Many of you were kind enough to comment on my post from last week, When Jockeys were Rock Stars  where I spoke about the love and fond memories I had of my maternal grandparents, Vergie and Morris.  Without intending to suggest that I am OLD one commenter pointed out that I was describing a time period long gone.  And she was right! Even in my very large and extended family and as the oldest of 16 I have memories and experiences that are totally different from those of my siblings and cousins. Our family reunion is coming up next week.  I won't be able to go but I thought I'd talk about what it was like spending many of my months with my grandparents in rural Texas  during the late 1940s and early 1950s.  I wasn't sure how to organize it so, taking a tip from our own Dr. Spudman, I am doing it  in vignettes. I hope you find it as enjoyable and interesting as I did.  And, please, contribute your own stories of your family and changing technology.

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First the basics...everyone has to 'go' sometime, right? During this time of no electricity and less plumbing, taking care of one's eliminatory needs occurred with either a Chamber Pot, kept under the bed and emptied the next morning or the famous/infamous outhouse where if one did not have a mortal fear of snakes as I did you just trotted out and took care of  business. Or if you were one of my many brothers, you just went to the back porch and hiked it over and let go.

  To this day I cringe whenever I hear, 'Watch out, snake'll bite your butt!'In developing countries these items are still used and in some areas of India 'night soil workers' come to your house to empty your chamber pot for you.

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Next is keeping yourself fed.  Rural electrification only began to spread across Texas in the 1950s after the initial creation  of the Rural Electrification Act in 1936.  Many farm families engaged in what we now call subsistence hunting and fishing here in SC. One had to have a considerable piece of land to ranch and run cattle. Most farmers such as Morris , had only a small farm ranging from 5-25 acres. So we ate a lot of deer, squirrel, birds of all kinds plus more catfish then I ever wanted to see again. Subsistence hunting and fishing was hardly  an option during a period when most folks were cash poor, so whatever little bit of cash crops they could grow generated just enough cash for the things they could not raise nor make.Morris Wenzel (L) and brother in law JM WimberlyMy grandfather, Morris, was considered an ace marksman and a beyond excellent fisherman. I always thought it was because he was one of the most patient people I knew. He eschewed deer stands saying they were for city folks and he patiently tracked his deer with a step as soft as an Indian.  He was proud of the fact that he rarely took a body shot, most of his kills being head shots, fast and neat. Interestingly the line was drawn at teaching the girls in the family to shoot, though we were taught to fish.  Of course, most farm families had kitchen gardens where vegetables and fruits were grown...and had to be eaten fresh since the only refrigeration was the old 'icebox'. Every Saturday morning, Grandpa Morris would hook the wagon up to the mules and load us kids up (my cousins all lived within rock throwing distance and were in and out of my grandparents house) for the Saturday morning trip to town.  Town was that magical place where we could stand in front of the furniture store window and look at the new fangled thing called a TV. We loved watching I Love Lucy in Spanish. It was broadcast from Mexico City we were told. Most often though we just looked at 'snow' since those kinds of connections were not terribly advanced and the battery run radio with 80 knobs of which only two worked was more reliable.                                                                

 An old Ice House

Ice was a fairly spare commodity. Getting Ice on Saturday morning was so the meals for Saturday evening and all day Sunday could be made. No cooking or sewing was allowed  on Sunday.  Grandma cooked on a wood burning cast iron stove which was fired up in the morning and let burn to coals through the day, cover the food and refrigerate dairy products. If we were lucky there would still be smoked meat in the smoke house, a small building designed for a fire to be in it to smoke and cure meat. (see drawing to left)Below are two examples of iceboxes circa1900 and a smokehouse (right) 

http://www.pa-roots.com/southbend/weather/smokehouse.html

My job, as a young sprout, was to keep kindling coming into the huge and incredibly hot wooden stove that Grandma Virgie cooked on.  I managed pretty  well for a four or five year old until she began frying frog legs. Boy could that grease pop! When we reached this stage it meant that our meat had run out and hunting was slim although Morris went out every day. Years later while being courted by a young and eager swain, he asked to order for me and ordered frog legs. I was so pissed off that he would dare order me 'poor people's food' that I stomped out of the restaurant and caught the bus home! Poor lad...little did he know.

If you think the women look old for their age they are. If a man's work was difficult on the farm and it was, keeping a large family together was an achingly difficult task. First is the appliance for cooking I mentioned. Oh and those kindling sticks also fed the built in wood oven. One of the things Virgie was proudest of years later was her new, modern electric stove. As I kid I imagined I could see her worshipping it. Below is a photo of one almost exactly like her old wooden cook stove.  The dark was kept away by oil lamps..in this case kerosene oil. None of the kids, of which there were many were allowed to carry them.   

  Keeping the family clean was no small task either. First there was soap to be made in the old black soap kettle in the back. Girls' work, right? In case you don't know lye is a key ingredient in soap making. I used to look at my grandmother's hands and wonder why they looked kind of scarred          

Washing clothes was done with an old fashioned washboard when I first began living with my grandparents in the 1940s. Wash was line dried and then ironed. What a chore!

Antique Washboard                                                                 French Sad Iron

The French Sad Iron (usually there were two) were heated up on the stove (which was still hot, remember) and then applied to the clothing.  Things began to look up, however, when the Coleman Gas Iron came out and the wringer washing machine made their debuts.

No there still wasn't any electricity...that wouldn't happen until around 1960 when one of my aunts and her husband built a 2 bedroom bungalow on some of my grandparents' property.  By that time they both had begun to slow down and appreciated the new modern conveniences.  They both continued to sleep in separate beds but in the same room and they both, short folks that they were insisted on big queen sized beds. One time, about when I was exercising my new adulthood, I was helping Grandma Virgie put Morris's bed back in her bedroom. (They had had a fight and she kicked him out) and I asked by  two big beds.  She stopped and stared at me like I was an alien from outer space:' Girl, ain't no reason to sleep together unless you plan on makin' a baby.'  Being the genius that I had become, I retorted: 'Well hell, you two *planned* all these kids?'   The next thing I knew I was sliding down the wall with stars in my head by the bounce off Virgie's slap.  Her dark eyes got darker and said: 'I know you're all grown up but y'all didn't invent this (she would never use the terms sex, intercourse etc.) but beyond that what we do is nunna yore damned bizness. You still a virgin or you had damned well better b e!'

I hope you have enjoyed this and I invite you to write about your grandparents and the way technology and/or cultural changes affected relationships. This romp down memory lane was fun for me and I'm grateful for the opportunity.

Copyright Ahavapicaro June 2010