1638 Mouse Dirt

Yuk. When I was a little girl our family moved to Forreston, IL into a house that was on the edge of town near the open farm country. It still had an outhouse, and there was no modern kitchen. This must have been quite a challenge for my mother who had grown up in a home that had all the modern conveniences long before the rest of the country became accustomed to electrified homes and indoor plumbing. There really wasn't a true housing shortage after World War II, despite what you read in the history books. It was government regulations and rent control that caused a shortage by removing less desirable homes from the housing market. After all, we had the same number of people and housing units in 1946 that we had in 1941. If a house should have been off the market, it was ours. Mother rolled up her sleeves and remodeled it and when Dad sold it in 1947, it had a nice kitchen and a bathroom. We drove past that house in 1999--still looks much the same and is well kept.



However, when the weather turned chilly in the fall, the little critters came in the house to get warm, and when you'd open the bottom drawer of the stove or a kitchen cabinet, there were the little trails of mouse droppings, and a furry gray thing would scamper across the floor and we children would all shriek and run out of the room. Except my brother. I don't think he shrieked, because little boys like to chase, grab and poke frightened little animals.

Yesterday my computer mouse was getting really balky. It wouldn't maneuver fine movements, like removing the glare from my glasses in photographs. So I unplugged it and took off the ball cap. With a toothpick I started carefully removing the "mouse dirt" and it was just all over the place. Now it is smooth rolling.