Share a Memory

[Beth Gallagher]

We forget sometimes how lucky we are to have the luxuries we do have. Like @John Brunner said, most of our parents and grandparents and the folks of the time were grateful just to have a roof over their head. A drafty old house was better than nothing to help keep the elements out and a place to sleep.

So true. We are very spoiled by modern conveniences. My parents and grandparents worked so hard all their lives, and were happy people. We were poor but I never even realized that until I was grown. Having squirrel stew for supper, it never occurred to me that mama didn't have grocery money that week so daddy found a way to have some meat for us. I was a very lucky kid.

 

[John Brunner]

We forget sometimes how lucky we are to have the luxuries we do have. Like @John Brunner said, most of our parents and grandparents and the folks of the time were grateful just to have a roof over their head. A drafty old house was better than nothing to help keep the elements out and a place to sleep.

The house we lived in during my early years still exists. I looked it up on Zillow. 1,000 ft² with 8 people in it. (That explains a lot of the chaos.) My sisters shared the attic and my room was essentially a closet up there, complete with the slanted ceiling (roof.) I still remember melting crayons in someone's 1950s E-Z Bake Oven in that cubby hole.

Fast forward to my adult life and a woman I worked for had a huge modern home in the DC suburbs with vaulted ceilings, with only her and 2 kids in it. She told me she could never go back to a rambler house style because after vaulted ceilings, it would feel like a prison cell. I was living in a 600 ft² home by myself and was perfectly content.

 

[Faye Fox]

Those are great pictures, Beth!

I think I may have say this before somewhere. The house I grew up in for the first 10 years of my life did not have running water, or an indoor bathroom. We had a covered porch with a cistern and water pump to pump up the water for drinking, cooking, bathing, etc. We had an outhouse.

We took a bath in one of those big round galvanized metal tubs. My mother would heat water on the stove and fill the tub for bathing. We had a big galvanized bucket that we kept filled with water. It had a big dipper or ladle for dipping out a drink of water. We didn’t have a phone either. It was a very nice big old farm house without all that.

My dad finally put in a full bathroom in the house and running water. I thought we were uptown then! Over the years, I have learned a lot of people my age have never experienced growing up in a house without indoor plumbing, or a phone. They looked at me like I must have been a hillbilly growing up.

I do NOT like using an outhouse, nor having running water for bathing, cooking, drinking, etc. And….I always try to send up a big “THANK YOU” to the Universe for indoor plumbing every now and then.

Ditto on the outhouse, no running water, and baths in a galvanized tub with water heated on top of a wood cookstove. I did that for the first six years I lived in the mountains. I used kerosene lamps and had one Aladdin I used for reading due to brightness. The sad truth is I chose to do this at age 24 until age 30. I can't blame this on my folks, it was all my doing.

Somehow the East Texas visits to my great aunt that lived like she was poor and loved basic living, wasn't a bad memory and I sought the happiness she got from basic living. She did serve opossum once and squirrel another, but fried Cottontail was more common. We usually had chicken and occasionally canned goat, but eggs, home baked bread, veggies out the wazoo, and goat milk was a daily thing. She had a large pond so, channel catfish was also at least once a week. Oh, I almost forgot, bullfrog legs. They were the best! I would shoot them and her little Cocker Spaniel would wade out and bring them in.

Anyway I feel at home here with all you former hillbillies. Any of y'all ever have to wear bid overalls? I hated those awful ill fitting things.

 

[Beth Gallagher]

Anyway I feel at home here with all you former hillbillies. Any of y'all ever have to wear bid overalls? I hated those awful ill fitting things.

My father wore bib overalls most of the time. He's wearing them in the saw picture, along with his "slouch hat." He usually had a carpenter's pencil in the bib pocket, and sometimes a hammer in the loop. When my father died, our teenage kids all wanted a pair of his overalls.

 

[Ed Delabama]

Ditto on the outhouse, no running water, and baths in a galvanized tub with water heated on top of a wood cookstove. I did that for the first six years I lived in the mountains. I used kerosene lamps and had one Aladdin I used for reading due to brightness. The sad truth is I chose to do this at age 24 until age 30. I can't blame this on my folks, it was all my doing.

Somehow the East Texas visits to my great aunt that lived like she was poor and loved basic living, wasn't a bad memory and I sought the happiness she got from basic living. She did serve opossum once and squirrel another, but fried Cottontail was more common. We usually had chicken and occasionally canned goat, but eggs, home baked bread, veggies out the wazoo, and goat milk was a daily thing. She had a large pond so, channel catfish was also at least once a week. Oh, I almost forgot, bullfrog legs. They were the best! I would shoot them and her little Cocker Spaniel would wade out and bring them in.

Anyway I feel at home here with all you former hillbillies. Any of y'all ever have to wear bid overalls? I hated those awful ill fitting things.

Good morning to all-

Yep, I have worn "over hauls"- that's how it was pronounced in the Ozarks... And I found bibs to be quite comfortable when working up firewood- chainsawing and splitting and loading. I don't have much backside to help hold up belted pants, and when I am bending and lifting, my pants tend to sag a bit, so.... Over hauls worked just fine.

I've eaten a wide range of wild game and seafood. I reckon my all-time favorite "wild food" was the oysters I could wade to and pick up behind our little place on the island down in Florida. Kick up oyster, use my pocket knife to open, slurp that oyster down, take swig of cold beer that came out to the oyster bed with me... that was good-good.

you all be safe and keep well- Ed

 

[Shirley Martin]

One of my earliest memories is of one of my brothers pushing me in a swing made of ropes. They took Daddy's plow lines and made the swing in a big ol' tree. They would push me so high that I could look down and see the roof of the house. I must have been 5 or 6 years old then. Imagine if somebody did that now. They would be accused of child abuse.