Memories on the farm from 1932 to 1950 by Chuck & Yvonne
CHARLES WALTER BUNTJER was born on the farm near Brookville, Ogle, Illinois, USA. He has lived in San Francisco since 1963!
Click this link to read about Charles Buntjer's early remembrances of life on the farm!
YVONNE CAROL BUNTJER was born in Cherry Grove Township, Carroll, Illinois, USA. She married Kenneth Burt on 29 Nov 1952. She currently lives in Tucson Arizona.
Click this link to read about Yvonne Buntjer's early remembrances of life on the farm!
charles
Memories by Charles Buntjer and the Early Years in Illinois ~ 1942 to 1949!
This is the only photo I have of myself and sister
and mother. It was probably taken with a box camera in 1940 when we
lived on a farm in Polo Illinois. We
eventually
bought the farm and also rented and worked a large 500 acre farm near
Pecatonica Illinois. In the late 1940s we built a new barn and
completely renovated the house on the farm near Polo and moved back
there.
My sister said I weighted 10 and one half pounds!
I remember our farm near Pecatonica.
When I was four years old I had a burst appendix. I was chasing my
sister around the yar
d and suddenly felt sick to my stomach. I lay
on the couch for several days and finally went to the doctor in
Pecatonica. He said I had a stomach ache and should go home and stay
still. Well I was in horrible pain and they took me to Freeport and
there found out I had peritonitis from the burst appendix.
They operated and I was unconscious for two weeks. They thought I would die but in the mean time, penicillin had been brought in from Chicago and I was one of the first to receive this type of treatment and it saved my life. I remember having to be in a wheelchair as I was so weak.
Mother and father took me home and put me in their big
bed downstairs and told me to behave, as they had to go work outside in
the fields. Yvonne was at our one room school and I, of course,
after a few hours, wanted something so tried to get out of bed and fell on
the floor. I couldn't get up and lay there for a long time.
Mother came in and did I get it. "Why are you on the floor and
not in bed?" Well of course I didn't mind!
But soon I was up and about. I remember us
going to the oats field near the house and we had a combine drawn by
horses. It cut the oats and put it in sheaves. We followed it
and place the sheaves in bunch with one laid flat on top of each bunch in
case of rain. There was a hollow post by the gate and every
spring
there was a blue bird family that used the post for a nest. I
checked that nest for years and then one time, the post fell apart and
always worried about where the blue birds went. Funny!
I was lucky as my mother Edna, and sister Yvonne,
always stayed up late on Easter eve and boiled eggs and dipped them in dye
to make me a surprise. When I was around four I got up and was
excited, "Did anyone see the Easter
Rabbit?" I think one time my
father said he was seen in the haymow! So up I went into the barn
and found a big nest of straw with eggs and chocolate bunnies and yellow
chicken treats. I was impressed. What a bunny! When I
was five I was told someone had seen the rabbit somewhere in the front
yard. Hmmmm, I said, maybe under the lilac trees. Yes, there
was a fantastic nest under the lilac bushes heavy with spring leaves.
The next year on Easter eve I heard a noise in the kitchen late at night.
I got up, half asleep, and opened the kitchen door. Mother and
sister had a most surprised look on their faces and told me to go back to
bed. I began to wonder why there were hard-boiled eggs all over.
Oh, oh, something is wrong. So later I was walking to the one
room school I went to with my two first grade classmates, Carol Neuberger
and Marilyn Ball. I made some comment about the Easter Bunny
and seeing the eggs actually came from my family. Carol looked
at Marilyn and then announced, "Yes, isn't it interesting, the Easter
Bunny is a lie and so is Santa Clause!" Well excuse me, I
was devastated, first the Easter Bunny and now Santa Clause. Marilyn
said, "Yes, I found out a long time ago!" Well I didn't
want to appear too dumb so I said, "Yes, who would believe in either
one of them." And that was the end of my child hood fantasies
as far as the holidays were concerned!
I remember going to school when I was six years old,
walking the mile or so. In the spring there was a hill covered with
stones, an outcropping that was created by
glaciers half way to the
school. In the early spring when the snow was just about to melt,
the hillside would be covered with little green leaves and beautiful
purple flowers blooming in the cold snow, like Alpine flowers. I
always broke off a bunch and took them to school to Ms. Erna Myers. I
always wondered how many pupils did that for her. One time I was
walking home and a horrible blizzard hit. I was about half way home
and I could barely see the road, the snow was coming down so fast. A
car stopped and a man rolled down the window, "Get in and I will give
you a ride home!" I said no way and ran off the road into a
snow bank. He finally gave up and I finally got home, frozen to
death. And guess what happened, my parents were mad and asked why I
didn't take the offer! Excuse me. I told them they had told me
never to get into a car of a stranger. They explained it was the
corn man who came in the early spring sell corn seed to use in seeded the
fields for the corn crop. He did come once a year so I should have
known him. Yes, I was six and should have known the seed salesman!
I don't think so!
I also had the 'hots' for Carol Neuberger and every
afternoon after school Carol, Marilyn, and I would walk home together to a
split in the road. They continued on one direction and I in the
other. Well Carol's father worked in town and they had a cute
little white house. Marilyn was on the farm like I was so she
obviously was not my type. When we would get to the corner, I would
push Marilyn away and give Carol a kiss and then rush off home. The
woman in the house on the corner would see us and call my mother to say,
"You son is at it again!" I'm not sure what my mother
said!
One day at school, Ms. Myers saw me doing something I
should have been doing. Hard to believe! She came over with
the ruler and smacked my hand very hard and it hurt! I was pissed!
I thought I was going to fix her! I stomped home and went into
the house and announced to my parents what had happened. I assumed,
wrongly, Ms. Myers was going to get it. My parents just stood there
and then my father said I should go out in the front yard and cut off a
nice fresh green branch off the lilac tree. I thought that was
strange. Then thought, I am in trouble! They snapped
that green branch around my ankles and backside and it stung like hell.
They sat me down and told me I minded them at home and Ms. Myers at school
or.... Else! I learned my lesson and after that I kept my
mouth shut if I got in trouble at school!
The boys on the next farm, Le Roy and Donald were
friends of mine and Le Roy was in the seventh grade and Don in the fourth
grade or so I believe and I was in second grade. Le Roy was big for
his age and tough. One day he told Ms. Myers off! She was
about 110 pounds if that. He stood by his desk acting smart and she
came along and took him by his ear and yanked it very hard and then
proceeded to put him in the closet and locked the door and told him to
shape up or else. Well the rest of us were in shock. He was
big and butch. Suddenly we heard a muffled noise. Then we
heard crying like a baby! After about 15 minutes or longer,
she opened the door and there was Le Roy, crying his eyes out and all bent
over. Ms. Myers took him by his ear again and walked him to his
desk, sat him down and told him to shape up and that was that. We
all were impressed and didn't give her much trouble after that!
My mother was so busy working on the farm and keeping
up the house but we always went to the PTA meetings at the little one room
school with about 12 students! For one meeting she made an
Angel Food cake, my favorite. She drizzled a sugared frosting all
over it. I loved that cake. She told me to behave as it was
going to the PTA meeting. Well I decided to see if it met the
standards of a cake and pinched off a piece inside the hole. Yum!
Then took some more off, and more off inside. So off we went
to the meeting after the chores were done. The women put all the
goodies on the table and my mother was proud of the cake. Everyone
was standing around as she cut the cake. She got the strangest look
on her face and everyone had a good laugh. The first piece cut out
had a big part of it picked out on the inside half and one could see the
cake had a big hole in it. She was not amused. I fortunately,
don't remember what was said afterwards!
My sister Yvonne said she remembered men coming to
hunt from Chicago and it frightened her when she was little. My
experiences were very different. On autumn morning in the late 1940s
there was a knock on the kitchen door. Two African American
men were standing there and asked my father if it would be all right to go
hunting on our farm if they were careful. Walter laughed and said
most people parked their cars in the brush by the road and sneaked over
the fence to hunt, sometimes shooting a cow or steer or what ever moved!
The men laughed and said they knew a cow from a pheasant! Daddy said
he was pleased they asked and said it was fine but.... they hadn't better
shoot a milk cow! Later that day they came back with about 14
pheasants. They gave us several even though our father said no.
They came back the next year and had a big bottle of wine for us.
They said they fermented it in their base
ment! The third year
they came with two of their boys my age, around seven or eight.
They went hunting and I played with the two boys, showing them the animals
and then having a great time playing in the haymow. Our
parents never said anything about them being 'black' so I wasn't even
aware of the fact. I don't believe they ever came back and we
were sorry and hoped they were all right. Talk about being taught a
good lesson about being liberal and not being racist!
One winter evening after our chores were finished and
the full moon had come out over the snow covered fields, my father asked
if I wanted to go with him in the truck to check on our steers I believe.
We drove to the middle of the farm and onto a high hill where there was an
Indian (Native American) Mound. He saw something and high in a
branch of a tree was a huge snow owl. The owl was fantastic with the
full moon s
hining on it. What a sight!
The owners of the farm we were renting near
Pecatonica were two sisters and a brother from Germany - they came around
1880 and may have gotten a land grant for the farms. They had a huge
house built around 1906 and I loved visiting there. They were Annie,
Gusty, and Bill Brinkman. Annie was the 'boss' and Gusty
was sweet and kind. Bill was always working doing something and I
think he just liked to keep away from the house! The house had
a beautiful dining room with cherry furniture, a great table, chairs and
buffet - furniture from Marshall Field's in Chicago my sister says.
They also had a den/library and in it were bookcases with glass doors and
inside were encyclopedias, I think from the turn of the 19th century.
Fantastic etchings of long gone animals and so on. One
Christmas Eve Bill asked us to get ready and wear lots of warm cloths.
We thought this was strange. He had gone into his barn and there
were harnesses for his two big workhorses. The harnesses were
covered with large brass bells and he hitched up the horses to a large
sleigh that I didn't even know he had. We all got into the sleigh
and Bill drove us all around the meadow between the two houses.
It was clear and cold with a full moon and the snow sparkled. What a
sight, the horses breath in the cold air, the sparkling snow and the bells
chiming as we road along. What a memory.
One summer I was playing with matches (My sister told
me she also loved to 'set' fires in 'safe' locations!), behind the house
in the old orchard where the trees had fallen down and were rotting.
Plus there was a lot of dry grass all over the area. For some reason
that I certainly don't remember why, I started a 'little' fire by the
rotting tree stump. Suddenly the grass caught on fire and there were
flames all over. I ran around but couldn't stop the fire. I
screamed and luckily someone heard me. All I remember was my father
running over to put out the fire. In the mean time I ran to the
house. Next thing, my father made a beeline to the house with sparks
coming out of his eyes! Yuck! I ran.... Fast.....
Faster...... Across the road and through the meadow to the Brinkman's
house. Fast as a bullet, but my father was just as fast. He
got in the truck and flew down the road, turned the corner and up the
Brinkman drive way. In the mean time I had flown up to the house and
on the back porch were Annie and Gusty. They saw I had terror
written all over my face. I screamed and crawled under the porch.
My father ran over to them and yelled out, "Where is that
......?" They just sat there rocking away and tired not
to say anything. My beady little eyes were peaking out of the
dark under the porch and father saw me and I flew out from under the porch
and back across the meadow and to our house but, my father was in the
truck and we met at the same time, in front of our house. For some
strange reason, I just cannot remember what happened to me then.
Probably better to forget! I, of course, was mad about
it and waited for a few weeks and then guess what? I got my
farmer's matches and walked a mile into a plowed cornfield, looked around
and dug a hole and put some grass in it and lit it and danced around it!
Such a bad boy! I said to my self, "So there, I'll show you
all!" But I did learn one thing, I never lit a fire again that
I couldn't control. So I did learn a valuable lesson and the farm
buildings were saved!
I also remember one Saturday night after chores we
went to a neighbor's house across the river from the Brinkman's house.
It was around nine P.M. which was late and I wondered what was up.
It was a shivery for the daughter, something I had never heard of and it
was the only one that happened in the area for a long time. Perhaps
it was the last one ever in the area, as those things all seemed to vanish
after World War II. Some young couple from two farms had gotten
married and the bride's family had the shivery for them - the Winch family
I believe. Everyone in the surrounding countryside was invited and
there was lots of dancing and singing and drinking. This went on to
very late in the night but I didn't last too long and that was my only
memory. I wonder today how many people actually experienced this
sort of celebration!
When I was around five or so, we would all get in the
car on Saturday evening after chores and drive to a little town named Ridott! I
think it had 50 or so people living there. There was a General Store
with the pickle barrels and so on and they would block off the main street
and put up a small screen and show a movie. Right in the
middle of the street! We then found there was a bigger screen
in German Valley! This town was a little bigger than Ridott and
the main grocery store was in a two-story building. Beside the
store was a big grassy lot and the wall of the store was two stories high.
The movies on Saturday night here were actually very large due to the
large blank wall. This was a great way to spend a summer
Saturday evening, shopping and then relaxing on the grass with snacks
watching a movie! This all disappeared soon after the war and
we then went to the movie theatre in Pecatonica!
When I was six years old I went to my first grade
class with Carol and Marilyn in 1946. Little did I know within the
year I would be famous worldwide! Life
Magazine had hired photographers and
writers to canvas the United States and find the perfect one room school
house to represent the country and what the military had been fighting for
- Mother and Apple Pie! Life Magazine picked the one room
school I went to. We children didn't realize what was going on and
eventually we didn't notice the photographer taking photos of our daily
routine. Eventually in the fall of 1946, Life Magazine appeared with
my photo on the front cover. There were about six pages of photos
and I was in most of them. In one picture I was holding the flag for
morning the Pledge of Allegiance and in another I was calculating the
size of the Easter Bunnies tail along with Carol and Marilyn! I
received over 5,000 letters and presents from around the world and today
after over 60 years, I am still in contact with one man, Frans, in the
Netherlands!
The farm buildings were built on a high hill due to
the spring flooding every year. About half a mile from us was
another large hill with an Indian Mound on the top. It was very big,
about 40 feet or more tall and in the front, or south side was a platform
or a ceremonial area. It was about 15 feet by 30 feet but
probably was larger years ago. I always went up there and
wondered what was done on this ledge. Archeologists came along
one time and asked our father is they could dig up the mound to study the
history of the native Indians and he said no. Leave the bodies
alone as they probably died from chicken pox or measles given to them by
the settlers. At the bottom of the hill were a swamp and a small
pond. The Johnson boys, who lived on the next farm and I, went swimming
there in the summer. They were Le Roy and Donald and Leroy was
about 12 years old and Don was maybe nine and I was around seven.
We were told the Indians had dug the dirt from the swamp to build the
mound and it filled with water. The swamp was very strange; every
spring there would be thousands of wild tiger lilies blooming.
There were very strange humps of land there, about a foot or so high and
about a foot across. They were very tough and covered with grass and
in-between was murky water! We used to dance around on the
tops of the mounds to get across the swamp!
The railroad that ran through our farm was built on a
man made ridge about ten feet high in some areas. The train could
run even when the area was flooded. I remember one spring the entire
low lands were covered with water. One night when it was dark,
we heard a horn, very strange sound. We rushed out and there in the
night was a huge train all lit up with a dome car! Our father rode
his horse down to the tracks and found out the train was the City of San Francisco!
The City of Los Angeles also ran on the tracks due to the main line being
down from the flooding! Little did I know within 20 years I would be
living in San Francisco and visiting Los Angeles.
In the meantime our aunt and uncle, Bennie and Francis Buntjer, were running our farm near Polo. They lived there until 1949 or so and then Bennie move to Rock Falls to work and we moved back to Polo from Pecatonica and built a huge new barn with war bonds. It probably was the last big barn build out of wood in the area as the next generation of barns was made of metal. We also remodeled the house and the cost for each was around $20,000.00. Not too bad for two people without much of an education!
I transferred to a school in Brookville, a very small village next to our farm near Polo after we moved back to our farm. Can you imagine, it also was a one room school! So all of my grade school education was in a one room school!
Memories by Yvonne Burt/Buntjer of our Early Years in Illinois ~ October 2007
Walter had a goiter operation before Yvonne was born, just after he and
our mother Edna were married. Walter turned 21 the day after
they were married so he was 21 when he had the goiter operation.
The doctors treated him for heart problems for a year before diagnosing
the problem! A Doctor Carter worked part time in Freeport and our
Grandfather Buntjer watched through
the window, said the doctor slit the throat in one motion!
The doctor also flew his own plane, this in the 1930s. He also
worked part time in the Mayo Clinic! Walter couldn't work for over
six months and were living in the Gast House when Yvonne was born.
There was a second farm and house down by the creek and they walked down
for dinner and Edna went into labor. Our mother said her mother,
our grandmother was very mean to her.
They
then rented the farm near Polo and moved there when Yvonne was about a
year old. They bought their cows on credit through the milk
company. Our mother said they had made a mistake and had a set
amount taken from the milk check instead of a percentage so they ended
up with 80 cents to buy groceries for the next two weeks!
They put wrapped Yvonne in blankets and put her in a wash tub so she wouldn't get under foot of the cows while they milked the cows! Yvonne said one time when she was three or so, mother was so mad she went to town and spent an entire mild check on a dress and coat. She came back from shopping, then had a 22 inch waist until I was born, the proverbial son Charles! They also had to pick corn by hand so put Yvonne in the corner of the wagon and one day our father hit Yvonne in the nose with an ear of corn. Our mother had a good yell about that!
Yvonne used to sleep on an old couch called a Fainting Couch in the
dining room. Then the house was full of smoke and Yvonne put a
blanket over her head and found the door and ran to the barn. Our
father had lit his pipe and
threw the match into the wood box next to the stove. The box
burned but not much else happened, fortunately!
When Yvonne was 18 months old a German Sheppard attacked her. Edna said the dog went mad. Later her uncle Johnny told her that her mother as in the yard giving her a spanking and the dog came over and grabbed my head to get me away - trying to save me. I ended up with a scar on my head and that was one time her mother lied to her. Edna walked up the road to the highway where a neighbor had a phone. The doctor said the hot sun clotted the blood or she would have bled to death. They took her in to have the stitches taken out and she screamed all the way up the steps to see the doctor! Notice her having a bath and the old hand pump we had to use to get water for the house!
Yvonne remembered when she was still in a high chair, men came in to warm up in the winter time, they were hunters. One was the son of the woman that originally owned the farm. Walter wasn't sure what to do and, they didn't even leave some birds with the family.
Yvonne also remembered the time our mother and father were doing all the
work with horses, and Walter was planting corn. A piece was
missing from the corn planter and he thought Yvonne had messed with the
corn planter and gave her the worst spanking. Edna had to stop him
and of course, later, he found the missing piece. (As I grew up I
found out our father had a terrible temper and would blow up and throw a
fit and curse and sometimes if one was too close, one wo
uld get a good
kick or what ever! I would then get mad for two or three
days, very pissed off. I finally figured out it was a waste of
time as Walter, our father, screamed and cursed and an hour later, had
basically forgot about it!) Yvonne said she can still remember
what that piece of the corn planter looks like.
In 1939 there wasn't any snow for Christmas and on Christmas Eve our mother went down to the barn. Walter was milking and said Santa had come by car because there wasn't any snow. While Yvonne was in the barn, father said, "Hear the car!" Yvonne was sure she had heard a car and ran to the house. Of course Santa had been there! That night Edna went into labor with Charles but nothing happened. There was a space heater in the dining room and Yvonne paced the floor. Well it was another month so I was really a 10 month baby! And weighted 10 1/2 pounds! Yvonne was eight pounds at birth. Yvonne thinks a mid-wife came to stay and was a bitch, made her get on the kitchen floor and scrub it and the kitchen was large. So guess what, Yvonne hated her! But she was never so excited in her life when I, Charles, was born. Yvonne held me when I was just half an hour old. And our dog Scrappy was so excited, would come in had stand on his hind legs to check that I was all right!
There was a farm down the road and a woman in Chicago owned it and lost it. Walter and Edna rented both farms but bought the farm in late 1939. We moved there in February 1940, just after Charles was born! The house Charles was born in only had a couple of rooms and the outside was covered with green shingles. They paid off the farm in 1944, in just four years! Hard to imagine. We all drove to Rockford to sign the papers in the Nelson Hotel. A rep from John Hancock Insurance was there representing the sale. (Interesting, not many years later Yvonne Buntjer would be working at Western Union after High School, a block from the same hotel, Nelson Hotel!)
The last time Yvonne and her husband Ken and their son Bill saw our grandparents on our father's side was in July, 1962. I saw them when I was working in Rockford and would stop and talk to them. I told them about how I flew on a jet to Florida and went on a ship around the Bahamas. They said it sounded great and wished sometime they had been able to do such a thing. As the years went by, I was saddened by the fact I didn't take the time to have them tell me about coming to the U.S.A. and what their life was like.
We use to do our
oats by cutting it with a binder that cut the oat’s stalks at their base and
tied them into sheaths. These
were dropped along the way behind the binder.
I tried to work the binder but I wasn’t strong enough to release the
sheaths after they were tied like they were supposed to be. I was seven at that time so our father
put me on the tractor and he sat on the binder.
We then shocked the oaks, he would prop up four sheaths, I did two more
and then the last one capped the shock. My mother worked by herself. The binder had canvas on it and I
remember my mother mending it on our old treadle sewing machine usually in late
July (I still have that old sewing machine!).
In the middle of
August we had the thrashers come over, one person owned the thrasher and took it
around to each farm in our area.
We killed
chickens the day before and my mother was an excellent cook. Sometimes we had the thrashers for two
or more days. The farmers living in
the area were in the thrashing ‘ring’ an each helped the others.
We had a table
outside with a bucket of water and a basin so they could wash up for dinner
(dinner in our era was noontime), and the evening meal was supper!
The oats was shoveled into bins, all by hands and they
used to put me up there when the oats was getting close to the top of the bin to
spread out the oats so more could be shoveled up there. I did that from the time I was ten. Horses were used to pull the hayracks.
When I was 14 we
started using the small tractor to pull the hay rack and guess who got to drive
it? My dad took me on the thrashing ring to drive it. I was not well received by the ladies
and they made me eat in the kitchen, my first hint of discrimination!
The second time was in high school when I wanted to be in the agricultural class. I knew as much as the boys and probably worked as hard or harder. They talked about breeding and so on and I would embarrass them as if I hadn’t seen it all.
When we were shocking oats i was the first to go home. Most often I drove the old Model B Ford so I was driving by the age of ten. Of course I knew how to drive a tractor already. I never could decently drive an automatic shift car, only the ones that had the toe shifted.
I would saddle my pony or later the horse, and go after the milk cows in the far away pasture and bring them home. I would drag bushels of feed down from the haymow and feed the milk cows in their stanchions. I had to carry water to the chickens and hunt the eggs. We would get over 400 baby chicks in the spring and my job was to take care of them when I got home from school. I changed the newspapers on the brooder house floor and wash the watering dishes, mix medicine in the water and then fill the water dishes. I also put special food in little troughs for them to eat from.
We usually raised 200 baby pigs and had three barrels by the tank that we filled with water and mash to make slop for the pigs. When I was twelve on I slopped the hogs, brought more mash from the bard to get ready for the morning slopping (such a nice word, slopping!). It fermented nicely in 12 hours. I guess that made the pigs get fatter quicker and they loved it! We had 25 milk cows and way in the back pasture we had Herefords or steers! They stayed out there all summer with their babies and we fed the calves until they weighted about 800 pounds and sold them to a feed lot dealer.
We got a combine when I was about 16 so no more thrashing, it was really great! No more cutting and shocking, or thrashing. The oats came out of the combine ready to go into the storage bins. I drove the horses on the hayrack to gather the hay, then drive the hay-fork to get the hay up into the barn.
The hay bailer was invented but we still had to go out into the fields and gather up the bales. One summer when I was 16, we put up 2,400 bales of hay. My mother and I lifted them all on the wagon and my dad stacked then on the hayrack. My mother and I, each one end-lifted the bales up. At this time Chuck was eight but we had him driving the small tractor! There was lots of yelling in the beginning but eventually he got the hand of stopping in the right spot!
Then we would go
up in the haymow and my dad hooked the bales on the hay-fork. I initially
drove horse, then a tractor on the
hay rope that pulled the bales to the top of the barn, then hit a
track that took them across the haymow where they were released. My mother
worked up there, stacking the bales and then my father would go up and help her
finish stacking the bales. If we were lucky, we got a cold drink or the proverbial
cup of coffee! I learned later on this job was one of Chuck's favorites
when he got older. He loved working the huge tines that were used to hold
the bales, sometimes twelve at a time, and then getting them from the wagon top
up into the barn and then pulling on a release rope to drop them in the right
spot!
One thing I never learned to to do the milking. I really played dumb on that one but I did most everything else. I cleaned out the manure in the barn but the worst was cleaning out the hen house in the spring. I can still remember the strong ammonia smell and it also was really dusty stuff. At least the cow manure was a little moist and no dust!
My mother and dad
did the milking and in the evening I usually did the supper. Sometimes we
had scrambled eggs and Span cut into little squares. Scary, the other day
I was homesick and bought a can of Spam!
Breakfast was made while they milked. I made eggs, bacon, and fried potatoes, but only in the summer. During the winter milking was done later so I had to get ready for school, pack my lunch and leave at 8:15 to walk a mile and a quarter to grade school. I took a school bus to high school but didn't get home until after 4:45 PM, a long day. Then I still had to do chores if corn was being picked in the early part of November usually, a fall thing you know!
We got electricity when I was nine and we were living at the Polo farm. We didn't have indoor plumbing until I was almost 19, this was 1950! In the summer we took a bath on Saturday night in a square galvanized tub in the kitchen. We put a copper boiler on the stove to heat water. Charles got to use the tub first. I was second, mother third and father was last! In the winter we did a full bath once a month! It was just too cold!
I was around three or four when we got a washing machine! A great day for my mother. It was run by a gasoline motor! In the winter time on the Pecatonica farm, we brought the washing machine, electric by then, into the kitchen to do washing about once a month in the winter. We would put up lines in the house to hang cloths to dry. The basement was too dusty since we burned coal in the furnace, way too much coal dust!
We used the old wood burning stove until I was around 11. We then got a gas stove, using propane tanks. That was another monumental moment.
I can remember when I was around three I decided to start the old stove like I had seen my parents do it! Just put in cobs, pour in a little kerosene, and throw a match on it! That was fine but, I stuck my nose down there and when it flared up, it singed the hair on my head and I never did that again.
Later I met my future husband Ken, when working in Rockford Illinois. I had several jobs, one was at Western Union where I sneaked out one day to have my picture taken. A little different looking from my eight year old photo!