Homeplace

About Me before we moved to the home place.

I remember I was ready for school , had a nickel for something, And I swallowed it waiting on the bus.
My mother did not know what to do, so she called Aunt Nellie who said to give me a big laxative and wait for the nickel to appear. I did not go to school THAT DAY.

And on the trips to Brown County, I remember Eula Gunning taking warm milk for her girls, and she being so nice, wanted to know if I wanted some. NO WAY could I drink warm milk.

The Huckster came to our house occasionally, This was during the depression. They came from a little grocery in Dog Town (Omega) . Mother bought very little, sometimes a can of baking powder. But sometimes I would get a penny sucker. Then they were big and such a treat. I must have been a little spoiled!

Then I remember going with mother to the grocery in Noblesville, It was in a building, rather narrow with long shelves on each side. With a counter all along the front. If you wanted a box of cereal, the clerk would get it down for you. Mom would take a crate of eggs, and see how much he would give her for them then, buy a few things with that money. I remember a banana or orange was quite a treat, And dad would have bought 10 cents worth of candy. Some chocolate drops, or some peppermint candy.

At the home place, my grand father had built it for his large family, and at the time there was natural gas. So they piped that in and had gas lights. Some of the gas lights were still there when we moved there in 1939. The big transoms over the doors let the air move from room to room, but the gas source had run out.

During the time we lived there were the ration books in the war. Since dad farmed with horses and we seldom went to town, mom said they would trade gas stamps for someone’s sugar stamps My mother was a good manager and she made the best chocolate cake, whether she had to make it with sorghum, molasses, lard, real cream or plain milk. She just adjusted the recipes and never looked at a cook book. When I was away from home and after my dad died, She went to stay with Esther Newby Day when she was having her 6th child. My mom made them chocolate cakes and they loved them and were amazed how she could do it with out a recipe

At the end of summer the basement shelves were filled with canned fruit . The bins contained onions, potatoes, beans. They worked hard and were very self sufficient. Not many I know could do that today. I am thankful for the family I grew up in and the ways we lived.

At one time Aunt Geneva (Tad’s wife), lived in a house south of Ray parkers. There they had a root cellar that was built into the ground. It also had a little spring running through it where they kept their milk. That was a fun place to explore when I was little. I stayed o/n with them once. The time my folks went to the Chicago World’s Fair. She tucked me into bed upstairs in a cold cold room, and wrapped a brick she had heated on the stove in newspaper and put it at my feet.

I remember butchering hogs. They would build a trestle and pull the hog up and hang it after they shot it and then butcher it. Peel the skin off, gut it, and let it bleed out good. The Bible says to eat No Blood. They used a lot of stuff of the hog, but never the blood . They made mincemeat out of some of the head meat, They cleaned the entrails to stuff with sausage. My but that was a lot of work, and they put the fat in a huge iron pot, built a fire under it to render the lard, and cook the cracklin’s.
But one job I disliked the most was using old oil based paint to paint a hog house. I must have been a rebellious teenager. Why does a hog house need to be painted? But I did it and had paint all over me. I am so thankful for the water based paints of today.