growing_up3.odt

December 30, 2014

It was so handy to finally have cold water piped into the house at the kitchen sink. All hot water had to be heated on the stove.

We had a large wooden icebox on the back porch to use when it got warm out. It took a large block of ice in one compartment to keep our foods cold. My mother would go to Adrian to the ice house to buy the ice. They would cut it out of the lakes in the winter time and store it for use in the summer. One time when she was using the ice tongs to carry a block of ice on the porch to put in the ice box the ice slipped out of the tongs and dropped on her foot. She always did think that it broke her toe, but she never went to the doctor to find out. We eventually got an electric refrigerator. I actually used this refrigerator in my home for several years.

We had a coal furnace in the basement. My bedroom was moved upstairs, when my grandmother moved over to live with us. It had no register for heat. My mother would heat up a brick on the wood stove and wrap it in a towel to keep my feet warm. It was hard to get up mornings, because it was so cold. I took my clothes downstairs and got dressed standing over the register.

My earliest memory of a vehicle was a Model A Ford pickup. When I was 5, I was standing up with my back to the windshield letting someone in the front seat. The car door was shut and my thumb was in the way. My left thumb nail has always been wider than the other thumb. My brothers and I rode in the back of the pickup. I was embarrassed because other people had newer cars than we did and didn't have to ride in the back.

I remember one time having threshers at our farm. They put the threshing machine in the yard on the north side of our barn. It was interesting to watch them work, since we weren't used to having big equipment on our farm. Our farming was done by horses. My mother fixed dinner for the men that were doing the threshing.

Some of my chores included cutting asparagus, picking blackberries, climbing the cherry trees and hanging a pail over a limb and picking cherries, working in the garden, feeding the bunnies, feeding the chickens, gathering eggs, helping in the preparation of the vegetables and fruits so my mother could can them. I would dust, sweep the floors, wash the dishes, and set the table. These chores weren't all my responsibility, but I did help with them.

I learned to sew on an old Singer treadle sewing machine. I bought a new Necchi electric sewing machine for $200, after I started to work. My Grandma Crawford told me that she would think a long time before she spent that much money for a sewing machine.

My mother had bought a Ford car and taught me to drive on Wilmouth Highway between Valley and Sutton Roads. It was a stretch of road that had no houses. I used her car to drive to work. If she needed the car she would take me and pick me after I got out of work.

When we got a telephone it was a four party line, so you had to wait until the phone was not busy to use it. There was always the chance that someone was listening in on our conversation.

I found out when I told my mother that I wasn't going to or did not want to do what she said that she saw to it that I did as she said. I find that it is still true in life now. I try not to say that I would never do something, because that may be what you end up doing later on in life.