Before you wax nostalgic on me and say something like, I could so live here, let me remind you of a couple of things. These homes had no electric, thus no AC, no TV, no hair dryers, not even a fan to move the suffocating heat and humidity around inside. Meals were cooked over a wood-fired cook stove three times a day no matter how hot it might be in the house. As you stood over that hot stove, sweat pouring down every surface of your body, you knew there was not going to be a cool shower. Why? No running water! Unless you consider running down to an open spring, brushing away the water bugs and being careful not to stir up the leaves and mud on the bottom while dipping up a heavy bucket of water to carry back to the house, to be running water. There was no washer or dryer. Just a tub, washboard, and strong home made lye soap for doing laundry and bucket after bucket of that running water carried from the spring. You rubbed your knuckles raw on the board and then hung the heavy wet clothes on a line in the blazing heat or if it was winter you hung them on the line with fingers chapped and numb from the cold and let them freeze dry. Since there is no electric, there is no iron except for a hunk of iron that feels like it weighs 10 lbs that you heat on that hot cook stove. Sorry about it being 95 degrees outside! There isnt such a thing as permanent press fabric and no self-respecting wife would let her husband be seen out without a freshly starched and ironed shirt. So she sets that hunk of iron on the hot stove until it gets the right temperature and begins to iron the dampened, heavy starched shirt until it is smooth as silk, with nary a wrinkle anywhere. If the iron is too hot, or if left in one spot a second too long the shirt is scorched and has to be done over again or is ruined altogether. The closest grocery is a two hour mule ride away and carries mostly staples like flour, sugar, dried beans, and salt. It doesnt matter because there is no money for luxuries anyway. If the family is going to have anything to eat there is a garden to raise. This means hoeing, weeding, and then picking and canning enough food to feed a big family for another year. And yes, it is hot outside (and inside) when this all has to be done. Canning jars to wash (again with buckets of that running water carried from the spring). Beans to string and break, tomatoes to pick and peel, cabbage to make into kraut, cucumbers for pickling and corn to can or pickle. Beans to string and put on a thread to dry for shuckie beans. Remember you have to do all this while cooking three squares a day on that hot stove, doing the laundry, making beds, sweeping floors, etc. Oh, yes. You cannot forget those new dresses you and the girls need and some shirts and pants for the boys. No clearance racks at Kohls here! Some freshly washed feed sack material and perhaps a couple of yards of calico from the store in town will have to be turned into that new wardrobe on the treadle sewing machine in the parlor. No electric, remember. There are no refrigerators or even ice boxes. There are no freezers that you can get a TV dinner out of when you are just too tired to cook. And no microwave to put it in. There is no bathroom! You use a hot, smelly outhouse and your roll of Charmin is a couple of the soft pages out of a Sears & Roebuck catalog. Tell me again that you could so live here. Another repost for my new friends at Old Farms and Barns and Roadside Barns.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Mar 2014 22:43:12 +0000
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