# pre grid 1930's living



## wormlady (Oct 8, 2004)

Dad was born in 1929, the very beginning of the Depression. Some of his reminiscences follow:

Power: Rural electrification was not completed in his area (90 miles outside of NYC) until 1939.
Prior to that point, power was generated by an engine bolted to an cement block in the cellar. The engine was started with gas (crank engine), but run on kerosene, which cost $.05 at the time.

The engine powered sixteen 32 volt batteries. They did not need to use the generator every day. The following appliances were powered by the battery array:
Iron
Food mixer
Toaster 
Wringer washer
Curling iron
Radio
Lights (floor, table and ceiling)
Bench grinder (out in the shop)

Heat:
A woodstove in the living room
A wood cookstove in the kitchen
Hot water heat &#8211; radiators in all the bedrooms

Food and food storage
Each winter, blocks of ice were cut from one of the nearby lakes and hauled to the ice house. Blocks were stacked &#8211; with layers of sawdust between for insulation.
There was no refrigerator, but an icebox, filled periodically with a block of ice from the ice house.

Food was dehydrated (solar), canned (water bath or oven &#8211;Grandma was afraid to use a pressure canner), smoked, fermented or pickled. Eggs were stored in glassine. These eggs were only used in baking.

Laundry
The wringer washer was in the cellar. Grandma used this for a family of 7. It was still in use as late as the mid 1960&#8217;s, because I remember Mom putting a pair of my brother&#8217;s rubber pants through the wringer and hearing a loud pop.

Grandma hung laundry on the outside line in the summer, in the cellar during the winter. My dad and uncle bought her an electric dryer sometime in the 70&#8217;s. As far as Dad knew, she never used it. It sat on the cement block where the generator once stood.

Water

A hand pump brought water to the kitchen sink. The well was in the cellar.
The outhouse was in use until 1939, when indoor plumbing was installed - one bathroom for 7.

Amusement
I don&#8217;t know that my dad and aunts and uncle had lots of time for amusement. One aunt bought herself a radio with money she earned. My dad and his other sister bought a bike with their pooled money.
There wasn&#8217;t a lot of free time though. The kids worked hard at farm chores. They sold sweet corn to tourists from New York City. 100 ears of corn for $1.00!!!!
When I was a girl, some of our leisure time was spent gathering food &#8211; corn, tomatoes, potatoes&#8230;Food was always best at Grandma&#8217;s &#8211; not because Mom wasn&#8217;t a good cook, but because the food was oh, so fresh!


----------



## wormlady (Oct 8, 2004)

I'm trying to pick Dad's brain and get as much info as I can. Any questions you want me to ask?

I'm amazed to think that he can remember all this stuff, but when he was 16 he began studying to be an electrical engineer - so I think power was always important to him.


----------



## tab (Aug 20, 2002)

Will try to redo later, lots of q's.


----------



## elkhound (May 30, 2006)

huh...we didnt get a power dam here until 1939...most folks and families didnt get electric here till 50's .


most folks didnt have a drilled well....no power....they had cisterns and several men made their living hauling water.theres pipes sticking out of ground along our roads where people still take jugs to fill for drinking water.if i get by one i will take pictures yall might find that interesting.one is built like a root cellar too.our old barn had a huge cistern for water critters at the barn.


----------



## ldc (Oct 11, 2006)

My mother's family was holed up in Starlight, PA during the War. They didn't get electricity til the 50's. They were also approx 90 miles away from NYC. The only electric was for a milk cooler that a neighboring raw milk dairy had to have by law. Their former house is now the post office there.


----------



## stef (Sep 14, 2002)

Wormlady. I really enjoyed reading your story. Does your Dad remember how they dealt with personal hygiene? Like washing their hair, hair cuts, baths or showers, tooth brushing, and so on.


----------



## JohnP (Sep 1, 2010)

elkhound said:


> huh...we didnt get a power dam here until 1939...most folks and families didnt get electric here till 50's .
> 
> 
> most folks didnt have a drilled well....no power....they had cisterns and several men made their living hauling water.*theres pipes sticking out of ground along our roads where people still take jugs to fill for drinking water*.if i get by one i will take pictures yall might find that interesting.one is built like a root cellar too.our old barn had a huge cistern for water critters at the barn.


We had them where I grew up in New England. We got some on occasion. Good stuff.Fresh cold spring water. No reverse osmosis to strip the minerals out just to add them back in "for taste" like bottled water.


----------



## wormlady (Oct 8, 2004)

Stef, I asked Dad about personal hygiene tonight while we were porch sittin'. He remembers a lot less about that than the power system, but I suppose that is typical of 10 year old boys. 

They would wash their faces and hands at the kitchen sink. They would brush their teeth with either salt or baking soda - because it was cheaper and because Grandma thought it did a better job.

I forgot to ask about the haircuts, but my grandma was a tightwad jedi master - I'm sure she cut all the kids' hair.

They got indoor plumbing around the time they got connected to the grid, but he does remember his uncle carrying a tub - 'heavier than any man should carry' on his back up to the second floor. Dad vaguely remembers carrying water up to that.

Several years ago we visited a historical home of about the same period. A metal bucket that had several holes punched in it was suspended over the tub for 'showers'.


----------



## unregistered41671 (Dec 29, 2009)

wormlady said:


> Dad was born in 1929, the very beginning of the Depression. Some of his reminiscences follow:
> 
> Power: Rural electrification was not completed in his area (90 miles outside of NYC) until 1939.
> Prior to that point, power was generated by an engine bolted to an engine block in the cellar. The engine was started with gas (crank engine), but run on kerosene, which cost $.05 at the time.
> ...


Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy the comforts I have but...... we have become soft. Thank you for posting this.


----------



## ET1 SS (Oct 22, 2005)

My parents were 8 and 10 when the Great Depression hit. Along with the Dust Bowl both of their families lost their farms and had to move seeking work.

Mostly the same area that had the horrible drought last year and again this year.

I have a photo of myself in a diaper, tied to a row of grape vines, playing in the sand. My family used me as a row marker when they were migratory picking.

I grew up hearing a lot of stories about the depression and about droughts.


----------



## armysurplus (Aug 4, 2010)

My father lived through the depression and I was always captivated by his stories of hard times. I remember him telling me about personal hygiene during that period. Once spring broke they all bathed in a stream behind his house (about 200 yards). He always liked Ivory Soap because it floated. In late fall he had to hall the water up to the house few times a week so that his parents, sister, and him could bath. They heated the water on the wood stove. Because he was the youngest and a boy, he bathed last. I remember him telling me that the water was always cold and filthy. Bathing became less frequent during the winter but he never told me how often. I know that my Grandfather bath more than everyone else because he was working as a boiler man at a factory. Sponge baths were also used in between baths.


----------



## ET1 SS (Oct 22, 2005)

armysurplus said:


> My father lived through the depression and I was always captivated by his stories of hard times. I remember him telling me about personal hygiene during that period. Once spring broke they all bathed in a stream behind his house (about 200 yards). He always liked Ivory Soap because it floated. In late fall he had to hall the water up to the house few times a week so that his parents, sister, and him could bath. They heated the water on the wood stove. Because he was the youngest and a boy, he bathed last. I remember him telling me that the water was always cold and filthy. Bathing became less frequent during the winter but he never told me how often. I know that my Grandfather bath more than everyone else because he was working as a boiler man at a factory. Sponge baths were also used in between baths.


When I was a child we all bathed once a week. As the youngest I went last, and the water was cold and muddy.

I think that many Okies developed habits that they never got out of.


----------



## sss3 (Jul 15, 2007)

My Mother was a child of the Depression. She told me how they dehydrated things. They'd get up on the roof of the house w/screens. They raised chickens, gardened, canned everything they could. Her Dad was a handyman. So to get beef they would barter what they had or his handyman work. She told me during the Depression; they never went hungry. Also, said during this time; she made a quilt for someone for 50 cents. She would have liked HT.


----------



## Horse Fork Farm (Jan 3, 2006)

Would you ask him if his mother put her baby chicks under the wood cookstove to keep them warm? I'd like to hear more details about his generator/ battery banks and how it all worked, pretty interesting stuff! And please thank him for telling these things!


----------



## wormlady (Oct 8, 2004)

elkhound said:


> huh...we didnt get a power dam here until 1939...most folks and families didnt get electric here till 50's .
> 
> 
> most folks didnt have a drilled well....no power....they had cisterns and several men made their living hauling water.theres pipes sticking out of ground along our roads where people still take jugs to fill for drinking water.if i get by one i will take pictures yall might find that interesting.one is built like a root cellar too.our old barn had a huge cistern for water critters at the barn.


Grandpa was a well driller by trade. He also built that house, so I think he drilled the well (not sure how - I'll ask Dad and see if he knows) and built the house over it.

Grandpa was born in 1895. He quit school after the fourth grade and went to work. He had an ox and a cart and he would haul gravel to various building sites - particularly bridge constructions. Can you imagine a 10 year old doing that today?

My auntwas disabled. She didn't go to school, but took care of all the family's mending/sewing and was a great help to Grandma in the kitchen. One day she told Grandpa, "I don't mind the fact that I'm crippled, but I don't want to be stupid." Grandpa went right out and hired a tutor, a woman who came to the house several times a week to tutor Aunt D.


----------



## wormlady (Oct 8, 2004)

elkhound, I googled 'drilling wells with oxen' and came up with this post.

Interestingly enough - this is the same are Dad grew up in, I'll have to ask him if he knows the well driller (or is related to him  ). 

The folks had a hand pump in the kitchen in order to get water up to the sink. They hauled water to the second floor. And every bedroom had a chamber pot under the bed.


----------



## tab (Aug 20, 2002)

Had a bunch of q's, could probably talk your dad's arm off! On the electric, was it set up like solar is now? Inverter and such? Was the engine vented? On water outside, was a wind mill used? They used to be all over for cattle but are gone now. Do not know how they worked. Did they keep animals, grow feed, how was it stored, what were rations, what was used for bedding? 
My dad has been gone a long time now. He did not talk much about growing up. Lots of things I wish I could ask.


----------



## Huntinfamily (Aug 14, 2010)

When I was in school I had to interview and do a report about someone that lived during the Great Depression. Knowing my Grandfather as a great storyteller and young man during the depression I used him. I can't remember everything he told me but I do remember him telling me about how they made food money. Since they lived in New Jersey next to railroad tracks that were used to haul coal to the factories in NY all the neighborhood kids would walk the tracks daily gathering coal that fell off of hopper cars and take it to the "rich section of town" to sell or trade for food. 
He also remembered going to his aunts house in northern NJ during the summer with his parents to work on farms up there as laborers. He said they would work at different farms for a few weeks picking corn or vegetables in exchange for food. When their car broke and couldn't be repaired they traded it for an (his words here) old brokedown horse and rotten old wagon. I still remember him chuckling and saying "yup, life was simple back then". 
I remember as I was growing up thinking to myself "wow, Pop can fix anything". I asked him once how he learned how to fix so much stuff. He told me that when you work so hard to get something you take great care of it because if it breaks and you can't fix it you may never be able to replace it. 
Now that he's gone I sure do regret not having spent more time on his front porch listening to those old stories.


----------



## wormlady (Oct 8, 2004)

I know what you mean huntinfamily. I thought I'd better get busy and record Dad's memories while I can!

Correction: the well in the cellar was not drilled - it was hand dug. I'm not sure how far they had to go to get water. In 39 when they got electric, Grandpa drilled the well with either a gas or diesel engine.

I forwarded that link with the blog written by the guy who hired the well driller who uses ox to drill to my cousin. Turns out her brother and nephew both have worked with that guy. Small world!


----------



## sss3 (Jul 15, 2007)

One theme I'm seeing in these threads is, everyone wishes they would have gotten more info from older relatives. I thought we did that when Mom was alive. My Brothers sat her down and even recorded what she said many times. I thought we had everything taken care of as far as the the past. And, don't you know; things have come up that only she could have answered.


----------



## Ozarks Tom (May 27, 2011)

Boy, you guys sure make me feel old. Being born in '45, I remember the late '40s and early '50s in rural Minnesota. My dad bought an army surplus supply building (pre-fab), and built it over a sandpoint well he'd driven. Divided it into rooms. No insulation, kerosene lamps for illumination, chemical toilet (finally) replaced the outhouse. Baths on Saturday night in the kitchen in a galvanized tub, water heated on the woodstove.

He was born in 1898, so he saw it all. Lived in a sod house in N. Dakota, and became a traveling salesman at 10 years old, driving a team and wagon selling berry bushes and strawberry plants to other plains farmers. Wherever he was at his last call was where he'd have supper and spend the night. He saw the roaring 20s in Chicago, even met Al Capone! Sold Packards thoughout the depression, and became a machinist during WWII. Never did explain why they moved to the country after the war.

As an interesting side note, while building the supply building/house, he showed a lumber yard owner how he'd designed the windows to fill the holes he'd cut in the walls. You can buy windows with that design now from Anderson Windows. Dad always was a lousy businessman.


----------



## silverseeds (Apr 28, 2012)

very interesting thread. 

No real knowledge survived in my family from the era. All i could add was my grandmas family on one side lived along some railroad tracks. they fed anyone who came along who was willing to work for it. expand the garden, forage, etc etc. Wouldnt work for all scenarios of course... but it worked for them at the time and they were proud they had shared what they could. Some people stayed on a few years! Some just a night. Atleast one (as far as I know it was just one the way the story was told, bu no one said specifically it was) had to be chased off with a lot of drama, refusing to help for his share, and refusing to leave. Interesting to note the family did NOT have to deal with the slacker, they had a wide buffer zone of helpers. Which I find very thought provoking.


----------



## Spinner (Jul 19, 2003)

Horse Fork Farm said:


> Would you ask him if his mother put her baby chicks under the wood cookstove to keep them warm?


Can I butt in here for a minute? lol

When I was a kid we heated with a pot belly stove in the dining room. Every spring we'd order 300 baby chicks that were delivered by the mailman. We'd get them early and they had to be kept real warm until they feathered out. Here's how we did it...

We took several boards and set them up on the sides to make a small pen around the stove. The floor was linoleum so we covered it with newspapers for easier cleanup. 

We set the water containers in there, sprinkled chick food around, then turned out the chicks into their own little indoor corral. They could move close or away from the heat of the stove to stay comfortable. At night they would usually be as far from it as possible, and by morning they would all be huddled right under the stove. Come morning when dad built the fire up they would move out again.

Every now and then we'd loose one and it was considered a major loss. We all knew we'd never get the eggs that hen would have laid, have the chicks she would have hatched, or at the very least we'd loose out on a future chicken dinner if the chick was a roo.

When they got their wing feathers, dad would put together an enclosed 4' x 8' box outside. We'd hang a couple lights in there for warmth, then move them all out to the box. During the day we'd let them run free, but shortly before sundown we'd all go out and catch them to put them back in the box for the night.


----------



## newfieannie (Dec 24, 2006)

very interesting thread! my father was born in 1900 so i heard a lot of this from him and my husband was born in 22 and i got a lot of info from him also. when i was growing up we still had the outhouse in the yard but only for us kids when we were playing outside. the women in the family always cut everyones hair. i learned to do it while watching mom and after awhile i did all that. for the mattress they had goose feathers also the pillows. dad had a bathroom with tub sink and toilet in our house long before the water and sewer went through our town. i can't remember not having it. ~Georgia.


----------



## Rocktown Gal (Feb 19, 2008)

elkhound said:


> huh...we didnt get a power dam here until 1939...most folks and families didnt get electric here till 50's .
> 
> 
> most folks didnt have a drilled well....no power....they had cisterns and several men made their living hauling water.theres pipes sticking out of ground along our roads where people still take jugs to fill for drinking water.if i get by one i will take pictures yall might find that interesting.one is built like a root cellar too.our old barn had a huge cistern for water critters at the barn.


Elkhound we have those water buildings here too. And we still have water haulers.


----------



## wormlady (Oct 8, 2004)

Dad and I porch sat for a while tonight and I took your questions down to him. I think it is fun for him to remember the 'good ol' days'.

*Horse Fork Farm*, you asked about keeping chickens under the woodstove to keep them warm. Dad does not recall ever having chickens in the house. Grandma was a neat-nik, I don't think the dogs even came in. They didn't hatch eggs, they bought the chicks and put them straight into the chicken coop. Love hearing *Spinner's* recollections.

The rest of the questions were asked by *tab*. Here are the questions and answers:
*Was your electric set up like solar is now*? No, says Dad, it was integral to the house. (tab, I hope you know what that means cuz I have no clue, lol).
*Inverters?* No such thing. It was DC to DC. (again, I hope you understand this!)
*Engine vented*? Yes, there was a pipe going to the outside.
*Windmill for outside water?* No, all hand pumped and carried - even for the animals and there was no pond or stream on the property.
*What animals did you keep?* Chickens, calves, rabbits, pigs. Three milk cows, except for the year they had 9 when Grandpa wanted to try selling milk. They butchered the calves. They ate wild meat too - venison, partridge, pheasant. And fish.
Grandma made butter and cheese.
*What did you use for feed?* The cows were in the pasture, and also got about a gallon of grain a day. The pigs had skim milk and all the scraps from the kitchen.
*How was it stored?* They bought the feed in 100 pound feed sacks. They stored the feed in barrels and Grandma and Aunt D. would make the sacks into clothing, aprons, etc.
*What did you use for bedding?* Dad doesn't recall any special bedding - hay? straw?

In addition to the questions, here is some more info I gleaned:
Grandma dehydrated food on the back porch in a screened box that Grandpa made. They primarily dehydrated corn. Remember, Grandma was afraid of pressure canners and primarily canned (water bath or oven) her food. But the corn would get moldy so instead she would dry it. I'm thankful they all survived!

As I mentioned, they had to carry water to the animals - from the house. The house was probably 75 feet from the barn. When Dad was 12 or 13, he as given the job of digging a ditch to lay a pipe to get water to the barn. The ditch was 42 inches deep (to avoid frost) and wide enough for him to stand in. He started with a pick ax as there was a lot of hard pan. "A pick per shovelful" he said. It was hard work and took him a long time, but he has always liked that type of work. And when he finished he no longer had to carry buckets of water from the house to the barn.


----------



## wormlady (Oct 8, 2004)

Dad and Grandpa would cut wood with a crosscut saw. Dad said even when he was 15 or 16 and on the basketball team and in pretty good physical shape, Grandpa could 'kill' him on that saw.

They would fell the logs and borrow the neighbor's horse to skid the logs out of the woods. Grandpa grew up with horses, but never owned any of his own. But I guess he was kind of a 'horse whisperer'. 

He worked with a horse named 'Prince' for the first time and it still amazes Dad to this day how Grandpa could get that horse to do what he wanted..

Horses don't back up easily, according to Dad, but Grandpa would tell Prince "*Come here **together'*" and gently cluck his tongue and that horse would back up so that Grandpa could put the tongs (not sure if that is the right term?) on the log. Grandpa showed the horse once, what he wanted him to do and after that - the horse did it. 

*Come here together *- what in the world does that mean??

I'm not sure if Grandpa was such a great horse whisperer or if that was really one smart horse.

I am so enjoying all your stories. Many of you, like me, love to hear those stories and I think gain hope, that if our relatives could survive hard times (much harder than we have now) than we can too.

Please keep the stories coming and if you have any more questions for Dad, I'll be pleased to ask them and he'll be pleased to answer.


----------



## backwoods (Sep 12, 2004)

Horse Fork Farm said:


> Would you ask him if his mother put her baby chicks under the wood cookstove to keep them warm? I'd like to hear more details about his generator/ battery banks and how it all worked, pretty interesting stuff! And please thank him for telling these things!


Our neighbors still put baby chicks in a box behind/under the wood cookstove. They also put a gallon jug of hot water in there at night before they go to bed to help keep them warm, with a lid on it of course.


----------



## ovsfarm (Jan 14, 2003)

For those lamenting the lost opportunity to talk with elderly relatives, contact your local nursing homes! In my area there are plenty of residents who would love the chance to talk "rural and agricultural history" with others. Some have family who visit regularly, but who aren't particularly interested in the specific details of homesteading. Others don't get any visitors at all and love the opportunity to chat about their lives.

When we were homeschooling 2nd grade for my dd, she was really into the Pathways readers (stories with an Amish/Mennonite lifestyle focus). So I would take her to the local nursing home and she would practice by reading the Pathways stories aloud to the residents. Many of them had been raised in similar non-electric circumstances and we got to hear many interesting reminiscences about the "good old days" from them. It seemed that they were willing to be especially detailed to explain things to a little 8yo girl!

It was a wonderful experience for dd and I and the residents seemed to really enjoy it also. So do consider this. It was a fascinating experience.


----------



## Digger (Nov 1, 2003)

My great aunt had a premature baby in the 30's. The doctor did not think the baby would make it. But the midwife put Ulyss in a wooden box and set the box on the open oven door of the wood cookstove. That tiny baby lived into his 70'S.


----------



## tab (Aug 20, 2002)

Thanks for that info. I understand the integral and dc, at least in a general way. I have to do some research now. All of this is good info and interesting. 
Funny how we view work, I would really hate to dig a ditch like that. 
On our farm there are many stone walls, some mighty big boulders. I wonder often how those rocks were moved, horse, mule some with tractors? It helps me to keep perspective, if that makes sense. We really do have it easy and yet it doesn't stop the complaining.


----------



## jwal10 (Jun 5, 2010)

I grew up in a house with running water....on the back porch. It was gravity flow from a spring up the hill. No bathroom, we had an outhouse, woodstove and lantern light. I left home at 12 and lived in a chicken coop with a rain barrel until I got the cabin built the fall before we got married in November. We had a pump out back on the well pipe....James


----------



## myheaven (Apr 14, 2006)

I heard few stories for my grandmother. Her brother Tommy was small and wasnt ment to make it but did. Great grandma put him in a small box lined with great grandpas flannel with goose featheres between the box and flannel. Tommy is still alive. Greatgrand never wasted anything. Fish heads and such went directly to the garden.my mother and grandmother always said great grand can grow anything anywhere even children. I got that gift. I'm greatful! Great grand always cooked from scratch. A lot from the garden. Fresh as you could get it. I was very young when great grand passed away. I remember a small fisty woman who yelle a lot in a odd language ( Hungarian) and smiled and told me you to little eat eat. And always had Candy to eat. She buried everything cuz " you never trust the bank". 
My husband bough me the whole set of the "great depression cookery" he even went to the womans house to buy the remainder of the set for me. Lol. I devoured them like wonderful dark chocolate. It educated me a lot. With great grand and The books set my mind. I have always had a green thumb and never Excepted the word can't. To me everything can have a second life. My husbands old shirts are being made into baby blankets and underwear for the little ones. We are buying " scraps of cloth " aka old t shirts and pants for 50 cents a garbage bag to make the kids new clothes. Money is to tight to do anything else. Make due or do with out use it up or go without. 
Some may call me argumentative but I just can't accept a cant or no answer. If there is a will there is a way.


----------



## wormlady (Oct 8, 2004)

myheaven, thanks for sharing. When you said, "Greatgrand never wasted anything" that reminded me of my grandma too.

Backe behind their garage was a pit - the garbage pit. It looked really deep to me, but I imagine it was about 4 feet deep. They put stuff in their that couldn't be reused and every once in a while they threw a match in there. No garbage pick-up fees, no runs to the dump. There was precious little garbage in there compared to what we throw away today...

And regarding food - if we ate everything up - Grandma worried that she didn't make enough. If we didn't eat everything - she worried that there was something wrong with it.

And you know what? I'm the same way.

James - I bet you could tell us some stories!


----------



## ACountryMomma (Aug 10, 2008)

My father was a child of the depression & he said that he and his siblings (who lived in town) would shovel snow for a nickle. In the summer they hauled water out to guys working construction (one he talked about a lot was one of the Mississippi river dams). He said he remembered visiting a relative and they still had a dirt floor. He also said they had one stove for heat & cooking and in the winter everyone slept in the room with the stove to keep warm.

My mother grew up in the 50's but her family was also not well off. Her father often traded his service as a carpenter for things they needed. She remembers being a kid & hauling bucket after bucket of water out to the garden. They also hung laundry to dry in the basement during the winter. Her dad hunted to put some extra meat on the table.

Growing up with parents who lived in difficult times taught me to hold on to everything... Which drives my husband (whose parents are younger than my mother & whose parents _themselves _were as old as my dad) CRAZY. But he is often thankful to find that I saved this or that when a moment of need rolls around.

OH, someone asked about entertaining themselves. They played dominoes, cards, dad still played baseball as a young man, they read books & fished, went on walks every evening after supper, etc. AND most families had a community organization they were involved with. Be it church or Masons or the Odd Fellows.


----------



## emdeengee (Apr 20, 2010)

We have a friend who was born in 1919. His Mom was a school teacher and his father was a farm hand who worked on her family&#8217;s farm. When her Father died she inherited the farm &#8211; which in those days meant he inherited the farm. His father and a neighbor were friends and together their big ideas ran both farms deep into debt just in time for the Great Depression. They of course lost both farms. 

Both families moved to a plot of land in northern Alberta that was owned by the neighbor &#8211; he had title but had not paid for years but it was so far in the bush that he was not worried that anyone would bother them. Our friend, his Mother and Father and four siblings survived for over 2 years living in tents and then very rough cabins, hunting, fishing and trapping. My friend said they didn&#8217;t starve and they didn&#8217;t freeze but everything else was miserable but they worked hard and did not complain and were actually quite happy kids. Then his father ran away with the teenage daughter of the neighbor. They never saw him again. 

He was 14 at that time and had to be the man of his family. They stayed almost another year but one day the neighbor decided that his Mom and sister owed him sex in exchange for living on his land. He wanted to kill the neighbor but his Mother would not let him. They left with nowhere to go and ended up in a small city. They slept in their truck or &#8220;flop houses&#8221; for 5 months while he and his Mother worked at anything they could get and his sister minded the kids. They lived hand to mouth in poverty until his sister married and Mom and the three younger kids moved into her husband&#8217;s house. By this time the war was starting and he joined up. Learned to be a cook and then spent the rest of his life working in construction camps. 

He said his Mother was a pillar of strength while all the troubles were going on but grew very bitter and angry as she grew older because she could not forget that the misery they endured did not need to have happened. She inherited a farm that had no debt along with a sizeable amount of cash. If her husband had not blown it all and this had still been the situation when the Depression hit they could have weathered it on the farm but there was no money left and huge debts so the debt ruined everything for them.


----------



## lonelyfarmgirl (Feb 6, 2005)

I find this info very interesting. My elders died when I was young, so I never really got the chance to talk with them like this. 

I wonder what they fed the rabbits? 
Did they actually have toilet paper?
How did grandma make cheese? Certainly not with store bought rennet and fancy frozen cultures.


----------



## wormlady (Oct 8, 2004)

Good questions, lonelyfarmgirl. I'll have to check with Dad about the t.p. I'm pretty sure they didn't use Ch*rm*n! 

Grandma only made cottage cheese, I don't believe you need rennet or fancy cultures for that. 

I'm thinking they fed the rabbits commercial feed, supplemented but greens from the garden.

But I'll get back to you on that after we porch sit tonight.


----------



## sustainabilly (Jun 20, 2012)

My mom was near the bottom of a heap of 7 kids growing up in central WI. Grandma was a nurse and used to take in babies that were without a home. So there were times when the house could get pretty crazy. Mom said they had a big garden and never bought any vegs. They usually canned enough for ~ 2 qts/day. Over 700 qts. Till the day she passed, I never saw her eat a yellow wax bean. She said she'd had enough for two lifetimes, growing up. 

I remember Grandma had an old wringer washer in the basement. With a steady supply of babies in the house, the going punishment for misbehaving was... you guessed it, dirty diaper detail.

Grandma liked to talk about living in N WI & the U.P. when young. Grt Gramps worked for the railroad and they moved alot. Most of the houses had newspaper (at best) in the walls for insulation. I think maybe he did a little bootlegging too. 

She would talk about how the kids would sit on the suitcases in the back seat when they were moving and she'd always laugh when she said "it's a good thing those cops were never smart enough to look in the suitcases."


----------



## Huntinfamily (Aug 14, 2010)

This is such a great thread. I just read everyones comments again and am sitting here with a notebook writing some of this stuff down. Please please please folks, keep this thread going. The wealth of info we can glean from our older generation is invaluable.


----------



## MJsLady (Aug 16, 2006)

I wish my mom had told me stories. She was 6 when the crash came.
I know from things my older brother says that she left school in 3rd grade to go to work, she got up to 6th via correspondence course.

He also says they didn't live in a real house. They lived in a hooverville.


----------



## wormlady (Oct 8, 2004)

Back from porch sittin' with a few answers.

Regarding rabbit food - as far as Dad can remember they did not give the rabbits commercial feed but greens and carrots from the garden.

Toilet paper? Yes, they had toilet paper in the outhouse, but you were limited to 2 squares per job. 

I asked him if they used Sears and Roebucks catalogs for tp and he said that they used that for doorstops. They folded back individual pages on the diagonal and the catalog fanned out and kept the doors from slamming shut.

I asked Dad if they ever 'grilled out' or cooked outside. The only outdoor cooking was the smoker - Grandpa could expertly set up the fire in the morning so it would slowly smoke the hams throughout the day.

They would eat outside though. Grandpa made a picnic table big enough to seat 12 and it was the site of many summer suppers.

They only took one vacation to visit some relatives about 200 miles away. Dad said that was like Christmas - they planned for months and months for that trip - new tires, valve job, packing and lots of anticipation.

The entertainment along the way? Anytime the kids saw an outhouse they hooted and hollered out the car windows.


----------



## myheaven (Apr 14, 2006)

I remember my grandma saying they made their monthly supplys. It was just a small square of cloth sewn into a tube and stuffed with a few rag cloths or an absorbent material.it had straps ten went to a belt for around your waist to keep it in place.The water from the washing and absorbent material if disposable went to the garden. 
The bath tub was a small cast iron tub. It is still in use in my great grands house. I often us a rubbermade tub to wash the smallest children. And wash the dirtiest clothes that way. Why waste so much water for those jobs? All waste water went to the garden. You only used soap if it was absolutely needed. " alls you need is water to be clean. Often times a little salt, baking soda or vinegar went a long way in cleaning. 
Only time you went to the dump was to find something. When we go to the dump is often like Christmas. They save out anything useful. Often we get first dibs. We have some very rich People around here and get ride of stuff just cus it's last season. I don't get it! But hey that's ok with me!


----------



## Maverick_mg (Mar 11, 2010)

My grandparents were kids durning the depression. They tell me GGrandma used to take lard and mix it with food coloring so it would looked like they butter. My grandma said at one point her family lived in a basement that her dad was gonna build a house on top of but never did. They raised rabbits and her dad and brothers would hunt and fish and she always had to clean what ever they got that day. She taught me to can tomatoes and I took it from there learning to can other veggies. 
My dads grandparents were from Poland and were the original farmers in the family. He and his 7 brothers and sisters had to work on the farm every summer and every Sunday his grandma would make dinner for the whole family. It was the only day where they all had enough to eat to make them full. 
The farm is still in the family. It has a cistern and they would pump water up to a tank in the attic that would feed the sink, tub and toilet by gravity. It also had one of the only octagon barns in the area, I personally only know of one other one still standing. Grandma used it as a chicken coop and granary.


----------



## jwal10 (Jun 5, 2010)

We didn't have much for toys when I was a kid. I did have a stuffed "owl" instead of a teddy bear that Grandma made from grey cloth with features drawn on with a marker. I was hurt in an accident when I was in first grade, the other boys came to see me in the hospital and shared some of their toys with me. A year later when I got polio Grandad carried me into the farm equipment store to buy a toy tractor and wagon with a silver dollar I got for my birthday.

We bathed in an old galvanized tub that hung on the back porch. Another one was under the faucet on the back porch. We used the outhouse out behind the woodshed. The old house had a piece of linoleum on the livingroom floor about 8' square, (the room was 12'x14') it had newspapers under it to keep the floorboards from making creases in it (but it still had creases and wear marks from the uneven floorboards). The wind blew in the winter right up through the floorboards around the linolium. There was a huge wood stove, an old davenport, the big dining table and Dads big chair in the livingroom. In the corner was a built-in bookshelf with a few books. The kitchen was bare floor, had a wood cookstove and a table in the middle, a small table for bread making along 1 wall instead of a counter and the old buffet for dishes. No refrigerator, just the springhouse. Dishes were put in a big aluminium dishpan and hauled to the back porch to wash, along with a pot of hot water heated on the stove. The old house was a garage, a small shed and a small cabin all drug to the site and jacked up on big oak rounds. The kitchen was the small shed, the old cabin was the living room. The old garage was divided for 2 bedrooms and a floor was built inside it. Us 3 boys slept in a full sized bed in that little room with 1 little window. A back porch was added and later enclosed for a utility room. Dad later built a Gambrel roof over it all for bedrooms upstairs. Mom and Dad sold the farm in 1980 and the new owner had to jack up the house because the floor joists had settled into the ground because the site was never leveled and the rain water ran under the house rotting the wood blocks it set on. The new owner said it would have been easier and better to just burned it down and started over.

I learned a lot from my Grandparents but both my parents went through the depression also. Neither had money, Moms side went through the dust bowl in Kansas. Hardy people. I left home at 12 to farm on my own. Things were tough, I lived in a chicken coop until I got the cabin built. Sweetie and I moved our things in the day before we were married so we came home from our honeymoon to a new place. We lived there for 11 years until we had to sell because my health went bad. The doctors didn't know if I would live or not, we had a house built in town so Sweetie would have a nice place. I slowly got my health back but we missed the country. We bought an old place (4 ac) with an old barn and a pond to go to. The barn was rotted out so we built a small replica from the materials we salvaged. We wanted to build there but never did. It was a great place for the kids to get away from town. We spent all our summers out there, camping, fishing and swimming. We bought the offgrid cabin property and built there. It was our getaway. We bought this place 2 years after we were married, for a rental, we remodeled it and rented it out. It was too small for our family. We moved to the offgrid cabin full time for 1 year before I got sick again. I retired Jan 2010 but living at the offgrid cabin was too hard so we moved here to the cottage. Our daughter lives in the family home in town. Living at the offgrid cabin was great, it fit our lifestyle, very laid back. We hope to get back there next year when I retire for good. We have always lived frugally, not for lack of money, it is just the way we are. We like old things, old ways, simple and plain. My Grandparents sold what they had at a farm sale, loaded up a pickup with what meant the most to them and headed to Oregon in 1953 to start over. They never owned land in Kansas but Grandpa got a job at a sawmill in Sweethome Oregon and they bought a little house. They were in heaven, in love and lived happily and content until Grandad got lung cancer. He died when I was 12.....James


----------



## partndn (Jun 18, 2009)

jwal10 said:


> I grew up in a house with running water....on the back porch. It was gravity flow from a spring up the hill. No bathroom, we had an outhouse, woodstove and lantern light. I left home at 12 and lived in a chicken coop with a rain barrel until I got the cabin built the fall before we got married in November. We had a pump out back on the well pipe....James


Does that mean you got married at 12? :shocked: One of my aunts rode off on her bike one day, and was married when she got back. I think she was 14. The fella was leaving for the navy. So she came on back home after the marriage and didn't tell her folks for about a month. 

My daddy is still living and was also one of 8 during the depression. About half of them were born in a house with a dirt floor. I think the next house they had was the one he said you could see their chickens through the cracks in the floorboards running around under the house.

They stored their cool things in the stream about 50 yards from the house. Everyone in the area used it for that purpose. I asked him one time if people stole each other's things. He said he couldn't remember that happening. Then he thought for a minute and said "I don't think anybody would have tried that but once."


----------



## AR Transplant (Mar 20, 2004)

this brings back some great memories. 
We had a grandma and grandpa who lived on a farm in north west Missouri. 
She had a huge garden, grapes and chickens, pigs, and cattle. I never remember her baking bread, as soon as she could buy it from the store she did. We always had the nasty white stuff, she always bought the whole wheat loaf that we loved.
She sold her eggs and cream at the store and used the money to buy material to make clothes.
They had a big bath tub and she heated water in a big tea pot on the back of a big electric stove. The kids wanted to put in a hot water heater for grandma in the 60's but my stubborn grandpa wouldn't allow it, said she didn't need it. 

She had a big copper boiler on a gas stove in the basement that she heated water in for the wash, which was of course, a wringer washer. I can still smell that damp basement. We hung the clothes on a clothes line just outside the basement door.
She had a reputation for the best peaches, and sold them by the bushel. I would love to know what they charged for them.
They had running water in the kitchen and a small separate toilet put in an old closet. We were never allowed to drink from the faucet, we had to drink from the bucket of water that was drawn from the cistern at the back of the house. 
My mother and uncle used to ride an old horse to school. And, like mentioned earlier, my uncle was also premature and was put in a box on the oven door.
My grandma lost at least one baby and never once did she ever discuss it with any of her children.
My grandma has really influenced me to get back to the land.


----------



## backwoods (Sep 12, 2004)

I remember my great grandmother calling the couch a davenport, and sometimes she'd call one a divan. I now know what she meant, but at 5 yrs old, I just giggled when she'd say it. ( a davenport is a sleeper sofa, a divan was an earlier version of an unholstered sofa) I also remember her shaking her head and saying, "Well I swan!" She never cut her hair, never "cursed" and always worked hard. My mom told me during the depression that she always had a pot of pinto beans and a skillet full of fried potatoes and cornbread on the woodstove. They didn't have much variety, but always had plenty to eat. I love this thread!


----------



## gardenmom (Dec 31, 2004)

My grandmother had twins in the 20's. One, my mother, was chubby and pink. The other, my uncle, was smaller,weaker and blue. My great grandmother sat all night in front of the open oven door of the cookstove warming and rubbing his little arms and legs. He just celebrated his 89th birthday and is still training horses and working cattle. My grandmother remembers her two grandfathers. One served in the Union army and one in the Conferderate army. They both lived with her family when they were old. They used to sit on the front porch and swap stories. The grandchildren were allowed to sit with them and listen as long as they kept quiet.


----------



## SFM in KY (May 11, 2002)

I grew up on a relatively remote ranch in MT (nearest town was 60 miles over gravel roads) from the time I was 6 years old, no siblings, parents and maternal grandparents and I do remember a lot of the stories. My mother kept saying she needed to write down what she remembered and didn't ... I've been saying the same thing for years myself and now, at 70 ... I've actually started ... but now, so many things I don't remember.

The original part of the ranch was 620 acres homesteaded by my maternal grandparents in 1915. My grandmother and the two little girls stayed at the homestead cabin while my grandfather worked as a ranch hand/cowboy at a ranch some 60 miles away for $40 a month, which was needed to buy food and supplies. He got home one weekend a month, as I recall. They went to town with a team and wagon twice a year ... early summer and in the fall. They started with chickens and a milk cow, put in a garden, which had to be watered by hand from a spring about 100 feet from the house. No stream, no well. They later added to the homestead section and moved to the larger ranch house there, 3 miles away but closer to the county road, still gravel but some maintenance. Creek ran through that property and there was a well and a cistern for rainwater.

My parents built a cabin at the home place and we moved there when I was 5 years old (1947). There was no electricity, didn't get REA until I was 10 or 12 years old and even after than, did not get running water in the house or indoor plumbing or telephones until the 1960s after I was grown and gone.

We ran beef cattle but had several cows that gave enough milk to have as milk cows. Had chickens, sometimes turkeys, pigs for a few years and a big garden. Most of our food came from our own garden, canned for winter. Without freezers, we cured pork from butchering a pig, had chickens fresh in the summer (and canned for winter as well) and when it was cold enough to be able to hang outside and freeze, we had deer. We didn't eat beef because that was our 'cash crop'. After we got electricity and were able to have a refrigerator and a freezer it got easier.

Washing (before electricity) was with an agitator washer that was driven by a small gasoline (kerosene?) engine ... mother and grandmother washed together once a week usually, though not as often in the winter. In the summer the sheets would be dry on the line before the next loads were hung. In the winter things had to hang out until the 'freeze dried'.

There was a pump on the back porch where we pumped water from the well for the house. In the summer a bucket was kept on a table on the back porch, with a wash basin where you washed face and hands when you came in from work before you went in to the house. Baths were usually once a week (Saturday night baths were a real thing then). A galvanized wash tub was put on the coal stove and the water heated to 'warm enough' and then sat on the floor in front of the stove on a braided rug. As the only child, I got the first bath, usually washed my hair as well and pitcher of clean water was poured over my head to rinse. In the winter, instead of pumping water from the well into buckets and pouring into the tub, the tub was placed on the stove and buckets of snow brought in to melt.

The big 'ranch' garden was below the house and irrigated from the creek with a small pump run by a gasoline engine. Very short growing season there, 90 days was about all you could rely on but we canned enough beans, peas, corn, tomatoes, cucumber pickles and beets to last all winter, plus potatoes and carrots in the cellar and squash and cabbage for as long as it lasted. Our jelly and jam was from wild plums and chokecherries ... I still miss the taste of chokecherry jam and syrup.

We had a small Ford tractor but most of the work was still done with a team of horses. We shipped calves in the fall to the auction, but I can remember my mother telling about driving the cattle they were selling 30 miles over the hills to a railroad siding to be shipped by rail.

There were no 4-wheel drive vehicles then, so most of the winter we couldn't get out. I can remember my Dad riding horseback the 3 miles to the county road to get the mail when the snow got deep and there were months we didn't go to town. I think we might have gone to town once a month, if that, curing the summers. By the time I was in my teens, vehicles were better, roads were better. We also had more machinery (that was always breaking down) and we went to town more often by then.

Heat was provided by a big coal pot-bellied stove in the living room and a coal range in the kitchen. When I was in my teens we added a propane stove for cooking, which made things much easier in the summer. I had to go away for high school since the local country school only went up to the 8th grade and can remember coming home in the winter and brushing snow of the windowsill in my bedroom before I went to bed. My bedroom was actually the original homestead cabin that had been moved from the homestead and attached to the ranch house already existing on the new place.

One of the things I never asked and would give anything now to know ... how did they get a 16 x 20 cabin moved 3 miles over the hills and at least one creek crossing with a team of horses?

The original ranch house burned the day after I graduated from high school. My parents lived in the cabin they had originally built for several years and then rebuilt on the same site. This is a photo taken from the hill above the home ranch after the new house was built.


----------



## henk (Jun 20, 2003)

Recently stole the fist few copies of foxfire magazine of the net:
Foxfire (magazine) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(they are still in print i think and you might be able to get them at the library)

There are some great stories in there of people that where old in the 1970 ties. 

Henk


----------



## ACountryMomma (Aug 10, 2008)

Someone mentioned using lard as butter... I was talking to mom & she said her grandmother told her that when she was a girl her mother would save all the fat that cooked off their Christmas goose. It was a terrific treat to spread the seasoned fat on toast.


----------



## LWMSAVON (Oct 8, 2002)

My Mom was born in 1929 (now has alzheimers so she doesn't remember anyone or anything pretty much). 

Dad was born in 1930 and passed away 9 years ago. 

What they grew up with and doing during the Depression years spilled over into their adult lives and their children's lives. 

We gardened but also hunted, fished, and foraged for wild food when I was growing up. I honestly wished I had paid more attention than I did because there are things I don't remember but I am thankful for the things I learned and do remember. 


Both Papaw and Granny (mom's parents) would have been in their 30's when the Depression came about. Granny was born in 1893 and Papaw in 1900. I don't recall stories of how they lived before and during the Depression but I could see evidence of it in their home and around their property. 

My Granny was 93 when she passed away (I was 17 at the time). I can still remember her standing in from of her wood cookstove cooking, her treadle sewing machine, the outhouse, the wringer washer, rain barrel out the back door, and more that she and Papaw lived with. This wasn't a long time ago either... just 25 years ago. I was 15 before we even had an indoor bathroom. When I tell people that they look at me like I'm lying or I'm crazy because I'm 43. People have become so out of touch with how things used to be and how things still are for many people. My own sister tells me I was born 100 years too late. She just forgets where she was raised and what holler that was. She and I are as different as night and day.

My Dad's Parents (Pap & Ma) would have been around their 30's as well and again I could see evidence of their life around their property (Pap died a few months before I was born and Ma a year after). Their house is the house I grew up in as Dad inherited it. The old smokehouse was there, the dairy as they called it which was actually an above ground root cellar built back into the hillside, the old hand well pump in the yard just out the back door of the kitchen, and other things. No indoor bathroom as I mentioned above, no closets in the house either we used wardrobes and chests, dressers, etc. as they did. Oils lamps were a common scene in our house even though we had electricity. The oil lamps were there for power outages. I remember winters were the electric went out and Mom would put the fridge contents out in the snow just outside the kitchen door.


----------



## rancher1913 (Dec 5, 2008)

My parents were raised during the depression; dad was lucky and was raised on a small farm, but mom was raised.. well...

Mom was literally left on the hospital steps as a baby. From what (2 lines!) medical records we have found and family supposition, we think the dr knew her mom and tried to help her out by taking my mom (the baby). Mom went into foster care (sorta) but was never told. The foster mom died and the dad remarried to a horrible woman who was abusive. Mom remembers eating flies with milk on them (as a punishment). At one point, they lived in the front showroom of a car dealership (this would have been in the 30s). When she was 12, the foster parents divorced, and she was sent to an orphanage run by nuns. Mom says that was a great improvement.

After about 6 months, she was adopted and lived in a very small town (think like our suburbs). They had chickens and goats. Mom worked in the grocery store (where they used ketchup and oatmeal to extend the ground beef) and as a telephone operator. 

My grandparents all lived in town by the time I came along (I'm the youngest), but I've heard stories of life on the farm. One of my uncles wrote a lot down before he died - I'll have to go find those old stories sometime this winter. He had a lot more details of how they used kerosene plasters, cod liver oil, etc 


Moldy


----------



## alpacaspinner (Feb 5, 2012)

ACountryMomma said:


> Someone mentioned using lard as butter... I was talking to mom & she said her grandmother told her that when she was a girl her mother would save all the fat that cooked off their Christmas goose. It was a terrific treat to spread the seasoned fat on toast.


This is still done in Germany - or at least it was not all that long ago. You can (or could) buy pork or goose fat at the butcher, flavored with onion and/or apple and herbs. Its called Schmalz (schmaltz here in the US is generally chicken fat, and is from the ---dish). I actually quite like the German version - pork fat with onions, apples, and sage gently cooked in it, and then allowed to cool. Really nice spread on a slice of hearty bread, a nice sourdough rye maybe.


----------



## Nimrod (Jun 8, 2010)

Both parents grew up during the depression.

Paternal grandparents never learned to drive. They had a well at their house in a Minneapolis suburb. There were little metal plates on the floor and ceiling of the kitchen so you could remove them and pull the pump rod to replace the leathers. When we stayed with them, Grandpa would take us down to the lake on the bus to fish. I can't imagine what the driver would say if you tried to get on the bus now with fishing rods. They had a glass barometer with a goose neck filled with colored water that showed when the barometric pressure changed. 

Maternal grandparents were well off. Grandpa was a doctor. he took critters in payment during the depression. I do remember her cooking with lard. The milk came in bottels and the cream had to be skimed off the top.

The parents house had an icebox. There was a little door on the outside of the wall that opened directly into the icebox so the delivery man could load the ice without coming in the house. There was also a door for dumping coal into the coal bin in the basement but the coal burner had been replaced by an oil burner. The coal bin was still there and full of black coal dust. Mom had 5 kids that lived and 3 that didn't. She saved grease in a can by the sink and used it to cook. Her favorite saying was, "waste not, want not". She hung the wash outside in the summer and in the basement in the winter. Dad showed us how he used to make his own toys. The one I remember was made from a larger spool from sewing thread, 2 wooden match sticks, a slice of bar soap, and a rubber band. The warming house at the ice skating rink had a coal burning potbelly stove in it. They would fire it so hot it glowed cherry red. It felt great to a soaked and freezing kid. The milkman had big chunks of ice in the milk truck to keep the milk cold. If we asked nice he would break off a hunk for each of us to suck on. It tasted so good on those really hot days. We would go to the movies on hot days because it was the only place that was air conditioned.


----------



## kasilofhome (Feb 10, 2005)

My mom was born 1920, she had a sister about 3 years younger. Grandpa married above him. He was a hard worker. He was single for years and met grandma at old orchard beach in maine or mass. Mom's folk were from Mass. Well they married--it is in the bible long with lot's of Grandma's folks.


I know my Grandma did not have a mother but she was raised by a brother and a neighbor lady who seems like she was like a cleaning lady. I mention this as women dieing after a few years of child bearing was a pattern going back a few generation.

Grandma died too leaving granddad with two girls under 10. His plan was to move to Mass and live with my his wifes single aunt. Well even though it was to raise the girls catholic services took mom and her sister away to there orphanage. It was in Mass. It was by the water. Mom at lobster most days for most of the meals it any was left over it became breakfast or else it was oatmeal. They had potates not fancy one --they were blue cause they were feed potatoes dyed blue (or purple). 

One of her memeries was checking the orphange lobster traps. picking fiddle head and in the spring for food. Other girls and her at times worked in the garden. Now, this is weird --at bath times they bathed in a tub (very forward for the time) but they HAD to were a sheer bathgown to take a bath. --Mom was a rebel and strip naked and bathed in the room --door had no lock and the gown was to "save her from being caught naked. She would dunk the gown and the sisters were none the wiser. 

Her sister Ann was cute and younger and just about got adopted but the Aunt that grandpa (nick) was going to "shack" up with got word of the adoption and she rushed in and adopted both girls.---The girls had lived lik2 years in the orphanage and it was "believed" that grandpa Nick was long gone. Once G.G. Aunt Helen got the girls legal--what a surprize she got a temp boarder --yes Grandpa was always in kahoots with Helen and he worked as a steampipe fitter building hosp. pretty much along the east coast. Helen was the spinster of her family and seem to be in everyones will thus she inherited 3 homes near each other two she rented and one she lived in (now know she really was a generation older than grandpa Nick) Helen was one of the first AT&T phone operators. She had a lowly gas stamp Nick had unlimited due to his work. Helen had money (inhereited) and she worked had a metal sears credit card in her own name. 

In time Grandpa did not have to work far from home--he was a plumber in his own right and he lived full time in the house (as a teen mom became somewhat questioning just how the relationship was between Helen and Nick--Mom felt that there were enough clue to come to a concusion but that searching for proof was out of line--so who know--but they were a family.

Living thur the depression was not really that hard. Beans on friday, garden out back. Mom was often sent to do the shopping so when she went to the butcher she brought an onion and a potatoe. Helen trained her to have the meat man grind both to streach the meat. A cousin--Named Nellie came with a knock on the door and a man claiming to have married a female from the family but that she died leaving him with the girl. He was to return but he never did thus a Nellie too young to know her last name was given Helen last name --no papers but she became the youngest sister of the girls though she was and still is called cousin Nellie.

Mom remember buy opium at the chemist (drug store) for G.G Aunt Helen. Mom never ever want to complain as she hated the orphanage and also because Helen was wonderful to all the girls. There was rationing but with a garden and simple living and Helen was of "old town blood" they really did not suffer. Walking to school was not poverty it was simply the norm. 

Oh, back in mom's younger days (teen years) it a known"fact" that it was unsafe for a female to wash their hair or bath --that time of the month. Mom ever the rebel lied and just got lucky on only had her period on sat. never on Friday bath night--wink wink.

women in the area took in laundry, sewing, and cooking. Helen had the means to hire domestic help but the upstairs were the girls job only. The adults each had their own bedroom downstairs. A big deal was made in my mom's mind to make it clear that they had separate bedroom. 

They ate from the sea. and garden. A cake with out frosting on Sat was made by a cook and that was the big even. Helen canned with the girls many fruit from the trees and beans. Root vegs stored in the basement. Mom noted that in the orphanage gardening was in desparation where with Helen it was just a natural way of the seasons of life. She did not fear hunger at Helens but in the ophanage there where comments spoken which made her worry about the future meals.


----------



## Wendy (May 10, 2002)

> I'm thinking they fed the rabbits commercial feed, supplemented but greens from the garden.


My dad was born in 43. He said he had rabbits as a kid because grandma wanted the flowered feed sacks to make aprons & things out of.


----------



## where I want to (Oct 28, 2008)

My mother's family were definitely city people but that didn't mean they didn't garden, bake their own bread, etc. One of my mom's stories was that her mother's mother would keep a dust pan and broom on the back prorch to go out to the street to sweep up the manure left by the horses to put in her garden. My mom always said she had the best garden in town.
They went through the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire but did not lose their house.


----------



## sss3 (Jul 15, 2007)

I love these stories. History can be so enlightening.


----------



## SFM in KY (May 11, 2002)

Wendy said:


> My dad was born in 43. He said he had rabbits as a kid because grandma wanted the flowered feed sacks to make aprons & things out of.


I had shirts made out of the flowered feed sacks and most of Grandma's aprons were made out of them. But those were the sacks the flour came in, Grandma bought her flour (and I think sugar as well) in 50# sacks and after October or November we never knew when we could get back in to town.

We didn't buy livestock feed at all, raised some wheat, barley and oats ... the chickens got wheat, pigs got barley and the work horses got the oats.


----------



## lmrose (Sep 24, 2009)

Wormlady; what you described is much how my husband grew up on the family dairy farm except there was no generators. He was born in 1945. Wood stoves for cooking, heat and water.Electric arrived in 1942 when his Mom had her first baby. One light bulb and one plug in the kitchen, a light bulb in the barn and milking machine! No more milking 40 cows by hand twice a day! Just had to attach the milkers to the cows teats and turn on the compressor.It was the late 1950's before more electric was installed in the house.They also had an icehouse with sawdust and an old icebox which I still have and outhouse.

I lived in Ohio a two room cement block house with an attic for Daddy to sleep in. It was converted from a garage. Grandma, my two sisters and I slept in the bedroom. The other room was the kitchen. It had a two burner kerosene stove for cooking and a very small oil stove for heating. Grandma turned off the oil stove at night to save oil even when it went -20 below 0 F. We wore warm clothes and snuggled to keep warm. We had one light in the house suspended from the kitchen ceiling and one electric outlet.Bathroom was an outhouse and baths were in a round wash tub set next to the stove. Blankets were draped for privacy. I was the youngest and went first in the cleanest water!

How did all of us who grew up this way ever survive without all the modern gadetry of today? At least we still know how to survive and live without electricity , gasoline and boughten food. We taught all five kids so they know what to do when the power goes off too.It is good to teach children how to live without modern conveniences if they should have to or want to.


----------



## SFM in KY (May 11, 2002)

lmrose said:


> How did all of us who grew up this way ever survive without all the modern gadetry of today? At least we still know how to survive and live without electricity , gasoline and boughten food.


I enjoyed it, the best memories of my life are the years I spent at the ranch growing up.

And I went back to that to a great extent, voluntarily. The two years before I relocated to KY (12 years ago) I lived on a ranch in MT on the Crow reservation, electricity, but no running water, no indoor plumbing, no phone. I could go to town once a month with no problem and I did buy most of my food (no garden) but I certainly did not have any difficulty at all with the lack of 'modern conveniences'.


----------



## Olpoop (Jul 8, 2012)

wormlady said:


> Food and food storage
> Each winter, blocks of ice were cut from one of the nearby lakes and hauled to the ice house. Blocks were stacked â with layers of sawdust between for insulation.
> There was no refrigerator, but an icebox, filled periodically with a block of ice from the ice house.


In the mountains of Colorado during that period, my maternal grandparents had a similar setup, but my paternal grandparents had a unique advantage. They had an ice cave. They didnât need to store much ice. The summers were short and cool at the high elevation anyway.

It was a natural ice cave that contained ice all summer long most years. The remote and sparsely populated ranch community shared the ice and either harvested their ice as it was needed individually or in small groups. The âcaveâ was actually a fissure in the ground on the side of a hill that was deep enough and large enough to keep ice frozen during all but the hottest summers. 

The cave was accessible by foot or horseback, and I donât think they were able to take wagons or trucks to it. Once at the cave opening, you crawled down into the vertical âcaveâ, rather than going horizontal into the cave. Melting snow refilled the cave each spring thaw. I was in the cave in July 1984 and broke off a chunk of ice to take home and put in the freezer to show family and friends.

Rural electrification didnât arrive to the area until around 1950. However, years later, community potluck summer picnics usually still involved some guys making a run to the ice cave for ice to use in the crank-operated ice cream makers. 

CD in Oklahoma


----------



## wormlady (Oct 8, 2004)

The winds are howling outside and the snow is piling up. We are expecting 8-12 inches.

I just spent a very pleasant hour or so carefully re-reading this thread, because a storm like this always brings with it the possibility of a power outage.

My dad, who I interviewed for the opening post is now 84. He called me the other day because his 87 year old sister had come to visit him (350 mile drive alone).She had just gotten an iPad and could not figure out how to get online.

I talked her through the process and she was able to connect to the interwebs.

These two octogenarians, who grew up in the depression and in poverty, both have and use cell phones, GPS, laptops/tablets; they regularly TEXT or email each other (both are hard of hearing so that is a great way for them to communicate...and hard headed, but that is another story... ). They are also both on Facebook.

They both have been through a lot and have seen a lot of changes. They have not only survived, but thrived and I am so blessed to be related to them.

Thought I would bump this thread up so we could all be inspired by the stories shared here. And be reminded that survival not only includes knowing how to do things the old fashioned way, but also includes adaptability to what is best in the present age.

I would be glad to hear other stories from the past.


----------



## booklover4ever (Nov 13, 2012)

My dad was also born in 1900 & my name is Georgia. What a coincidence!


----------



## Mutti (Sep 7, 2002)

I've worked in alotof nursing homes and learned so much from our residents. Two sisters were most inspiring. They actually homesteaded here in MO. With their families carved homesteads out of solid woodland. Talked about keeping sheep and washing the wool in the river. Spinning,weaving and making the cloth for their families clothes...now that is an job! Shocking corn and having a snake fall out and bite their Pa who nearly died. Everything done with horses. In their 90's when I met them but still quilting "on their fingers" as they called hand quilting. They always said electricity on the farm was the best thing ever. 

Many of our neighbors here in the Ozarks still use cisterns and haul water. Also several springs around us that people use regularly for their drinking water.


----------



## Sanza (Sep 8, 2008)

It's strange to me to read that some here have no experience or no stories from their parents and grandparents about life before power and running water, because I grew up that way and have the experience first hand. I'm blessed to still have my mother alive and still able to tell stories from her past.

Settlers didn't arrive in Alberta until around 1900, with the majority coming after, so modern conveniences were decades in the making. 
My parents were both born by 1925, and were married in 1942 and proceeded to have a large family of 9 children born alive. (Not counting stillborn and miscarriages).

We had no power, no running water and just wood and coal for heat. A wood stove in the kitchen and a heater in the living room, and the bedrooms were cold. Even with storm windows we always had a layer of ice on all the windows in winter. 

The only things gas powered were the tractor, the car and the washing machine. My dad and brothers would bring in the batteries to keep them from freezing, and when the tractor or car needed starting they would build a little fire underneath the oil pan to warm it up, and then attach the battery. This was done from November until April.

We kept our milk and cream cold by keeping it in the creek behind the house in summer. We'd separate the milk and if we wanted butter we had to pour the cream into a jar and shake it. We had to drink powdered milk in winter when the cows dried up and buy margerine. The garden was a couple of acres, and it was us kids' jobs to weed it. We ate fresh all summer, but never had lettuce in winter - the only vegetables eaten in winter were the potatos, carrots, beets, parsnips and turnips which were kept in the dirt cellar under the kitchen floor and of course the huge 75 gallon wooden barrel filled with sourkraut and leaves. A lot of the fruits and vegetables were canned or else dried. 
We picked wild mushrooms, nuts and berries and usually took blueberry or saskatoon jam sandwiches on homemade bread for our school lunches. 

Pigs were butchered in November when it got cold enough for the meat to keep, and the 100 or 200 chicks were eaten once they grew and there was never any extra to butcher in the fall. Once in a while some were kept for laying and the old hens were canned in jars, as was some of the pork and that was eaten in the spring before the chickens were big enough to eat. We didn't eat beef but did have deer meat and fish. We would snare fish in our creek.
The chicken coop had it's own wood/coal heater and someone had to get up in the middle of the night to add to it to keep the chicks alive. If it got too cold in the coop the chicks would pile up in a corner and smother.

Our house water came from the creek and later on an adjoining quarter of land we had a hand dug well with a pump. This well was closer to the barn so we had a couple hundred yards to carry water to the house - many times a day! 

We had a washstand with a hole in the top for an enamel basin to fit on, and the water could be dumped through the hole into a 5 gal. "slop" pail underneath and carried out for the pigs. Beside the basin was a pail of water with a dipper for drinking out of that we all used, even visitors. Many times in winter the water would be frozen in the pail in the morning.

Bath time in winter was once a week with the water heated on the wood stove and the youngest and girls went first into the round galvinized tub. Big oval boilers were used to heat the water and the stove also had a resevoir for heating water. We had an outhouse and the "toilet paper" was most often old magazines and catalogues.

Everyday cooking was done on the kitchen stove which was fired up all year round, and most women had big 4' by 8' clay ovens outside to bake bread usually 2 or 3 times a week, and then cooking the meals too because the oven stayed hot for about 8 hours.....old tyme slow cooker!

All the wood was hand cut and hand split, and the woodbox needed to be filled all the time.

The washing machine was brought inside the house in winter and boy was it noisy! The clothes were hung out on the line and then brought in and hung in the kitchen to dry. In summer the machine was moved outside. Needless to say, we had our school clothes which were hung up and worn again, and our home clothes that we wore for many days before they were washed. Ironing was done using the sad irons heated on the stove.

Lights at night were the coal oil lamps with the mantles that had to be pumped up, and the lamps with the wicks. Our only entertainment was the battery operated radio, and we couldn't listen long in order to preserve the battery life, and a wind up gramaphone. We used the thorns off of a tree when we didn't have needles for it.

We never seemed to have money, but we never went hungry.

A lot of the field work was done with a team of horses, and the one tractor. The grain was cut and bundled with a binder, stooked using 6 sheaves and every fall the threshing crew would make it to our place to thresh the grain. In the mid 60s we got a pull behind combine.

I never had the luxury of power, running water and flush toilets or phone until the fall of 1966. Even though I don't want to be without my luxuries now, I'm prepared for a long lasting grid failure after the generators run out of gas!


----------



## ET1 SS (Oct 22, 2005)

Sanza said:


> ... Pigs were butchered in November when it got cold enough for the meat to keep, ...


Same here.

Since butchering I have been rendering lard most every day, I think I have finally gotten through all of it. Yesterday I went through to check and I found two 5-gallon buckets of ground pork, still frozen, that my wife had forgotten about [it needs to be mixed with spices for sausage].


----------



## TheMrs (Jun 11, 2008)

I've really enjoyed reading this. Thank you so much for sharing your stories. I'm 36 years old and all of my grandparents are gone. It's been nice reading everyone's family memories.


----------



## wormlady (Oct 8, 2004)

I've enjoyed re-reading this as well. Gives me lots of great ideas. And hope. Reminding ourselves that we can live with a lot less than we have and survive is a good lesson. It may not have been easy to live the way my dad did, or the way many of you describe (thanks for your contribution Sanza), but it is do-able. I'm definitely bookmarking this page and hoping others chime in as well!


----------



## PATRICE IN IL (Mar 25, 2003)

I too am enjoying reading this thread. Both my parents, who are gone for many years, were raised during the Great Depression. We always had extra food stored away growing up because of the lack of food in my father's life early on. My mother fared better because her mother & step-father operated a grocery store. After the economy improved, they bought a farm in Michigan and grew much of their food, preserving it and transporting it back to Illinois in the fall. My grandparents came to this country in the early 1900's from Poland.

My parents always had a garden and some fruit trees. My uncles had farms and we often split a cow with one of them in the Fall. We would spend as day berry picking at a farm then spend the next day preserving them.


----------



## bigjon (Oct 2, 2013)

I learned to bake from a friends gramma in a tin oven on a 3 burner kerosene stove


----------

