Whenever someone in our community had a new “contraption”, it was an awesome thing and sometimes it was shared by the whole community!
In the previous article, I promised to tell about modern lights, radios, and washing machines. Well, it was still a long time before we would have the luxury of electricity, but when we graduated from kerosene lamps to gasoline lanterns, we were truly “uptown”! The intensity of the light given out by the lanterns was much greater than the smelly old kerosene lamps, but they were not without problems. Occasionally, a lantern could catch on fire and cause quite a stir. If my memory serves me correctly, my dad once picked up a burning lantern and threw it out the door into the front yard! Perhaps a blanket, or quilt, was not readily available, or the fire may have been so fierce that it would not have smothered very easily. Whether another way of dealing with the fire would have been better or not, we were safe, the house did not burn and nothing in the yard caught on fire!
Battery powered radios were available, and I have faint memories of our having one in the 30’s. Evidently, it held very little fascination for me. I do have rather vivid memories of another community and a gathering at a neighbor’s house one evening in which the grownups sat around a rather sophisticated radio to listen to Joe Louis and Max Schmeling fight it out for the world heavyweight boxing championship. While the big people were doing their thing of listening to the broadcast of a blow by blow account of a historic boxing match, we youngsters were having the time of our lives…..we had the run of the big yard and barn lot (barnyard), and we even had the barn to romp and play in to our hearts’ delight. Hide-and-Go-Seek was a fun thing to play by moonlight, and to top it off, we joined the older group to enjoy several bowls of homemade ice cream. Wow! Can anyone beat that for a wholesome, happy experience in neighborly togetherness?
Going back to the time period of the mid-thirties, there were several other significant events which helped to develop my attitudes, personality, and character. The community was very much involved in helping to raise money for the benefit of the school …..remember the hand-walking, cigar-smoking gentleman? Well, as he walked on his hands with his feet straight up in the air, the sound of money falling from his pockets and rolling around on the stage made as much a memory for me as seeing his acrobatic progression across the stage! Other people of the community and teachers worked together to perform plays, hold pie socials and box suppers etc., all with the intent of helping to provide a better education for the children.
One skit, acted out by some parents, consisted of a living room scene in which there was a lighted window and two elderly parents in their rocking chairs discussing their longing for a wayward son to come home. It doesn’t sound like something a six year old would remember, but I think its music was the power that moved me to tuck it away in my heart. A song which was evidently the basis for the skit was an emotional experience in recognizing the disappointments that children can be to parents, who, nevertheless, continue to love them and are willing to forgive and welcome them back.
We had a teacher who occupied one of our bedrooms during the winter months, and besides keeping me full of chocolate cream candies, she taught me to sing several songs. She decided that I could sing so well she wanted to show me off at one of our school functions. Between some of the grownup acts, she accompanied me in front of the big curtain, but no amount of prompting paid off. The only sounds that I made was to tell her she was hurting my arm in which I had gotten a shot that day! The songs are still in my heart and I have sung them many times to my children, but never to a big audience!
This sixth article is written for my grandchildren who are enjoying the blessings of homeschooling. Public schools were much less damaging to innocent young spirits in my day, but I had my parents with me all the time. I learned not only from books, but from the way people interacted and worked for common causes.