The next morning arrived, as mornings have a way of doing. John Britan and Ed Crissman came by early to get the cook stove unloaded and the pipe put through the hole in the ceiling. It was heavy work, but accomplished very quickly. I am sure mother hustled around and built a fire so coffee could be made. This was done with a large enamel coffee pot, water, grounds and an egg shell. Egg shell was to make the grounds settle better. I do not remember what our first meal in the new house was, but I am willing to bet it was some sort of "mush." Mush was made by boiling water and stirring some sort of cornmeal into it. I think today it might be called "grits". I have since perfected this recipe. Mine is called "Scrapple."
First I boil some kind of pork or beef until it is very tender. I season it with a bay leaf, some sage, maybe salt and pepper or chicken broth. Then I fish out the meat, add coarsely ground yellow corn meal (grits or polenta) and cook that until it is done. Then I stir the meat in and pour the stuff into a loaf pan that is lined with wax paper. When this cools it will set up and be firm. Then I take it out of the pan and slice it about 3/4 inches thick and fry it in hot oil. Serve that with Maple Syrup and you have some happy people on the other end of the forks. Hard to believe that recipe came from the heart of the depression years. We just didn't put meat in it back then.
So with the cook stove cooking away, the next item in was the "heating stove" or parlor stove or what ever. Since the linoleum in the front room was still in very good shape, we did not need to replace it. The first thing to go down was the 4' x 4' square of asbestos that was clad in tin. Usually the tin was painted so it was pretty. The purpose of this was to keep the stove separated from the linoleum cause the stove would get very warm.
( A little aside here! The Environmental Protection Agency and every one else in government would have us shut down today. Asbestos is now hazardous waste and I am sure that linoleum under it was a case of lung cancer waiting to happen. But in those days all this was considered luxury. )
The stove needed to set about 2-3 feet from any wall, so our metal mat was placed accordingly. Then the stove was carried in and placed exactly in the center with the door facing into the center of the room. Do not ask me why, but that was how it was. Step ladder was brought back in and the pipe installed connecting the stove to the hole in the roof. Always amazed me how that worked out every time, but apparently there was some sort of plan. There was no chimney, just poke it out the hole and we are good to go. The wood box in the kitchen was located just inside the door. The one for the front room was just outside the door. Hey! Do you think we were hicks?
Then everything left on the hay rack and the trailer was carried in and taken to the room where it belonged. The zinc tubs were put in the kitchen, because that was where the washing machine would go and that was where we would have our weekly bath. In case you missed the blog on the bath, I will tell it again later. The three legged cast iron kettle that was the mainstay of life was placed out back near the pump.
I have got to extol the three legged kettle. It was about 3 feet high and 3 feet across. The sole purpose was to heat water over an open fire, hence the legs that held it up out of the ashes. See, it set there and a fire was built under it and buckets of water were carried from the pump and poured in it. About anything could happen in that kettle! Mother raised geese, ducks, chickens and rabbits. When it was butchering time for the geese, ducks and chickens the water was heated in there. Off came a head and in went the body. Geese and ducks had to have a little soap added so the water would penetrate. Then the feathers were plucked off and the "down" saved. Down is the light feathers under the wings and inside of the legs. It is used in Down Comforters, pillows and stuff like that.
The kettle was also used to heat water for washing clothes, washing kids on Saturday night, rendering pork fat into lard, dipping the pig during butchering and lord only knows what else the inside of that kettle seen! I do remember many years later when we moved to the big city of Hutchinson, mother left that kettle. Her words then were, "I am so happy I will never have to heat water in that thing again." We also left the stoves, but that was many years later.
Father strung new wire on the clothes lines. We never hung curtains, because we didn't have them. Someday we would, but not now. And since we mostly used a kerosene lamp, we usually went to bed early. Back in those days, most people functioned with the sunlight, so who was going to see us anyway?
Want to tell you just one more thing for today. The ice box was just that. It was a big brown box that was insulated with, you guessed it...asbestos. The ice man drove by the house with his ice wagon once a week. We had a card that went in the front window. The number that was up was how much ice we needed. Usually 25 pounds was what we got. When he saw the 25 on top, he would stop and get his ice tongs and pick up a 25 pound block and carry it into the house, open the ice box and set it inside. The money was always left laying there and he would pick it up and leave.
Bet you wondered how he got in without a key, didn't you? Every house in town had a door with a lock and the lock could be opened with a skeleton key. I mean every house could be opened with the same key. If you lost your key, you went to the hardware store and bought another. Doors were rarely locked. I do not think we even had a key. Back in those days there was a whole different breed of people. We still had "vigilantes" and if some one did something the town did not approve of, there was talk of "tar and feather and ride him out of town on a rail." Never knew it to actually happen, but heard it a lot. If you were out and needed a drink of water, just go in someone's house and get it. Of course there were the codes of honesty, common courtesy, decency and all kind of things the new world does not understand.
Guess maybe that is why it is called "the good old days."
