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My Throwback Thursday story...
Posted On 11/13/2019 23:09:06 by yourchoice

This may be a crazy idea but I decided to have a ‘Throwback Thursday’, also known as a TBT! My ‘throwback’ is what I remember of the first home that I lived in. Here is my story!

My parents lived in a converted granary (a building that normally was used to store grain) on my grandparent’s farm when I was born. Understandably, I don’t remember it, but I do have photos of my parents standing at the doorway and holding me. There was no electricity, no running water… no nothing except protection from the weather. However, my Dad worked very hard as a farm hand and was able to buy a small farm when I was about two years old.

We were quite isolated and that was fine until it was time for me to go to school. After life in the granary, my mom thought our new home was a palace. It even had an ‘upstairs’. We still didn’t have any electricity or running water, and there was an outdoor toilet, and a potty under each bed. We didn’t have a telephone, and our nearest neighbor was over a mile away.

The main room had a wood/coal burning stove, with an oven, a warmer above the cook top, and an attached basin that always had hot water for washing dishes and having baths. My uncle made a round kitchen table that had extension boards to enlarge the table when we had guests, and Dad made benches to sit on until they could afford to buy chairs. There were two small rooms accessible from the main room… one had the hand pump to the water well, and the other had a few cupboards for dishes and a counter that was Mom’s work bench. She also had a trap door in the floor to the dirt cellar to keep food cold and edible. The living room was small and rarely used, except in the summer because there was no heat in the living room or in my parent’s adjoining bedroom. I had my own room ‘upstairs’ and the only heat I had was through a steel grate in the hallway, that was directly above the kitchen stove. There was a hanging gas lamp over the kitchen table and coal oil lamps that could be moved from room to room. I don’t remember if I ever had light in my room; I may have gone to bed before it was dark!

My mom did her laundry in the garage for two reasons. It wasn’t so far for her to carry the water from the well, and the wringer washing machine was run by a gasoline motor that emitted exhaust. She often used a glass wash board to scrub out the stubborn stains before adding them to the washing machine. All the laundry was hung on a clothesline, fastened with wooden clothespins, to dry in the sun. In the winter, she still put the clothes on the line for a spell, because it was important to have clothes smell fresh even though they later, when frozen stiff, would be brought in the house to dry by the kitchen stove. The next day, everything was ironed on a wooden ironing board that my Dad made, and using a steel iron with a wooden handle that was heated on the stove.

My dad had a few milk cows, four work horses for field work, and Brownie, his favorite retired saddle horse that he used when he was single and a cattle driver in the Cypress Hills. Brownie was a one-man horse, allowing only my Dad in the saddle. When I was five years old, Dad was able to purchase a John Deere tractor, which made farming much easier for him. I was seven years old when I started grade one, and Brownie let my dad take me to school on his back.

All that changed the winter of 1947 with the extraordinary amount of snow. Even the work horses had trouble getting through the deep snow and I missed a lot of school. When the passenger train got stuck in the snow, and the piles of snow left on the highway by the snowplow was higher than the Greyhound bus, it was time to move to the city. My Dad had enough… and in the city he learned to be an excellent carpenter and I was able to walk to school. It was my Mom who missed the farm!

What can you remember about your first home? I would love to hear about it.


Grainger-Farm1945

Tags: Childhood Farm City Memories



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Viewing 1 - 3 out of 3 Comments

11/19/2019 10:13:43

Wonderful blog and I loved reading about your memories! I was born in 1963 and what I remember most was how my mom decorated my room. It was painted lavendar, with lavendar gingham curtains and bedspread. I still have a love for gingham now but one hardly ever sees it any more.



11/15/2019 14:32:51

I remember so much from my childhood. Born in 1962, so we grew up in a modest house. It was built in 1919. Solid as a rock, my brother lives in it now. Looking back to my childhood days and comparing to current time, what changes there have been. I remind my son often of these days. Wouldn't trade them for anything. We live in a fast world now..back then it was slower and a lot simpler...



11/14/2019 07:07:33

What great childhood memories you have. Well the first home I lived in was a rather small house. I didn't think so at the time but after seeing pictures later and going by the house years later I realized how small it was compared to the next home. We were connected to the city water system so we always had plenty of hot water. I can't recall what the stove was. It had to be either gas or electric. Yes we had electricity. My greatest memory is of a retired couple who lived a couple of houses down. They were very nice and talked to me often when I would ride my tricycle down the sidewalk.





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