My summer of 1958, part 4

What does an 18 year old do for a social life while living on a farm with her grandparents?  Not much except spend time with adults.  See Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 for the story about why I was living on a farm the summer between my freshman and sophomore years in college. Transcribed from my diary!

Perhaps it was a good thing, but my boyfriend had to go to Minnesota for the summer of 1958 for civil engineer camp. According to my diary, he called about 11:30 on June 6 and said he would stop by before leaving, so I grabbed a pail of water to wash up, put on some clean clothes and we said good-bye before he left. Going after the mail, either walking or driving to Franklin Grove, was a favorite activity and I got my first letter from him on June 9. I would often stop at the local drug store to get a Coke and read my mail the diary says. I mentioned letters from college friends, some other boys I’d dated, and my great uncle Edwin who lived in Ohio.

On Saturday June 14 I was picked up by a relative so I could go to my uncle’s wedding, which was a lovely event and I sat with my other grandmother (groom’s mother). I spent the night at my parents’ home and my brother drove me back to the farm after church with them.  That Sunday afternoon Aunt Muriel and Uncle John came down with my cousin Gayle and we girls had a good visit.  By this time, Grandma and I were wearing on each others’ nerves, and I noted in the diary I started to read Norman Vincent Peale’s “Power of Positive Thinking.” I was probably acting like a normal, self-centered teen-ager, which I’m sure was difficult for her. I didn’t sympathize then, but for her age and declining health, the stresses in her life and still being in deep grief over the death of her sonin WWII, she was doing better than I realized then.

The big activity of June 16 was cleaning the house and ironing clothes and in the evening I walked in the bean field and watched the men making hay. I’m sure I wished I was at the skating rink or movie, although I didn’t write that. Finally, someone my own age showed up.  On the evening of June 17 friends from high school/college—Sylvia, Sharon and Lynne drove down from Mt. Morris to see me and I wrote we had a lot of fun talking.

Uncle Leslie and Aunt Bernice would come out from Chicago about once a week and all of 5 of us would go to Dixon to eat and shop for groceries, and Bernice and I would chat while Leslie talked to his parents.  She often brought cake or cookies with her.

One rather interesting “social” event was meeting a woman, Mrs. Sharkey, on Sunday morning June 22 when I drove to Dixon, and I attended a Catholic Mass with her at St. Patrick’s  (my first and only until 2017) and she loaned me her prayer book.  She was a widow and invited me to her apartment for coffee, and I note in my diary that her china was the same pattern as Grandma’s.  In late summer 1960 I went to Dixon to the store where she worked and bought my everyday china from her. A sweet memory of a dear Christian woman.

It’s not clear from my diary why I was in Dixon on a Sunday morning, probably looking for the Church of the Brethren thinking I'd see friends from college, but later that day I drove to Mt. Morris, had supper with my other grandparents because no one was home at my parents.  Perhaps I just wanted a bath (we still had no indoor plumbing at the farm).  I recorded that my Aunt Lois (who died this last December at 91) had a baby girl the day before (that would be cousin Rhonda) and that I drove my Dad’s new red Ford Ranchero.  Dad never removed the keys from his cars, so I suppose I just hopped in and went for a joy ride stopping to talk to people I knew!

On June 25 Grandma wanted to see Dr. Boyle in Mt. Morris so we drove there and I had a chance to visit with my girlfriend, Lynne.  On many days I wrote that I walked down the lane to the neighbors after supper. Often they would give me fresh produce from their garden which I would work into my menus  Addie and Dale were 38 and 39 (died in 2016 and 2017),  had four adorable children and were fun to be around.  I also went to church and their Sunday School class, really old folks like 30 or 40, and I don’t mention meeting anyone my age.  I also visited an immigrant couple, Dora and Zieg, down the other lane who were learning English by watching TV (my grandparents didn’t have a TV).  On June 30, two sisters-in-law of my boyfriend stopped to visit me at the farm.

On July 4 after baking a cherry pie, making a big dinner of meatloaf and baked beans and sprinkling the laundry (no permanent press then—wash, starch, dry, sprinkle, iron), I walked to the neighbors down the lane and Martha Brumbaugh came by and offered to take me to Mt. Morris, so we went after supper and I caught up with high school friends Nancy, Priscilla and Lynne to attend the July 4 talent show in Mt. Morris. Sylvia drove me back to Franklin Grove that evening. Rereading this, I am surprised at all the driving back and forth and I seemed rather casual about the transportation  arrangements.  If Sylvia hadn’t offered, how would I have gotten back to the farm? It’s about 19 miles, with hilly, winding roads, and a long lane off the high-way, or about 40 minutes. Did it ever occur to me at 18 how many people I inconvenienced?  If so, I didn’t mention it.

On July 5 I wrote I had a 4 page letter from my boyfriend and I was beginning to miss him!  How shallow is that? He’d been writing several times a week. Also I went to the garden and picked over a quart of raspberries and some rhubarb.  Then I made 2 pies.  Aunt Muriel, Uncle John, their daughter Dianne and my mother came down in the evening.  I hope I served them some pie, although I didn’t write that in the diary!

         

I don’t have a photo of my cousins and Aunt Muriel from 1958, but this is 1959 at Gayle’s wedding. Aren’t they lovely!

From July 7 through the 11th my entries are very short.  Sylvia and Dave came to visit, I went to the neighbors to help with a birthday party and got home at 1 .m., I cleaned a lot, baked a lot, took a pie to Dora and Zieg.

July 12 is my last entry in the diary of my summer at the farm. I baked a blueberry pie that day, Uncle Leslie and Aunt Bernice came and we went to Dixon where I bought a wedding gift for my high school friend, Tina, who had moved to Florida after our junior year.  And I mentioned no one would want this job. . . nothing I did was right, and there are no other entries.  I think my father picked me up the next day or within a few days, and I spent the rest of the summer in Mt. Morris.  And I was probably much more appreciative of my own home, my mother’s cooking, and just doing what teen-agers do.

Support family farms, says the poster

I hope that little guy is in the driver's seat just for the photo. Looks about 8 years old.

Small family farms, averaging 231 acres, make up 88 percent of farms and 48 percent of total acres. Large family farms, averaging 1,421 acres, make up 3.9 percent of farms and 13 percent of acres. Very large family farms, averaging 2,086 acres, make up 4.6 percent of farms and 23 percent of total acres.

Farm and ranch families are 2% of the population and produce 262 percent more food with 2 percent fewer inputs (labor, seeds, feed, fertilizer, etc.), compared with 1950. 15% (21 million) of American workers produce, process and sell the nation’s food and fiber, but if you add in restaurant industry workers that's another 14 million. So it still takes a lot of people to feed America--and that doesn't include those Americans who have gardens for feeding their families.

Not sure what "support" means in this poster. The so called "food bill" of USDA is about 1 trillion and 80% goes to social programs not to farming--nutrition programs, energy assistance, rural housing assistance, changing our eating habits to make us less fat, more sustainable programs, etc.

About that kid on the tractor: On average, 113 youth, less than 20 years of age, died annually from farm-related injuries between 1995 and 2002. In 2011, 108 youth died. 33,000 children have farm-related injuries each year (OSHA). However, compared to sports related injuries for children, that's low. In 2009, an estimated 248,418 children (age 19 or younger) were treated in U.S. EDs for sports and recreation-related injuries that included a diagnosis of concussion or TBI. (CDC)

3663

Fat Grandmothers

I had none. I'm so fortunate that I had both my paternal and maternal grandparents in my life, and my great-grandparents lived just a few doors away when I was very young. My grandmothers weren't fat, or even plump or curvy. If your grandmother is a member of my generation, you probably can't say that.

Today I was reading "Aging, adiposity, and calorie restriction," by Luigi Fontana and Samuel Klein in the March 7, 2007 JAMA. It's a very cautious and conservative review of the literature from 1966 through December 2006 in PubMed (the largest and most famous medical literature database) which concludes from all the studies done on calorie restriction in the last 40 years that calorie restriction in adult men and women causes beneficial metabolic, hormonal, and functional changes, but (and here's the cautious part) the precise amount of calorie intake or body fat mass associated with optimal health and longevity in humans is not known. And after laying out all this fabulous research (139 citations), the authors take a buy-out and decide that because calorie restriction is difficult to maintain long-term, we might have to turn to a pharmacological agent for a solution. Cha-ching. There's no money in eating less, moving more.

That's what got me thinking about my grandmothers, both of whom lived to their late 80s. One was born in 1876 and the other in 1895, young enough to be the other's daughter (my great grandmother was born in 1873), a time when life expectancy at birth was about 45. Their generations benefited from better hygiene, but I doubt that either ever had a vaccination. It's possible that very late in life they might have had an antibiotic. I don't know much about their early lives, but given the times, I'm sure they were both breast fed by non-smoking mothers. They didn't give birth in hospitals. They both lived their childhood and early married life on farms a few miles from each other, but didn't work in the fields. Housework, however, was much more physical in those days. I use Grandma Mary's pressing irons as book-ends--they were heated on the cookstove and weigh 10-15 lbs. Water was pumped outside and carried in to be heated either in the stove or on it. Grandma Mary was wealthier than Grandma Bessie and did have a German woman as household help, but they would've worked side by side. And both gardened (potatoes, carrots, cabbage, tomatoes, beans, turnips) and raised chickens for meat and eggs. Root crops could be stored, and beans and tomatoes were canned for winter, but table fare was pretty bland and boring. Both women baked their own bread. Beef was not on the table in either household. Grandma Mary rarely served meat, except chicken occasionally, and Grandma Bessie would have only had fatty pork, sausage, or a tough old chicken, too old to lay. Cows were for milk (cash crop) and butter (for cooking), and when you think about it, they were much more difficult to butcher for a single family than a pig or chicken. There wasn't even much in the way of fruit, maybe a few apples, grapes for juice or berries.

According to the authors, the first calorie restriction study was done in 1935 when it was discovered that limiting calories in lab rats increased their life span by 30-60%. Food shortages during WWII in some European countries were associated with a sharp decrease in coronary heart disease, and although this article didn't mention it, I've seen reports like that on breast cancer. Again, the authors use cautious language, but say "population studies suggest that lifestyle factors, such as sedentary lifestyle, dietary intake, and adiposity, are responsible for up to 70% of chronic disease and are a major contributor to reduced longevity. . . data suggest that a BMI at the low end of normal (18.5-24.9) is associated with optimal metabolic and cardiovascular health."

Monday Memories

Monday Memories
Did I ever tell you about
How my Grandparents lived in the 1920s?
My grandparents, living on a farm in Ogle County, Illinois, in the 1920s (many years before I was born), were far better prepared to deal with any disaster that involved interruption of basic services by a blizzard, tornado or terrorist attack than I am. They were not technology-dependent, they didn't see themselves as victims, and some of their children didn't even know they were poor.

My grandparents were tenants on a farm that didn't have running water or electricity. They used corn cobs in the kitchen cook stove and coal or oil in a space heater for the main room. All water for cooking, cleaning and bathing was drawn from a cistern. They owned an automobile which had an engine most men and boys of that era knew how to repair. Illinois did not yet license drivers, so even children drove cars if they were tall enough. They had a crystal radio and kerosene lamps. Their draft horse was available for bad weather days when the unpaved roads were impassable. A small gasoline motor powered some simple machinery, like the washing machine, and clothes were hung outside to dry. Outdoor privies weren't pleasant, but they did the job--smelly in the summer and chilly in the winter and the Sears Roebuck catalog could be used for light reading or toilet paper.

My grandmother always canned enough beans, corn and tomatoes from the large garden to get the family through the winter months; root crops like carrots, onions, turnips and potatoes were stored in the cellar; the few dairy cows supplied the family with milk, cream and butter, and the extra milk and male calves were a cash crop to buy items not raised on the farm like sugar and flour; hogs were butchered with the help of neighbors to make sausage, bacon, hams, chops and lard; cows were not butchered, so they didn't eat beef; the chickens laid eggs, and the tough, older hens later were served over biscuits.

Although they raised nine children, my grandparents never sent anyone to the doctor or hospital. None of the children were vaccinated and antibiotics hadn't been invented yet. When a new baby arrived, the older children went to the neighbors to spend the night and the doctor came to Grandma. All of the children worked at jobs appropriate for their ages--taking care of babies, setting the table, drawing water, cleaning the house, washing dishes, weeding the garden, swatting flies (no screens), feeding cattle, chopping wood, mucking stalls, or helping younger children by being their mother's eyes (my grandmother was blind). No need for Grandma to be a soccer mom--the children were too busy being essential to the family. That probably took care of self esteem worries too. My father was the oldest and he didn’t remember any toys, not even a bike or a baseball bat. However, there were always other children around to play with--siblings, cousins and neighbors--so Grandma didn't need a calendar to track their social activities.

When the children needed clothes, aunts and cousins would drop by to help with the sewing using a foot pedal sewing machine, catching up on the family news and gossip. There wasn't much variety at meal time, but the gravy could be watered down if the dinner table included a less fortunate visitor, as it often did. Not too far down the road was the little Pine Creek Church of the Brethren the children attended with their mother and they were educated in a one room school.

My grandparents, who died in 1983, loved every 20th century advancement that made their life easier--perhaps appreciated them more than the grandchildren and great-grandchildren (there are over 100 of us). Grandma, who nursed all her babies, thought women were crazy not to bottle feed if they could. They were "early adapters" in some areas and owned a car and a radio long before many of their neighbors. About 10 years after leaving the farm, they built a Lustron home, the ultimate in modernity in 1950 with radiant heat and built-in appliances and furniture. You would never have been able to convince them that life was better “in the old days.”

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