Growing up poor wasn’t easy and it wasn’t until I became an adult that I realized that I had a pretty decent life. I had a mother who stayed at home with us and loved us. Dad could be a bit rough but raising eight children must have been really hard. I’m sure Dad could have up and walked away from his responsibilities like many fathers do today. But he managed to farm and work other jobs on the side to take care of all of us. I remember a story an insurance agent told me about my father. He told me that one year Dad wasn’t able to pay the insurance premiums and the agent paid them for him. But he said my dad got out his traps that winter and managed to sell enough furs and he paid the insurance agent back every cent. I wasn’t able to understand and appreciate the sacrifices both of my parents made to raise eight of us.
Mom worked every bit as hard as Dad did. She got up early every morning, started the wood stove and cooked us a real breakfast before we went off to school. She washed our clothes in a wringer type washer, no automatic washer back then and no running water. No dishwashers either, so it was up to us to wash all the dishes by hand. We hauled the buckets of water inside from the outside well. Then even in the coldest winter weather she hung the clothes outside unless there was too much snow. Those times she hauled the clothes to the attic and hung them on lines in the attic to dry. Supper would be whatever Dad had managed to trap or shoot. I won’t go into what some of those things were but back then Mom could make anything taste pretty good. She was a wonderful cook. I don’t eat much wild game anymore.
We didn’t have much in the way of close neighbors but us kids had each other and we weren’t lonely or bored, as so many kids are today. We played in the creek and built a small dam for the really hot days. Another really cool place to cool off was the culvert that the creek ran underneath the road. That culvert seemed really big to children but now that we are all grown up, it seems much smaller.
In the fall one day when Mom was done with her canning vegetables for the year my brother and I got in the garden and threw vegetables that weren’t any good at each other. Another time my sister and I gathered up some jars and did our own canning of vegetables. We packed the vegetables into the jars and put them under the porch. When Mom found them they had maggots eating up the vegetables and she made us walk them down the road and dump them. By that time they smelled pretty bad.
So many wonderful memories I want to share with my sons.
