Memories From Grandma

   Things were so different back in 1929, the year I was born.  I was the 12th child for Henry and Lydia Johnson Seacrist.  All of their children were born at home. The doctors came to the house to deliver babies, rather than mothers going to a hospital.  Most transportation was horse and buggy or train.  By the time I was born, there were some automobiles, so it was easier for the doctor to make the trips.

   There were no disposable diapers.  They were made of cloth and had to be washed and used over and over.  That was not easy since there no washing machines or running water or bathrooms.  Water was drawn from a well and carried in buckets for everything.

   There was no electric or gas for heating or cooking.  Coal and wood was the only fuel, even that had to be hard work.  My dad cut his own wood and even went inside a coal mine to dig out coal. The only lights we had were kerosene lamps.  They weren't very bright but were the best we had.

   Times were bad and people didn't have much money.

   There were no Walmarts or Super Markets, only small little country stores,owned by some neighbor.I remember when my parents only had about $15 to last the whole month, maybe not even that much. They worked very hard, growing their own vegetables and fruit.They had chickens to get eggs and also to kill and eat.  There was a cow for milk, butter and buttermilk, when there was more than we needed Mother would sell some of it to help with expenses.

   Every year they raised a hog, feeding it "slop" made of leftover table scraps.  Each year about November they would butcher the hog to have meat for the winter.  There were no freezers or refrigerators, so the fruits and vegetables had to be canned, pickled, or preserved some way.  One thing that helped, most people had cellars, a small area dug out under a small portion of the house, sorta like a basement only you had to enter it from outside under a cellar door.  This was sloped and made of tin, so we could slide down like a slide in the park, only much shorter.  The reason for the cellar, it was much cooler the year round.

   My father built our house in about 1905.  I've been told it was just four rooms at first but another room was added by the time I entered the picture.  He was a very intelligent man, was a great carpenter, even tho he could read and write very little.  He had to leave school in the third grade to work at a coal mine in order to help support his family, being the oldest in his family.

   My first years of school were in a one room school, grades primer [as it was known in those days] thru 3rd.  It was located just a very short distance from our home.  We carried water from a well or pump for drinking during school.  We poured the water into a stone crock that had spigot at the bottom.   The toilets were little out houses in the school yard, two, one for boys, one for girls. Nobody in our little town of Holley Grove W.Va. had indoor plumbing.  We really did only bathe once a week.  That was done in a little round wash tub.

   Some of the games we played at recess were hop scotch, ring around the roses, hide and seek, and a game called Andy over.  There were 2 groups, one on each side of the building, they threw a ball all the way over the building to the group on the other side.  I can't remember just what the object was but the chant went "Andy over pigs in the clover, can't get him out til the ball goes over"

   In some ways we were healthier then because we spent time outside in the fresh air.  There were no TVs, not even radio, we did have a record player that played 78 rpms.  It had a crank on the side that had to be cranked by hand. That was our main entertainment.  Most of the songs told a story, usually sad songs about things that really happened.  I still love those old songs.

The work was hard but made us stronger.

To be continued::MAYBE