Reminiscenses

The Marietta Daily Times, December 1, 1931

Recently I met a fellow who was a pal of my boyhood days, and naturally we got to reminiscing of the days when life was young. Those were happy days, and these are happy days also. I think life is just as enjoyable for me today as it was nearly half a century ago, only in a different way.

Young folks today are reared without any knowledge of many things which were a part of home life three or four decades ago. My first childhood dreams came in a trundle bed, which was the first lower berth. It furnished bunking quarters for three of us at night and was rolled back under the big bed for the day. This provided most economical sleeping quarters, where there were large families and few rooms. The beds were often of the cord variety, where a heavy cord took the place of slats or springs. Surmounted by a feather mattress they were about as comfortable as some of the modern beds, though they did not comply with some of the present sleeping technique.

All the rooms except the parlor were heated with barrel stoves with coal for fuel. There was an open fireplace in the parlor which was fired up on Sunday and when company arrived. One of the regular chores after school was to fill the coal boxes and get in enough dry kindling to start the fires in the morning. If this was not done before dark, it had to be done after dark by the dim light of the oil lantern. Those old stoves when they began to show red below the doors provided ample heat that was real heat. They may have violated some of the rules of heat engineering, but they were most cozy and comfortable.

There were other chores at the barn, feeding and milking the cow who added much to the family living. Also, old "Barney," the equine member of the family, had to be fed and bedded, and occasionally curried. He also served as a passenger sedan when he was taken back and forth to pasture.

Usually there was a pair of pigs who were making hogs of themselves to replenish the family lard for winter. Those home grown hams and sausage - well I can taste them yet. None today taste like those did.

In the fall the cellar was well-stocked with potatoes, several barrels of apples and a barrel of sorghum. This sorghum was used for frosting the buckwheat cakes which composed the daily breakfast all winter. Some day dietitians will discover a new vitamin in buckwheat cakes and the air will be filled with their praises a la Phil Cook or some other cook.

The acme of every boy's ambition was a pair of red top boots. Shoes were very plebeian. Occasionally when snow or water got into them, it taxed the capacity of the old boot-jack to get them off. I still have the old boot-jack, now retired on pension. It served its day well for it helped many times to get our feet out of a tight place.

On Sundays and for an occasional party or funeral, we were decked out in those stiff-bosomed, clap-board shirts. They were alright until you sat down; then they shoved the collar up against the ears and shut off part of the air intake. Weekends were not anticipated with any great joy. They meant a vigorous Saturday night scrub, which always brought out all the sore spots collected during the week and it also meant those stiff jacket shirts on Sunday.

The evenings were usually spent around the big center table lighted by a large kerosene lamp. Here we learned to extract the square root and to locate Timbuktu. After the lessons, possibly there would follow a game of checkers or authors, while at other times we gathered around the wheezy organ and sang some of the old hymns which today lift my spirit above the noise and clamor of this speeding age as they are occasionally wafted in over the air.

As I sit by the radio on Tuesday evenings listening to the sacred hour program featuring the grand old hymns, I find myself in a pew in the old two-horned church, listening to Miss Lillian Eells as she sang these same hymns so appealingly, just before Dr. Dickinson, that grand old man, arose to tell us of that better way. In those days, every family had a pew and usually had enough children to fill it. 

We never get away from those early influences, however far afield we may wander. Such are some of the memories of boyhood days, which bring much delight to live over again as we draw nearer to that golden shore where we shall renew friendship with those whom we have loved long since and lost awhile.

By C. Tassel