To keep warm in bed in the winter we slept on a feather mattress and on a feather pillow and sunk down so far that the covers on us were near level. It was a task just to turn over! Mom preheated a smoothing iron, wrapped it in old cloth and put it at my feet to help keep them warm. All was OK until it came time to get up the next morning in a room that was freezing cold. Also the smoothing iron had lost all of it’s heat! Yep, it was not unusual for water to freeze in the house at night. I remember that as the house aged the vertical outside boards dried out and shrunk up. This allowed openings between the outside boards. Since there were, at that time, no inside walls you could see through the cracks. Once snow blew in on me while I was asleep! Shortly thereafter dad corrected the situation.

The living room heater sat near the middle of the room. It was cast iron and had those chrome plated cast iron foot rests on each side so you could warm your feet. A filled wood box was in the corner of the room with some pine kindling there ready for the next time the heater was put to use. An ash bucket sat on the metal plate that was underneath the heater. The heater was mostly used on Sunday or when we had company.

My dad and I used the old Model A Ford to haul wood for the living room heater and the cook stove in the kitchen. We would travel old log roads, go into the woods that had been cut over and get rich pine roots to be used for fire starting. The rotted pine stumps would have a long rich tap root. Dad would back up then run forward and hit the root with the front bumper of the Model A to loosen it. After several hits we could pull the root out of the ground and, using an axe, cut it up enough so we could put it in the back of the car where the seat was removed. I learned to drive that Model A Ford in the woods and fields hauling fire wood that we cut. We would spend the day cutting down a tree and cutting it into short pieces. We cut pinewood for the cook stove and hardwood for the living room heater. We would split and stack the wood after we hauled it back to the house. We would saw the pine tap roots into short pieces, split the pieces with an axe then stack it to keep it dry. It sure helped when starting a fire.

Mom cooked three meals a day on that wood cook stove in the kitchen plus all of the other work of a farm wife. Of course the kitchen was very warm whether it was winter or summer!

Cooling without electricity or gas:

Some times after work in the fields, especially during haying time, we would go to the creek across the road from the house to cool in the nice clear water. What luxury! To try to stay cool in the house we would open all of the doors and windows. If we had the time we would sit in the swing on the front porch and fan. After it got dark it would cool down enough for the family to go to bed.

We kept our fresh milk in a glass gallon jug in the spring down on the side of the hill in front of the house. The jug had a string tied on it with which to retrieve it. One summer I let it bump a rock and burst it in the spring. Boy was that a job to dip all of the water out and find all the pieces of glass. The water was flowing and was cold, I thought I would freeze before I completed the job.

Dad built mom an icebox from tongue and groove pine lumber. The voids between the inside and outside walls were filled with sawdust for insulation, it worked good. In the summer we would buy ice from our iceman, Mr. "Pop" Taylor (no kin). We would turn the ice card in the front window of the house to the amount we wanted that day 25, 50, 75, or 100 pounds. This was used until we got electricity on the hill then we all pitched in and bought a refrigerator on credit. Mom was very proud of that refrigerator.

Water:

We kept fresh water in a bucket on the back porch. There was one dipper and we all drank from it. The water was hand carried from the spring across the road and down the hill. Although it was heavier, we always carried a bucket in each hand as carrying a single bucket kept one unbalanced. The back porch is also where we washed our hands and faces in the wash pan. In the winter we would just break the ice and go ahead and wash. It doesn't take long to wash with cold water, boy was it cold! Of course we had no water heater.

On the rocky hill no flowers would grow except mom's beautiful red lily flags at the back porch steps. She always poured her dish water there and we poured our wash pan water there. The plants produced many beautiful blooms.

I helped dad dig a well on the side of the hill, it was about thirty inches per side and eighteen feet deep. He used an old ladder made of two poles and cross steps of lumber to go down into the well. We used a home-made windless to hoist up a five gallon bucket with dirt in it. Dad said there was a gas vapor in the bottom of the well and he couldn't breathe so he didn't dig any deeper. We never got much water from it but the frogs loved it. A few times dad loaned me money. We would go to the old dug well house on the side of the hill, he would remove a board and retrieve a glass fruit jar and count out the needed dollars. At that time he still didn’t trust banks! He didn't charge me any interest but I repaid every cent. He kept good books!

Dad had a well drilled through the rock up on the hill near the old house and we thought then we didn't have to carry it so far. While drilling, a special clay was found and dad thought he had hit it rich but he could not get anyone interested because it was underneath the covering of solid rock on the hill. The clay was the type used for firebrick and around oil wells. The well didn't produce enough water so we still had to haul water from the spring across the road from the house.

Mom washed our clothes each Monday at the spring across the road. I had to go into the woods and gather "wash wood" on Saturday to use to heat the water in the iron wash pot. The water was carried from the spring in buckets. Lye soap was used. The clothes were put in a metal wash tub and mom, by hand, scrubbed them on a wash board. The next step was to hand wring the water out of them then rinse them in a tub of fresh water from the spring. They were wrung out again and hung on the clothesline. This work was done regardless of weather, many times I have seen the clothes freeze on the clothes line as soon as they were hung there. Several times I have seen mom's hands crack open and bleed due to washing clothes. Some clothes would be dry that evening, the rest the next day. These clothes, dirty or clean, were hand carried to and from the house.

Later dad allowed me to use the Model A to haul water from the spring to the house so mom could stay at the house to do the family clothes washing. I would put a 55 gallon metal barrel on the front bumper and tie a rope around it to the lights cross-support bar to hold the barrel in place. I would fill the barrel at the spring with a bucket then cover it with a tow sack so not much would be spilled and then drive to the house. There I would unload it with a bucket into the wash pot and the rinse tub.

On Saturday we would carry water from the spring, let it set in a wash tub in the sun to warm then continue heating it on the stove in the kitchen. There we would have our bath, one after another, all in the same water. Sometimes in winter dad would warm his feet on the chrome plated rails of the wood heater in the living room. Mostly the kitchen was the warm place in the house because mom was always cooking there. Three meals a day, every day.

A half of an old car tire was used as a watering trough for the chickens. Once dad's chickens were not laying as many eggs as they had been. While trying to determine why, he caught me shocking them. I was using a Model T Ford ignition coil and old dry cell batteries I had picked up at the rail road tracks. I had one high voltage wire tied to a nail pushed into the ground and the other high voltage wire running out and into the watering trough for the chickens. I didn’t know chickens could jump as high as those did!

Dad made a rain gutter of scrap lumber and attached it to the edge of the porch roof. He then put an open top drum under the drip end to collect rain water for fire safety. I liked to watch the “wiggly tails” that hatched out in the water.

Lighting:

On the farm we always had coal oil (not kerosene) and it was used to free rusty bolts, burn in the lamps or a lantern at night, put in a bottle with green pine straw and was slung onto the crosscut saw when we were sawing green pine trees so the saw would not stick. Also if we got cut while cutting wood then we poured it in the wound to clean it. The church was also lighted with coal oil lamps hung on all of the walls and was heated with a wood heater. If we kids coughed then a few drops onto a spoon of sugar was given as a cough remedy. Dad used it to heat the chicken house where he was growing baby chicks. He bought it in a fifty gallon drum and sometimes I used it to "extend" the gasoline in my car. It ran ok but was hard to start when cold. I even used it in place of antifreeze but it ate up the water hoses. We sometimes used it to help start a fire in the living room wood heater.

Of course we didn’t have any flashlights. Sometimes neighbor boys and I would go rabbit hunting at night using a carbide light attached to a special cap. Carbide looked like small rocks but when you dropped water on it a gas was formed and this was burned to give off light. The light was dim and the rabbit would look at it and you could see the reflection in his eye then we could shoot it. If you saw two eyes you didn't shoot because it was some animal other than a rabbit.

Electricity Finally!

We finally got electricity after World War II, about 1946. As we lived on a rocky hill the construction crew had to use dynamite to blast a hole in the rock in which to set the power pole. I thought it was going to shake our house down! As a teenager I wired our house for a single bulb in the center of the ceiling of each room. We were then able to buy some electrical appliances and mom really appreciated them. To plug in the appliances an adapter was used at the light bulb socket and this provided a receptacle. Now mom was able to iron the clothes without building a fire to heat the smoothing iron. She could use an electric window fan, not have to worry with coal oil lamps, etc. About this time I had a telephone installed. It had no dial, you just picked up the handset and the operator would ask "number please". You could also ask the operator for the correct time, we had no electric clock. It was like magic! I also wired the Cooper Church for lights.

In the living room dad had a battery powered radio in a wooden cabinet, table model. It was operated only by him, he listened to the Stamps-Baxter Quartet, news and preaching. Later he let me listen to Tom Mix and Gene Autry. The radio used an AB pack, the "A" part was 1 1/2 volts for the tube filaments and it would run down first. The "B" part was 90 volts, a necessary higher voltage for the plates of the tubes. This was the only battery of any kind in the house! I would go over to the railroad tracks where the work-crew boss threw away the old 1 1/2 volt #6 batteries from their little putt-putt work cars. I would take them home and wire them to the radio so we could use the "B" part of the AB pack until it was fully discharged also. We even put a converter in the battery radio so we could run it on electricity!

Bathroom:

None! Of course without water plumbing in the house there was no bathroom in the house. All of my years at home we never had a bathroom therefore the outdoor toilet was used all year, hot or cold weather. That made for some fast trips to the outhouse! The Sears Roebuck catalog always ended up there along with some corncobs. Also a bag of lime sat in the corner, some would be sprinkled down the hole when needed. The one-holed outhouse was sitting over an opening between two large rocks. The outhouse was small and could be moved to another set of rocks when needed. Boy was it cold there in the wintertime. In the winter it didn't take as long to do what you had to do as it did in the summer time!

Mom and Dad:

My Christian parents went beyond the call of duty to their children and grandchildren rearing me and my sisters during the great depression of the 1930s and then through World War II. They farmed and dad worked at the local textile mill so as to have some cash. We attended every church service at Cooper Church, rain or shine, sleet or snow. I believe dad and mom are now in heaven free of the pain and heartaches of this old world. May God keep the memories of them in our hearts as long as we live. Both are buried in Cooper Cemetery with several other family members.

Dad: George Evans Taylor, Mom: Gladys Aline (Ennis) Taylor.

My Sisters: Dorothy (Clift) Hobbs, Wilma Huckelby, Pauline Guyse.

I, George Evans Taylor Jr., was the only son and the youngest child. DOB 5-20-31.

Written for the Hot Spring County Historical Society’s annual Heritage Magazine.Sept-13-2006 GT/gt