We lived in southern rural Indiana. Heck we didn't have indoor plumbing until I was in 8th grade. We did the outhouse routine, the coal stove deal, I learned to get one going and keep it going good. Used a wringer washer, hung clothes out in the winter till they froze on the line. Remember pants stretchers? Mom said when I was little, of course I don't remember that, she made some clothes for me from the flour sacks or chicken feed sacks. They would get it in material that women made clothes out of.
I remember dad butchering a hog. We would take meat to a local grocer and he would grind it into sausage meat. Mom would bring it home add seasonings, fresh sage, salt, and pepper. She would cook it down and can a lot of it. Then dad would sugar cure the hams and bacon in the smoke house. That stuff had enough salt in it to make you pucker, so she soaked the hams to get some out, but it was still real good eatin'. Mom would also make head cheese, all that stuff was good. We had cracklins'. He didn't do the butchering to many times, took it to the slaughter house but until we got a freezer that was what was done with it. We would get a can of lard back too. Mom would sometimes complain that it was from an old boar as we bought young pigs and the lard from them has hardly any odor at all.
My great aunt and uncle cooked on a cookstove and the food she made. I remember her light bread, out of this world. They were old when I was in my early teens, wish I remembered or had asked more. I remember Aunt Dodie telling me some stories about her mom, she was a little girl in the civil war. And she would tell me about them Yankees! My dads family was Kentucky Hill folk.
And uncle hunted as did dad some. We had frog legs, sometimes turtle, if dad found one. Mom would put out rabbit boxes, we had lots of rabbit, and we fished for blue gill and crappie. They would also buy carp or catfish from fishermen at Riverton and places on the Wabash. Dad shot squirrels but wasn't the best shot, we were still picking shot out when eating, mom tried to get it out.
I can remember my aunt cooking raccoon, mom liked to died, and also eel a few times, that we did not eat.
Aunt would get mushrooms, different ones, and things like dock, and other stuff in the woods, but dad was afraid to let us eat some of that stuff. She knew all kinds of edible stuff you could get from the woods. But we did hunt and eat morel mushrooms, nothing better then those. Those folks lived on everything cooked in lard, he had been a coal miner, drank beer, and he smoked a pipe and she used snuff. They lived to be almost 90.
Mom would soak squirrel in salt water to take out the wild taste and then cook it in the pressure cooker after browning it. I still remember her putting a piece of bread on top of it to take more wild taste out. The squirrel and gravy was to die for.
Hey anyone remember wallpaper cleaner? It looked kind of like stilly putty. You would take a handful and rub it over your wallpaper, it was clean the winter smoke off the wallpaper that got on it from the coal stove. My folks were older when they had me, showing my age aren't I?
