What would you ask?

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LadyLocust

LadyLocust

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I have an elderly family friend who grew up extremely rural. She is a wonderful intelligent woman. So even though the time when she was born is not unusual, the fact that she grew up in such a way that was "behind the times" is an asset in my mind. If there was a question you could ask an "old timer" what would it be? (I don't mean to call her an old timer though she might laugh and agree with it.) As I was writing Christmas cards, I was thinking I need to call her and ask her just to talk for a while. She is such an asset and has lived through so much, I'd like to preserve it in some way. I know there are some family questions I wish I would have thought to ask my Gpa before he passed, only to think of them too late. I have a few questions, but I know I am omitting a ton that I might later regret not thinking of. With that, what would you ask?

Assuming she will humor me, I will share the answers here.
 
Wishing my grandma was alive, she died when I was really little, and they lived near our farm, just down the road. I would ask her about how she preserved her meats, specifically pork, and other things she grew/raised here. I'd also ask her how it was here in our tiny little town during the Spanish Flu (She was 18 then), and how it was in the great depression here.
 
Amish Heart said:
Wishing my grandma was alive, she died when I was really little, and they lived near our farm, just down the road. I would ask her about how she preserved her meats, specifically pork, and other things she grew/raised here. I'd also ask her how it was here in our tiny little town during the Spanish Flu (She was 18 then), and how it was in the great depression here.
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I will ask her, but will also share:
A dear friend who is now gone said when he was a youngin' there was usually a fella who came around with a butchered critter and would haul the critter around and sell parts. He said he remembered his mom going out and pointing and the guy cutting off a big hunk of the meat.
I also asked my step dad who is 87 how they kept meat when he was little. He said they would butcher, can what they could, then would cook what they could and layer it in a crock in the cellar with grease in between each layer. Then the rest of the critter would go to various neighbors. When they began to run out, it was a neighbors turn to butcher and they would do the same thing. As he got older, they had a locker "in town" where they could keep meat.
 
Pearl said:
I know so many wild critter recipies from my older friends!! Also learned some old houses had gaps in the floors between the boards and it was not nice in the nice in the winter! Never had to 'ask', a lot to learn!
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Also know my 25 minute drive to town used to take 4 days!!
 
The locker thing is still alive and well in our town, most of the amish still have one at our town's meat place. Mom said when she was first married, her locker was near her mom's locker, and her mom knew that they didn't have much, being newlyweds, and would put meat in her locker for her. We have a large outbuilding with electricity, so we provide the electricity for 2 freezers for our next door farm neighbor, and her parents down the road. We're closer to get to than the locker in town is. I suspect that's what grandma did with her excess pork. Canned and cooked some and put some in a lard filled crock. I still have that crock. I heard alot of community cooking took place...sausage making and applesauce, then everyone shared the results. Wish that would happen now, sounds like fun. I have done it on a smaller scale with just a few cousins
 
My grandmother told of canning large quantities of beef before electricity. The first couple years she an grandpa were married they had no electricity but they had a battery powered freezer with a small wind generator on the roof. So they did have some freezer capability. I think they also ate a fair amount of home raised chicken and eggs for their protein. Grandma said butchering chickens was her least favorite job on the farm, especially as she was raised in town and had no experience before marriage. I do know that my grandpa was not a hunter. Game meat didn't figure into their diet and there was no place nearby to catch sufficient fish other than carp and suckers for pickling.

I would ask an old timer, How did you make the things you needed? They had to make so many things that we just run to Walmart for...
 
Pearl said:
I have heard so many "before electricity" stories! They have taught me a lot about cooking on the wood stove, etc.!
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This is a little funny to me only because: growing up, our cookstove was half electric and half wood. Our power would go out for days at a time and sorta regularly. When the power would go out, we would just scoot the pans over to the wood side only my mom made me do any of the baking because she would always burn one side - she would forget to turn the things in the oven so it baked evenly.
 
Aerindel said:
"How many walkers have you killed?

"How many people have you killed?"

"Why?"
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More than the screams in my sleep allow me to remember. WAIT, they were Jehovah's witness with cell phones? Now I feel bad.
Seriously though, the secret of good buttermilk!
 
Pearl said:
I have heard so many "before electricity" stories! They have taught me a lot about cooking on the wood stove, etc.!
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When I was young I used to visit my grandmother and it was always amazing to see and eat all the things she cooked and baked on her old wood stove, many of the things she cooked were foods from when she lived in Norway, she also warmed my PJ's over the oven door to put on and run up to the attic bedroom and jump in a very cold bed and stare at the back side of the roof shingles until I fell asleep. I rather miss those days, it seems sad in dealing with how complicated things have gotten in these days.
 
viking said:
When I was young I used to visit my grandmother and it was always amazing to see and eat all the things she cooked and baked on her old wood stove, many of the things she cooked were foods from when she lived in Norway, she also warmed my PJ's over the oven door to put on and run up to the attic bedroom and jump in a very cold bed and stare at the back side of the roof shingles until I fell asleep. I rather miss those days, it seems sad in dealing with how complicated things have gotten in these days.
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It is "differently complicated" now for sure. I no longer have to get out of bed in the middle of the night to shovel coal into the furnace. They didn't worry about cybersecurity, online banking, social media, etc etc etc. They didn't have freeze dried food, solar power, reliable generators, etc, I do. I can do the much of the stuff they used to do, but I really don't want to to heat water in a pot to take a bath, start the 1 cylinder engine to run the line shaft to run the lathe, pour babbit bearings in a model T engine, pump water with a hand pump, the list goes on and on.

Are we really less or more complicated now?
 
Apparently, I am you 'alls grandma. I grew up without electricity. We butchered in the fall, usually bear or moose and canned what we could and ate that during the summer. We milked a cow and had a few chickens for eggs. There were no luxuries like cakes and stuff. We ate a lot of oatmeal and bread with milk.

Baths were in the creek or snow melted on the stove.

My greatest Christmas present was an orange. I didn't know what it was or what to do with it. Boy, was it ever good.

Town was for buying oatmeal, sugar, salt, flour BP ect. Everything else was do it yourself or catch someone's kid and make them do it.

We had shovels, cross cut saws, axes and matches on the school bus and had to rescue ourselves. We also had a gun rack and the bus would stop for a shot at game near the road. Pretty much every kid carried a hunting knife.

Schools and homes were log and came with wood stoves and out houses. There were school chores as well as home chores.
 
Buckets. We had a creek down in the willow bottom. Dad built the house in the side of a hill for insulation. There was a flat bit in front of the house, maybe 20 ' and then a really steep and long bank which led down to the flat area below with a small creek.

He dug steps down the bank and we lugged water up to the house. Water was heated in the side compartment of the cook stove. Every time water was dipped out for dishes ect.. another bucket was lugged up by a kid. In winter, snow was melted in buckets on the big Ashley stove and it too was bucketed in and then dumped into a tin wash tub sitting next to the stove. A bath every Sunday whether needed or not.

Now, to gross you all out, that was a big endeavor to bring in the snow, heat it and fill the tub. There were seven in the family, and it was oldest to youngest in age, in turn, for a bath in the same water. That's the way it went for all families,

Livestock had a longer path down to the creek and we had to chop the ice into steps for them as the creek froze up deeper. If it froze to the bottom, we were back to melting snow for both people and livestock.

Dishes were washed in a dish pan and dirty water was dumped over the edge of the hill. That same hill served as our toboggan run.

Some of our neighbors had longer to go to get to the creek and used a draft horse and sledge to haul water in barrels. They had to transfer the water from the barrels outside to the inside barrels to keep the water from freezing solid.

No, a shed with a stove outside wasn't feasible, because that would have required the cutting of even more fire wood. It regularly got down to -40 to -60 F when I was a kid.

Eventually, some neighbors got together and bought a wore out old well drilling truck from somewhere and managed to keep it working to drill a well for the school and five homesteads. I remember the joy we had using a hand pump instead of lugging buckets.
 
The only grandparent I ever knew was my dad’s dad.
He was a railroad conductor, and he passed away when I was about 12. He lived in Maine, we lived in Florida, so I never got to interact very much.
But, I learned a lot from my parents, they both went through the Great Depression and then WWII.
I grew up learning to make do and do without.
I’m 73, wife is 75.
 
ClemKadiddlehopper said:
Buckets. We had a creek down in the willow bottom. Dad built the house in the side of a hill for insulation. There was a flat bit in front of the house, maybe 20 ' and then a really steep and long bank which led down to the flat area below with a small creek.

He dug steps down the bank and we lugged water up to the house. Water was heated in the side compartment of the cook stove. Every time water was dipped out for dishes ect.. another bucket was lugged up by a kid. In winter, snow was melted in buckets on the big Ashley stove and it too was bucketed in and then dumped into a tin wash tub sitting next to the stove. A bath every Sunday whether needed or not.

Now, to gross you all out, that was a big endeavor to bring in the snow, heat it and fill the tub. There were seven in the family, and it was oldest to youngest in age, in turn, for a bath in the same water. That's the way it went for all families,

Livestock had a longer path down to the creek and we had to chop the ice into steps for them as the creek froze up deeper. If it froze to the bottom, we were back to melting snow for both people and livestock.

Dishes were washed in a dish pan and dirty water was dumped over the edge of the hill. That same hill served as our toboggan run.

Some of our neighbors had longer to go to get to the creek and used a draft horse and sledge to haul water in barrels. They had to transfer the water from the barrels outside to the inside barrels to keep the water from freezing solid.

No, a shed with a stove outside wasn't feasible, because that would have required the cutting of even more fire wood. It regularly got down to -40 to -60 F when I was a kid.

Eventually, some neighbors got together and bought a wore out old well drilling truck from somewhere and managed to keep it working to drill a well for the school and five homesteads. I remember the joy we had using a hand pump instead of lugging buckets.
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That is where the phrase "don't throw the baby out with the bathwater" came from - yep it was the norm. Children also ate after the adults back in the day - they were not a valued sector of the population as value was based on production & children produced less and consumed almost as much (in the way of labor).
 
Traditional here in big groups to feed the men first. In a small group, we let the kids go after the elderly plates are made and served. Women eat last and the hostess eats dead last, and there's no exception to that. She's also the first to serve everyone fresh coffee and dessert. We actually have had times where the women say, "no, you go, no you go next". Ha. I settle this by having special candy (like dark chocolate salted caramels) in the kitchen while we wait. The guys have slowly started figuring this out.
 
I spoke w/ her yesterday and she said she would answer what she could. In visiting, I did ask her about tips for good buttermilk. She chuckled and said well, I know we made it. Mama's not here to ask 😊 so she didn't really have advice on that one. Her mom passed in 1974.
 
Great post, LadyLocust. I wouldn't even know where to start. We were always city folk. For at least the three generations before me we always lived in the city. My great grandmother spanned the time from Indians being put on the reservation to the beginning of the Internet. What she saw in her lifetime was mind boggling. She saw science fiction become reality. I can't think what I would ask. What was the most life changing invention? What was the most impressive? What most changed your life? What do you miss the most? What do you not miss?
 
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I received answers back and a bunch of old info on the area. If you are interested, it is Riverside, Oregon - no usually listed among ghost towns.
I will post some of the questions I asked, her answers and then any other info. I found in the reading. Much of the info was about the PO and the RR as those are the two things that remained the longest duration. On thing that was funny was that every time the post master changed, the location of the "post office" changed.
This is the area - photoshoped to look greener than it really is. There used to be pictures of the ranch & old PO building which looked like little more than a tack shed but internet has them hidden.
1644002289176.png
 
Aerindel said:
"How many walkers have you killed?

"How many people have you killed?"

"Why?"
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She didn't remember any killings. In the graveyard, there are 2 sheepherders, their names unknown but no details as to how both died. I found no other info. on such happenings.
I also asked if any notable people traveled through or stayed. Again she couldn't remember but said there were always people going through and notable at that time might have just been an area big-wig.

(More later, I have to get a few things done while it's light out.)
 
Pearl said:
I get to clean for many "old timers", their life experience is amazing!! Where they worked, raising their kids, how they got by, and SO much more! I am a better, stronger, more resilient person for knowing/ loving these super stars!! Today's young have no clue!!
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That's alright, sometimes, even at my age, my wife thinks I have no clue, leaves me to wonder how I built our home, plumbed and wired it and dug nearly 500 feet of earth to bury the water line to the spring site, ah to be a younger man now than I am, at least I try to think young and do things I can physically do, even going under the counter to add water to the solar batteries reminds me of the effort a week afterward with sore rear
end muscles. As to talking to my grandparents, I do wish I'd have asked my grandmother how it was to have come from Norway, probably in the 19 teens and likely went through Ellis Island.
 
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Tirediron said:
Water usage, when you have to carry it in and carry it out, how did they manage,
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So they lived near the convergence of the river (at the fork). In the family history, it mentions specifically "In 1915, a well was drilled just outside the North door of the kitchen making it much easier to carry water in." They got electric to the house for the first time May 24th 1957. Then they did not get a telephone until spring of 1967. That surprised me. Somewhere after the electric is when the indoor plumbing would have happened.
 
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