The Hard Times Cafe

Connecting to the Past

Anyone who has read my blog over the past year will know that for the past few years we had allowed, maybe not embraced, but allowed electric lights and processed foods into our home because of some life changes that we had no control over.  They were convenient at the time.  We had control over what we allowed in our home but because of the life changes some items where just much easier to have then not, even if we didn’t really care for them.  These past several months besides giving up propane (which by the way, now I don’t even have my camp stove a story I will get into later) we’ve contemplated the difference in the atmosphere in our home with simple little changes.   It’s huge.  It creates a hustle and a bustle that is unnatural, more convenient but simply unnatural.  I realize this is not for everyone, it wouldn’t work for many and that’s fine.  But of for us losing more “modern” things improves our lives.  Example: there is a piece calmness when the sun is going down and an oil lamp is lit verses when a light is turned on.  Its soothing to ones nerves.  It signals the day’s work is done; now it’s time to sit down with your family and enjoy each other.  Read together, play games or just talk.  Or a time for the silence to take hold and do some mental contemplation or listen for the still, small voice of God, the time when He’s whispering and you need to hear it.  We aren’t tempted to stay up beyond what our bodies want to watch that show, or listen to that music.  The unnatural light that the electric lights throw to stimulate you in the dark beyond what your body should endure.

 I’ve thought about the irony of how so many older people I’ve either personally come in contact with or have read about reminisce over days gone by.  Almost with a longing in their voices for the simpler time.  But I have yet to meet one that would give up the things of today for the things of the past.   It was for all practical purposes, an inconvenient life, even with fond memories that connect them to the past.  I read the stack of good old days and how these people lived the way some of us try to recapture, the cook stove, heating with wood, pumping water, cooking from scratch, raising our eggs and milk and gardening and preserving, not electricity, or at least minimal.  But yet they dreamed of a “streamline” galley kitchen where all they had to do was take 3 steps in either direction to accomplish all their kitchen task willing giving up the huge country kitchen that was the heart of the home in many families.  They speak of games played at night when they were young; they were never bored as they had tons of imagination.  Time spent with friends and family always something to do and how they don’t understand the modern generations, yet not one would be willing to give up their couch or lazy boy in the living room or their TV to relive that past. The taste of home grown and homemade food but most wouldn’t want to put the work or time into growing it, they’d rather go to the store and by it. Do you see the picture?  Isn’t it odd how the things our  grandparents gladly walked away from draw us back? 

My grandfather was a farmer during the depression.  He and my grandmother lived in rural Indiana on 80 acres and raised 6 children.  They were  then, what would be considered now, homesteaders.   Although back then it was known as farming.  Small scale, use what you raise.  Use the milk for your family from the dairy cows.  Use the pork from the hogs for your family, the rest went to market.  They started with wood heat and cooking,, no indoor bathrom.  Even though over time my grandfather gave modern heating and bathing to my grandmother, she still couldn’t wait to leave that place.  She wanted a postage size yard, with a trailer, 14x60 on it.  She’d had her belly full of country living.

My mother remembers those years with nostalgia.  Well, it’s nostalgic when she has memories of her father with living that way.  My mother moved from the farm when she was 17.  She often talks about the farm and how she wished she’d had settle on some land instead of in a city, where you can touch your neighbor’s house when you can stand on the edge of your property.  But see, my mother’s vision of the country is different than mine.  She wants everything she has in town, just on some land.  I suppose that is how most people in the country live.  But to me it seems odd.  I can’t explain it.  I laugh at my mother because of the”farm girl” she is always talking about being.  What makes me laugh is she won’t even drink the milk I put on the table at my place because it came from my barn instead of a sterile dairy.  I can’t even get her to eat one of my farm fresh eggs because well, she doesn’t trust them.  This coming from a woman who complains about how the dairy industry raises the animals and the chickens are crammed in little cages and raised inhumanly.  But she’d trust their products before they way things were raised back then. That in itself is another whole story I’ll skip for now.

Do you see the irony of which I speak?  I realize that this life style is a lot more work!  I guess that might be somewhat of an understatement.  I wonder too, is it just that so many are  disconnected with things? We’ve traded connections for conveniences.  To be disconnected with things takes away our power.  It binds us.  It makes us unable to think outside of the box, it has the ability to paralyze us.  If we get so set on one way of living should the need come to change we are much more resistant to it.  Thus causing the transition to be very difficult.  If and when the conveniences are taken away, will we be able to connect to a time past?

The Intentional Peasant

More Treasures from the past

The Depression Years

A Slight Detour: by Edward W. Thomas

The Good Old Days: July 1974

They called it “Black Tuesday”  I never  knew why until many years later and confess that my remembrances are a lot different from those of my parents.  When that fateful day arrived, I was seven years of age and enjoying the immunity from worry that is the blessing of youth.  Being too young to evaluate the reason why our diet was steadily changing-that certain foods were disappearing from our menus and that my clothing was being patched and repatched – I  assumed that this was the way it was supposed to be.  Maybe I did ask a question or two and I probably got an answer, such as, “We are in the midst of a great depression caused by the failure of the stock market.”  If that is what I was told, I didn’t understand it then and I confess, I don’t understand it now.

Looking back to my youth, a lot of things stand out in my mind that  have a much different meaning to me now than they did then.  When I was a child, my mother would send me to the stores to buy some of the ingredients she needed to make soup.  I say stores because there was no supermarket in those days.  For fruit of vegetables, it was the produce store, and for meat, it was the butcher shop.  The closest thing to a supermarket was the delicatessen or the Five and Ten.

Getting back to my errand, my mother always gave me directions as to how I was to act and what I was to say to these merchants.  I was given the inevitable shopping list, written on brown paper, with the money wrapped up inside, “so you don’t lose it.”  I can hear my mother’s voice.  The produce store was easy; -- On turnip—“Look for the biggest one,” a bunch of carrots (in those days they came with the tops on), and a pot herb.  The cost of this transaction, I believe, was under a dime.

Then to the butcher shop I would go and that’s when the trepidations would start.  I loved my mother very much and I also feared to incur her wrath.  Consequently I knew that there could be no change in the ritual.  I was to follow her directions to the letter.  “I’d like a soup bone please…..and could you give one with a little meat on it? (It was understood by both butcher and layman alike, that the meat was to be included in the price of the bone.)  The butcher would give me the lear that I knew so well as he proceeded about his task.

When he had wrapped the bone in butcher’s paper, he continued with his part of the ritual.  “Anything else?”  “Yes, Sir, I’d like a pound of round steak with the fat trimmed off”.

Shortly he would return from the block and put the meat on the scale.   “Will that be all,” he would demand, and I would reply, I’m sure with a pronounced quiver in my voice, “Would you grind it up, Sir?”

There were many people who went hungry during the depression but, fortunately, we never did.  The only complaint I had then was the sameness of the food.  My mother must have known a million recipes and everyone of them was creamed – creamed carrots, creamed spinach, creamed dried beef and, yes, even creamed hot dogs.  I realize now it was done to make our meager rations go further, but as a child, I thought my mother was in a culinary rut.

As I think back to those times, various memories pop into my mind.  I remember the people selling apples on the streeet corners.  I remember the bread lines and the soup kitchens.  I remember a wonderful Pawn Shop Broker who would grant loans on overcoats during the  warmer months.  He knew these men would never get the money to retrieve them so, just before winter arrived, he would place an ad in the paper and offer free overcoats to the needy. 

Hard times, yes, I guess they were, but  the people never lost hope.  Their songs indicated this, songs such as “Look for the Silver Lining,” : “April Showers,” “Shanty Town,” and  such lyrics as “Just around the corner, there’s a rainbow in the sky,” and so forth.

The depressions years were a trying period but mostly we remember the good times.  To quite Will Rogers with something he said about that era, “We are the first nation to go to the poorhouse in an automobile.”  We now know that the poorhouse was just a slight detour on the road to life.

Treasures from the past

With that said, I would like to share some of these stories as I think many would enjoy them.  Many of us work so hard to bring back the simple days that these folks watched slip away.  These folks that shared these memories, I would venture to say have pasted from this earth, or the majority of them anyways.  But though the memory might seem simple to some, in the end memories are all we have to pass on history.

I am very cautious about copy writes.  I wanted it stated that this is of no financial gain.  I will quote any and all credits to author and publisher.  If anyone out there has any knowledge of copywrite infringement and can share with me I would appreciate it.  I will be doing some research this weekend to see if I can do this and not worry about copywrite police at my door.

This is a story from the June 1974  issue of the Good Old Days entitled Mom’s Wash Tub by Shirley Lewis Calhoun: she writes

“When I go to do my wash in this day of modern laundry,-clothes washed and rinsed all in one machine- I think of my mom’s wash tubs.  Though I have a dryer, I, like my mom, hang my clothes out on the line.  My clothespins are the snap-on type.  My mom used the round top-peg, type, and us children used them, also, for toys.  How my mom would “get after us” on wash day, which was always on a Monday.

My bother used them for “his cars and trucks on the dirt pile”, and we girls put faces on them for our “dolls”.

What I remember most were the wash tubs, they were two big, black, round tubs, used for most anything.  Our home was in the country, sitting not far from a creek.  We had no electricity or running water.  WE girls would carry those two big tubs to the creek for rinse water, when Mom washed clothes.  On Saturday night, the same two tubs would be filled with water for our baths: at the time there were my three sisters, and we’d take turns in the tubs.

In the summer, when Mom went to can her jar vegetables, off again we would go to the creek and fill the tubs with water to wash the jars.  Mom would then, after filling the jars, place wood slats on the bottom of the inside of the tubs and place her filled jars, placing this over the fire in the back yard.  This was the way she did her canning.

 Come fall, how I remember peeling apples, throwing them over in the tubs to be washed and placed in a kettle for apple-butter making.  In the summer when the water was low, we had a natural spring.  We also carried water in the tubs for household uses.

  A few w years ago, we girls got our mom a set of the modern laundry tubs, which she uses on her wash day.  The other tubs she still uses for her canning, and are in the basement where she keeps them when not in use.

My mom also used two flatirons, which were heated on the top of the stove.  Our clothes were ironed beautifully in those days-never a scorch on them.  I have one of the irons in my hone now, a reminder of how hard it was on my mom, back when.  My mother’s mother is still alive.  She was ninety-five years old in March (1973), and I love to hear her tell stories of when she was growing up.

I, too, know what it is like to fill lamps, wash the lamp globes, get in wood and coal, walk to meet a school bus, help your dad to skin squirrel and rabbit, take cod liver oil, carry your apple butter sandwiches to school and wonder why it sank into the thick slices of “homemade bread”.  Most of all, eat you oatmeal, and bedtime, when the lamp was blown out at eight o’clock.

Those days will never be again.

WATER AND PROTEIN: SHORT COMINGS IN THE PANTRY

Hardship or Inconvenience