When Step #2 was learning to read, we read all of the Little House books together; he would read one page, then I would read the next. It was always SO EXCITING when Pa got to fight a bear or a wolf or an Indian. ;)
I’m still humbled by Laura and Mary being THRILLED to get an orange, a peppermint stick, new mittens and a tin cup for Christmas.
Life should always be that simple! :)
At Christmas, in my dad’s family, presents were on your plate Christmas morning. Usually it was an orange & a few pieces of hard candy. Being the youngest, dad can remember getting a pair of socks one year in addition to the ‘usual’. I think another year he got a 5 cent sleeve of BBs.
His family did not celebrate birthdays with cake, etc. or even acknowledge the day; although my grandmother’s birth date was remembered because that was the date potatoes were planted every spring.
Dad’s family was ‘rich’ in that they grew & raised all of their food and during the Great Depression, they had plenty to eat & helped out some less fortunate. They raised tomatoes to take to the canning factory & any kid who worked planting & harvesting got a share of the money when the canning factory paid off at the end of the season.
To continue a bit with life on the Valley farm ....
Granny had a great vegetable garden. She had salsify in her garden & made the best salsify dish - I loved it ... ‘almost’ as good as her mac ‘n cheese! She cooked a huge meal for Sunday after church & the family (6 kids) ate leftovers a good part of the week. A lot of the food sat covered on the counter - mom & I are still mystified why it didn’t spoil.
There was a spring house to keep things cool that would spoil. The milk from the cows my aunt milked was kept there in crock jugs & Mason jars. My dad loved milk and would run to the spring house multiple times a day. He drank a LOT of milk - our modern recycle bins were filled with half gallon jugs & if you asked him the secret of his longevity (he was 100+ when he passed), he would smile & answer “milk”! The stone spring house with tin roof still stands today & is considered one of the finest examples in the Valley - there is historical interest in it.
The main meat was pork & chicken. They had beef cows & those were a ‘cash’ crop so only 1 beef was butchered for the family a year. Hogs were different - 2-3 were butchered the fall of every year. My granddad made really good sausage. My poor aunt had the labor intensive job of cleaning out/scrubbing the intestines to use for casings. Dad’s job was to administer the coup de grace to the hogs prior to processing. Chickens were eaten as well, but ‘Pop’ (Granddad) would often send my dad out hunting rabbits to spare a chicken. Turkeys were raised to sell & some ducks.
Dad recalled one ‘windfall’ of cash. Pop sent him to another farm (he accumulated 3, one for each son) to shoot skunks - the place was loaded & they would come out every evening in a field to dig around & find food. Dad shot 15 & just let them lay. Pop told him there was a fur trader who might buy them & sure enough, he picked them all up the next day & paid dad $1.00 per skunk .... $15 was a lot of money in those days.
There was an outhouse & I can remember using it as a child ... sort of scary. Dad put in a bathroom for his folks - got up early on Saturday mornings, drove 2 hours & made it to his folks place in time for breakfast, then worked all day & came back home. I don’t know how long he did this, but he dug all the ditches by hand, tunneled under two sidewalks & got the pipes into the house to the point a plumber connected the fixtures. As his folks were getting older, indoor plumbing made life a lot easier (there was water in the kitchen).
My Granny loved flowers & had them everywhere. My dad loved flowers & flowering bushes & I am sure that love came from seeing his mom’s flowers.
Life was much simpler back then but it was a lot of HARD work.