LIVING - PLAIN AND SIMPLE · The bedroom doors opened that had been shut all day with no heat! and that blast of freezing air coming out! Cold featherbeds and a ton of quilts on top of you!!! Waking up to the smell of coffee and bacon. Standing close to the stove until your behind was red hot, then turned to warm the other side. The community water dipper that everyone drank from. The one wash pan that everyone washed their hands in before eating! Throwing a tablecloth over the leftovers and everyone picked around on the food all day with no refrigeration! Catalogs and spiders in the outhouse! The smell outside when it was snowing and silent...and the air hung heavy with the smell of burning coal in every house. · Even after my grandfather had water piped up to the house my grandmother refused to drink it because it tasted rusty! She drank water drawn from the well until the day she died in 1963! One wonders what health inspectors today would say about that old oaken bucket! No running water! Saturday night baths in the old wash tub sitting in the kitchen floor. · Cream separators, churns, wash boards, slop for hogs, gathering corn by hand, outhouses, dinner (that mid day meal) left on the table with a table cloth, going out on Sunday morning catching a chicken and wringing it neck to cook for Sunday dinner, stepping in chicken ** with the bare feet, or in the lot with the cows. · In the early seventies, my great-grandma still lived alone in the same house she'd been in for 60 years (she was 88 at the time). She cooked on a wood stove, because she didn't trust the electric ones not to explode. The wood man delivered the wood to her front yard, she would chop it herself and haul it to the back yard in a wheelbarrow. She also used a wringer washer, for the same reason she used the wood stove. The only electricity was used for lights, she also still used an ice-box (same reasoning). One year my parents bought her a pressure cooker for Christmas, to use in canning the multitude of fruits and vegetables she grew in her back yard. Nope, it might explode. · Lived in a 2 room house...took a bath in a # 3 tub...no running water...hauled water in a beer keg...with a little red wagon!!! Finally got a spigot in the side yard when I was in the 8th grade. I remember mama heating water in that #3 tub on top of the stove many a time for baths for us 3 kids. The 2 rooms in our house consisted of a kitchen and a room we all slept in. A wood stove. Mama also heated water on the stove to wash dishes by hand. · Using kerosene lamps for light at times. We did have electricity but it did go out from time to time. Daddy would drag out those lamps. After I got old enough to think about things...I wondered why Lincoln wasn't blind from reading by the things! · Running for the feather bed where mom had heated an iron, wrapped it and placed it in the bed to keep my feet warm. · Mom ran the switchboard when I was growing up and you could count on the party line to keep the neighbors informed when ever you made a phone call. Course they would be the first ones there when you needed help. Helped do a lot of canning and still do as much as I have time for. · We finally got an old wringer type washer the first thing I did was run my arm through the wringer, child like, it went pass the elbow. Scared everybody to death. MISCELLANEOUS: · I will never forget the odor of DDT. I think we didn't get sick because we didn't have time to - or knew we didn't have the $$ for a doctor visit so no sense being ill. · When the nickel was worth a nickel and *the silver penny was not worth a dime, only a penny. · When you could walk to school without being terrified of being kidnapped? Or having a drive-by shooting? · An airplane was a thing to truly be amazed with, the radio was something you would walk miles to see operate, the motorcar. The phonograph was all the rage, talking movies were just over the horizon, Television, what the heck is that?. Atomic energy? Never heard of a diesel engine, how about the telephone, party line, what no auto dial? · Dad went rabbit and squirrel hunting.. We were not amused with killing the bunnies and needless "I" wouldn't eat one if I was starving! It was all I could do to think of chickens grown and dressed at our place as any kind of food! I use to catch them and pet them. Daddy taught my 2 brothers how to trap....they'd go out before school and check traps and reset them...("we" were not happy with THAT either!) · The button box. My grandmother had an old tin filled with old and sometimes new buttons - we would spend hours going through it and listening to the stories behind each button - my mother has that box now and it will be passed on to me - unfortunately I don't remember all the stories, but still, I can't wait to own that box of buttons! · Halloween: When the air was chilly and the night air was spooky and the moon was large and orange, and there were all those outhouses just BEGGING to be dumped over. And the neighbors were one step ahead and sitting in them, just waiting for someone to dare try! · I had a plan to cut the toe of my stocking out and put a box at the bottom, so Santa would just keep filling and filling and filling. Somehow that never happened. · Cars in l930 were $200. I remember Dad bought a new car in l939 and paid $999.00 for it. It had a heater. I can remember passing people traveling and they were wrapped up in blankets. WAR: · The Saving Stamps you purchased with your lunch money and the air raid warnings. · Mother reading to us the war news after the mail ran each day. There was a map showing where the fighting was heavy that day. It showed where the Allied front was and the Axis front. I was so scared that when a plane went over, I thought it would bomb our house. Sugar rationing and shoe rationing. Gas rationing didn't bother us as we traveled in a wagon, pulled by 2 horses, to town, church and visiting. I remember when our neighbor showed up at school to pick up his daughters. Their brother was missing in action. He later was freed from a POW camp. I remember when the war was over. We children danced around the chinaberry tree in the yard. · World War II was Uncles going off to war and Mom worrying about if they were going to get home. · Most everything went in to the war effort--no money for gas, and if you did have money--no ration coupons. Same thing was true for film, food, and lots of other things. I remember when Pearl Harbor was bombed, the hushed tones in which the adults spoke, and then five of my uncles left for war. One of my most vivid memories is of my grandmother Clark sitting by the radio each day listening to the news concerning the war. My dad's only sister worked in what was then called the "bomber plant" here in Fort Worth, as did many women in this area. · Going out to weed the Victory Garden that our President asked everyone to plant so each family would be sure to have vegetables and not have to go without. I still have a book of rationing stamps. · Being home listening to the radio, probably listening to Amos and Andy on a Sunday morning when the terrible news came of the bombing that started the war. My dad went immediately down Monday morning to see if he was going in as he was planning on changing jobs. He was turned down for a heart murmur. But my uncle was drafted and he was in Guadal canal, a terrible battle, but survived. I started making a scrap book of the pictures of where the yanks were. Each day in the Boise Statesman was a picture of where the soldiers had advanced. I cut that picture out and pasted it in every day of the war. · When the Japanese children were taken out of the schools and put into camps. Two of my best friends were Japanese and we cried a lot. · City-wide blackouts. · The day the war was over. My aunt and my grandmother and I had gone downtown and we were again on a streetcar. All of a sudden, all the grownups began to hug each other for no reason, with no warning. Cars zigzagged down the street, honking their horns. Every church bell rang. People threw hats and newspapers into the air. They were laughing and crying and running into the streets. Strangers picked me up and lifted me above their heads, passing me from hand to hand down the length of the streetcar, cheering and whistling and crying. Every grownup in the world had gone completely nuts! I was terrified and astonished that such a thing could happen. Other memories by Sandi: I thought in conclusion that I would add a few of my own memories. They are random memories accumulated over 58 years and aren't world shaking - but they are me. Dad being drafted during World War II, failing for some health reason and my screaming out to my Mom that I saw the Sunbeam (seal beams)headlights of our car when he returned from the draft board. The top of our car being caught on fire when a town Fourth of July display's fireworks got too close. Those wonderful 4th of July parades, the fireworks - all of us children running around with our sparklers. The Saturday night movie in our little town of 300, a screen and projector being set up on the field of the grade school, everyone sitting on blankets with picnic lunches. Running boards. Growing up next to my grandparent's house with my grandmother's acre of beautiful flowers she showed each year at State Fair - the apples, pears, peaches, plums, grapes and berries (including what I thought my Mom had called poison berries!) The outside pump for all our watering needs. Our first sink with a little pump on the side. Taking the Saturday night bath in a big tub on the kitchen floor. Inside plumbing later being installed and my dropping my Lone Ranger ring in the commode and overflowing the entire first floor. My grandmother's canning. The threshing parties with tables set all over the side lawn with the women folk cooking for hours and eating last. Riding in the wagon hitched up to Doc and Molly. Eating raw soybeans (I still hunger for the smell of soybeans!) My cousin and I gathering eggs and reaching a snake instead. Our eating more strawberries that we got in the basket, bing cherry tomatoes. Going to the State Fair and screaming in fear at the top of the ferris wheel, having to be brought back down. The merry-go-round and not being allowed to get close to the "freak shows" as they were then called. Seeing my first television at my grandparents - Friday night boxing matches, Saturday morning cartoons, Mickey Mouse Club, The Pinky Lee Show, Howdy Doody, the Saturday night wresting matches, Milton Berle show, Red Skelton, The Show of Shows. Listening to the radio to the Green Hornet, The Shadow, Fibber Magee and Mollie Going to school in a little country school, riding the school bus - and sometimes missing it! The "sick room" at the school, having the same teacher several years at a time, usually the one I didn't like very much. Listening to President Truman announce the new law that a president could only serve two terms. The beautiful nighttime skies with more stars than I've seen the rest of my life. Hearing the principal announce that Russia had placed a satellite in orbit called "Sputnik" and being afraid to go outside at recess in case the Russians were flying over and taking pictures of us. The bomb shelters. Hop-skotch, playing jacks, jumping ropes an the jungle gyms. Failing miserable at girls's basketball and being unable to pitch well in softball. Going to basket ball games on the school bus. Deep snows, hot summers, no air conditioning. I'd better quit before reaching much deeper into the 50's - the "Happy Days" generation. Hope you have enjoyed this series! Merry Christmas. (c) Copyright 10 December 1998, Sandra K. Gorin, All Rights Reserved, sgorin@glasgow-ky.com Sandi Gorin - A Kentucky Colonel 205 Clements Ave., Glasgow, KY 42141 (502) 651-9114 PUBLISHING: http://www.members.tripod.com/~GorinS/index.html GORIN FAMILY MSG BOARD: http://www.insidetheweb.com/mbs.cgi/mb248461 BARREN CO OBITS, WILLS, DEEDS & BIBLE RECORDS: http://cgi.rootsweb.com/~genbbs/genbbs.cgi/USA/Ky/BarrenObits KYRESEARCHING TIPS: http://cgi.rootsweb.com/~genbbs/genbbs.cgi/USA/Ky/Tips KYBIOGRAPHIES: http://cgi.rootsweb.com/~genbbs/genbbs.cgi/USA/Ky/Bios