Sunset on the Prairie

As the days grew shorter in November the sunsets came early and were so awesome over the prairie to the west of the house. As dusk appeared and Morris was still not home from his day’s work down at the Johnston Home Place, I would  stand at one of the south windows and watch and worrying as I searched for the headlights on his pickup truck to turn up the road and head north toward home.

 If the cows, all 18 of them, or just 17 of them and one still out there,  had not decided to come up to the barn for their evening feed, he would have to walk out in the pasture and herd them into the lot south of the barn and milk them before his days work was done and he could relax and eat his supper. His days work were long and tiring.

As I watched from the south window in the nursery for his truck to appear I would hear the coyotes singing their evening song, which was frightening to this small town gal! Morris would laugh at me for being afraid and tell me they were far away from the house and only calling to each other. I sometimes heard them howling and yapping at each other off and on all night long.

Their song is a very high-pitched wail, sharp howls and "screams", which go up and down scale very rapidly. They have often been reported as "a sound like something being killed." Coyotes can be seen traveling alone or in pairs. On occasion large groups are present, and they sometimes hunt in packs.

The preferred habitat for coyotes is a prairie or grassland habitat that provides the food and shelter they most desire. Their diet consists mostly of small mammals such as rabbits, mice, carrion, fruits, and plants. If the rabbit population was slim and they got the taste of a new born calf, it was sometimes beyond changing their habits and then they were hunted down!  For the most part coyotes live both on the edge of our physical environments as well as on the fringes of our imaginations, cunning, wary, and the epitome of a true survivor. They are the tricksters in numerous Native American legends.

The ducks flying overhead in their V formation were also a reminder that winter was on its way. It was a delight to watch them. I always wondered where they had summered and where they were headed for the winter.

Once Morris shot a couple of Geese  out of season and I had to clean them before the game warden came by! I had never even cleaned a chicken before in my life, and the feathers on those geese were very stubborn. It was indeed a learning experience for both of us! I decided the taste of them was not worth the work to clean them.  He soon learned that he would rather shot the wildlife with a camera than with a gun.

When the works all done this fall…

 Mike and Ken visiting Grandma Bergman in Nashville, MO.

Now that the crops were all in the work was slowing down some.   The cattle had been moved down to the Johnston Home Place for the winter and grain feed, then hauled to the Joplin Stockyard when they had fattened.

On a day when there were no work scheduled, Morris and I would take the day to visit the Grandma’s.

Grandmother Morgan lived with her daughter Florence, on the Morgan home place that had once been the Liberal Brick Yard, just across the railroad tracks on the south side of Liberal, MO. Her husband Ira P. Morgan had suffered a heart attack at the age of 52 and left her with 8 children and one not yet born. Her oldest son was working as an apprentice pharmacist and with his help and the help of her older daughters she managed to raise them all. Her life story is another book!

Grandmother Morgan always served us hot green tea when we came to visit.  It was so strong! She put the tea in the kettle on the stove when we first arrived and boiled it! Of course she served it with about half milk. How I’d love to get some green tea like that once again. We have searched for tea like that and have not found it anywhere.

Florence was a school teacher then so usually she was not home on weekdays.

Some days we would go and visit Grandma Johnston while Morris saw to some chores around the home place. She was always sitting in her rocking chair and usually crocheting. She saved all the string from the feed sacks and would tie the pieces together and make lovely lace for edging on blouses for Isabel or Morris’s Mom, Dorothy. For pillow cases and table runners. She even made table clothes from those feed sacks. 

She had bad feet from wearing shoes with those pointed toes when she was younger and now in her old age she didn’t wear shoes at home. She made herself cloth booties from the old denim overalls her son’s John and Jake had wore out. She had a quilt in the frame most of the time. She would give a new quilt to each family for Christmas. How I wish I had saved mine. I used them all the time and wore them out!

If she was not sewing she was reading as she was a very learned lady. She wrote to her daughter Isabel at least every other day and sometimes every day. She cut articles from the daily newspaper she thought Isabel might enjoy as well as poems she thought she would enjoy also.

She kept a weather journal and recorded the temperature every day! What a different life she lived from our life here in the 2000’s!

It was only 7 miles farther to my Mom and Dad’s in Nashville, MO. She was always delighted for us to stop by with the babies. She quite often had made or purchased some little outfit for them to wear.

Of course Morris still had those 18 cows to milk, so we would hurry home for him to do that and I would have to fix supper for us, then with their tummies full, and tired from the days journeys those little guys would sometimes fall asleep in their highchairs. Although they both were still having their "baba", and with their warm jammies on and a bottle they were asleep soon.

“As you read my stories of long ago I hope you will remember that the things that are truly worthwhile and that will give you happiness are the same now as they were then. Courage and kindness, loyalty, truth, and helpfulness are always the same and always needed.”

Laura Ingalls Wilder

I so agree with Laura now!

Spot, The Guard Dog

 

As you can see, Spot took it on himself to be the boy’s bodyguard dog! Where the boys were, Spot was, and that was a relief for me! Michael was so little out in that tall grass in the front year, but Spot was guarding him!

Spots love of riding in the truck though created a dilemma for him sometimes. Rather than stay at home with the boys his desire to ride in that truck pulled him to jump in and ride to wherever Morris was going that day. If the work was at the Johnston Home place, 7 miles away, Morris would leave for the day to work down there and Spot was right with him. So you can see Spot liked to be with the boys but his love for working with Morris and riding in that truck pulled him away

If Morris was plowing or disking, Spot was right with him. Once Morris was plowing up some grassland down by the timber that had never been plowed before and with every furrow he made, he dug up rat tunnels and the rats were running wild. Spot would grab one up in his mouth and shake it until it died. However they soon began coming out in such numbers that he would just grab one and throw it over his shoulder and go on to the next one. He was so tired he could hardly walk and climb into the truck that evening to come home!

Morris was headed to Pittsburg one day for something  and the boys and I went with him. He had the stock rack on the truck for I guess he and John had taken just one or two head of cattle to the stockyards and he hadn’t taken it off.

He told Spot to “Stay” and guard the house as we pulled out and headed for town. For some reason we had to stop at the bank in Minden and Spot appeared on the sidewalk in front of the truck! The tail gate had been down on the truck as it would not go up with the stock rack on and Spot had jumped on and ridden that three miles into Minden standing on that narrow gate! I don’t remember Morris slowing down for some of the bumps in the road coming into Minden either.

Morris just put Spot inside the stock rack and he traveled to town with us. Thank goodness he was quiet as we parked in town to do our shopping.

We had traded our car for the pickup truck as it was needed more for hauling things on the Ranch than a car would, and the boys were small enough so we four could ride easily in it then, but Ken even before he was two years old did NOT like that truck. He thought that day that we were going to town to get our car back and he was so disappointed when we didn’t get the car that day that he cried about it!

It was Spots delight when Morris would have John’s big truck stacked tall with hay bails. He would climb to the top and ride up front with his nose sticking out in the wind as far as he could stretch his neck!

Spot had long hair that we sheared off in summer to keep him from getting it just full of cockleburs. He would sometimes come in with the burs so thick in the hair under his tummy and on his tail that he would yelp as he lay down. That was when we got the hair clippers out and trimmed him. What a difference it made! Wish we had gotten some pictures of him then.

 After a few years he gave up his job of guarding the boys and was for the rest of his life strictly Morris’s dog until the day he just lay down and died. He was about 14 years old when he passed away.

Spot was not a house dog. He slept in the back porch or in the shed where we had piled hay for him to burry under when it got cold. And winters was getting closer now.

Every little boy needs a dog!

Earlier in that first summer, I heard a car pulling into our drive and with Little Mike in my arms and Ken by my side, I hurried to the back door as my Mom and Dad drove up.

Dad got out of the car with a grin on his face and said, “I have something here for the boys!” He opened the back door of the car and out jumped a medium sized Rat Terrier. She immediately spied Ken and ran to him and licked his face to say “Hello!”

Ken petted her and said, “Bow!” and that is how we came to call her Bow!

Our neighbors, who lived about a mile north, had a collie dog and he began coming down to visit Bow! Soon we could see that she was going to have a family!

Bow slept in the shed just east of the house and as her time to have these puppies became close, I checked on her and could see that she was struggling to deliver these little Collie puppies that were a little large for her small body! Not wanting her to be in pain I managed to get her to swallow a couple of aspirin in some water.

As I related this story to the family later they all laughed at me for my concern with this mother dog doing what nature had always handled without any pain meds. But I could see the pain she was going through and knew I would want help if I was in her condition!

The first little guy to appear was definitely a look-a-like for his father, the collie up the road! Then came a little tan guy and three little girl puppies. Bow licked each one like she was so proud of this little family she now had!

It was clear that here was more dogs than we could feed and care for, so the next morning the three little girl dogs were taken off to a new home.

Ken called the brown and white dog “Spot”, and the tan dog “Brownie.” Bow continued to care for them and without the other three dogs she had enough milk to feed these growing puppies.

Spot and Brownie each had a different disposition. Spot would lay by the boys and let them crawl all over him. Brownie was constantly out exploring new territory and smells.

Soon he decided that chasing the chickens was fun and catching one in his mouth he got the taste of blood and as Morris saw this he caught him and flopped that dead chicken in his face, then whipped him hard! He whimpered and stocked away. But that didn’t stop him the next day as we found 2 more dead chickens in the yard! He had not eaten them, he had just found it fun and exciting catching them in his mouth and flipping them side to side until they quit struggling!

The next morning he and his mother both left for a new home and only Spot was left. He didn’t seem to miss either his mother or his brother and stayed close to the children. Their constant companion when outside, for dogs were not allowed in the house then.

Spot loved to ride in the back of the pick-up and on top of loads of hay on Uncle John’s big truck also. He would climb to the front of the load of hay with his nose in the air and what looked like a smile on his face as they drove down the road!

This dog would become an important member of our family and I have several stories to tell you about “Spot!”  

Time to start using the Coal Stove!

As the cool days of fall turned the prairie grass brown, the wind blew briskly from the north west, and rattled the west windows. Of course there were no storm windows on the house, and it was drafty around the windows that steamed over when we began to heat with the coal stove.

Morris was the one who always got up and started the fire before he went out to milk the cows. It was my job to have his breakfast ready for him when he came in from milking so he could start the winter chores of the day.

The fire had to be remade each morning which was the coldest time of the day. The first task was to remove the old ash from beneath the fire grate (a cast iron grid or basket which held the coal). The grate was raised up to allow air in and to let the ashes fall into a pan, and this pan had to be taken out and emptied into the dustbin, a process which created clouds of dust. Although most of the ashes did collect in the pan, the space below still needed to be swept out, which made more dust.
Laying a new fire was a skill which most people in the 1940s and 50’s knew and understood because it was so common-place. You had to start with a few sheets of crumpled newspaper which would burn easily. Next came something like dry twigs or thin shavings of wood, known as 'kindling', stacked loosely up round the paper so that enough air would be drawn though it by the heat of the flame. Wood shavings or dry twigs were often just bi-products of gardening or carpentry, and sticks of firewood could be bought quite cheaply at the local ironmongers. After the kindling came the coal.
The paper was lit in several places with a match or a lighted wax taper.
Sometimes the fire needed help to start. This could be because the wind down the chimney was in the wrong direction, or there was not enough or too much of it, or there was not enough kindling, or the coal was damp, or it was a poor batch of coal, or for any one of a thousand and one other reasons.
As the days grew shorter, and the nights longer, sometimes Morris would have to get up in the night to add more coal to the fire. That made it much easier in those cold frosty morning to get the house warmed up again.
After he left to work down at the Johnston Home place, or whatever his job was for the day, it was my job to keep those home fires burning through the day to keep myself and the boys warm.
Reminiscing about all the work that went with keeping the house warm with that old cold stove makes me appreciate the electric heat we have now! Just turn the switch and it starts warming the house!

Fall is here!

There was always a “breeze” on the hill where our Little Prairie Home sat! With the days getting colder the boys had to be bundled up to go out and play.

Taking pictures was not as easy as it is today with our camera phones. That little box camera we owned took 120 film and the expense of film was sometimes more than our budget would allow. We did capture a few photos of the boys then however.

My Mom and Dad were always bringing something up for them when they came to visit. They brought them a stroller that we could put both of them in and Morris use to push them out on the road between the house and the barn on a warm day when he was home.

Preparing for winter

Doing laundry out on that open back porch began to be a chilly job as winter approached. The heated wash water soon cooled off and felt even colder on the hands as I grabbed those clothes out of the washing machine and ran them through the wringer into that cold rinse water!

Morris decided to enclose the north end of the porch for a ‘Mud and laundry room’. He left enough room south of the door into the kitchen to hang coats on hooks and leave the boots sitting under them. He built screen covered windows all across the east side then covered this with clear plastic for the winter.  This still left about 12 foot of open porch on the south of the door into this enclosed part.  Of course the steps that had been in the center of the porch were moved down in front of the open porch now.

The North side of the porch had no windows in it and this kept that cold wind from whipping around the house in those cold winter day and blowing right through there. This made it so much nicer for me and now the two little boys could be out there with Mom too.

I usually held baby Michael on my left hip and pulled the clothes out of the water with my right hand and pushed them into the wringer. Once he put his little hand into the wringer. He never let out a cry as I quickly released it! It scared me more than it did him I think. However this had taught him a lesson even though he was only about 6 months old, and he never did that again.

I had a rope cloths line that I ran from one side of the kitchen ceiling to the other where I hung the cloths to dry when it was freezing cold out and I couldn’t leave the boys to go out and hang them on the outdoor cloths line that was north of the house.

Morris brought a load of gravel up and dumped it in front of the porch and south of the well to keep out that mud and dirt some.

Ken and Mike loved to play in that gravel. Mike was sitting on the gravel and of course put his little hand down and grabbed a handful and put it in his mouth. Morris came by about that time and tapped him on the head and said -”Spit that out!”

Ken said…”What you trying to do? Killed Him?”

Morris had to turn his head to hide the grin on his face from Ken!

I don’t think Mike spit it all out. I had to put my finger in his mouth and clear it all out!

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Winter approaches

With our second season upon us here at our new place, we are just barely beginning to get our boots wet, or more accurately, filthy - with the "farming" end of things - the daily care of the animals in our charge. It's exciting to be at the beginning of something - with so much still to learn and discover. So much yet to experience. Everything feels new – because at least to me it was new.  There is much wondering, discussion, dreaming and planning for what and who may (or may not) come next.

Yes, all of this feels new, exciting and wonderful yet frightening, if I may be so bold as to say that.  My heart was happy here, doing this right now and anticipating what's around the corner. And yet - it's also a little bit scary, a tiny bit frustrating, and a whole lot humbling. To be doing this on our own, raising two beautiful little boys. Watching each step they took! Listening to the first words they said!  We were blessed with family who were right there to help us when we stumbled. Helping us in so many ways! watching along as we stumble our way into the beginnings.

The fun times were the hay rides to feed the cattle. Riding the sled down the hill to the outhouse. Making snow ice cream and snow angels. Hooking the home made sled onto the truck and giving the boys a ride down the road. Popping popcorn. Snuggling up in a blanket and reading books to them. Baking cookies and candies. Home mixed modeling clay and finger paints. Coloring Big pictures on Butcher paper that was saved from the frozen meat wrappings. Good clean fun at little cost that were actually learning experiences without the boys actually knowing they were learning a lesson.

Remembering these times make me forget all the hardships we had to endure and made it all worth every minute of it!

Remembering where we came from!

This is a book about people who are shaped by the places they live and the times they've lived through.  I hope I have painting a portrait of the place we chose to live in and loved.

 

I compare our few years on the Prairie to a musical composition with themes and resonating chords that appear and reappear. I am EXPLOREING OUR beginnings but also other birthing and beginnings, moving on to gifts and graces, and then through relationships, homes, journeys and more. A new and fascinating way of regarding life.

What history has taught me is to remember where you came from. Having this connection with the past helps me to see more clearly into the future. We need to pass the connection and the stories to our children and grandchildren. We all need those ties.

Many of us make decisions that set the course of our futures —for good or ill— while we’re still only youngsters. For some it might be a decision to do nothing: the easiest of all to make, just allowing ourselves to be tossed around like corks on the sea of life, washing up on any shore, or maybe never seeing shore at all. For others, it might be a decision to take a path in a new direction that, if followed unwaveringly, will yield benefits in our adult years. I’m happy to say that I made the latter kind of decision at the tender age of 16. It was a very good decision, as things turned out, although I didn’t realize that at the time. I’d like to tell you more about it....

Chickens

The "Double Crib Barn" consisted of two cribs separated by a breezeway and covered by the same roof. The breezeway, which essentially acted as a driveway which entered the barn was often used for the grain or hay trucks, to protect them from the rain.

This barn was just south of the house as you drove up the long drive. Our Prairie house was situated on the top of the hill and the view to the west was awesome! Prairie as far as you could see! With no fence around it as it was just a hay meadow.

As I remember, the cribs were separated  by a drive thru and had a slanted roof going down from the east and west end of the barn. The wall, and door boards were spaced apart to allow air to flow through the crib to help dry the corn still on the cob. Now, farmers have expensive metal silos with equipment to circulate and dry corn that is already shelled before it goes into the silo. So many things have changed since those days and these memories just bring back the smell of corn,  hay, and wood in the barn that will always be a part of my lifetime experiences.

Morris’s aunt and uncle, Carl and Elda Buchanan lived just east of Pittsburg, KS, which was about 10 miles from us. Carl had worked for Dickey Clay in Pittsburg where they made clay pipes. They closed down and that left Carl without a job. Fortunately he found a job in Kansas City, with Fairbanks and Morris Co, a foundry, but that would mean they would have to move up there.

They had about two dozen hens and a couple of roosters that they brought over and let us keep for them while they lived in Kansas City temporarily. It looked like the west side of this old crib barn had been used as a hen house, as there were nests built along the side (wooden boxes with a filling of hay)  and  some roosts in thereas well, and we released the chickens there and shut the door until they become accustom to their new home. Later we let them roam in the large yard that was just a part of the prairie that had been fenced off. This had not been mowed until haying season when the guys had the mower on the tractor. So it was usually only mowed one a year!

Along about sunset the chickens would all come back to their hen house and fly to the roost for the night. We would then go out and close the door so the coyotes and foxes could not get them.

Their natural instinct is to scratch around in the dead leaves and twigs in the grass looking for bugs. They also are partial to quite a lot of greenery. They also would find themselves somewhere where they could have a dust bath. They would find a patch of dry earth, and wriggle around until it was all through their feathers. They seem to know that it would clog the pores of the mites in their feathers, and get rid of them.

The next spring some of the hens began to roam out in the field and make a nest for brooding. It was always amazing to me that they managed to brood those eggs without a fox or coyote making a meal out of them!

Wild chickens are forest animals. They live in small groups called flocks. They scratch in the dirt and forage for things to eat. While one hen sits on the nest to lay, the group may wander away through the undergrowth searching for food. The hen's cackle serves to renew the contact with the group as if to yell "where are you?". The cock (with the other hens) answers "here we are!".  This was like music to me... for a while!

A mother hen enjoys lovingly teaching and nurturing her baby chicks. The chicks find sweet comfort under the shelter of mom’s wings and mother hen takes great pleasure in her wise and protective role. A mother hen will do everything in her power to protect her biddies. It’s her instinct. Call it chicken love if you will, but the hen is hardwired to protect them.

It was a delight to see one of the hens bring her brood of little fluffy chicks up to the hen house. Her wings stretched to her side and those little heads peaking out as they walked along protected by Mothers wings.

One of the roosters loved to crow at the break of dawn! Morris usually was up and down at the barn to milk the cows early, then he would come up to the house and I was to have his breakfast cooked so he could go of to the field or whatever he and Uncle John had planned for the day.

 I loved to sleep in! And if the babies would stay asleep I would too! But that darn Rooster seemed to have it in for me! He would come up right under our bedroom window and crow  his loudest!

This made me so angry that I would go out on the back porch in my gown and throw whatever I could get my hands on at him! Of course I never could hit him. He would strut away like he was king of the Prairie and join his Harem of Hens as if he had accomplished his days work!!!

We named him Dormeyer, after the name of a fine heavy duty electric mixer…you know …an egg beater???

It was Dormeyer’s delight to catch me in the outhouse and try to attack me with the long sharp spurs he had growing on his legs just above his feet, as I was leaving! He because so aggressive that I feared he would attack one of boys. Morris’s Mom laughed and said, “Oh! He couldn’t be all that bad!” One old Rooster?” So we decided to give him to her.

It was not long before she became a believer and Dormeyer went to live with the hens down at the Johnston house!

He soon disappeared from there! We never knew if he was caught by a coyote or fox or ahum… met his demise in some other way!

The day that rooster left our Home on the Prairie was a day of celebration for me!

The Milk Cows

The old barn had a shed on the east side of it with stanchions for milking cows,so Morris agreed to milk some cows for extra income for the Ranch/farm.

He and Uncle John went to the stockyards in Joplin where they had an auction every Fridays, and bought several cows. Then later, Morris saw an ad in the paper for 6 cows that a man down around Webb City had for sale, so they went down to look at them.

The man had a small acreage at the edge of town and sold milk right from the farm there. He was getting older and had decided to quit milking. John and Morris decided to buy them all, and as they were loading them into the truck, the old man said, “Maybe I should tell you their names as they come into the barn better if you call them by their names.” He said, “This it Mable, and this is Whitie, this is Gladys, this is  Lightening, and so on. The name Lightening ,just slid right by him.

With this addition, Morris had 18 cows and was milking them all by hand. Morning and night. That was after working on the ranch, and farming the fields on the Old Johnston Home place the rest of the day! Later he did get two milking machines.

 That evening he starts calling them in to milking, there were only 3 stanchions, so he could only get that many in at a time. Feed was placed in the trough, which the cows loved, and they were eager to come in and eat it and they usually knew just which stanchion was their place in the line also. As they put their head in the stall, he would close the bar to hold them in place if they decided they were NOT going to have anyone milk them!

He had milked all but “Lightening”, who was a little Jersey cow. Jersey’s are all small built but they are noted for giving lots of creamy rich milk! They are always gentle and easy to handle. She was already in the stanchion and enjoying her sweet sorghum coated feed. He put his stool down and placed the bucket under her udder, then grabbed a tit in each hand, when she swiftly kicked him off his stool!

Wow! He lifted the kickers from the wall where they were hanging and placed one on each back leg and place the bucket and stool back in place and started again, when Wham! She did a little dance and had those kickers off and kicked him against the wall!

This time he decided he would just tie that back leg to a rope and the rope to the wall behind her! That time she just flat out laid on him! That was when he had the bright idea to turn the little calves on her and let her feed them rather that feed them on a pail! She was so small that with four of them on her they would literally lift her off the floor and walk her around. Oh she hated that and was not so eager to come into the barn and place her head in the stanchion even though she loved the feed! But that took care of that problem.

Later Morris said…”Always listen carefully to what people say to you!”

No Rain Again!

1953: Driest year on record. State average precipitation: 25.35”

The Prairie south of the house had been plowed up and John and Morris planted corn there in early spring. With no rain to speak of and the hot weather it didn’t even reach the tasseling stage, so it was decided to cut it and shock it for feed for the cattle in the coming winter.

John still had a team of horses, although they had  used tractors for what farming they did now. He also still had a horse drawn sled with sickles they had used to cut and shock corn, back before the tractor came into use.

|I couldn’t even find a photo of a horse drawn sled anywhere so have inserted this drawing of one.|

As the horse drew the sled down between the rows, John sat on one side of the seat and Morris sat on the other side and they held out their arm to catch the corn as it was cut, stopping to stack it when their arms were full. This was a long and slow process as they shocked the whole 40 acres.

They came in for lunch and in order to make room for Uncle John at the table I would pull that round table out from the corner.  I would fix a full meal not a light lunch. Perhaps a roast with potatoes and onion, or even a meat loaf with mashed potatoes and a vegetable. Lettuce for a salad was not available easily at the grocery stores then as it is now in 2011, so I doubt if I would have had a salad, although I liked to bake cakes, so perhaps I had managed to do that, if I had not had too much interference from the two little “helpers”.

Ken and Mike would both have been seated in their high chairs and Uncle John would always say "Hi Buttons,” as that was always his pet names for any of the small children. That way he didn’t have to remember their names!

They had salvaged some of the corn crop for fodder for the Cattle for the coming winter and somehow, working out in that heat, and even with no air conditioning we managed to survive the 110 degree heat.

That Saturday night bath!

That Saturday night bath in the summer time was easier than in the wintertime. AND it was not just on Saturday nights, but an every night thing them. Our bathtub was the big galvanized tub used on weekdays to rinse the laundry.

Usually I filled the tub with water from the well outside on the back porch and left it to warm through the daytime, then we took turns bathing after dark. First the boys, then me, then Daddy was last. After a day in the fields he was very dirty!

One day it was hot and I had taken the boys for a walk down in the pasture where a little branch ran. It was alkaline water that drained off the coal pits that were south of our land. It was shallow enough so I could sit down in it and it was only up to my waist. Ken, who was only 2 yr old and Mike was about 6 months and still in diapers. I stripped to my undies and let the boys go nude. We were enjoying the cool water when Morris drove in the drive up at the house. He heard us laughing and playing and came on down… stripping off his clothes as he crossed the fence and laughing as he stepped into the water with us. Yes, the family that bathes together stays together. This year is the 59th year we have been enjoying our life together…or as he says, with a grin on his face…’a couple of those years were good years!’

The principal source of heat in the wintertime was the wood or coal stove positioned in the corner of the living room, as the chimney was in the middle of the house, with access from both the kitchen and the west bedroom, although we only had the one coal stove for heat.  It was not so enjoyable to take a bath in a galvanized tub set out on the floor and filled with water heated on the nearby stove.

After supper the tub was placed on the worn living room floor in front of the stove. 

The living room became the bathroom for the whole evening while we took turns taking our bath. I draped a sheet over the backs of several kitchen chairs pulled close to the tub.  This not only gave a little privacy, but also kept the drafts off as we bathed.

 The tub was half filled with water heated in a big pail on the stove.  I always bathed the boys first. When they were dried, in their jammies, and in their beds it was my turn. I was small enough then to be able to sit in the tub and soak away some of the aches and pains of lifting two babies and fixing meals for Morris and usually Uncle John when they were working up here at the ranch.  Then it was Morris’s turn to soak away the field dirt that was impossible to avoid. After putting on his nightclothes he gathered up his dirty overalls and put them to soak in the used, but still soapy, water for the night. The tub was pulled over near the back door and those clothes were put into the washing machine On Monday. 

Hot Summer Time

I loved waking to a soft breeze blowing in the south window over our bed, but soon that breeze was HOT! Temperatures were above 100 that July and August.

Looking west out over the prairie I could see the many blooming wild flowers swaying in that hot breeze and smell their fragrance. Morris usually picket me a bouquet of flowers as he walked through the fields.

There was a porch across the west side of the house and one across the east side of the house. I would sometimes place a wet towel or sheet over the screen door so the breeze would come through it and cool us off.

We had a small electric window fan, about a foot across that Morris put in the west window and this ingenious man, put 2 bales of hay on the porch just in front of that window and sat a bucket with a few holes in the bottom of it. Filled the bucket with water and sat it on top of the hay and it slowly seeped through the hay and the fan brought in moist air that cooled us some.

Usually the boys only wore their diaper as it was so hot.

Ken with his ragged Andy and his bobba

Church

We had long hours of hard work, dusty and sweaty overalls, complexions that were deeply tanned from working in the sun and we seldom took time to sit down and relax except at meal time and on Sunday at Church time.

Morris and I both belonged to the Christian Church in Nashville, Missouri but Morris’s Mom attended the Baptist Church in Minden mines, which was only 5 miles away, so we started to church there.

One Sunday Morris’s Mom, Dorothy, and his brothers Bill and Richard came home from church with us for dinner. Bill had also brought his good friend and classmate, Charlie Clegg. They were both about 15 years old then.

As Dorothy and I were busy in the kitchen  preparing dinner for all of us,  baby Michael began to cry for attention and Dorothy handed him over to Bill and said…’Take care of him”.

Charlie had picked up my Doctor Spock book on  The Common Book of Baby and Child Care, and as Michael continued to cry , Bill said….”Read faster Charlie – Read Faster!”

THE STORM CELLAR

With so many tornadoes reported through the Midwest this past month I though I would tell you about the storm cellar we had by our Prairie Home.

A storm cellar is a type of underground bunker designed to protect the occupants from violent severe weather, particularly tornadoes. They are most commonly seen in the US Midwest ("Tornado Alley") where tornadoes are particularly frequent and the low water table permits underground structures.
Our Storm Cellar was just to the north of the back porch. Close enough to the home to allow quick access in an emergency, but not so close that the house could collapse on the door during a storm, trapping us. This is also why the main door on most storm cellars is mounted at an angle rather than flush with the ground; an angled door allows for debris to blow up and over the door without blocking it and also decreases the force necessary to open the door if rubble has settled on top.
This cellar would have been eight by twelve feet, if I remember correctly, and had an arched roof —but it was entirely underground. This one was built of rock. It had no windows in it and it was very dark inside. The only light came in from the open door and you had to have a flashlight or lantern with you to see well in there. There was no air ventilation as some cellars had that I had been in before.
Shelves lined the walls of the cellar for storing canned produce, however I didn’t know how to can when we first moved into the Prairie Home but my mother-in-law soon taught me how to do this.
I hated going down into that cellar. I just knew there were snakes in it, and I was so afraid of snakes that I would rather take my chances with the storm as to go in where I just knew the snakes were! Therefore I kept the door to it closed all the time. Plus as the boys grew old enough to wander around I didn’t want them to go in there by themselves.
Here is a picture that Morris took of me sitting by the cellar door while we lived here.

When a storm was headed our way we could see it coming for miles as those dark clouds blew in from the northwest across the prairie.
The next year after we moved in, we were glad we had that cellar as we watched two tornado’s crossing the prairie to the west of the house and one later spotted east of the barn! We were lucky indeed that we never did have one come over the farm!
Fully enclosed underground storm shelters offer superior tornado protection to a traditional basement or cellar because they provide overhead cover without the risk of being trapped or killed by collapsing rubble from above. For this reason they also provide the only reliable form of shelter against "violent" (EF4 and EF5) tornadoes which tend to blow the house off the foundation, removing the overhead cover protecting the occupant.

The Outhouse

Our ‘bathroom’ was brand new to us as the old one was about to fall down, and my Dad was hired to build us a new “two holer”. This was located several yards east of the house. The path to this ‘outhouse’ (ice cold in the winter and hot as blazes in the summer - yes, hold your nose) was illuminated at night by the moon (we had to use flashlights - watch your step and take your own means of hygiene with you - often a Sears-Roebuck Catalog or something similar) and in the daytime as you sat there, you could watch spiders busily working on their webs; at night you would wonder where they were and what they were doing. I’ve often wondered how many people suffered spider bites (and wood splinters from the so-called seat) on their buttocks ‘in the good old days’.

 In the dead of winter, we might have to brush a little frost or snow from the seat before sitting. But summers were worse. Ventilation was lacking in the outhouse, so the door was often left open when in use. After all…we were almost a mile from any neighbor, and you could hear a car coming up the road in time to push the door shut or take care of the bottom and pull the pants up and greet them if they pulled into the drive.

A bag of lime was usually kept inside the door and when you were finished with business, instead of flushing, you dumped a cup of lime down the hole. Worked like a charm to keep the flies down as well as the smell!

It wasn't always necessary to walk to the outhouse at night. Many, many flowers planted off the porch, were watered at night, ha. And who can forget the pot? Pot back then didn't mean a weed to be smoked. The pot under the bed was for nighttime convenience, be it an old coffee can or a decorated porcelain utensil.

Until next time....

Little House On The Prairie is a winner!

The History Channel Club had a contest reciently for three free History DVD's and I submitted a photo of the house and a short story about it. Yesterday, April 25th, I recieved a message that it was one of the winners!
I hope you will check it out and read some of their many articles of our past histories in America!
 http://www.thehistorychannelclub.com/

Visit this Prairie to see where we lived!

 May is a great time to visit the Prairie, a sea of green grasses sprinkled with red, purple and cream-colored blossoms of Indian paintbrush, arrow-leaved violet and cream wild indigo. Summer brings a constant succession of flowers from pale purple coneflower to rattlesnake master, gayfeather and butterfly milkweed. Regal fritillary butterflies float from flower to flower in search of nectar, while slender glass lizards bask in the warm sunlight. Dickcissels, sedge wrens and Henslow’s sparrows nest among the plants.

A visit to their web site http://mostateparks.com/park/prairie-state-park,  will give you driving directions and a list and dates of the many guided tours you may take while there.

When you go, tell the Park attendant that you read about them through my blog!

Until next time….

Laundry part 2

 I Separated clothing into whites (those cloth diapers that had been rinsed and soaking), mediums, dark and really dirty (like rugs, barn clothes, grungy rags). Saving the delicates for a separate wash, or hand wash them.
 At the end of the washing time, I stopped the washer, turned on the wringer and put the clothes through it one piece at a time.
 As soon as I got all of the items from the washer, I turned it back on and put in the next load of laundry.
I repositioned the wringer over the rinse tub and rinsed the finished load by swishing it up and down or side to side in the rinse water, running the rinsed items through the wringer and into the second rinse tub or a waiting basket, and then repeating the action.
Hanging the clothes on the line out north of the house was sometime a challenge. I would put baby Mike then only 2-3 months old, on top of the wet clothes in summer time and Ken would walk beside me hanging on to my skirt. ( I don’t remember ever wearing trousers! It just was not done by women then!)

With the laundry hanging out to dry I would use the rinse water to mope the kitchen and back porch floor, then carry it outside and pour it on what flowers I had planted around the back porch during the summer months. Water was conserved a lot because if the cistern went dry (and sometimes that happened a lot during dry weather, because we only got what rain water drained into it from the rooftop of the house) Morris had to get Uncle John’s truck and put a large tank on it that he had for this purpose, and go to Liberal, which was about 7 miles away and haul a tank of water back and put it into the cistern.

Later Morris bought a thing I plugged into a socket and put into the washing machine to heat it! I know now that it must have been very dangerous; however I burned it out without ever getting burned from it myself. They discontinued that item in later years.

After the clothes dried on the clothesline I would carry them in and iron. There were no permanent press clothes back then. Morris wore Overalls when he was farming. I usually didn’t get around to the ironing until the following day. I didn’t like to iron, so lots of thinks were just hung on hangers or folded. I had three pair of pant stretcher that you put in the legs of the pants while they were damp and as they dried it left a cutting edge crease. I usually starched those work clothes because the dirt usually washed out of them better if it was on top of that starch. Our clothes had that clean smell of the sweet Prairie flowers when I brought them in to fold. How nice those sheets smelled on the first night when you crawled into bed. By the time the days work was finished I was ready for that bed too! Now if only those babies would sleep through the night!

LAUNDRY FOR TWO BABIES

This is a book about people who are shaped by the places they live and the times they've lived through.  I hope I have painting a portrait of the place we chose to live in and loved.

Laundry and bottles for two babies was not easy. Formula had to be mixed. Bottles had to be washed and sterilized, then stored in the frig.

Morris had purchased a used wringer washer with an electric motor on it and a double tub on a stand.

These sat out on the back porch. I had to pump a large pan of water at the pitcher pump that was on the left hand side of the sink, then carry it across the room to the small apartment sized electric stove to heat. While the water heated I had to fill the two rinse tubs with water. No water hoses then. Had to pump and carry it bucket by bucket to those tubs that were also on the back porch. When the water was hot I carried it out to the machine on the back porch, then filling the swishing tub with dirty clothes that hit the suds one by one with a satisfying plop and burble. Like a hungry monster, the washing machine pulled the clothes downward into the steaming, soapy water. After a moment, they’d rise like undersea monsters, pale colors and shades of white, mounded like the smooth back of some undersea creature… then they’d swish and swoop downward, only to rise and do it again.

THE NEW BABY ARRIVES

I was expecting our second child and suffering from a cold in late March of 1954 and my doctor, Dr. Gregory from Webb City, thought I needed to be closer to Mom and the hospital, so I stayed with my Mom and Dad in Nashville, MO., while Morris went back to our apartment in Kansas City, some 150 miles away, to finish working for Santa Fee Trailways, loading trucks at night on the docks.  Morris came down from our little apartment in Kansas City for the weekend on Saturday April the 24^th. We had just gone to bed when I started having contractions and we knew it was time to make that trip to the hospital in Webb City. This baby was a little bigger than his older brother had been at birth and the doctor thought I was going through more than usual pain so they did give me something for it.

Michael Dwaine Johnston arrived at 12:25 A.M. on Sunday April 25^th, 1954, weighing in at 8.07 lb. He had a vigorous voice and active legs. They always gave new babies foot prints on their hospital certificate and somehow his was blurred and it looked like he had 6 toes on one foot and my Dad laughed and told me that he had 6 toes on his feet. Of course I had to check that out the next time they brought him in for me to feed him.

The Ranch house was not quite ready for us to move into it, so I went home to Mom and Dad’s on the third day. Morris came down the next weekend and installed a little two-burner  wood stove that Uncle Big (Judson Johnston, who owned 160 acres just north of the land John owned) loaned to us.

It was May when I finally managed to move up to the Ranch. That was my first night, and Michael’s first night in our House On The Prairie.

The west wind howled against the house, making if feel colder than it was and the heat from that little wood stove felt good as I sat and rocked baby Michael in my little rocker next to that warm fire as it was cool for this time of the year. Little Ken, who was only 16 months old cried and cried, as he had been my baby and expected for Mama to rock him and give him his bottle. He stood by my chair and could not give up, so Morris picked him up and carried him to bed with him and soon he stopped crying and fell asleep in his daddy’s arms.

Making a House a Home

Excitement grew as I contemplated having my very own house instead of the small, furnished apartment we lived in. My Dad was a carpenter and Uncle John hired him to repair the old windows and he installed a doorframe from the living room into the south room that would be our bedroom so that we could have a door to shut. The framework was boxed in to create shelves on both sides of the doors into the bedroom and from the living room into the kitchen also.

With the room measurements we picked out wallpaper for each room. We met with the local Baptist preacher who was also a paperhanger and he gave us a price for doing it all. However when the time came to settle up, his price was more than what we had calculated, however we settled on a compromise and paid him for the job.

We accepted donated furniture from all the family. We had Grandmother Johnston’s old round oak table

 and a set of four  chairs.

 Some were held together with bailing wire but we didn’t mind.

Our son Ken, age 16 months, was given the old family high chair that had been used by all the old Johnston children. Uncle John, Judson (Big), Isabel, Bill, Tom and Jake! I’m sure Morris and his brothers Bill and Richard had all used it when visiting Grandma and Grandpa Johnston too.

 We managed to scrimp together $25.00 and bought a bedroom suite from Duncan’s Furniture at Arcadia, Ks. It was a Walnut veneer set with a high backed bed, a chest of drawers and a dressing table with mirror.

Morris put in a pitcher pump over an old sink just inside the east door into the kitchen. It had no drain, just a bucket under the sink to catch the water you might dump down it. Of course someone had to carry the water OUT that ran down the drain into that bucket, so that kept us from using too much water. After all, we only had a cistern that caught rainwater from off the roof of the house. This water ran down through a filter that was made of sand, charcoal and rock, then into the old well just east of the porch.

I don’t know how we could have made it without all the help we got from our families. Both my Mom and Morris’s Mom gave us a kitchen cabinet.

 

 Morris’s Mom gave us a small apartment sized electric cook store. The wallpaper we had picked out for the kitchen was a red plaid and I made bright red curtains with black rickrack for the windows. We bought a black and red squared linoleum for the floor. How bright and clean it looked.

Our baby was due the last of April and I had a cold the last of March and my doctor, Dr. Gregory from Webb City, thought I best not travel back to our home in Kansas City, so I stayed with my folks at Nashville, Missouri  while Morris went back to Kansas City to finish working and packing our belongings up for the move to the ranch.

Anticipation grew as I knew we could not move into our little home on the prairie house until this baby arrive and our family had prepared it for us!