L e e ' s's profileL e e ' s Senior Moment...PhotosBlogListsMore  |  Tools Help |
Growing Up in the 40's & 50'sWhen I started writing my memoirs over two years ago, I started to recall things that I hadn't thought about in a very long time. I hadn't delved into it very far before I realized a problem that hadn't occurred to me that I would have.
The problem is that so many things that I experienced early on living on a farm just no longer applies. It just no longer exists. Life on a farm has evolved so much from when I was a kid that farm kids of today currently living on a farm or ranch have absolutely no idea what I'm even talking about. Current economics are such that they never have and never will experience so many of the things that I did. I think they would find it hard to believe. I have mixed feelings about these things. I have always wanted my offspring to have a better life than I did, and to not have to go through so many of the hardships that I endured. But, the older I get, the more I wonder 'with progress, what are we giving up, what are we losing?' And, is it really worth it?
I remember early on when we still farmed with horses. Oh, not me, I was too young. We didn't have a farm tractor yet, or even electricity. No indoor plumbing. Still used a 3 - holer outhouse! (complete with Sears or Montgomery Wards catalog. The index pages were the softest). All of the farming was done Monday through Saturday, absolutely never on Sunday.
But, it was never boring for us kids. Born and raised there, we grew up learning how to amuse ourselves without the advantage of other kids. Lots of playing cowboys and bad guys with home made toy guns. Or one of my favorite things was to make toy airplanes - until I discovered that you could buy model airplanes in a kit from one of the stores at the county seat. And then I started building model race cars. One day I came up with the idea of mounting one of my solid fuel rocket motors onto a race car that I had just built. I lit the fuse, and that model car took off much faster than I ever imagined - and disintegrated when it hit the wall. I think my mother was ready to give me up for adoption about then!
Without electricity, we had no refrigerator or deepfreeze. So, we butchered our own livestock, and 'salt cured' the meat for storage. So, when hunting season came around it was a real treat for us to 'bag' some wild game. I don't remember how old I actually was when I first started hunting with a gun. All of us at some point had to go through a learning process where we had to walk along with adults a year or two before we were entrusted with a gun.
Back then, hunting for wild game was a means of contributing to the dining room table. When hunting became a sport was also when I stopped hunting. But, by then we finally had electricity installed, bought a refrigerator and deep freeze (and a farm tractor!), and the need for fresh wild game was no longer a necessity.
We knew all of our neighbors very well, and they us. So, when we (kids) wandered around we soon got to know just about every inch of ground for at least a mile radius. In one area we used to walk out to where a natural spring surfaced. It was a great place for a kid to while away some time. Out on the backside of our property was an old hardly ever maintained dirt road that only the locals used to harvest a crop, or to move livestock from one pasture to another. Sometimes that old road got more use after dark than it did during the daytime.
One day my brother and I had gone back to the old one lane bridge on that old road - another great place for a kid to amuse himself. Then we started walking that old road working our way (in a very roundabout way) back home. We came across about a half case of beer in the tall grass beside the road. Just in case someone should come back for it, we moved it, and stashed it under the old bridge. You know, I don't really remember what happened to it after that. (hehehe) (Actually, that is the truth. We knew we were much too young to be drinking it. )
Many Blessings, friends
Lee
My Early YearsNext Installment of my Memoirs I grew up in an old two story house in central Illinois that in the winter, once the old coal kitchen stove burned out at night, it was also the end of our heat for the rest of the night. So, it was a rule of necessity that everyone had to sleep with someone else. And, since there were eight kids in our family, that wasn't a problem - especially since we had a limited number of beds. I remember some of those winter nights it being so cold that we didn't dare get up until we knew our Mother had the old cookstove blazing away. The living accomodations during the winter months was limited to a large kitchen where we also had our meals, and the bedrooms which were upstairs. As a young boy, I spent a lot of my time in a 'play area' which was directly behind the stove. Whenever any of my brothers and I began to get 'cabin fever' we would head for the hayloft in the barn. There we would have moved all the hay bales to one end of the hayloft, and put up a basketball goal on the opposite end. That wouldn't have gotten us a warm place to play basketball, but it did give us a level surface with which to play on out of the cold wind. We'd play basketball until our hands got so cold that we would have to go back to the house and warm up. (Have you ever tried to play basketball with gloves on? LOL). Several years later after several of my older brothers moved out and on their own, we finally had enough room (bedrooms) for me to have one all to myself. It was about then that I started repairing old radios in my room just for the experience (hey, we didn't have TV's or PC'S yet!). As word got around, friends and neighbors used to give me their old radios. I would take parts from one to make others work. But, late in the evenings I had one old radio that was especially good at 'pulling' radio broadcasts from distant places. I used to lie awake just looking for a new distant radio broadcast and dream about what it must have been like where it was being broadcast from. I don't remember all of them any longer, but a few were "WWL" which was broadcast from on top of a hotel in New Orleans; Or maybe "WLAC" (?) which was broadcast from Galatin, Tennesee (outside of Memphis, I think); WBAP was from Fort Worth; "XERF" from Del Rio, Texas. Sometimes I could also pick up a radio station from Schenectady, N.Y. Ah, well, I guess that is what memories are made from.
Blessings, friends L e e |
|
|
