I was born on a farm near Pomeroy, Iowa to Dick and Gretchen Dirks on November 23, 1917. I had one older brother named Harold. When mother had him they had my Aunt Annie Coleman take care of her, she was my dad's half sister. They didn't have a doctor for Harold but a doctor was called when it was time for me to get here. Mother was sick a long time before I got here so they decided to call Doctor Webber in on the case.
I must have been a stinker. Mother told of one time I hung onto her dress tail, she popped me one and I got mad and turned blue. I got a good many spankings over that, didn't do any good. One time they had company and I had one of my spells, or fits, so they put me under the spout and pumped water on me, that didn't stop me. Mother said I had many more, I guess it scared the dickens out of them. I out grew it before I went to school.
There were fourteen children in our family, an even number of boys and girls. I had one older brother, six younger brothers and six younger sisters. We were all not home at the same time. My baby sister Eva Marie passed away in 1925, if I remember right, she was about 11 months old. My baby brother was born in 1939. My sister Verneeda passed away in 1940, she was a sophomore in the Fonda School, she was fourteen on her last birthday.
The only memories I have of my early childhood were that Mother had lots of setting hens. When my younger sister died I must have been 5 or 6 years old. The day of the funeral our cousins and all of us were dressed in our Sunday best and we spied an owl’s nest in a hollow limb and we got to poking sticks at them. I always heard they were blind in the daylight.
I can remember one time when it had rained my older brother and I was wading around the barn and I was arguing with him. I kept telling him I was going to catch up with him on my next birthday and he always said I couldn't because he would have a birthday before I would. I wouldn't have it that way, gosh, I was always right. I was really stubborn.
We had an old organ in the parlor. My daddy would play it, and he had a fiddle, he played them by ear and did a fair job of it.
School Days
There were a lot of one-room schoolhouses. Water was carried to the schools and put into stone jars, at first it was dipped out with a dipper but latter they got stone jars that had a spigot and we just held our cups under there. The water got pretty warm by the time we went home. Every child had a their own cup. They were usually made of tin or aluminum and we had our names on them. The cups were hung on a nail, not too high so the smaller kids could reach them. These schools had a hall up in front for us to hang our wraps. The lunch buckets were put there too. The lunch buckets were mostly half gallon syrup pails with holes punched in the lids. Our lunches would be soggy as we had mostly jelly sandwiches. I can't remember ever having a meat sandwich at school. We always had light bread. In our part of the country we never had biscuits, like they did in the south. I know we never took corn bread to school.
The old country schools were heated with a wood or coal stove. The teacher was janitor, fireman, nurse and an all around lady. The schoolyards were mowed before school began, it was mowed with a horse mower. The outhouses were all in the back, one for the boys and one for the girls. They had a Sears or Wards Catalogue in there, either to look at or use.
My first days at school were not pleasant ones. My dad took my brother and me to school in a Model T. I cried all day. My brother was a little older and he survived it a lot better than I did. I was almost five and my brother was six. There we sat with all those other kids staring at us, we couldn't talk to them and they couldn't talk to us, all we knew was the German language, we didn't know any English at all. Finally the teacher got my brother to do some water coloring. I can remember he painted a big black dog. I suppose I was still crying, probably thought my papa had decided to desert us. We both could speak German, but after a year in school we spoke nothing but English. I can understand some German, but can't speak it.
They built a new one room school house in the summer of 1924. must have been going into the third grade. It had a full basement, a furnace and two restrooms up front. The restrooms were not the flushing kind, they had barrels in the basement and had to be pumped out. They taught eight grades in these schools. One teacher had All grades. Sometimes we would jump a grade, it was a lot better for the teacher.
Transportation to School
My dad would take us to school if he wasn't too busy with the farm chores and farming. Sometimes we walked the two and one half miles to school. We did a lot of footwork, sometimes we cut across the fields, and it made the distance a lot shorter. My Aunt Mary, dad's sister, was helping mom with the housework, better known as a hired girl. My dad rigged up a one-horse buggy and Aunt Mary would take us to school in it. If the snow got bad dad would harness up a team and take us in the bobsled. They put a wagon box on those runners, put straw in the box and a cover on top, us kids crawled in there and stayed until we were home. One morning my Aunt was taking us to school, the horse got scared and broke one of the shafts, these went on each side of the horse. We had a neighbor fix it.Mr. Carlson wired it up so we could go on. I think we were all freighted, no telling what a horse might to if that got to poking him in the side. After my parents moved to the Marshall farm we enrolled in the Fonda School. We lived about a mile and one half from it and we walked it in fifteen minutes, we timed ourselves many a time. I was in the fourth grade and they were so much further ahead of us. The teacher asked me where we were in the geography book, we didn’t have that in the country school, at least in that grade.
The Fonda Public School burned just before we went there. They had classes in every vacant building in town. I had school in the K. C. Odd Fellows Hall and Violet went to the Catholic school. I got run off by a Baker girl as I went to walk my sister home, so after that I stayed off their grounds. While I was in the fifth grade we moved into the new school building. I graduated from the eight grade there. My dad didn't think a high school education was necessary, girls were to stay at home, raise a family and be homemakers. My dad only had a second grade education. In his day they used slates to write on but in my day we had the (The Big Chief) tablets, they were red, as they are today. We had penny pencils, an eraser on one end and you sharpened the other end. Sometimes we sharpened them with a sharpener and at other times with a pocketknife. The pencil lead was very hard but it broke easily. We had crayons, some were good and some were made very cheap. I think everyone had a pencil box, cigar boxes came later.
We had a desk that seated two students when I started to school. Then we went to the new county school and we had a desk that had a hinged top, a good place to hide behind. In the Fonda school it was back to the solid top and we slid in the books and papers. In the new school we had a water fountain, inside restrooms and steam heat. I took a lunch bucket to school all my life, no hot lunches in those days.
We finally got softer lead pencils. They cost about two for a nickel. We had fountain pens that had a tube in them that filled up with ink, sometimes they leaked and you'd have a mess. When we had Palmer writing we had to use a straight pen that we dipped in ink. Our desks had inkwells in them, we usually kept our ink in a bottle. We furnished all our own books, art papers, writing, pens, pencils, etc. We bought a few used books but they kept changing them so we'd have to buy new ones. We hardly ever sold any cause we had someone who could use them in a lower grade. I never heard of P.T.A. until by children were in school. I never did belong, always too busy and my husband didn't believe in that jazz. My children rode in a covered wagon when they went to school. It had benches on both sides. One of the drivers was Cleo Dodge and the other was Gaylord Miller. Our roads were real bad, they were mud, mud, no bottom to it. Now the schools are all consolidated the children all ride in school buses that haul about 25-30 children and travel 10 - 20 miles to school.
No more country schools, just bigger schools, higher taxes, more sports and less work at home. I think they got more education in those country schools, at least we got our three R's.
Happy Days
When we played house, we made mud pies and cakes. We used sticks for candles, leaves for decorations, pebbles for chocolate chips and we got eggs out of the hen house and put in them mud things. Mom and Dad never knew about this or we would have got a blistering. They will never find out, cause they will both be gone by the time I get this wrote. We should have been caught, the folks needed those eggs to sell to buy groceries. They were probably 10 - 15 cents a dozen. A 30 dozen case of eggs would buy a lot of groceries. The hens lay good in the spring of the year and then tapered off as the weather got hot. In the wintertime we got no eggs at all.
Our Uncle Henry and Aunt Ella Hohensee had 5 or 6 children about our ages. They ended up with 14 children too. We used to see them about every night at their place or ours. We lived about four miles apart. Us kids used to go down to the creek and throw rocks at the snakes and watch them stick their tongues out at us. We thought those forked tongues looked funny. Uncle Henry would grow some big water and muskmelons. He would have is cellar full of them when he got through gathering them. I think I ate too many of them as I never cared for them after that. They moved back to Nebraska when I was 8 or 9 years old.
There was a time in the fall when our hayloft was full of hay. Us kids dug holes or burrows in there. Then we would play hide and seek. This went along very well until one day we tramped one of the entrances shut. We thought one of the boys had suffocated. So we made a deal, we had to answer when someone called our name.
We also made houses in the side of the creek banks where the creeks used to be. We got so involved in digging and playing that we left the house without doing the dishes. About 3 o'clock we decided we wanted a drink, Mom was at the sewing machine mending, patching, etc. and the dishes were still on the table. It didn't take us long to get the dish pans out and get those dishes done. They were harder to do then cause everything had dried on them. It was a good thing my Dad hadn't come home or the feathers would have flew, we thought Mom would do them, did we get fooled.
We also went wading in the dredge where the opening was, this was called the cattle crossing. They had piled dirt high on each side and then made and opening. Us kids make a slide down that bank. I bet our clothes were a mess for we just slid down them on our rears.
My brothers learned to ice skate. My sister and I tried our hand at that too. The boys had on high top shoes and us girls just had slippers. These skates fastened to the soles of the shoes. We girls didn't learn to skate, we need pillows on each side and the back and front, we got a bruising. Three of my brother could skate with the greatest of ease. They could do figure eights. It looked easy, but I never learned to do it.
The folks visited Dad's folks once a week. When us kids were older we didn't go with them. We stayed home and made fudge. My Dad didn't care but Mom hated to see us use that sugar. I realize now it was hard times but that was cheaper than buying it. We were only kids and it didn't bother us that much. On Sunday we would pop two dish pans full of popcorn. We had real butter on that or we would make popcorn balls.
We always loved to see Mom's sister and her husband come. When Aunt Marie and Uncle Benhart Rankin came for a visit they always brought a sack of candy. They sure knew the way to a kid’s heart. They didn't have any children of their own. If we were not home they would tie the sack of candy to the doorknob and we'd know they had been there.
Our Aunt Anna Lochen, who married Hans Lochen, would come and visit us about twice a year. They lived in Chicago. She'd always brought us chocolate candy. She worked in a rug factory, sorting out rags. If she found something she thought we could use she'd keep it back. She would bring it to us, it had lots of white material in it. We made table clothes, sheets and baby things. Sometimes there were a lot of handkerchief prints, so we sewed them up.
The flour came in fifty-pound white cotton bags. We embroidered on these and used these to dry of the dishes. We boiled these on wash days. I don't ever remember having any such thing as bleach, we had bluing which we put in the rinse water to make the clothes whiter.
Uncle John Ahrens was a favorite Uncle of mine. He never married, he was a half brother to Mom. He wanted to marry Mom's cousin but her folks wouldn't let her come to America so that was the end of that love affair. Every time Uncle John came he always had a sack of bananas, this must have been his favorite fruit. He went to Chicago to see his sister Anna and this one time I got to go along. That city was so cloudy and dirty. It was trying to rain while I was there. We went to the Lincoln Zoo Park. That was a large city in my eyes. This was on Decoration Day in 1929 or 1930. Aunt Johannah lived there and she went to the park with us. She was only 32 years old when she got hit by a streetcar that killed her.
Back to my story. I shall never forget that train rides, the noise, the side tracking and the banging. I didn't get any sleep and we got home about 6 A.M. and my Dad made me go to the cornfield and cultivate corn. I was thinking he could have let me rest a day. Just Harold and I got to go to Chicago, my Aunt Anna got pneumonia and passed away, after that Uncle John had no reason to go to Chicago anymore.
My Uncle George and his wife Olga lived in the apartments, upstairs of my Uncle and Aunt’s house in Chicago. They had two small children then, my uncle was out of work and couldn't pay the rent, so they just set them out in the street. I think the Red Cross or Welfare picked them up when it got dark. This was during the depression years, starting in the 30's.
My Mom got to go to Chicago once. That time Harold got to go. Marcella was a baby, she made a fool out of herself, she cried all the time she was there and all the way home. Mom, Harold, and Uncle John took an earlier train home. Dad was not looking for them that morning, so they walked home, it was one and a -half miles. When Marcella saw our dog all was well, she was all smiles.
When Mom was in Chicago, dad took us fishing. We went to a placed called -Sunken Grove, he took us out in a rowboat. What a risk we took one day when the waves were high, he was no swimmer and none of us kids knew how either.
We had fun jumping rope. We would take a rope about 15 to 20 feet long. One person one each end and throw this rope up and around And you would run into it, as many as two, or three could jump it at the same time.
When we had our cultivating all done and the wind in the southwest, we'd pack a picnic lunch and go to Twin Lakes to go fishing. We only caught small bullheads, about forty of them. When we got home we put them in the watering tank, they must have died, I don't remember eating any of them.
Our wiener roast was fun. We had a few in the summer time. We'd buy a dollars worth, probably 5 to 6 pounds, fix a large bowl of potato salad, pork and beans. our salad was very simple. Pepper, a little butter, maybe a little sugar, and that was our salad dressing until Violet and I found a salad dressing in one of Mom's cookbooks. I had to be cooked and it contained almost the same ingredients. We had milk to drink if it hadn't soured. We had homemade bread, homemade catsup and mustard, it was cheap and we could afford. We enjoyed those outings very much even though we had to fight the flies, mosquitoes and ants.
Games and Things
Everyone knows how to play ring around the rosy, drop the handkerchief, blind mans bluff, farmer in the dell, fox and goose, hide and seek, tic tack toe, mother may I, sack race, jumping rope, baseball, marvels, jacks, leap frog, teeter totter, walking barrels, somersaults, hopscotch, who’s' got the button, hot potato and sometimes we made paper windmills.
The Lutheran Church Picnic at Pomeroy
I was about 4 or 5 years old. The Lutheran Church had a picnic. I can remember they put up a large tent with no top, I thought that was great. You could get 3 chances for a dime, you got a pole with a line and a safety pin on it, you threw that over the side of the tent and someone would put some little something on it. That was a lot of fun for me. The older folks did a lot of visiting. Then our creamery gave a picnic every fall and everything was free, ice cream, pop and hot dogs, we never had it so good. This was at Newell.
Free Movies at Knoke, Iowa
Every Saturday night a Knoke they had free movies. They were held in the open. They were the silent kind. I couldn't read yet so all I went for was to get pop for a nickel and popcorn for a nickel. They were larger sacks than they have today. This town today it only a grain elevator, years ago it had a grocery store and the post-office was in the store. We traded there on free movie nights. Oh yes, if forgot, cracker jacks were a nickel also.
School Clothing and Chores
School clothing was very simple, the boys wore bib overalls. They always had a new pair just for school. These they wore all week. They had a pair of old pants that they wore when doing the chores. My sister and I had a dress each. These were washed on Saturday, also ironed, so we could wear them the next week. We didn't worry about what we were going to wear. We knew it would be dark material, so it wouldn't show the dirt. When we got home from school we knew what chores had to be done without being told. We always saw that the baskets were full of corncobs and the wood brought in. The barn always had to be cleaned and bedded down with straw. We had to do this especially when the men were in the fields. The horses were fed a pan of oats and hay thrown down through a hole in the hayloft. The milk cows were fed the same way, only they got a ration of ground ear corn. In the summertime the cows didn't get any feed. We had a windmill that pumped the water and there was a creek that ran through the pasture. The livestock drank from the large watering tank by the windmill. In the wintertime we had a tank heater that burned cobs, wood, and coal. It kept the tank thawed out, my bother or dad to care of that. Dad took care of the hogs. We helped with the milking of the cows and feeding the calves. My dad always bucket fed the calves. One time he did leave the calf suck the cow, which he sold to a butchering place in town, he sure hated to see that calf go.
The boys and girls wore long stockings. They were either black or brown and were held up by elastic garters, sometimes we used rubber band cut from inter tubes. Anklets didn't come into style until the 30's, my sisters wore them, I was out of school then. The anklets were of many pretty colors.
The girls wore high button shoes most were black. We fastened these with a buttonhook. You would pass this hook through the hole and catch the button then draw it back through the hole. I believe we wore this kind of shoe until around the year 1927, at least the younger ones did.
I can remember when my sister and I got our first pair of slippers. We were forever slipping into the bedroom to try them on. I was probably about seven and Violet about five years old.
I must mention everyone wore long underwear every winter, men, women and children. The girls wore stocking caps and the boys wore the caps that the tops fastened to the visor, you see some men wearing these today. They always reminded me of my Uncle when he came from Germany. That was my mother's brother, Uncle Hajo.
We all had a special pair of shoes we wore to church and a Sunday dress. . The boys wore suits, which we pressed with a damp cloth and a hot iron. If they had a spot on them we cleaned it with gasoline. When we did this we stayed away from the fire.
One morning in October old Jack Frost really covered the ground, almost like snow. Us kids, my brother, sister and myself decided were we going to walk to school that morning, barefoot. No persuasion by Mom or Dad could change our mind. Don't know it we tried that again or not.
Dogs at School
Our neighbor, Jen Siglum, had a nice collie dog. Their son had just started to school. The teacher gave him a list of things to get whenever his folks were going to town. He had a different idea, so he raised his hand to go to the outhouse. In about 15 minutes she thought he should be back. We all went out to look for him. One of the Lynon's boys spoke up and said, "I bet he rode is collie dog home". Sure enough he got his dad out of the field. His dad brought him back to school and went into town to get his supplies.
A Mad Dog at School
One of the older boys had gone out to the privy and he spied a dog down the road a ways. So he called it and of course it came up to the schoolhouse. He fed it a sandwich from his dinner. I think the dog had rabies, cause when ate that peanut butter sandwich he began to froth at the mouth. Someone yelled "Get out, its a mad dog!!". We made a run for the outhouses. The teacher took the broom and got it out of there. When it was clear we made a run for the schoolhouse. Us girls forgot to close the door on the Girls outhouse and that dumb dog went in there. Us girls used the coal house for a few days, until a neighbor came and shot the dog.
Routine of the Week and Dinners
Sunday's were my favorite days. We just kind of relaxed and took it easy. The children usually went to Sunday school, hunting, fishing or just goofed off. After I got my car, the girls and I went to the swimming hole in Fonda. This used to be an old rock quarry. I think they took the sand and gravel out of this place and left a hole, which filled with water. It was fed by a spring. They manufactured brick from this sand and gravel.
This was a small pond, 3 - 4 acres. We got our bathing suits and went to the water like fish. My dad didn't think much of our skimpy outfits cause they didn't cover enough of our bodies. We never took and swimming lessons. Fred and I almost drowned, but we made it cause we are here. At this pit they had dressing rooms, one for the men and one for the women. They both had cold showers in them and a tray to step into that had a disinfectant, so we wouldn't get athletes foot or a fungus. They thought these cold showers would keep us from getting cramps. I know of two people that drowned in that pit. I don't think Violet learned to swim, but she didn't spend as much time there as I did. One summer I went there about every night. Agnes and Mae had both taken swimming lessons, they helped me a lot. One time Mae and I swam across the pit and I didn't think I could make it back, after I rested awhile I did. I didn't want to walk back home.
We used to have those large Sunday dinners. When all the uncles, aunts, and cousins came for dinner. First at one place and then another. The children thought it was great, but it sure was hard on our moms. I can remember my dad peeling dishpan full of potatoes. The women all helped with the cooking. No one brought a dish of any kind. They just bought themselves and we did the same thing when we went to their house. This kept up until I got married. Everyone was getting married and some moved away. Uncle Henry and Aunt Ella moved to Nebraska, when they left Iowa they had 4 or 5 children, but they had 14 before they quit. Dad's sister lived in Clarinda, Iowa. We didn't see much of them. That was Uncle Howard and Aunt Hanna Long, they had five children, Rose, Roger, Vernon, Alberta, and Aunt Lena and Uncle Otto Vanhoff lived by Manson. They had one son, Louie, he was as ornery as they come. We visited with them some. Dad's sister Aunt Zenie and Uncle Neb Kibber lived in Wisconsin and Iowa. They were older than we were and we did not visit them much. They had five children. Aunt Mary and Uncle Fred Hohensee lived in Nebraska and Iowa. They had twin girls, two boys and another girl. Aunt Rena married Walter Hohensee, had three boys and we saw more of them because their children were our ages, that is Leroy and Freddie’s. They lived near Pocahontas all their lives. Aunt Mattie (dad's younger sister) and Uncle Carl Jones had two children. A girl who died in a tractor accident around the age of 14 and a boy, Eldon, who had polio when he was about 9 years old, he lived through that. Uncle Otto and Aunt Freida Dirks didn't have any children. They lived near Twin Lakes most of their lives. Otto was dad's only brother. Dad had two half sisters Aunt Tenie (Loll) Benting, Tenie had one girl and two boys, I believe. Her second husband had a girl. Aunt Annie and Uncle Henry Coleman had one son and an adopted girl.
My mother also had one half brother and one half sister, Uncle John and Aunt Anna. Uncle John was born in Germany and never married. Aunt Anna and Uncle Hans Lochen made their home in Chicago, Illinois. They lived and died there. They didn’t have any children. Both of my grandfather’s first wives died and both had two children by their first wives, a boy and a girl. Aunt Lena stayed in Germany and married a musician, she was a seamstress, and his name was Herman Fisher. They must have had 3 or 4 children. Uncle Hennie Ahrens never married and never came to America. Uncle Hajo Ahrens came to America in the early 1900's. He farmed for several years and made a trip back to Germany and got caught in World War II. He had to stay there till it was over, he served in the German Army. He was there when Grandma Ahrens passed away. He came back to America in the early 50's and worked on construction. He went out to Arizona and found a friend, married her, he was in his late 60's. They had no children and both passed away out there. Uncle George found his wife through an ad in the paper. She was from Benton Harbor, Michigan. They had 5 children, Evenly, Erna, Anna, Lenard and Arthur. Olga his wife, they separated. He went to California, where he passed away and was buried. A younger sister Johanna got off a streetcar in Chicago and walked in front of a car and was killed, she was about 32 years old, never married. I think this was about 1933.
Back to the weekly schedule. Monday was wash day as far back as I can remember. Dad rigged up a gasoline engine to run our washer for the weekly wash. This was for the heavier clothing like overalls, underwear, bedding, and so forth. It would take the better part of the day. We had to heat the water on the range, wash the cloths, hang them out to dry. We usually shaved two bars of soap into the hot water. One type of soap was named P & G, must have stood for Procter and Gamble.
We caught our rainwater in a large cattle tank. On this farm it had a wooden lid on it so the kids would not get into it and drown. When we moved to the Marshall farm there was a cistern there. That was a lot better, the mosquitoes did not lay their larva in it, as we had to strain all the water through a cloth.
In the year 1933 we graduated to a Maytag washer which had its own motor, it was nothing but a headache. Then we moved to a place where we had electricity and got an electric motor. That was a lot better but not near as good as these automatics where we have running water and hot water heaters.
Tuesday was ironing day. I started ironing when I was 11 or 12 years old. That was work as we usually had 2 to 3 bushel baskets full of damp clothes. The clothes were sprinkled the night before. The sad irons, as they were called, were heated on a wood or cob range. They had to be run across newspaper to see if they had anything burned on them or if they had smoke or soot on them and also to see if they were too hot. If they scorched the paper they were. Sometimes we would check by a dampened finger on them to see if they sizzled.
We usually put all our clothing up on Wednesday. Mom did patching and mending, that took about all week. The socks were darned too. In the mean time us girls took up sewing. Dad fixed us up an old treadle sewing machine. First thing we did was make doll clothes. We would see a dress we liked and we would make the doll one just like it. We made hangers out of old wire and hung them up for all to see.
On our first try at making our own dresses my mother gave us some money, probably 50 or 75 cents. Violet and I went to town with dad to buy some cloth. We had never done anything like this before. In those days we only had prints, wool, linen and silk. We went over to the counter and bought us some prints. Mine was prints with red designs and blue flowers. Violet's was more of a green design. We were excited and after the dishes were done and Mom went to the garden. We cleared the table and I spread out my material. I used one of my old dresses for a pattern, folded my material down the center, did the same with my dress, to the scissors and cut all around the dress. When my mother came in a saw that she about had a heart attack. That was what they call an "All line dress, no doubt. It had no collar, no sleeves, no pockets, and just a belt tied about the middle. Violet's dress was a little better, Mom got there in time to help cut hers out. We wore these dresses to school and we were so proud of them. We wore them over to Aunt Marie and she liked to have had a fit when she saw them. We were only ten or eleven years old. We got better as we got older. We'd take a Sears or Wards catalogue, find a dress we liked, take a newspaper and make us a pattern and sew up a dress. They looked pretty darn good even if I had to say so myself. I didn't buy a dress pattern until after I was married and then I didn't like the way they fit. Mom taught us a little about croching and embroidering. We made a few quilt tops in the wintertime.
Thursday was our baking day for cookies and doughnuts. We usually made a double batch. Our favorites were oatmeal and sugar cookies. The doughnuts were cake and puff balls.
We made our cakes and pies on Saturday. Had the pies for company or Sunday dinner. The cakes were for Sunday lunch or school lunches. We bake bread three or four times a week. We started the bread the night before. We'd take a cake of yeast foam and use potato water, sugar, and flour and stir this up and let it set overnight to rise. The next day we added more water, sugar, flour and salt. Then we would knead it real well and let raise. We always fixed enough for eight loaves of bread and a pan of rolls. it would take all day to do this. Every family baked their own bread, wasn't any bakeries. We made both white and wheat bread. I don't think the bread tastes as good as it did then, they've taken too much out of the flour, added additives and the oven heat was a lot different in those old wood stoves.
Friday was our day to clean the upstairs. We mopped the floors, cleaned the lamp globes, trimmed the wicks, filled the lamps with kerosene and wiped the stair steps.
Saturday was our day to clean the downstairs. Mop the floors, take care of the lamps and do a little baking. About, every two weeks we would wash the windows, the flies were bad.