Thinking about the old ways

[LBrown59]

I don't remembe wallpaper cleaner

I remember it well
It was a lot like A Kids play dough but it had a nice cleaner smell.

You rolled it up into a ball about the size of a tennis ball and rubbed it on the wall to clean the wall paper.
Worked pretty good too.

 

[mbohuntr]

AAhhhh butchering chickens...... tie the feet, put em to the block and use the hatchet. Then mom would dip em into a kettle of scalding water to make the feathers easier to pluck. That smell will NEVER leave my nose...

 

[Egon]

. That smell will NEVER leave my nose

.

That makes two of us. Then there was the plucking of wet feathers !

 

[dooleysm]

That smell doesn't bother me, though I've given up plucking in favor of skinning. Much quicker and easier, and we usually make soup out of ours, so we don't need the skin.

 

[riptides]

Potatoe pancakes with ample amounts of sugar is a memory from my ma.

Miss em both.

 

[Wayne County Hose]

Dang I love reading most of this. When I was a kid, I couldn't wait to get off the farm. Now, I would give up everything I own to go back. Even though we were poor, I never will be that rich again, if you know what I mean.

 

[Patriotic Stabilist]

I remember how bad wet chicken feathers smelled too. But I dont' have that problem. I put fresh straw in my chicken house about every 2 weeks. About every month or two, I remove all the straw and wash it down with water and a jug or two of clorox. When I dress out my chickens they don't have that awful smell. There feathers are clean and shiny looking.

Hubby said noboy ever did that back when and I know that too but I think it makes a big difference. My great aunt hardly even had straw in their nests, just wooden boxes. But I keep it clean too.

Right now only 1 chicken so the dogs stay used to them. If I get done working on houses and stop vacations will raise a few again and keep some for eggs.

Getting ready to cruise in Aug to Jamaica, Cayman Islands, and Cozumel.

To Disney AGAIN, for DD sometime after that, then hubby home for about 3 weeks in Sept, Nov up to Indiana for a class reunion of just the gals, class of 64, oh I'm old. So no time to mess with chickens right now.

I remember going to grandmas, they had milkcows. My uncle lived there and ran the farm. I would go with him when he milked the cows, it was hard to do by hand killed my hands, he had a milking machine though. I remember how the cows would let down their milk when they heard the machine and it would be running out of the **** on their udders. We would take a big pitcher back to the house. I loved drinking the cream off the top, grandma wanted store bought milk. She would separate it when I was real little and I think make butter, barely can remember that, she didn't do it for long though just bought it. But that was such good food. Uncle had a well house with 2 big wooden barrel halves or some kind of wooden cask in a concrete tank where he kept the milk cold. A truck would come by and they would pick up the milk to make cheese. I can remember how he said you had to keep cows out of wild onions or their milk tasted and smelled like it and it did.

They had pigs too and grandma wouldn't let me get around the sows. She said they were mean and if you fell in with them they could eat a kid, she really worried about that.

 

[Egon]

. I put fresh straw in my chicken house about every 2 weeks

Every Saturday morning it was my job to clean out the chicken house and spread fresh straw.

It was a lovely job during the colder winter months.

 

[Patriotic Stabilist]

One year dad and I planted 25 acres of clover. We had two of the hand cranked spreaders. I remember him telling me to take a big step and crank, step and crank. I never offered to do it again! Whew!

Also went down in the woods and hunted morels, those things are to die for, I'm sure some of you still do. Some springs there are a lot, some practically none. I would love to fry up a batch of them, sooooo good. I also still like blue gills or sun fish. There was a pond mom and aunt and uncle knew about and they were the size of your hand or bigger, delicious.

Also remember riding around in an old 1952 blue Ford pickup, that was what mom and I had to drive. Sometimes the neighbor kids would go and we all rode in the back and went on all the old gravel country roads. Fun for us was "going on a drive" with a cooler and some snacks. The same neighbors would take me with them to go roller skating. There dad had a shell on the back of his pickup. He put benches in for us kids to ride on. There were 3 of them and me. It was so cold back there, there wasn't any heat, in the winter we would really bundle up, but if it hadn't been for them many Saturday nights I would have had no where to go. Patty and I have reconnected and email often. Her husband is a big farmer back home and her son now lives in the old homeplace. I wish our son were closer, I hardly ever see him.

Remember the paraffin "coke bottles" with the sweet syrup in them? Cat tails, the long candy stick, they were good, or the coconut flat candy, that was white, pink, and brown.

We would also go in the woods and cut down a tree for Christmas. Some kind of fir tree or something, the needles would stick your hands real bad when decorating but it was free.

I remember the pitcher pump in the kitchen before we got running water and the one on the well, we pumped all the water by hand we used. Heating water to do laundry, hanging it on the lines in winter, and your hands freezing and cracking open sometimes.

Pants stretchers, remember those? I still have some. Also starching clothes. Mom would make the starch and then we would dip the clothes in it and run through the wringer. She starched all dads work clothes and we ironed them, also good dresses and blouses. We even ironed pillow cases and dads boxer shorts. Mom or I would dampen the clothes and roll them up and put them in the fridge so they wouldn't sour.

Remember linoleum think everyone had it in the kitchen at least. Cloverine salve, Beechnut gum, poodle skirts, hula hoops, milk delivered. When we lived in Terre Haute, Indiana, up to my age 6, they still delivered milk and put it in a sort of insulated milkbox on your porch. The Fuller Brush man, we had one that came for years.

The little corner groceries, kids from all over would go to those and buy a piece of candy or RC, no one worried about us going. I would go down and wonder in the woods and play, ride my bike, or whatever, it was safe.

 

[LBrown59]

Nov up to Indiana for a class reunion of just the gals, class of 64, oh I'm old.

My wife graduated in 1963 her sisters husband graduated in 1964 and her sister graduated in 1965.