by garybuss 75 Replies latest jw friends
Something about this thread makes me want to ask...
Gary, is everything okay, presently?
UD: Glad you asked as I was about to as I read through the thread. Gary, those are great pics, theres nothing like a trip down memory lane or nostaligia road. Thank you for sharing. Gary
Hi Juni,
The yard critter is a English Sheepdog so I was told. He was a stray my parents befriended. He was a chaser and he was road hit by a car one day chasing my motorcycle on the dusty gravel road we lived on.
The well was a shallow bored well, maybe 35 feet deep or so. They were surface soft water wells. The water was good. We moved into the center box part of the house in 1950 just in time for me to start first grade in the country one room school up the road.
We didn't have electricity at first and we carried the water in and we carried it out. Bathroom was an outhouse. The house was sided with tar paper and the floor was concrete and it was cold! We heated with a seldom used fuel oil space heater and a much used cob burner in the kitchen. After a couple years my dad took his two week vacation and built on the addition to the left and that was the entry and dinette.
Martin Anderson raked him over the coals for not making meetings and service for the two weeks from the platform when my dad got back to meetings. He was pissed but he kept on. The only Witness to help my dad build the addition was Bob Harsh.
In 1953 my dad installed running water and an inside toilet. January of 1953 we were coming back from visiting my mother's dad in Pipestone and I heard on the radio that Hank Williams died. They played a lot of his music that day. I was 9 years old.
I seldom did homework because I didn't have time because of meetings Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights, and the Witness people told me I'd me automatically smart in the new world. I didn't really care about school because the Witnesses told me I'd never have to go to high school in this old world.
I started high school after we got back from the New York assembly in 1958.
Martin Anderson raked him over the coals for not making meetings and service for the two weeks from the platform when my dad got back to meetings. He was pissed but he kept on. The only Witness to help my dad build the addition was Bob Harsh
Yep. When you have a project all of your "friends" are scarce! A lot have absolutely no concept about large projects and how much time it takes to finish - even when you're working all day for 2 weeks.
Very interesting history. That must've been a very cold, miserable time in the winter. Kids today would NEVER survive - there would be a lot of pissin and moanin. Though I'm sure you kids weren't thrilled either! My mom said they had to use pages from the Sears & Roebuck catalog as toilet paper. Is that what your family did? Mom said her mother would make underwear out of flour sacks.
Juni
Gary,
You look like Buddy Holly with one of the Crickets in that picture. I love the old Caddys. I remember during the "gas crisis" in the 70's 1970's Caddy's, used, were going for $1200 to $1400 dollars in just about every used car lot. Tuna boats with power everything.
Warlock
Hi Juni
We had real toilet paper in our outhouse. When we visited my grandfather in Pipestone, he only had catalogs for the outhouse. The index pages were coveted and the first to disappear.
Hi Warlock, I bought my first Caddy in 1965 when gas was 37 cents. In 78 or 79 I bought a really nice 1974 Buick Electra with a 454 and crushed velvet upholstery for $1,600 bucks. It was really a nice car. We drove that for 5 years or so.
That Buick is the only car not a Caddy I've owned since 1965 when I turned 21.
I play and sing better than Buddy Holley:-) Musta been the glasses that threw ya.
These pics are really great, it gives us Brits a little insight into your life over there, i`ve only seen stuff like that in films.
Juni
I forgot your question about the counter. The tin tray in the cupboard slid out and the tambour doors opened to a flour sifter and more counter space. I don't remember her using the table for extra counter space except for canning time.
She washed in the entry way with the antique Maytag washer that my dad replaced the gas engine with an electric motor and one tub.
Today people camp better than we lived.
This is the way we lived so my dad could be a prolific Witness. He followed the Society's directions to aspire to poverty and that was a goal that a lot of people could reach. We would all pile in the car to go door to door and tell people with nice yards about the paradise earth, and the weeds in our front yard were a foot high and there was deferred maintenance and ignored grounds care everywhere.
I enjoyed that comment. "poverty...was a goal that a lot of people could reach".
that was so true of the 50's organization mind set, maybe even into the 60's.
Real nice thread Gary, kind of melancholy. Nice to see and share, but kind of hard too.
Brant
Gary, thanks for the trip down memory lane. I had the same two Fords (okay, one was a '50, not a '49, but they were nearly the same car).
Now that we've seen your roots, I appreciate Armageddon Okies even more. Keep up the good work, man! You're an inspiration to us all.
On the plus side my dad bought us a Doodlebug scooter when I was 10 or 11. We had great fun with that. Then later when I was about 13 he bought a basket case of a Cushman scooter and got it together and running. My brother and I had lots of fun with those.
My dad bought us a electric jig saw and he brought lumber scraps home from the millwork company he worked for and we made all kinds of stuff out of wood, toys and little boxes.
We lived on a 10 acre corner until my dad sold one acre to my double aunt and uncle. My folks made a big garden and we raised chickens in a shed and pen out back. The chickens were called broilers and they were chicks in the spring and in the fall we'd have a chicken killing and the chickens would go off to a rented freezer in town called a locker.
The chickens were a big attraction to weasels and it was a constant battle to keep a good fence up. The fence wasn't to keep the chickens in but to keep the weasels out. We added a weasel factor to the spring order number and we always had more than we could eat. We had bacon grease pan fried chicken at least once a week all winter. The bacon grease was saved on the back of the stove in a tin cup and it was used to pan fry everything in.
My mother canned lots of fruit in season and we had a cellar we used to store home grown potatoes and carrots and onions. A neighbor would hire to plant corn on the acres and we'd keep the cobs in a pile and between the mill wood scraps and the cobs, we'd heat the house without much use of the oil heater. The windows had a half an inch of ice on them in the winter and the glass had ripples in the summer so ya always saw a version of what was actually outside.
