Life in the Old Home

  The teakettle on the stove was always froze solid in the mornings.
Every morning Dad would get up early to build a fire in the kitchen
stove and the pot bellied stove in the living room.  We would grab our
clothes and run to the stove to dress where it was warm.

    We also took our bath every Saturday in the living room.  Mom would put a towel over the window in the door for privacy, but none of the other windows.  Nobody could walk past them.  The water was pumped outside, carried to the kitchen stove and heated.  A round tub was placed near the stove and the girls bathed first, Marva and then me.  In the same water, with a little hot water added,  Tom, and Max would bathe.  We all used the same towel.   In the summer we took a bar of soap and bathed in the Texas Slough, west of our house.

  

The walls were covered with wall paper, which was faded and which
you couldn’t  really wash.  Finally the folks got enough money to put
oil cloth on the kitchen walls and ceilings.  We were excited.  Dad and the Uncles worked all day to get the oil cloth hung, since  none of the walls were square. That night, as we all sat eating supper, we heard cracking sounds.  Looking up we saw the ceiling sinking on top of us.  Under the new oil cloth
covereing all there was was layer upon layer of wall paper and the weight of the oil cloth pulled the ceiling down.

     At night, if you needed to go to another room, you lit a candle and took with you. Marva and my bedroom,which was just off the kitchen and only big enough for a regular bed.  No closet or place to stack anything.  We hung our clothes on nails, driven into the door.  One night Marva lit a candle and went to our bedroom.  She accidently set my dress on fire.  The dress was hanging on a nail,  This was a real tragedy, since we had such few clothes.  We got a new dress for Easter and one for Christmas, other than that they were hand me downs.  I was pitcher for the eighth grade baseball team and my dress was snug across the shoulders.  Mom would patch it and I would wear if for a few days and it was torn again.  Girls were not allowed to wear pants to school, we wore dresses.  The boys couldn't wear levis they had to wear dress pants, which were wool..  Can you imagine the odor.  The pants couldn't be washed they needed to be dry cleaned.