By BUZZ KING, guest columnist
I have been thinking about this for several days and decided that several of you folks might enjoy this. Many have never thought much of how it was just a few years ago, and still more don’t care. If you are of the latter, turn the page.
I am going to give you a tour of the home I grew up in. It all sounds terrible now, but it was not too bad at all. Think of the folks who lived 200 years ago. Now, that would have been hard, but they thought nothing of it.
The house I grew up in was built around 1854, frame, and added onto several times. At the rear was a covered porch with chest-high sides. On the porch was a wringer washer. Mother would heat water and fill the washer from a two-handled pot. We used flake soap — usually Ivory, but other brands were also available. I remember our first use of detergent, and I have no idea when detergent was available, but we did not use it ‘til the very early ‘50s. Monday seemed to be the day for that chore.
Just inside the door was the kitchen with all the latest: Table with four chairs and a bare oil stove for heating that end of the house. Coal was used ‘til the end of WWII. I know because a coal pile stood just outside the kitchen door on Blood Alley. A farmhouse sink with an inside pitcher pump sat in the northwest corner. The sink was large enough to bathe a small child. Yes, I was small in the beginning. There was a white kitchen safe, a refrigerator with a freezer which would hold two ice cube trays, and a four-burner cook stove (LP gas). We used a three-slice pyramid frame which sat in the oven for breakfast toast.
Next was the dining room, large for the day, with an outside door. When the house was built, this room was the kitchen and dining area. The whole house had knob and tube wiring with push-button switches, etc.
Next was the living room with a large area rug. The wood flooring was painted in the exposed areas, plus six inches under each edge of the rug. The rug was removed each spring to the four-line clothesline and was beaten ‘til it was near death, and returned. A bare oil stove stood to one side. Both oil stoves had a one-gallon tank which had to be filled three times a day, including the middle of the night. Later, my father saved up and bought a new oil stove for the front room with a fan and metal covering from Sears. At that time, he purchased a 250-gallon tank on 4-foot legs and ran a 3/16 copper line to both of the stoves.
At that time, the second floor was closed off to conserve heat. Two bedrooms down in which one, my older sister, was born in 1941.
I hope you have found this interesting, and to those who lived it, compare.
As I have said before, small things will be lost to time if we do not pass them on.
‘Til next time. — Buzz
