I hear you granny. My great grandparents lived in a 4 room house with no indoor plumbing. I remember when I was very young staying there, having to use the outhouse during the day, the chamber pot at night, pump water for everything, took baths in a tin tub in the kitchen in front of the wood stove after buckets of water were hauled in and heated on the stove. Those experiences have stayed with me and I have memories of being comfortable and happy. It was a frugal life for them, but a busy and happy one. The smell of woodsmoke still takes me back. We have lived through times without much of what most today consider necessary. And you know what, it was a more relaxed time, centered around family, honest work, faith, and yet, we were the greatest nation on earth.
LOL, you do understand.
Woodsmoke adds so much to the taste of food, for years we kept a set up for cooking, outdoors, so we could cook on wood, we never used the charcoal briquettes.
I have thought for a long time that we made a mistake, waiting until the kids were grown to move to Arizona.
We had bought 8 acres as an investment and when the day came that the doctor said to my husband you need to move to Arizona, we did.
We did get electric, in a few weeks, but hauled water for several years and lived hard up for a while.
All we had was a camp trailer, so we slept outdoors and I had a separate kitchen of sorts outside.
As we bought cows,goats, hogs, and all kinds of poultry, we went to the local dump in the small town and hunted for building supplies.
Existing in Yuma County, was a challenge, extreme heat in the summer and then it was cold in the winter.
And as I look back, working to survive, was a lot more fun, than the new homes, with proper furniture that I had lived with in San Diego.
The thrill of finding a big roll of chicken wire at the dump, topped going to the store and buying a new couch.
And people shared what they had. It was nothing to wake up at 5 am and find someone there to tell us that Farmer so and so was going to plow his fields today and we could go and pick all the vegetables that we could get out of it ....
Or come and get the broken bales of hay in the field, we have water coming for irrigation and it is yours if you can get it out first.
Once, LOL, my friend Mary and I salvaged a trailer of hay, from a field they were burning, talk about work, just the two of us and at the time she was close to 80 years old.
I no longer live in Wellton and I am so sorry we ever left it, there were real people living there, in those days.
Kingman, is not a friendly town, never has been and never will be, and I have lived here 30 years.
Mary taught me all the old skills she had, she had farmed in Wellton for over 50 years, when I met her and she too enjoyed surviving, and would not leave her home.
Every Wednesday, I took Bill to work, and then went to Mary’s for the afternoon, we had tea and talked/worked on quilts and often visited the ‘City Exchange’, her name for the dump.
Now the Free Cycle groups are giving it away, before it gets to the dump and if you try to take something from the dump, you would go to jail.