Teen Years
skreidle recently published a link to the Ohio Department of Aging Great Depression Story Project. In reading those stories, I was reminded of my teen years during the 50’s in the Missouri Ozarks. We had been living a fairly comfortable existence in Overland Park, KS, when my father died. My mother decided to move me and three younger brothers down to live in a three room cabin in the woods and we would all live on her Social Security check.
We had a living/dining room, a kitchen, and a bedroom. In the bedroom, there was a standard size bed for mother and bunk beds for us four boys. We had no TV, no phone, no indoor plumbing, and only a hand pump on the kitchen sink pumping water from a cistern for running water, although we did have electricity. If we wanted to make a phone call, we had to walk a quarter of a mile to a neighbor’s house, and use the crank phone there. The water in the cistern always had a slight brown tinge and a taste of tannin from the oak leaves on the roofs that drained water into the cistern.
We lived on top of a bluff overlooking the Gasconade River, a truly beautiful spot. In the spring, summer, and fall, after breakfast, we boys would usually disappear into the woods and down to the river and be gone all day. When it started to get dark, my mother would start to get worried and go out on a point of rock sticking out of the bluff and yell for us.
We always had enough to eat, but usually it was navy beans and cornbread; to this day, I can’t stand navy beans and cornbread. Often today people will serve me cornbread thinking it is a treat. I will choke down a few mouthfuls, but I can’t eat very much. But sometimes my mother would fry up some bacon hard and then crumble it up and then put it in the mix for the cornbread. This made it fairly acceptable. Also, we never had any fresh milk; it was always powdered milk. Cornmeal mush was a staple for breakfast.
The winters were rough. The only source of heat in the house was the fireplace in the living room. When we went to bed, we would bank the fire and then go through the kitchen into the bedroom. It got pretty cold in the bedroom; often in the mornings we could see our breaths in the air. We had a little dog, and we boys would argue over who got the dog that night. There were some tomato juice cans that we boys could pee into during the night-and my mother had a chamber pot under her bed-but if you needed to do anything else, you had to get up, put some clothes on and trudge out to the outhouse. The outhouse faced west, and if the wind was from the east it would come up under the outhouse and freeze your bottom.
My next younger brother and I were responsible for getting wood for the fireplace. We would go out into the woods with a two-man crosscut saw and cut some wood. The saw didn’t cut very well and jammed up in the cut often. Sometimes we only came back with a day’s wood. Later, a neighbor examining the saw said that the teeth didn’t have any “set.”
In the winter, I had to leave to go to high school in the dark, and it was dark when I got home. My mother said she felt sorry for me. I had to walk about 1.25 miles to the bus pickup point. Other kids waited there also, and sometimes we built a fire to stay warm until the bus got there. The bus was a 1947 International Harvester and vibrated like crazy. I always felt like the vibration was good for me, like a massage. The bus ride was an hour and a half; I won’t go into the stuff that happened on the bus. Then I got to high school and my class of 45. I never felt that I was bad off, but I saw some of my classmates that I felt sorry for.
We had a living/dining room, a kitchen, and a bedroom. In the bedroom, there was a standard size bed for mother and bunk beds for us four boys. We had no TV, no phone, no indoor plumbing, and only a hand pump on the kitchen sink pumping water from a cistern for running water, although we did have electricity. If we wanted to make a phone call, we had to walk a quarter of a mile to a neighbor’s house, and use the crank phone there. The water in the cistern always had a slight brown tinge and a taste of tannin from the oak leaves on the roofs that drained water into the cistern.
We lived on top of a bluff overlooking the Gasconade River, a truly beautiful spot. In the spring, summer, and fall, after breakfast, we boys would usually disappear into the woods and down to the river and be gone all day. When it started to get dark, my mother would start to get worried and go out on a point of rock sticking out of the bluff and yell for us.
We always had enough to eat, but usually it was navy beans and cornbread; to this day, I can’t stand navy beans and cornbread. Often today people will serve me cornbread thinking it is a treat. I will choke down a few mouthfuls, but I can’t eat very much. But sometimes my mother would fry up some bacon hard and then crumble it up and then put it in the mix for the cornbread. This made it fairly acceptable. Also, we never had any fresh milk; it was always powdered milk. Cornmeal mush was a staple for breakfast.
The winters were rough. The only source of heat in the house was the fireplace in the living room. When we went to bed, we would bank the fire and then go through the kitchen into the bedroom. It got pretty cold in the bedroom; often in the mornings we could see our breaths in the air. We had a little dog, and we boys would argue over who got the dog that night. There were some tomato juice cans that we boys could pee into during the night-and my mother had a chamber pot under her bed-but if you needed to do anything else, you had to get up, put some clothes on and trudge out to the outhouse. The outhouse faced west, and if the wind was from the east it would come up under the outhouse and freeze your bottom.
My next younger brother and I were responsible for getting wood for the fireplace. We would go out into the woods with a two-man crosscut saw and cut some wood. The saw didn’t cut very well and jammed up in the cut often. Sometimes we only came back with a day’s wood. Later, a neighbor examining the saw said that the teeth didn’t have any “set.”
In the winter, I had to leave to go to high school in the dark, and it was dark when I got home. My mother said she felt sorry for me. I had to walk about 1.25 miles to the bus pickup point. Other kids waited there also, and sometimes we built a fire to stay warm until the bus got there. The bus was a 1947 International Harvester and vibrated like crazy. I always felt like the vibration was good for me, like a massage. The bus ride was an hour and a half; I won’t go into the stuff that happened on the bus. Then I got to high school and my class of 45. I never felt that I was bad off, but I saw some of my classmates that I felt sorry for.