Digging A Trench
Today is Tuesday, January 17, 2006 my dear cousin, Cindi, has been imploring me to continue writing my memories. After reading Doris's, ( Cindi's Mom) recollection of the 1930's depression era I am impelled to share some of mine.
I lived on a farm with my parents and my father's parents. It was my grandparents' farm. There was a windmill that pumped water. A big tank in the attic of the big farmhouse provided running water for the household. When the tank was full the overflow was piped to a water trough where the animals drank, the horses and cows.
If you read Doris's account of the depression, you read of her parents having to subdivide their farm and sell lots to keep cash on hand to live. Well the people that bought those lots were enduring the misery of unemployment and cash shortage too. Several of the families that bought lots pitched tents to live in while they built a house. Times were tough. Living on the farm then had its advantages: A big garden, chickens for eggs and Sunday roast chicken, pigs for lard and pork, cattle for milk as well as veal and beef. We didn't have much money but we certainly could eat! My dad was a generous soul. He would let those ambitious hungry neighbors get water for drinking and laundry. He furnished milk to them. He gave them jobs for food. Jobs included hauling away the manure from the barnyard, repairing fences, hoeing, repairing buildings and whatever needed a hand.
In the winter it was necessary to put a heater in the water trough to warm the water for the cows and horses that were let out of the stable to drink. This happened twice each day. So one summer dad had the desperate men from up the road dig a trench from the windmill to the cow barn and in the trench pipe was laid to bring water into the barn. Dad installed drinking fountains in the stable so the cows could drink at their individual stalls. It was a great improvement. Usually five men came to work at the odd jobs when there was some odd job to be done. But on this water project there was one neighbor who absolutely refused to work. His reason: "I don't have water at my house and I'll be damned if I will work in a hole shoveling dirt so your cows can have running water." He never worked again for dad. There just was not a job for him to do.
During the depression years we were never out of food. Mother did a lot of canning. Apples of several varieties came from the orchard pears too. We had a grape arbor, a strawberry patch, a raspberry patch, and rich soil that produced potatoes and vegetable of all kinds. These are a small part of my memories and they are indeed fond. Today gasoline here is $2.36 a gallon; Mary and I are skimping to buy it. In the 1930's gasoline was 17 cents a gallon; Dad and Mom skimped to buy it.
Things change--or do they?
I Thought I Would Be A Farmer
