When I was about twelve my father lost his job - the depression was on. We lost our home and were able to move to a small house rent-free in exchange for work by my Dad. Many homes were being repossessed as people lost their jobs and an income. Dad would go out and paint and paper the houses so they could be placed on the market and sold again. He took me along to paste the wallpaper. On the days he wouldn't be working he would go job hunting - a useless search. He had to put cardboard in his shoes at night to plug up the holes in his soles. Uncle Herm had also lost his job so my Mom and Aunt Nell would bake bread, rolls and cakes, then Dad and Uncle Herm would go door-to-door trying to sell the baked goods.
One day my Dad gave a spice cake in exchange for a woman's dog. We children were delighted, called the dog "Spicie." The women were furious. Finally, people didn't have money to buy baked goods so Aunt Nell and Uncle Herm went back to W. Va.
They still had their small farm and house and they could farm if Herm could not find work. At least they wouldn't starve. I recall a two week period when we had nothing to eat but milk and blackberries. My mother stewed berries, made berry cobbler, or we just eat them plain. We all liked berries and never minded at all.
Then we got food stamps and could buy staples; we ate mostly beans, bread and potatoes. My father always had a garden and my mother canned whatever she could so I don't ever recall being hungry. What I hated about food stamps was that they could only be used at certain stores, usually a small grocery that didn't have much of a selection. I was mortified that someone I knew would see me going into one of these stores, so I would walk miles around so that I wouldn't go near the homes of any of my friends. Then, when I got to the store I would stand back and not buy anything until all the other customers were gone. It was very humiliating for me to take charity.
I recall one time when my shoes, my only pair, tennis shoes, got a hole in them and my Mom had no money for a new pair. That Saturday was Akron Pure Milk Day at Summit Beach, an amusement park. With bottle caps one could get free rides. I went with several friends and we had a wonderful time on the rides. Late in the day there was a contest with prizes for the fattest kid, the one with the most freckles, etc. My friends wandered over to the stage when they were having the reddest hair contest. My friends pushed me up on the stage and I was declared the winner. I recall that I got $5; I was in heaven!
When I went home my Mother was even more thrilled than me: now she could get two of us new shoes. I was so happy to get a new pair of leather shoes and still recall the day that I proudly wore them to school. When school was out it was raining and even though it was October and cold and chilly, I took my new shoes off and walked home in my bare feet. I wouldn't have ruined those new shoes for anything as I didn't know when I'd get a new pair.
As the severe economic depression of the 1930s continued, my Dad finally got a job with the government sponsored Works Progress Administration. When brother Tommy was about four years old Mom went to work for the Ralmer Match Co. We had a "girl" who would come over and keep an eye on us kids until she came home. I really hated the new arrangement as previously I used to rush home from school and report on everything that had happened to me that day; I was like the town crier.
That fall when we went back to West Virginia to visit relatives, Aunt Nell talked my folks into letting Tommy stay with them while my mother was working. Her daughter Honey would be in school all day and Tommy would be appreciated company for his aunt. So it was agreed that Tommy would stay. After brother George had lived with my grandparents in Bruceton Mill for a couple of years they wouldn't give him up. The same thing eventually happened to Tommy. After some six months my Mom was laid off from her job. Times were still very rough for our family financially so Tommy stayed on with Aunt Nell. When he was six my folks went back to bring him home. But Aunt Nell cried and threatened she would go to court demanding settlement of his board bill if they tried to take Tommy away. My folks didn't want to alienate Aunt Nell. Tommy was very happy there so he was allowed to stay on.
Each summer from the age of nine I used to spend a month at least at Aunt Nell's. Honey and I were the best of friends and played very well together. Their farm was a mile from town. Honey had no one near to play with so she begged me to stay with them. Uncle Herm would be gone most of the day, working on a road crew. Aunt Nell would be out working in her large garden so Honey and I could take care of Tommy and play all day. Honey had a favorite doll, "Rose Marie", and a small battered doll for me. Whenever I got homesick and wanted to go home, Honey would let me play with Rose Marie for the day. We played out in the empty corncrib, until we saw a long black snake. That was the end of our play in the crib. Then we would take turns playing on the big old lumber pile, or the roof of the coal house.
We would fix our own lunch; my favorite was picking fresh lettuce from the garden, making a sandwich with it, homemade bread - of which I was not fond - and homemade mayonnaise. A small fresh cucumber completed our lunch. We always helped prepare dinner: peeling potatoes, setting the table and fetching a pitcher of cider from the cellar, which was a cool dugout space under the kitchen, with a door from the side yard. One would insert a rubber hose down the small hole on top of the large barrel, suck on it to start a siphon in order to fill the jug. Never have I tasted such good cider, especially when it got a little tangy.
A dish that Aunt Nell often made was "smear case". Skim milk was always simmering in a big pot on the back of the coal range. About once a week Aunt Nell would scoop out the curds which had formed, put them in a large pillow case, hang the case on a nail with a pan underneath to catch the fluid. After all the fluid had drained, the bag would be squeezed and the dry mixture removed. A little cream and would be added to our home produced cottage cheese.
Saturdays Honey and I were always busy. After the breakfast dishes we had to scrub the back porch and the board walk all the way to the outhouse and then the inside of the outhouse - all three holes about the toilet pit and the floor. Then we had to churn butter. Cream which had been saved all week was placed in the churn and Honey and took turns working the plunger up and down until butter formed. Nell would then scoop the butter out into a bowl, wash it with water until the water was clear, add a little salt, work the butter into a solid mass with a paddle. Then she would place the butter in a wooden mold of a one pound size, place it in the basement to cool. We usually produced four to six pounds of butter.
Then Honey and I would take our weekly bath in a big tub in the wash house. We would carry water from the tank on the stove, which was next to the fire grate and held about five gallons as I recall. Keeping the tank filled so we always had hot water was another of our duties. After bathing we dressed up in our good clothes to take our weekly trip to town. Aunt Nell would place four or five dozen eggs and the butter in a basket. It was shorter to go through the woods and come out by the cemetery and the church rather than the longer walk on the road. This shortcut was fine when there were two of us but when one of us went alone we used the longer route, always walking around the cemetery as this was one of our phobias. Another phobia was snakes. Aunt Nell hated snakes and we were filled with her warnings and fears.
One day a cousin, Tom Cunningham, from Uniontown, was visiting us for a few days. One day, not telling us, he killed a large black snake, draped it from one branch to another across our usual path. The day we saw it we went running back to the house in a hysterical state. Aunt Nell didn't believe our report so she went with us. When she saw the snake she ran back to the house screaming.
Getting back to Saturdays: our first duty was to deliver the eggs and butter to promised customers. Then we went grocery shopping for sugar, tea, coffee, etc. Aunt Nell would know almost to the last penny how much the groceries would cost and how much change would be left over. Once in a while, rarely, it would be a nickel but usually it was only three or four cents. The change was ours to do with as we wished. We would check over the penny candy counter as closely as a miser counts his money. We would usually buy the largest quantity possible for a penny to make it last for several days. Each of us wound up with a nickel. We would hike up the street to Syballs and get an ice cream cone - what a treat! Then we would go visit our relatives -Uncle Will and Aunt Emmy usually because we would have fun with their son, Joe. He would kid us and he was always making or doing something interesting. Uncle Will had built a crystal radio set so Joe would let us listen to programs on it. They kept bees and would give us honey in a comb to take home. I did not care for honey then, still do not.
Although it was fun to watch out the window and see Uncle Will removing the honey from the hives, wearing his hat with protective veil, thick gloves, and smoking a cigar. Joe had a pet crow and we would watch Joe put it through its tricks. One day the crow pulled out all the clothes pins from my aunt 's wash hanging on the line. We never saw the crow again after that. Then we would visit our grand parents and my brother, George, walk home in the late afternoon.
When Uncle Herm came home from work he would always bring a newspaper and we would anxiously await the comic strips. The best comics were in the Sunday paper wh1ch Herm brought home Saturday evening; after we were in bed Aunt Nell would lie down with us and read them aloud, using all the dialects. The Katzenjammer Kids strip was our favorite.
Sunday was usually the quiet day for the family. Honey, Tommy and I would go to Sunday school. Aunt Nell would. do only necessary work: cooking, milking, nothing else. She might do some crocheting but no sewing; she told us that if one sewed on Sunday, after one died one would have to take out all the stitches with one's nose. That was one rule we never broke. Usually we had beef or pork for dinner on Sundays, mashed potatoes, gravy, peas, corn or beans from the garden and pudding or pie. My favorite pudding was cornstarch-made and whenever Nell was undecided about dessert I would yell for my favorite. When company came we would have fried chicken and cake.
Of course Honey and I would still have duties on Sunday: filling the stove tank and the water bucket. A large bucket of water was left on the porch counter for drinking and washing. Across the dirt road that ran in front of the house there was a spring house, a little rock-lined hut with a door, surrounding the spring, protecting the water supply from animal contamination. The spring was at the bottom of a hill where its water collected in a large well-like hole. It was cold and sweet-tasting and supplied all our needs. During World War II my father piped the spring water into the house.
Monday was washday, all day. Honey and I carried buckets of water to keep the hot water tank filled, then we filled large tubs of water and a copper-bottomed boiler on the stove. Then we had to carry water from the spring to the wash house for the rinsing of the clothes. Aunt Nell would carry the heated water from the house to the wash house. She would wash all the clothes by hand using a scrub board. Between the wash tub and the rinse tub there was a hand wringer. All the white clothes were laid out on the grass to keep them white. Honey and I would lay out the small clothes. All the dark clothes were hung on the clothes line.
Every evening after dinner, while Honey and I washed the dishes, Aunt Nell would go milk the cow. Before supper Honey and I would go to bring Daisy to the field close to the house. We would take out through the woods, then into the open meadow. We would call "Sooee" and would soon hear Daisy's bell. When the cow saw us she would follow us home. Aunt Nell sat on a small stool to milk the cow, yelling to Daisy when the cow would flip her tail and hit Nell in the face. First she would wash Daisy's teats, then start her milking. I can still visualize the warm milk flowing first in a small stream, then a larger stream, making a pinging sound as it hit the bucket. My brother and Honey liked the warm milk but I hated it. In fact I didn't like milk much at all. I tried to milk once but was never able to do it. I learned it was a knack I did not possess.
After milking Aunt Nell would take the milk to the cellar, put it through the separator to remove the cream from the milk, most of which was saved to make butter but we did use some of it on our breakfast cereal. Another Sunday job Honey and I performed was cleaning the kerosene lamps. We would take off the glass shades, wash and shine them with newspapers, trim the wicks and fill the lamps with kerosene.
We would go blackberry picking when they were ripe. It would be hot but we would be dressed like we were going to the Arctic. Aunt Nell would wear a pair of Uncle Herm's pants, held together with pins because she was a lot heavier than he was and couldn't fasten them. Hone and I would have long black cotton stockings on our legs and arms, with cutouts for our fingers to poke through. And protective sun bonnets. We dressed like that because the vines were so prickly, thorns everywhere. We took along sandwiches and a glass jar of water. The vines often grew over rocks so Aunt Nell would caution us to watch out for snakes. Although we never saw a snake she would tell us about people who had wandered into snake dens, died horrible deaths from multiple bites of copperheads or rattlers.
Sometimes Honey and I would go huckleberry picking by ourselves. The bushes were small and not too prevalent. They were my favorite, especially in pies. Aunt Nell canned many quarts of berries. There was a small patch of strawberries in the garden which were wonderful: we would have strawberry shortcake, but mostly the berries were used for jam. In the fall we would gather hickory nuts, spread them out on papers in the attic to dry. We also gathered black walnuts.
As we grew older Hone taught me to dance. On the old hand crank Victrola we would play such records as 'Don't Ring Lulu", and "By the Light of the Silvery Moon." We would have to keep winding up spring as Honey showed me how to slide my feet in a square. I always liked to dance but don't think I learned too much this way; I learned more later just be following a good dancer.
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