the whole family there was neighborhood barn dancing. Mom and Dad loved to dance as well as the kids, so we grew up on a dance floor more or less. One of the neighbors played a fiddle and someone else played a piano that we danced to. Square dancing was popular as were waltzes, two steps and whatever else was the thing in those days. Dad liked to polka and do the schottische. He liked to do those with Lula, Leo's wife, as she was very light on her feet. We kids would dance with each other. There was also a hay mow along one side of the barn where the little tykes were put to sleep. Sometime during the night refreshments would be served....sandwiches, cake and coffee. Sad to say such family traditions are no more.
Other winter evenings were spent reading while listening to a battery powered radio. We also played cards with family, or neighbors gathered at one or another's homes. We munched on popcorn and apples that had been wrapped in paper and stored in barrels in the cellar. We kids had our own card games that we played.
Sunday mornings everyone went to church. As the older ones grew up, some of us went to early mass, the rest to late mass. No matter how late we were up the night before, we would have to get up to go to early mass if it was our turn to go to confession and communion.
As soon as the older boys (maybe 15 years old) were old enough to drive, Dad gave them the old 'Umpire" car to drive. What fun they had driving around the neighborhood, with the top down or maybe no top at all.
So, what did Dad drive?? He bought a family car, a Chandler, so all eight could ride in it at the same time. It was one of those touring cars that the top would fold back. It had isinglass curtains to put on the sides in the winter time, with the top up. The four oldest sat in the back seat, we three next in size sat on a jump seat between the front and back seat. Mom and Dad sat in front, Mom holding Baby Ikey. Later we always had two cars, one for the boys and one for Mom and Dad.
We called Hubert "Ikey" after a clown in the circus we attended as kids. For days afterwards we played circus and Hubert was always the clown 'Ikey' and the name stuck to him the rest of his life. Otherwise we children were called by our given names with just a few nicknames. Leo, Raymond was Ray, Julia, Leonard was Lennie, Norbert was Norb, then Anna, Bertha and Ikey. Julia was named after a deceased sister of Mom's who was a twin to Julius who survived. Mom was one of two sets of twins in her family. Her twin was also a boy, Charles Dendinger. We called him Uncle Charlie. I must have been named for our Grandma Anna and Bertha was named after Dad's sister who died in a fire. I think the boys' names were picked from a calendar with saints' names on it. There was a saint's name for every day of the month.
Summertime Saturday nights were family nights in town, and sometimes Wednesday nights also. The oldest kids usually headed off to the dance hall or elsewhere. We younger ones with a dime for a Saturday night movie and a nickel for popcorn made a beeline to the local theater. Sometimes we even stayed for the rerun. The music for the accompaniment to the movie was piano music played by the theater owner's daughter. She did a great job and I can still hear those "tremolos" in my minds memory. After we got out of the movies, we kids ran up and down the streets, no worry of traffic. And sometimes we got money to go to the creamery for an ice cream cone. While we were being entertained and out of Mom and Dad's hair, they shopped. Mom shopped for groceries, clothes and such while Dad shopped for farm and 'man' things. After all the women got finished with their shopping they would sit in the cool of their cars outside and visit while the men played cards and visited in the pool hall.
All week the cream off the milk was saved in ten gallon cans in the cellar and the eggs not eaten were candled and put in crates to take to town on Saturday night to be sold. Mom got the money from that barter with which to do her shopping and have pin money, if any was left over. That was the money we mostly lived on the year around.
Dad raised grain and hay that he fed to the cattle, hogs, poultry and such. Cattle and hogs were probably sold only once a year. That money was used for other necessities and had to last all year for farm implements, seed and all the other things needed to run a successful farm. Dad was a modern farmer for the time and usually had the latest equipment to make farming easier. He did do most of the repairing of his equipment himself. We kids loved to watch the loads of shucked corn come in from the field. Then one end of the wagon was elevated for the corn to pour out into a machine that elevated the corn into the corn crib.
Horses were used for field work until the tractor came into use. Dad repaired the harness and shod the horses. He had a workshop and anvil to shape horse shoes and such. I remember the awe of the fire in the furnace to heat the iron and shape it. It was like the village smithy in the poem to watch him hammer and shape and watch the sparks fly. He also graded his own seed corn and tested it.
When Mom sent us kids to crack nuts for chocolate cake, we used the big vise and hammer in the shop to crack them. We had our own walnut trees and we kids got to pick up the nuts in the fall and put them on top of one of the sheds to dry. This type of work was as much fun as play, horsing around the way kids do. Guineas roosted in our walnut trees. Why we had them I don't know, we did not eat them. They were noisy. It seems they were some kind of alarm system, I'm not sure.
My mother was a great gardener. She had a garden near the house in which she grew most of the vegetables we ate. Of course she canned the surplus and we kids got to help by shelling peas, snapping beans, husking corn and whatever. She also canned fruit and made jelly and jam. And there were big crocks of pickles and sauerkraut down in the cellar.
Mom and Dad were a great team, each of them proficient in their part of the farm work and raising a family. I've often marveled how much work my mother performed each and every day. During farming season everything had to be done like clockwork. Three meals a day always cooked at a specific time on the hour. And they were three big meals a day along with all the other work she had to do. She allotted as much to us girls as we were able to do; we cleaned the house, did the dishes, ironed and how I hated to wash the cream separator, all those disks to wash separately. We also had chores like getting in the wood and cobs to fuel the cookstove to cook our meals on. The cook stove had a water reservoir in which water was heated to wash and bathe with as there was no running water on the farm. We did have a couple of wells. One was for the live stock tanks and one was for the house. They were deep wells and the water was clear and cold....cold enough to make lemonade in the summertime without ice.
Carrying water from the house well by buckets full into the house was another one of the kids' jobs. The reservoir had to be kept full for wash day, canning and bathing. It was really fun to bring that big pump handle up and down and to hang on it for the down pull. Rain water was caught by eave troughs running off the roof into an underground cistern near the front door. Water from it was pumped into the kitchen into a water cabinet sink. A water basin kept in it was used for hand and face washing and for washing our hair. A roller towel was near by to wipe hands and face on. Over the sink was kept our hair combs, tooth brushes, tooth paste and hand soap. The water from it drained thru a pipe under the house to an area out back of the yard and house. That was our big plumbing system! Saturday was bathing day in a wash tub.
Drinking water was a bucket of well water kept on the kitchen cupboard with a one dipper from which everyone drank. How is that for passing germs along??
Our kitchen/dining room was one big room in which we cooked our food and ate at a big table set for ten or however many more happened to drop by at meal time. Mom always served a well-balanced meal long before I had ever heard of such a thing. Menu of meat, vegetables and fruit; the fruit was usually our dessert. But there was always pie and cake for Sunday dinner and sometimes during the week, a sour cream chocolate cake was made as a special treat on a birthday or such. And there was also pudding sometimes. Of course, Mom baked her own bread. What a treat to come home after school to a slab of fresh baked bread with home-made jelly or jam.
Then you changed out of your school clothes and did your chores. Afternoon chores were to get in the needed cobs and wood and to collect the eggs. After supper we would wash the dishes on the kitchen table. One girl washed and the other dried.
Mom was a great and sympathetic nurse to her family. She did us more good than a doctor. Some of her remedies for flu and fever were mustard plasters and hot toddies to go to bed and sweat it out with a lot of blankets piled on top. Then there was blackberry balsam for diarrhea and that hated castor oil for constipation. During prohibition, she would have Leo find her a bottle of good bootleg whiskey. It was kept high on a shelf for medicinal purposes only. Oh! Those hot toddies!
Mom always knitted mittens and stocking caps for us. She also sewed a lot of our clothes. She was a very good seamstress. I must have been about fourteen when she decided I should sew myself a dress. It was fun selecting a suitable pattern for a novice and the material which was a sunny yellow percale. It buttoned down the front to one side with white trim. It buttoned with large buttons, all different pretty colors. I remember this so well as I got stuck on doing one part of it. Mom told me how to do it, but I thought I knew a better way. Of course, I wound up doing it her way. In the end it came out a dress I was proud to wear.
Which reminds me, when Mom got a new sewing machine she banished her old one to the store room upstairs. We girls had fun making doll clothes with it and I tried making pillows (toy ones) by sewing two of them at the same time. They wound up together as one, which was quite a learning experience. Not all shortcuts work! As kids do, we loved that old treadle machine and spent lots of happy hours working the treadle.
Mentioning the store room brings to mind rummaging through what was stored there. Once I discovered a pair of lace up high-top shoes. When I showed them to Mom she had me try them on and they fit, so I wound up wearing the hated things. You see, I had difficult feet to fit, as my feet are narrow, and our little town didn't cater much to narrow feet. In my teen years I sometimes was fitted with those hated grandma shoes and how I hated to wear them! One time Julia bought a pair of pretty oxfords and they didn't fit her so I was told I could have them if they fit. They were a little short for me but I would not admit it. At last I had a pair of beautiful shoes and happily wore them with some discomfort. Probably why I wound up with crooked toes as I did wear a lot of shoes that did not fit properly. Dad did most all of our shoe repairing as he had the equipment to do it. He kept the equipment inside the cellar door where he also kept his razor strap.
Though Dad's razor strap was always handy, I can't ever remember him using it on any of us. I can't remember us kids getting much of a 'licking' as it was called in those days. All Dad had to do was turn a sour face on us and we minded. We were no angels and had to be reminded more than once to do something as told to do. I remember once Mom broke a yardstick on Bertha because we weren't hurrying fast enough to get in the chores as we were in a hurry to be off to Uncle Henry's for a Sunday visit. Bertha got the whack as she was first in line. Because the stick broke, I didn't get it. Dad didn't care much for Uncle Henry so Mom wanted us ready before he changed his mind. He got bored with Uncle Henry showing him every "rat and mouse" on the farm, as Dad put it.
I stayed one week with Uncle Henry and Aunt Kate Dendinger as they were my godparents. They had a daughter, Sylvia, who was just a little older than me. She and her boy cousin, Milo, liked to go swimming in a deep pool in a creek on their property. I tried it, but had never swam and as the bank was very steep, I just sat on the bank and felt bad. They did try to coax me in with water wings and such. To my sorrow, I 've never learned to swim, a fraidy cat, but it didn't bother me to go fishing in boats on lakes and the ocean even tho I couldn't swim. (During my later years.)
(I've jumped around from one subject to another as I failed to organize my thoughts and have jumped from one memory to another as they came to me although I did make a lot of notes.)
On our farm there were work horses to work the fields and buggy horses, two of them, named Bud and Maud. There was also a riding horse, Prince, that I was afraid to ride. One time I tried to get him past the mail box to take some butter down the road to Ray and Toots. Prince was used to someone riding to the mail box to get the mail and then go back home. He refused my efforts to go on so I tried cutting across the meadows and he took off with a gallop spilling me and the butter. That was my last attempt at horse back riding.
Our buggy team, Bud and Maud, were used by Julia (for one thing) to go into town and take piano lessons. Happy me when I got to ride along. We kids also drove a buggy to school part of the time, mostly during bad weather. The horses were kept during the school day in a barn there. We took a bag of oats to feed them at noon. Some other families also drove buggies to school. As there were ten grades at our school, there was a time when all eight of us kids, or most of us, were going to school at the same time. When we did the older boys drove us in a surrey, a two seater. Boys will be boys, so the older boys (ours and some of the other families) would race their buggies neck and neck even over the hill and down the road going home from school. A neighbor lady along the road said she had near heart attacks being an observer of such recklessness. Luckily there were no disasters.
When I was in the 8TH grade and we got down to the last four of us driving to school, I couldn't get Norb out of bed in time to go feed and harness the buggy horses. As the harness was very light weight, I would get up and do it, sometimes even starting the kitchen fire while the rest of the family were still in bed. By the time I got back to the house Mom would have breakfast ready and a reluctant Norb and Ikey up to eat. Lunches had to be put up too. Bertha stayed with Grandma Anna that year and went to Catholic School.
Norbert was our naughty boy. He is the only one of us younger kids I can ever remember Dad really having to get after. I remember one time he was chasing Norbert up the yard, Norbert was trying to keep ahead of him. Dad was hurrying after him, smacking a stick along his hip ready to whack him with it. Strange, I can't remember what happened. Did he get it???? Hmmm He also borrowed Dad's car one night to go to a dance and ran into a ditch coming home.
Leo was the one who had a disaster. He and Lula were going to a dance at Fordyce; this was before they were married. It was after dark, the road was being graveled, and they ran into a big pile of gravel. The car left the road and landed upside down in a field. The top of the Model A , (I think it was), was demolished and Lula lost her two front teeth. After that, as I remember, she always wore two false front teeth. The car was brought home and a new top ordered. After Dad got it, he kept it hidden for awhile from Leo as a punishment for his driving too fast and for his recklessness. As we grew up together, brothers Leonard, Norbert and I ran around together, mostly to dances. We all dated some, but after I met Roy Robins I didn't have eyes for anyone else and we were married on August 29, 1933.
Funny things we remember! As I said before, as the boys got old enough to drive, we always had two cars to drive, one for the boys and one for Mom and Dad. We all learned to drive with an old Model T. Had to get the gas and spark lever in just the right position on the steering wheel, then get out and crank the car. When it began to start and sputter, we would jump inside the car and adjust the levers to keep it going. What joy if it took off the first try! From that we graduated to the Model A and bigger cars. My first real 'on the road' driving was in Dad's Dodge car, a 1928 model, I believe.
Winters in Nebraska were very cold. We had some fierce blizzards when snow piled up so deep no one went out in it except to feed the stock or get in wood for the cook stove. As the storm subsided, the men folks would harness a team to a bobsled and drive over the snow banks to town to get any supplies needed. One winter, when the snow was so bad, brother Leo had an appendicitis attack. As he couldn't get to a hospital for an operation, a doctor came out from Sioux City on the train, bringing a nurse with him. Dad met them with a sled at the train station and brought them home with him. I was told, if I remember right, the doctor operated on Leo on the ironing board. It was most likely the table though. Then he went back on the train leaving the nurse to care for Leo. The rest of us children didn't know anything about it until the next morning as we were fast asleep in bed. I was still very small then so don't remember too much about it except that we weren't allowed in the room where Leo was recuperating. He and the nurse took over the living room. It seems she even cooked food for him. Suppose it was all meant to keep down germs and infection.
Later, Leonard also had an appendicitis attack. Thank goodness it was in the summer time so he was taken to Sioux City for his operation. Mom went and stayed with him so that left me with the housekeeping, cooking, washing separators and all. Julia must have been married and gone by then. I must have been about 14 years old. I stirred up a batch of bread but I guess I didn't do a very good job of it because when Dad came in from the field at noon, he took one look at it and threw the whole batch out and went to town and bought bread.
I haven't talked much about school. I started in the first grade when I was five years old and I loved school; I expect it was because I did very well in most subjects. Our family all went to school in our two room school, Pearl Creek. There were ten grades and the first five grades were separated from the higher grades by a partition down the middle of the school so, of course, there were two teachers. (The local bachelors pursued the teachers.) The teachers usually stayed with one of the local families because they were not from the area.
It was cold in winter to be using outdoor toilets and I remember one day I needed to use the facilities and asked permission to go. But the teacher asked me to stay till the noon hour, only a little while longer, which I did with disastrous results. I wet my pants before I could make it. They were heavy winter underwear so I had to spend my noon hour miserably by the big heating stove trying to dry out.
The girls in high school took home economics which consisted mostly of some food made on a kerosene stove. The food was furnished each day by a different parent and easy to prepare, such as soup or hot cocoa or noodles. I think Julia did this when she was in high school at Pearl Creek. There were long tables and benches in the basement of the school where the food was cooked and served.
Another partition at the front of the two rooms raised up to a stage on which were presented programs during the school year. The Christmas program was a big deal in which all the children participated in one thing or another. There was always a play about the birth of the baby Jesus. Parents attended these programs. The partition between the two rooms was raised at that time so they were in one big room.
Dad was always on the school board. He and the other board members decided we should have indoor toilets. As there was no running water, they were chemical toilets, one in each rooms' hallway and were somewhat stinky. Anyway, we didn't have to brave the cold outdoors and frost on the toilet seats anymore.
All eight of us children attended the Catholic school in Hartington for one or two years, just long enough to learn our Catechism and considered educated enough to make our First Communion and be confirmed. While going to school there, we stayed with Grandma Anna Felber. I'm sure she wears a crown in heaven after putting up with such an active bunch of kids all those years.
Many Sundays the whole family stayed after Mass and ate a chicken dinner at Grandma Felber's beautifully set table with linen tablecloth and napkins and her lovely Haviland china and cut glass glassware. We ate on oil cloth tablecloth at home week days, linen on Sundays.
As Bertha was always more of a Momma's baby, I had to wait till she was old enough to stay away from home to go to Catholic school. Consequently, I was in the 6TH grade and Bertha in the 3RD grade when we finally went to stay at Grandma Felber's and take our turn. It was very embarrassing for me to have to go out of class at my age to go to Catechism instruction for First Communion. We both went to school there for two years. The next year we went back to school at Pearl Creek.
As Grandma wanted someone with her, Bertha and I both stayed with her and went to Catholic School all thru high school. Grandma also boarded other relative's kids when they came there to go to high school. One of these was Elizabeth Becker, her niece, who she raised from a baby as her mother died in childbirth. There was also Elizabeth's step-brother, Robert Kleber and my cousin, Roman Reinders. I think, to a certain extent, Grandma enjoyed having us as she often played cards with us during the winter nights. I remember Bertha and I pulling each other around on a towel or clothes helping to shine the kitchen floor that Grandma had put a coat of wax on.
The older boys never went past the tenth grade at Pearl Creek. They had to stay home to work on the farm. To her great sorrow, Julia never got to finish high school either though she wanted to very much. Dad said she had to stay home and help her mother. What mentality in those days! Why didn't he hire someone to help Mother and let Julia go to school. He hired extra help in the fields during growing season if he needed them. Also, as the boys got older, they were paid a wage and a car for working but we gals only got room and board and our clothes plus a little spending money for movies and such. We were lucky to have one or two good dresses and the men (boys and Dad) each had one good suit for dressing up for church and such. We did have summer clothes too.
During the busy harvest season, sometimes Julia and Bertha milked the cows. I could never get the hang (pull) of it and Mom needed help in the house. I do remember we younger kids often bringing the cattle up from the lower pasture at milking time, but, as a rule, farm work was men's work and housework was woman's work.
Baseball was our main Sunday afternoon summer entertainment. Sometimes it was pasture baseball, competing with neighboring teams but also baseball at the town park. We always had to hurry home after church on Sunday to eat dinner, do the dishes quickly, and go. Mother, in her efficient way, would probably get up early and put a couple of pies in the oven to bake. Next, she would put a beef roast in the oven to bake and a kettle of spuds on the back burner to cook while we were at church. So it was a snap to finish up dinner after we got home. We just made the gravy, mashed the potatoes, heated some vegetables...olay!! Sunday Dinner!!
I forgot to say what our house was like. It was like most homes in the area at that time. One big room downstairs was the kitchen/dining room. There was also a living room and one bedroom with a small closet downstairs. There was a pantry off the kitchen from which steps went down to the cellar. In the cellar was stored all the canned fruit, etc. It also had a coal bin, a big bin of potatoes (enough to last all year), crocks of sauerkraut and that sort of thing. There was an enclosed porch on the front of the house through which came most of the traffic into the house. (The back part of the porch housed the washing machine and all the outdoor rain boots, etc.) Upstairs was one bedroom over the kitchen area that held three double beds for the boys. A hall divided it from three smaller bedrooms for the girls. The smallest bedroom was often used as a storeroom. As there was no heat upstairs, it was very cold in the winter. The windows would be entirely frosted over and we kids would sleep with our winter underwear on under our nightgowns under a pile of blankets to keep us warm. There were usually two to a bed to cuddle up and keep warm. And, of course, there were no indoor toilets so instead there was a chamber pot in the hallway that had to be emptied every day.
Eventually, after most of us kids were grown up and gone, Dad worked hard to get rural electrification throughout the county, which he did. So, in their old age, Mom and Dad got to enjoy electricity and indoor plumbing as Dad built on a bathroom and had indoor plumbing installed. Otherwise, as I grew up we used gas lamps to see by.
There were occasional tornadoes throughout our area. We luckily were never hit by one. We did have a storm cellar and there were times, when a storm was approaching, that Dad got us all up in the middle of the night to go outside and down in the cold, dark storm cellar.
We also had severe thunder and lightning storms. Sometimes the lightning struck pretty close and split a tree in the grove. Also lightning came in on the telephone wires and we knew enough not to stand facing or near the telephone. During that time at night as the thunder crashed and the lightning cracked, Mom would sometimes get prostrated in bed. We would run to get the smelling salts to take care of her, pulling down the dark roller shades to keep out the lightning etc.
Early in the spring was butchering time. Five or six hogs that Dad raised were butchered. It was a big event as neighbors and older kids came to help. The hogs had to killed and bled. (The blood was saved to make blood sausage.) Then the hogs were dipped into a barrel of scalding hot water to enable shaving the bristly hair off the pigs skin. They were then hung to cool and then cut into hams, shoulders, bacon slabs and chunks for sausage. We had a sausage stuffer and Dad and Mom made good pork sausage and blood worst. The hams, shoulders and bacon in early times were hung in the smokehouse to cure. Later times they were wrapped in a cloth surrounded by a curing salt, then wrapped in newspaper, tied well and then hung under the roof in the corn crib. They kept them that way year round.
In the summertime was harvest time, cutting and stacking hay. Sometimes I got to drive the stacker team which was quite a thrill for a kid my age at the time. In the middle of the morning and the middle of the afternoon women folks would take lunch out to the hay field with coffee for Dad and cold lemonade for us. Then came cutting of small grain such as oats or barley and that meant threshing time. Neighbors came into help so Mom had to cook dinner and supper for the threshers. There were usually two tables full, ten to a table, at each meal and a table full of women and kids. It was like a picnic for us kids. We girls got to set the table and set out buckets of water and basins and soap for the men to wash in before eating.
In the fall was corn picking time. The men went out with a wagon and team through the cornfield and picked corn. There was always a corn picking contest between the neighborhood men considered the best or fastest corn pickers to see who picked the most in the time allotted. (Or maybe it was so many rows). Anyway, it was great sport to see the wagons, pulled by horses going down the corn rows, with the men throwing corn against a bang-board on the wagon to make sure it fell into the wagon.
This about finishes my life and times growing up on the farm. I forgot to say earlier that when I was a small child my Dad called me "Girlie". He also had a work horse he called Girlie so I've often wondered, was I named after the horse, or was the horse named after me?????
I met my husband Roy at a barn dance put on by Bertha's 4-H Club to raise money for their club. All of my family were at that dance.
Should I add we went to the County Fair every fall. I remember going to the sulky races and that there was fireworks at night. A great fun time. Every summer a "Chautauqua", a road show, came to town and Dad always bought season tickets. The show lasted about a week. The family took turns going, some one night and others the next night.
Fourth of July was a big, family day with a picnic in the park, a speaker (probably someone running for office), sack races, leg races and fireworks.
Often, at night, after we kids went to bed we played games by hollering back and forth to rooms across the hall. We played games like "She Comes, She Comes" and others.
I remember Dad telling me one of our books was not fit for me to read. (Then why did he have it around I wondered.) Of course, I snuck it to bed to read at night. When I was going to school in Hartington, I often brought books from the library for Dad to read. I must have gotten my love of reading from him. I still read from one to three books a week. I am very thankful I can still see well. Seems like most of the people here at the retirement center have cataracts or some kind of eye surgery. I also play cards almost every evening.
I want to add that Mom and Dad were very good parents. They were not demonstrative parents but I'm sure they loved us very much as they were always there for us even though we gave them some unhappy and painful times as we grew up, married and left home. We were always well provided for, never lacked for any necessities. They liked good, fun times as well as we kids so that was definitely a plus. (They never even fussed at Julia when she came home with her hair bobbed after staying all night at Abbie Kalins, although she thought she was really going to get it! Did she ever tell you about that, Patty?)
(No, Aunt Anne, she never did. I've learned several things about my mother that I never knew before. I really thank you for writing these memories. They mean so much. Patty.)