A couple of random memories:
My grandparents lived in a tiny community called Manes, Missouri. My Grandpa Jim and Grandma Orie (Ora), never owned an automobile (car, truck, tractor, scooter) that I know of. They had a wood stove in the front room to warm the house. I once rode my tricycle too close and trapped my pinkie finger between the blazing pot-bellied stove and my tricycle. I bear the scar of the encounter to this very day. Grandma (never Grandpa!) cooked on a wood-burning stove in the room that became Hell's Kitchen in the summer.
They had an outhouse with a Sears & Roebuck catalog for reading and for sanitation. I guess there were just enough pages for a family to get by until the next edition arrived...or they substituted corn cobs for catalog pages. A painful substitution.
Drinking water came from a well with a bucket on a pulley. The adults talked about children who fell into wells and drowned. I, therefore, never leaned over too far to look into the well. I don't think we actually knew anyone that ever happened to. Maybe it was just one of those things grownups made up to protect us kids. We (family, friends and passersby) drank from a shared dipper that hung over the water bucket in the kitchen.
I remember as a very little girl starting out to walk to the general store with Grandma Orie. One of the neighbors came by with his horse-drawn wagon and gave us a ride down the dirt road to Austin's General Store. I think Grandma traded her chicken eggs for supplies, but I'm sure she bought me a Cho-Cho ice cream. As I remember it, it was the best treat in the whole world. It was similar in taste to a Wendy's Frosty, but frozen and much better..or maybe that's just the way I remember it. Men sat around on benches whittling figures with their pocket knives and chewing tobacco, spitting that disgusting juice into tin cans. I must admit I admired their talent for hitting the intended target most of the time. I tried target spitting (but not chewing) but never got very good at it. I soon gave it up as a disgusting sport. The women, as I remember, just gossiped. I never got very good at that either. But the few times I have tried it, I found it a lot of fun and quite fulfilling, actually!
You know, I don't go back as far as Laura Ingalls Wilder, but though the rest of the world had modernized, Manes was about a century behind or so it appears to me. In retrospect, I think it reminds me of Little House on the Prairie. It hasn't changed all that much to this day. Except they do have cars, phones, electricity...but what they don't have anymore is Austin's General Store, Jim and Ora Wade or Hobart and Ressie Hurley...or Cho-Cho ice cream.
My grandparents lived in a tiny community called Manes, Missouri. My Grandpa Jim and Grandma Orie (Ora), never owned an automobile (car, truck, tractor, scooter) that I know of. They had a wood stove in the front room to warm the house. I once rode my tricycle too close and trapped my pinkie finger between the blazing pot-bellied stove and my tricycle. I bear the scar of the encounter to this very day. Grandma (never Grandpa!) cooked on a wood-burning stove in the room that became Hell's Kitchen in the summer.
They had an outhouse with a Sears & Roebuck catalog for reading and for sanitation. I guess there were just enough pages for a family to get by until the next edition arrived...or they substituted corn cobs for catalog pages. A painful substitution.
Drinking water came from a well with a bucket on a pulley. The adults talked about children who fell into wells and drowned. I, therefore, never leaned over too far to look into the well. I don't think we actually knew anyone that ever happened to. Maybe it was just one of those things grownups made up to protect us kids. We (family, friends and passersby) drank from a shared dipper that hung over the water bucket in the kitchen.
I remember as a very little girl starting out to walk to the general store with Grandma Orie. One of the neighbors came by with his horse-drawn wagon and gave us a ride down the dirt road to Austin's General Store. I think Grandma traded her chicken eggs for supplies, but I'm sure she bought me a Cho-Cho ice cream. As I remember it, it was the best treat in the whole world. It was similar in taste to a Wendy's Frosty, but frozen and much better..or maybe that's just the way I remember it. Men sat around on benches whittling figures with their pocket knives and chewing tobacco, spitting that disgusting juice into tin cans. I must admit I admired their talent for hitting the intended target most of the time. I tried target spitting (but not chewing) but never got very good at it. I soon gave it up as a disgusting sport. The women, as I remember, just gossiped. I never got very good at that either. But the few times I have tried it, I found it a lot of fun and quite fulfilling, actually!
You know, I don't go back as far as Laura Ingalls Wilder, but though the rest of the world had modernized, Manes was about a century behind or so it appears to me. In retrospect, I think it reminds me of Little House on the Prairie. It hasn't changed all that much to this day. Except they do have cars, phones, electricity...but what they don't have anymore is Austin's General Store, Jim and Ora Wade or Hobart and Ressie Hurley...or Cho-Cho ice cream.
No comments:
Post a Comment