When I was five or six years old, we moved into a two story farm house. The
house was big and roomy. More room than we had ever had in our previous homes.
We actually had a living room. It didn't remain a living room; it became the
bedroom for my mother and dad. My sisters and I slept in another room at the
back of the house. My mother had a really big kitchen.
We had a cistern on the back porch. The porch was about six feet off the ground
as I recall. The cistern was built of concrete and had sides about four feet off
the floor of the porch. This was where we got our water. I'm not sure how pure
the water was; it's a wonder we all didn't die from contamination, not from
pesticides or herbicides or any other cides. But from the small animals that
were bound to have found themselves in deep water in our cistern.
I remember one day, one of our neighbors came to visit. She was a farm girl,
they still lived with her in-laws. She had been walking barefoot down the dusty
dirt road to our house. So, naturally her feet were very dirty. Her remark was,
"I just washed them a week ago." That was typical, I believe of this particular
person. But I must clarify that statement. Not everyone let their feet go a week
without washing them. This lady was not what you would call real bright. So, you
could understand her making such a statement. What I mean by typical is that in
those days, there was not an abundance of anything. People made do with whatever
they had. Some times it was not convenient to bathe every day as we are
accustomed to these days. So, a lot of people did not bathe as often as we would
think necessary. We had to conserve our water. We did not have running water and
indoor plumbing. In fact, most of the time we didn't even possess an outhouse.
That was a luxury we could not afford. The wooded area in back of our house was
our outhouse. We didn't know what toilet tissue was. If there were some dry
leaves around, that was what we substituted for toilet tissue.
I remember one time my Dad brought home a baby rabbit. My sister and I nursed it
and fed it and tried to keep it alive, but to no avail. The poor little thing
finally succumbed and my sister Dorothy and I gave it a Christian burial. We put
it in a large kitchen match box and dug a hole out back and sang some songs and
cried a few tears. It was really sad and we just hated to lose our baby rabbit.
But in a few days the event was just a sad memory and we went on to something
else.
I remember we had some bantam (we called them "banty") chickens. There was only
one egg laid every day and since I was the baby of the family, I got the egg.
Oh, it was so good. We didn't have eggs very often. We couldn't afford them and
there was never enough money to buy chickens to produce eggs. So, eggs were a
special treat.
I also remember when my father had worked on a farm or worked in the iron ore
pits and had a little money he would take us kids to town with him to buy
groceries. We would go into the grocery store, ( no Wal Mart Super Center in
those days) and my daddy would buy a ring of baloney and some cheese and
crackers and we would go outside where there were stairs going up to the second
floor where the proprietor lived and sit on the steps and eat baloney, cheese
and crackers for our lunch. That was a treat to us. If he had the money he would
buy me an orange crush soda. It was so good; much better than it is these days.
Sometimes I think even though our lives were very difficult back then, we at
least had a family and we learned what it is like to be poor. It's sad to see
some kids that have everything their little hearts desire who never know what it
is like to be poor, to go without food even for one day, and how to be
compassionate with people who don't have anything. The old saying says, "Don't
criticize someone till you've walked a mile in his shoes." It is really true.
Another Memory About Growing Up In Missouri
Nell Berry nmberry@mcmsys.com
About me: I live in Missouri at Mark Twain Lake. My husband and I both are 73.
We have four children and nine grandchildren and soon to be two great
grandchildren. I like to sew, crochet, cook & bake and write, poems/song lyrics
and short stories. Now, I have a novel almost finished.
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