Dawn and I traveled to Omaha this past weekend for my mother's 101st birthday. Not exactly a big trip, but I think that it may include a story worth re-telling. Our world has changed so much since she was born. In attendance at the birthday party were her 97 y.o. brother and her (almost) 92 y.o. sister. We encouraged them to tell us stories of their childhood.
When my mother was born, World War One was still raging and the world was also caught in a pandemic influenza outbreak which killed millions of people. Antibiotics had not yet been developed. She was raised on a large, 240 acre, farm with a large farmhouse (two stairwells and five bedrooms). However, their home had neither electricity nor running water. The stove was heated by burning corncobs retrieved from the hog lot after the hogs had eaten the corn kernals off (and the poop had been knocked off). Only the kitchen and parlor were heated. The farming was done with horses. During the summer, the men worked the fields until sundown and the children carried their meals out to them. As children, they remember no discipline problems; too busy with farm chores to get into trouble. Their grade school was a fairly convenient walk, only 3/4 mile away. The mailbox was 1/4 mile distant. On snowy winter days, sometimes her father would hitch up the wagon and horses to take them to school.
Then the great Depression came; times were hard. The material from flour sacks was used to make clothing. Christmas brought an apple or orange in your stocking hung by the fireplace. At that time there were five children; the only holiday present one year was a board with holes in it where the children could compete to toss marbles through the holes. Toys were what you made up yourself using your imagination. When a horse died, they skinned it and made a horsehide blanket.
My mother recounts that when she started high school there were 48 children in her class. When she graduated there were only 24; the other half of her class dropped out to help at home on their farms. My mother was valedictorian of her high school class (all 24), but there was no thought of further schooling. She got a job as a domestic: cleaning and caring for children in other people's homes. She had an attic room to stay in when she worked for a couple in the city of Omaha. Eventually she got a job as a bookkeeper for Robinson Seed Company. Interestingly, bookkeeping was a standard course she had been taught in high school. Subsequently, she met my father who, at age 22, was back home after four years in the US Navy.
Her brother had played on his high school basketball team, although he had not been introduced to the sport until entering high school. Her younger sister had been a cheerleader for all four years of high school. Their parents never attended any of their games. Not sure of the reason why.... were they too busy on the farm? Her sister married her high school boyfriend; he was killed in a tractor mowing accident shortly afterwards.
All three siblings were affected by WWII. My mother had two children to care for while my father was called back into the Navy to serve during the war. Her brother, graduating from high school in 1940, received a deferment to help out on the farm but was called up to serve near the end of the war. Her sister, after her first husband's death, remarried to an ambitious young GI returning from the war.
It is great that my mother and her siblings are so mentally sharp. They look back on what they view as pleasant childhoods. All their neighbors were enduring the same conditions that they lived with. Will we be able to enjoy such a gathering next year?
Think of the many changes in the past 100 years! Not just no TV or internet... no electricity.
When my mother was born, World War One was still raging and the world was also caught in a pandemic influenza outbreak which killed millions of people. Antibiotics had not yet been developed. She was raised on a large, 240 acre, farm with a large farmhouse (two stairwells and five bedrooms). However, their home had neither electricity nor running water. The stove was heated by burning corncobs retrieved from the hog lot after the hogs had eaten the corn kernals off (and the poop had been knocked off). Only the kitchen and parlor were heated. The farming was done with horses. During the summer, the men worked the fields until sundown and the children carried their meals out to them. As children, they remember no discipline problems; too busy with farm chores to get into trouble. Their grade school was a fairly convenient walk, only 3/4 mile away. The mailbox was 1/4 mile distant. On snowy winter days, sometimes her father would hitch up the wagon and horses to take them to school.
Then the great Depression came; times were hard. The material from flour sacks was used to make clothing. Christmas brought an apple or orange in your stocking hung by the fireplace. At that time there were five children; the only holiday present one year was a board with holes in it where the children could compete to toss marbles through the holes. Toys were what you made up yourself using your imagination. When a horse died, they skinned it and made a horsehide blanket.
My mother recounts that when she started high school there were 48 children in her class. When she graduated there were only 24; the other half of her class dropped out to help at home on their farms. My mother was valedictorian of her high school class (all 24), but there was no thought of further schooling. She got a job as a domestic: cleaning and caring for children in other people's homes. She had an attic room to stay in when she worked for a couple in the city of Omaha. Eventually she got a job as a bookkeeper for Robinson Seed Company. Interestingly, bookkeeping was a standard course she had been taught in high school. Subsequently, she met my father who, at age 22, was back home after four years in the US Navy.
Her brother had played on his high school basketball team, although he had not been introduced to the sport until entering high school. Her younger sister had been a cheerleader for all four years of high school. Their parents never attended any of their games. Not sure of the reason why.... were they too busy on the farm? Her sister married her high school boyfriend; he was killed in a tractor mowing accident shortly afterwards.
All three siblings were affected by WWII. My mother had two children to care for while my father was called back into the Navy to serve during the war. Her brother, graduating from high school in 1940, received a deferment to help out on the farm but was called up to serve near the end of the war. Her sister, after her first husband's death, remarried to an ambitious young GI returning from the war.
It is great that my mother and her siblings are so mentally sharp. They look back on what they view as pleasant childhoods. All their neighbors were enduring the same conditions that they lived with. Will we be able to enjoy such a gathering next year?
Think of the many changes in the past 100 years! Not just no TV or internet... no electricity.
Postscript: My mother died at age 104 1/2. She always considered herself as a very fortunate girl from a farming background and still felt the presence of her husband and loved him until her death.
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