pre grid 1930's living

I wish my mom had told me stories. She was 6 when the crash came.
I know from things my older brother says that she left school in 3rd grade to go to work, she got up to 6th via correspondence course.

He also says they didn't live in a real house. They lived in a hooverville.

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2Ti 1:7 for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.
Luceo non uro

Back from porch sittin' with a few answers.

Regarding rabbit food - as far as Dad can remember they did not give the rabbits commercial feed but greens and carrots from the garden.

Toilet paper? Yes, they had toilet paper in the outhouse, but you were limited to 2 squares per job.

I asked him if they used Sears and Roebucks catalogs for tp and he said that they used that for doorstops. They folded back individual pages on the diagonal and the catalog fanned out and kept the doors from slamming shut.

I asked Dad if they ever 'grilled out' or cooked outside. The only outdoor cooking was the smoker - Grandpa could expertly set up the fire in the morning so it would slowly smoke the hams throughout the day.

They would eat outside though. Grandpa made a picnic table big enough to seat 12 and it was the site of many summer suppers.

They only took one vacation to visit some relatives about 200 miles away. Dad said that was like Christmas - they planned for months and months for that trip - new tires, valve job, packing and lots of anticipation.

The entertainment along the way? Anytime the kids saw an outhouse they hooted and hollered out the car windows.

I remember my grandma saying they made their monthly supplys. It was just a small square of cloth sewn into a tube and stuffed with a few rag cloths or an absorbent material.it had straps ten went to a belt for around your waist to keep it in place.The water from the washing and absorbent material if disposable went to the garden.
The bath tub was a small cast iron tub. It is still in use in my great grands house. I often us a rubbermade tub to wash the smallest children. And wash the dirtiest clothes that way. Why waste so much water for those jobs? All waste water went to the garden. You only used soap if it was absolutely needed. " alls you need is water to be clean. Often times a little salt, baking soda or vinegar went a long way in cleaning.
Only time you went to the dump was to find something. When we go to the dump is often like Christmas. They save out anything useful. Often we get first dibs. We have some very rich People around here and get ride of stuff just cus it's last season. I don't get it! But hey that's ok with me!

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I'm so done here.

My grandparents were kids durning the depression. They tell me GGrandma used to take lard and mix it with food coloring so it would looked like they butter. My grandma said at one point her family lived in a basement that her dad was gonna build a house on top of but never did. They raised rabbits and her dad and brothers would hunt and fish and she always had to clean what ever they got that day. She taught me to can tomatoes and I took it from there learning to can other veggies.
My dads grandparents were from Poland and were the original farmers in the family. He and his 7 brothers and sisters had to work on the farm every summer and every Sunday his grandma would make dinner for the whole family. It was the only day where they all had enough to eat to make them full.
The farm is still in the family. It has a cistern and they would pump water up to a tank in the attic that would feed the sink, tub and toilet by gravity. It also had one of the only octagon barns in the area, I personally only know of one other one still standing. Grandma used it as a chicken coop and granary.

We didn't have much for toys when I was a kid. I did have a stuffed "owl" instead of a teddy bear that Grandma made from grey cloth with features drawn on with a marker. I was hurt in an accident when I was in first grade, the other boys came to see me in the hospital and shared some of their toys with me. A year later when I got polio Grandad carried me into the farm equipment store to buy a toy tractor and wagon with a silver dollar I got for my birthday.

We bathed in an old galvanized tub that hung on the back porch. Another one was under the faucet on the back porch. We used the outhouse out behind the woodshed. The old house had a piece of linoleum on the livingroom floor about 8' square, (the room was 12'x14') it had newspapers under it to keep the floorboards from making creases in it (but it still had creases and wear marks from the uneven floorboards). The wind blew in the winter right up through the floorboards around the linolium. There was a huge wood stove, an old davenport, the big dining table and Dads big chair in the livingroom. In the corner was a built-in bookshelf with a few books. The kitchen was bare floor, had a wood cookstove and a table in the middle, a small table for bread making along 1 wall instead of a counter and the old buffet for dishes. No refrigerator, just the springhouse. Dishes were put in a big aluminium dishpan and hauled to the back porch to wash, along with a pot of hot water heated on the stove. The old house was a garage, a small shed and a small cabin all drug to the site and jacked up on big oak rounds. The kitchen was the small shed, the old cabin was the living room. The old garage was divided for 2 bedrooms and a floor was built inside it. Us 3 boys slept in a full sized bed in that little room with 1 little window. A back porch was added and later enclosed for a utility room. Dad later built a Gambrel roof over it all for bedrooms upstairs. Mom and Dad sold the farm in 1980 and the new owner had to jack up the house because the floor joists had settled into the ground because the site was never leveled and the rain water ran under the house rotting the wood blocks it set on. The new owner said it would have been easier and better to just burned it down and started over.

I learned a lot from my Grandparents but both my parents went through the depression also. Neither had money, Moms side went through the dust bowl in Kansas. Hardy people. I left home at 12 to farm on my own. Things were tough, I lived in a chicken coop until I got the cabin built. Sweetie and I moved our things in the day before we were married so we came home from our honeymoon to a new place. We lived there for 11 years until we had to sell because my health went bad. The doctors didn't know if I would live or not, we had a house built in town so Sweetie would have a nice place. I slowly got my health back but we missed the country. We bought an old place (4 ac) with an old barn and a pond to go to. The barn was rotted out so we built a small replica from the materials we salvaged. We wanted to build there but never did. It was a great place for the kids to get away from town. We spent all our summers out there, camping, fishing and swimming. We bought the offgrid cabin property and built there. It was our getaway. We bought this place 2 years after we were married, for a rental, we remodeled it and rented it out. It was too small for our family. We moved to the offgrid cabin full time for 1 year before I got sick again. I retired Jan 2010 but living at the offgrid cabin was too hard so we moved here to the cottage. Our daughter lives in the family home in town. Living at the offgrid cabin was great, it fit our lifestyle, very laid back. We hope to get back there next year when I retire for good. We have always lived frugally, not for lack of money, it is just the way we are. We like old things, old ways, simple and plain. My Grandparents sold what they had at a farm sale, loaded up a pickup with what meant the most to them and headed to Oregon in 1953 to start over. They never owned land in Kansas but Grandpa got a job at a sawmill in Sweethome Oregon and they bought a little house. They were in heaven, in love and lived happily and content until Grandad got lung cancer. He died when I was 12.....James

Does that mean you got married at 12? One of my aunts rode off on her bike one day, and was married when she got back. I think she was 14. The fella was leaving for the navy. So she came on back home after the marriage and didn't tell her folks for about a month.

My daddy is still living and was also one of 8 during the depression. About half of them were born in a house with a dirt floor. I think the next house they had was the one he said you could see their chickens through the cracks in the floorboards running around under the house.

They stored their cool things in the stream about 50 yards from the house. Everyone in the area used it for that purpose. I asked him one time if people stole each other's things. He said he couldn't remember that happening. Then he thought for a minute and said "I don't think anybody would have tried that but once."

this brings back some great memories.
We had a grandma and grandpa who lived on a farm in north west Missouri.
She had a huge garden, grapes and chickens, pigs, and cattle. I never remember her baking bread, as soon as she could buy it from the store she did. We always had the nasty white stuff, she always bought the whole wheat loaf that we loved.
She sold her eggs and cream at the store and used the money to buy material to make clothes.
They had a big bath tub and she heated water in a big tea pot on the back of a big electric stove. The kids wanted to put in a hot water heater for grandma in the 60's but my stubborn grandpa wouldn't allow it, said she didn't need it.

She had a big copper boiler on a gas stove in the basement that she heated water in for the wash, which was of course, a wringer washer. I can still smell that damp basement. We hung the clothes on a clothes line just outside the basement door.
She had a reputation for the best peaches, and sold them by the bushel. I would love to know what they charged for them.
They had running water in the kitchen and a small separate toilet put in an old closet. We were never allowed to drink from the faucet, we had to drink from the bucket of water that was drawn from the cistern at the back of the house.
My mother and uncle used to ride an old horse to school. And, like mentioned earlier, my uncle was also premature and was put in a box on the oven door.
My grandma lost at least one baby and never once did she ever discuss it with any of her children.
My grandma has really influenced me to get back to the land.

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misera est servitus ubi jus est aut incognitum aut vagum
(miserable is that state of slavery in which the law is unknown or uncertain)

I remember my great grandmother calling the couch a davenport, and sometimes she'd call one a divan. I now know what she meant, but at 5 yrs old, I just giggled when she'd say it. ( a davenport is a sleeper sofa, a divan was an earlier version of an unholstered sofa) I also remember her shaking her head and saying, "Well I swan!" She never cut her hair, never "cursed" and always worked hard. My mom told me during the depression that she always had a pot of pinto beans and a skillet full of fried potatoes and cornbread on the woodstove. They didn't have much variety, but always had plenty to eat. I love this thread!

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Pro Libertate!

My grandmother had twins in the 20's. One, my mother, was chubby and pink. The other, my uncle, was smaller,weaker and blue. My great grandmother sat all night in front of the open oven door of the cookstove warming and rubbing his little arms and legs. He just celebrated his 89th birthday and is still training horses and working cattle. My grandmother remembers her two grandfathers. One served in the Union army and one in the Conferderate army. They both lived with her family when they were old. They used to sit on the front porch and swap stories. The grandchildren were allowed to sit with them and listen as long as they kept quiet.

I grew up on a relatively remote ranch in MT (nearest town was 60 miles over gravel roads) from the time I was 6 years old, no siblings, parents and maternal grandparents and I do remember a lot of the stories. My mother kept saying she needed to write down what she remembered and didn't ... I've been saying the same thing for years myself and now, at 70 ... I've actually started ... but now, so many things I don't remember.

The original part of the ranch was 620 acres homesteaded by my maternal grandparents in 1915. My grandmother and the two little girls stayed at the homestead cabin while my grandfather worked as a ranch hand/cowboy at a ranch some 60 miles away for $40 a month, which was needed to buy food and supplies. He got home one weekend a month, as I recall. They went to town with a team and wagon twice a year ... early summer and in the fall. They started with chickens and a milk cow, put in a garden, which had to be watered by hand from a spring about 100 feet from the house. No stream, no well. They later added to the homestead section and moved to the larger ranch house there, 3 miles away but closer to the county road, still gravel but some maintenance. Creek ran through that property and there was a well and a cistern for rainwater.

My parents built a cabin at the home place and we moved there when I was 5 years old (1947). There was no electricity, didn't get REA until I was 10 or 12 years old and even after than, did not get running water in the house or indoor plumbing or telephones until the 1960s after I was grown and gone.

We ran beef cattle but had several cows that gave enough milk to have as milk cows. Had chickens, sometimes turkeys, pigs for a few years and a big garden. Most of our food came from our own garden, canned for winter. Without freezers, we cured pork from butchering a pig, had chickens fresh in the summer (and canned for winter as well) and when it was cold enough to be able to hang outside and freeze, we had deer. We didn't eat beef because that was our 'cash crop'. After we got electricity and were able to have a refrigerator and a freezer it got easier.

Washing (before electricity) was with an agitator washer that was driven by a small gasoline (kerosene?) engine ... mother and grandmother washed together once a week usually, though not as often in the winter. In the summer the sheets would be dry on the line before the next loads were hung. In the winter things had to hang out until the 'freeze dried'.

There was a pump on the back porch where we pumped water from the well for the house. In the summer a bucket was kept on a table on the back porch, with a wash basin where you washed face and hands when you came in from work before you went in to the house. Baths were usually once a week (Saturday night baths were a real thing then). A galvanized wash tub was put on the coal stove and the water heated to 'warm enough' and then sat on the floor in front of the stove on a braided rug. As the only child, I got the first bath, usually washed my hair as well and pitcher of clean water was poured over my head to rinse. In the winter, instead of pumping water from the well into buckets and pouring into the tub, the tub was placed on the stove and buckets of snow brought in to melt.

The big 'ranch' garden was below the house and irrigated from the creek with a small pump run by a gasoline engine. Very short growing season there, 90 days was about all you could rely on but we canned enough beans, peas, corn, tomatoes, cucumber pickles and beets to last all winter, plus potatoes and carrots in the cellar and squash and cabbage for as long as it lasted. Our jelly and jam was from wild plums and chokecherries ... I still miss the taste of chokecherry jam and syrup.

We had a small Ford tractor but most of the work was still done with a team of horses. We shipped calves in the fall to the auction, but I can remember my mother telling about driving the cattle they were selling 30 miles over the hills to a railroad siding to be shipped by rail.

There were no 4-wheel drive vehicles then, so most of the winter we couldn't get out. I can remember my Dad riding horseback the 3 miles to the county road to get the mail when the snow got deep and there were months we didn't go to town. I think we might have gone to town once a month, if that, curing the summers. By the time I was in my teens, vehicles were better, roads were better. We also had more machinery (that was always breaking down) and we went to town more often by then.

Heat was provided by a big coal pot-bellied stove in the living room and a coal range in the kitchen. When I was in my teens we added a propane stove for cooking, which made things much easier in the summer. I had to go away for high school since the local country school only went up to the 8th grade and can remember coming home in the winter and brushing snow of the windowsill in my bedroom before I went to bed. My bedroom was actually the original homestead cabin that had been moved from the homestead and attached to the ranch house already existing on the new place.

One of the things I never asked and would give anything now to know ... how did they get a 16 x 20 cabin moved 3 miles over the hills and at least one creek crossing with a team of horses?

The original ranch house burned the day after I graduated from high school. My parents lived in the cabin they had originally built for several years and then rebuilt on the same site. This is a photo taken from the hill above the home ranch after the new house was built.

Recently stole the fist few copies of foxfire magazine of the net:
Foxfire (magazine) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(they are still in print i think and you might be able to get them at the library)

There are some great stories in there of people that where old in the 1970 ties.

Henk

Someone mentioned using lard as butter... I was talking to mom & she said her grandmother told her that when she was a girl her mother would save all the fat that cooked off their Christmas goose. It was a terrific treat to spread the seasoned fat on toast.

My Mom was born in 1929 (now has alzheimers so she doesn't remember anyone or anything pretty much).

Dad was born in 1930 and passed away 9 years ago.

What they grew up with and doing during the Depression years spilled over into their adult lives and their children's lives.

We gardened but also hunted, fished, and foraged for wild food when I was growing up. I honestly wished I had paid more attention than I did because there are things I don't remember but I am thankful for the things I learned and do remember.


Both Papaw and Granny (mom's parents) would have been in their 30's when the Depression came about. Granny was born in 1893 and Papaw in 1900. I don't recall stories of how they lived before and during the Depression but I could see evidence of it in their home and around their property.

My Granny was 93 when she passed away (I was 17 at the time). I can still remember her standing in from of her wood cookstove cooking, her treadle sewing machine, the outhouse, the wringer washer, rain barrel out the back door, and more that she and Papaw lived with. This wasn't a long time ago either... just 25 years ago. I was 15 before we even had an indoor bathroom. When I tell people that they look at me like I'm lying or I'm crazy because I'm 43. People have become so out of touch with how things used to be and how things still are for many people. My own sister tells me I was born 100 years too late. She just forgets where she was raised and what holler that was. She and I are as different as night and day.

My Dad's Parents (Pap & Ma) would have been around their 30's as well and again I could see evidence of their life around their property (Pap died a few months before I was born and Ma a year after). Their house is the house I grew up in as Dad inherited it. The old smokehouse was there, the dairy as they called it which was actually an above ground root cellar built back into the hillside, the old hand well pump in the yard just out the back door of the kitchen, and other things. No indoor bathroom as I mentioned above, no closets in the house either we used wardrobes and chests, dressers, etc. as they did. Oils lamps were a common scene in our house even though we had electricity. The oil lamps were there for power outages. I remember winters were the electric went out and Mom would put the fridge contents out in the snow just outside the kitchen door.

My parents were raised during the depression; dad was lucky and was raised on a small farm, but mom was raised.. well...

Mom was literally left on the hospital steps as a baby. From what (2 lines!) medical records we have found and family supposition, we think the dr knew her mom and tried to help her out by taking my mom (the baby). Mom went into foster care (sorta) but was never told. The foster mom died and the dad remarried to a horrible woman who was abusive. Mom remembers eating flies with milk on them (as a punishment). At one point, they lived in the front showroom of a car dealership (this would have been in the 30s). When she was 12, the foster parents divorced, and she was sent to an orphanage run by nuns. Mom says that was a great improvement.

After about 6 months, she was adopted and lived in a very small town (think like our suburbs). They had chickens and goats. Mom worked in the grocery store (where they used ketchup and oatmeal to extend the ground beef) and as a telephone operator.

My grandparents all lived in town by the time I came along (I'm the youngest), but I've heard stories of life on the farm. One of my uncles wrote a lot down before he died - I'll have to go find those old stories sometime this winter. He had a lot more details of how they used kerosene plasters, cod liver oil, etc


Moldy

This is still done in Germany - or at least it was not all that long ago. You can (or could) buy pork or goose fat at the butcher, flavored with onion and/or apple and herbs. Its called Schmalz (schmaltz here in the US is generally chicken fat, and is from the ---dish). I actually quite like the German version - pork fat with onions, apples, and sage gently cooked in it, and then allowed to cool. Really nice spread on a slice of hearty bread, a nice sourdough rye maybe.

Both parents grew up during the depression.

Paternal grandparents never learned to drive. They had a well at their house in a Minneapolis suburb. There were little metal plates on the floor and ceiling of the kitchen so you could remove them and pull the pump rod to replace the leathers. When we stayed with them, Grandpa would take us down to the lake on the bus to fish. I can't imagine what the driver would say if you tried to get on the bus now with fishing rods. They had a glass barometer with a goose neck filled with colored water that showed when the barometric pressure changed.

Maternal grandparents were well off. Grandpa was a doctor. he took critters in payment during the depression. I do remember her cooking with lard. The milk came in bottels and the cream had to be skimed off the top.

The parents house had an icebox. There was a little door on the outside of the wall that opened directly into the icebox so the delivery man could load the ice without coming in the house. There was also a door for dumping coal into the coal bin in the basement but the coal burner had been replaced by an oil burner. The coal bin was still there and full of black coal dust. Mom had 5 kids that lived and 3 that didn't. She saved grease in a can by the sink and used it to cook. Her favorite saying was, "waste not, want not". She hung the wash outside in the summer and in the basement in the winter. Dad showed us how he used to make his own toys. The one I remember was made from a larger spool from sewing thread, 2 wooden match sticks, a slice of bar soap, and a rubber band. The warming house at the ice skating rink had a coal burning potbelly stove in it. They would fire it so hot it glowed cherry red. It felt great to a soaked and freezing kid. The milkman had big chunks of ice in the milk truck to keep the milk cold. If we asked nice he would break off a hunk for each of us to suck on. It tasted so good on those really hot days. We would go to the movies on hot days because it was the only place that was air conditioned.

My mom was born 1920, she had a sister about 3 years younger. Grandpa married above him. He was a hard worker. He was single for years and met grandma at old orchard beach in maine or mass. Mom's folk were from Mass. Well they married--it is in the bible long with lot's of Grandma's folks.


I know my Grandma did not have a mother but she was raised by a brother and a neighbor lady who seems like she was like a cleaning lady. I mention this as women dieing after a few years of child bearing was a pattern going back a few generation.

Grandma died too leaving granddad with two girls under 10. His plan was to move to Mass and live with my his wifes single aunt. Well even though it was to raise the girls catholic services took mom and her sister away to there orphanage. It was in Mass. It was by the water. Mom at lobster most days for most of the meals it any was left over it became breakfast or else it was oatmeal. They had potates not fancy one --they were blue cause they were feed potatoes dyed blue (or purple).

One of her memeries was checking the orphange lobster traps. picking fiddle head and in the spring for food. Other girls and her at times worked in the garden. Now, this is weird --at bath times they bathed in a tub (very forward for the time) but they HAD to were a sheer bathgown to take a bath. --Mom was a rebel and strip naked and bathed in the room --door had no lock and the gown was to "save her from being caught naked. She would dunk the gown and the sisters were none the wiser.

Her sister Ann was cute and younger and just about got adopted but the Aunt that grandpa (nick) was going to "shack" up with got word of the adoption and she rushed in and adopted both girls.---The girls had lived lik2 years in the orphanage and it was "believed" that grandpa Nick was long gone. Once G.G. Aunt Helen got the girls legal--what a surprize she got a temp boarder --yes Grandpa was always in kahoots with Helen and he worked as a steampipe fitter building hosp. pretty much along the east coast. Helen was the spinster of her family and seem to be in everyones will thus she inherited 3 homes near each other two she rented and one she lived in (now know she really was a generation older than grandpa Nick) Helen was one of the first AT&T phone operators. She had a lowly gas stamp Nick had unlimited due to his work. Helen had money (inhereited) and she worked had a metal sears credit card in her own name.

In time Grandpa did not have to work far from home--he was a plumber in his own right and he lived full time in the house (as a teen mom became somewhat questioning just how the relationship was between Helen and Nick--Mom felt that there were enough clue to come to a concusion but that searching for proof was out of line--so who know--but they were a family.

Living thur the depression was not really that hard. Beans on friday, garden out back. Mom was often sent to do the shopping so when she went to the butcher she brought an onion and a potatoe. Helen trained her to have the meat man grind both to streach the meat. A cousin--Named Nellie came with a knock on the door and a man claiming to have married a female from the family but that she died leaving him with the girl. He was to return but he never did thus a Nellie too young to know her last name was given Helen last name --no papers but she became the youngest sister of the girls though she was and still is called cousin Nellie.

Mom remember buy opium at the chemist (drug store) for G.G Aunt Helen. Mom never ever want to complain as she hated the orphanage and also because Helen was wonderful to all the girls. There was rationing but with a garden and simple living and Helen was of "old town blood" they really did not suffer. Walking to school was not poverty it was simply the norm.

Oh, back in mom's younger days (teen years) it a known"fact" that it was unsafe for a female to wash their hair or bath --that time of the month. Mom ever the rebel lied and just got lucky on only had her period on sat. never on Friday bath night--wink wink.

women in the area took in laundry, sewing, and cooking. Helen had the means to hire domestic help but the upstairs were the girls job only. The adults each had their own bedroom downstairs. A big deal was made in my mom's mind to make it clear that they had separate bedroom.

They ate from the sea. and garden. A cake with out frosting on Sat was made by a cook and that was the big even. Helen canned with the girls many fruit from the trees and beans. Root vegs stored in the basement. Mom noted that in the orphanage gardening was in desparation where with Helen it was just a natural way of the seasons of life. She did not fear hunger at Helens but in the ophanage there where comments spoken which made her worry about the future meals.

My dad was born in 43. He said he had rabbits as a kid because grandma wanted the flowered feed sacks to make aprons & things out of.

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I can't believe I deleted it!

My mother's family were definitely city people but that didn't mean they didn't garden, bake their own bread, etc. One of my mom's stories was that her mother's mother would keep a dust pan and broom on the back prorch to go out to the street to sweep up the manure left by the horses to put in her garden. My mom always said she had the best garden in town.
They went through the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire but did not lose their house.

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For we used to ask when we were little, thinking that the old men knew all things which are on earth: yet forsooth they did not know; but we do not contradict them, for neither do we know.

I love these stories. History can be so enlightening.