MAXINE WOODS

Maxine Woods tells this story of her early years in Lucas County where her family moved when she was eight months old - she was taken by bobsled from Woodburn to Derby, In her words: they took me to the neighbors who kept me until the family was settled. My brothers thought they were going to keep me and they bawled and bawled. Possibly when I got older they wished the neighbors had kept me.

I had three older brothers, one younger sister. Dad’s first wife died and he remarried a 17-year old girl who was my mother, Anna Belle McLaughlin. She took his two girls to raise-ages 7 and 9. All the children were raised on that farm; all graduated from Derby High School before the folks retired and moved to Osceola.

The farm was 147 acres that Dad bought in 1916. He paid $100 an acre for the "back 40" that was nothing but timber. He and the boys cut wood and hauled it to town for sale. This provided money to pay for the farm.

The house had five rooms - a big kitchen, dining room, a parlor which was never used, and two bedrooms on the first floor. The door to the parlor was never opened except on Sundays. There was an oriental rug, library table, a settee and piano. On Sundays that was where we had our entertainment.

There was no indoor plumbing. We had a 2-hole outhouse that was scrubbed every Saturday and once a year was dug out, lime put on the waste.

Baths were taken in a tub in the kitchen, boys at one time, girls at another. It is possible that it was all the same water, because all the water had to be carried. It was heated in the reservoir on the stove. Men sawed and brought in wood from the timber for fuel. In the summertime we put the tub out in the sunshine and that’s where we took our baths. Towels were shared because Mother had to do all the washing on a scrub board.

There was an upstairs that had no heat whatsoever. In winter time it was so drafty that many a morning the snow would be drifted across the bed and floor. The only sickness I ever remember having was when I had scarlet fever. The rest never had anything.

Mother made all the bedding, from overalls, old coats or anything she could possibly cut to make into blocks and quilt, Our bedding was never a mattress. After the oats were harvested, we used the straw from threshing - the old straw was dumped out and new straw put into the ticking. That was our "mattresses." By the time the year was up the old straw would be just about like dust. Mother would sew the ticking up by hand so the straw wouldn’t come out. Bedrooms had wall to wall carpeting that were rag rugs in strips, put in and tacked down; in spring the tacks were pulled up, the rug taken down to the clothes line and beaten with rug beaters.

The old house was so cold that when Mother scrubbed the kitchen linoleum the water would freeze and my sister and I would take off our shoes and skate on the kitchen floor. Everything that would freeze had to be taken to the dining room at night and put around the potbellied stove. The range wasn’t kept burning at night.

In the summertime the house was too hot to sleep in but Dad had bought a tent that was almost like a circus tent, large enough to hold four double beds. We slept outdoors in the tent. Mother put down rag rugs, many of them made by a grandmother on an old loom. She put one in front of each bed and a long one down the center between the beds. Every morning she swept the tent. That was her house cleaning.  I don’t remember any problem with mosquitoes or bugs.

One night when we were all ready to go to bed a tramp came to the house and wanted to stay all night. Nobody was ever turned away. Mother fed him and took him into the house and showed him to his bedroom. She came back to the tent and the next morning when she checked on him he was gone. Nothing was taken. Could this be clone in 1996?

Mother made quilts out of feed sacks. Her hands were never idle. She mended and sewed everything. She would even mend com shucking mittens! Mamie and Maude outgrow clothes and she would out them down for Colene and me.

For our livelihood Mother had two huge gardens - about an acre — everything we raised we ate or canned. We picked greens all around the house - lan1b’s quarter and wild lettuce. We’d go to the back forty, at least a mile, with our buckets and gather greens. They would cook down so much that it hurried her to have enough for one meal out of 4 buckets of greens. There were dewberries back there — one year we canned 100 quarts.

We didn’t lack for meat. At that particular time the creek that ran through the farm had lots of fish. We’d use a #8 thread with a hook on it and leave it during the night. When we went back in the morning to get the cows we would pull in the lines and we often had enough catfish for breakfast. They did their own butchering and Mother sugar cured all the hams in our smoke house. The beef was butchered and canned.

We raised lots of chickens. The dumbest animals you ever saw. If a hard rain would come up they would just stand there and if someone didn’t rescue them they would drown standing right there. In the wintertime Dad and the boys would get in the bobsled and go hunting for rabbits. We ate lots and lots of rabbits. They would shoot them, clean them and hang them on the clothes line to freeze — that was our deep freeze. The refrigerator was the well. We hung the bucket with milk and that was our refrigeration. Butter was always churned. We never bought a stick of butter!

At butchering time Mother also made soap. They put wood ashes in water to remove the skin from the hogs. The soap was made from tallow and lye. She had a big iron kettle and a long wooden paddle whittled 4"-S" across, 6"-8" long with a handle about 5’ long. The mixture had to be stirred and stirred with a motion that went to the bottom of the kettle and up until it reached a certain consistency, then it was cooled and cut in blocks.

We had an excellent cave, Dad planted potatoes in a big plot in the farm land. There wasn’t enough room in the gardens. He often would bring in a wagon load of potatoes and put them in the potato bin in the cave. It was located right under the dining room window. Mother and Dad were both scared to death of storms and when it began to get dark and threatening they would open the window and scoot us kids down into the cave. He took an axe so if something fell on the door he could chop our way out. Many times Colene and I would fall asleep down there on the potatoes in the bin.

When Dad sold hogs in the fall he bought sugar and flour in 100# sacks and put them upstairs so Mother would have them to use for cooking and canning. We had peach, cherry and apple trees and then we’d also get the ones the neighbors didn’t want. All this is to say that we provided for ourselves. We had no money except what we got from selling cream and eggs. Every Saturday night, roads permitting, we took produce to town and got the week’s groceries. We kids each got a nickel. That took us to the silent movies. The words were printed across the bottom of the screen and that helped us learn to read because we wanted to know what the characters were saying.

One year Dad sold 19 head of hogs. They were driven on foot two miles to market. He received enough money to pay cash for a 1927 Ford coupe. Cars were Dad’s obsession. He always bought a new one every three or four years. When Dad got a car none of us were permitted to drive. That was Dad’s car. I hear kids now who can’t wait to drive an automobile. I didn’t drive until after I was married, and that was when I was 22.

Don’t get the idea we kids were ever neglected or felt neglected. To us this was the way of life. Our parents were very strict. If Dad said, "No" — don’t ask again. We could once in awhile twist Mother around. After we left home the lilac bush was cut down. That was where the switches came from and we even had to get our own switches. Whatever happened to child abuse in those days? I’m glad for all the discipline because we all escaped trouble. We used to say that if Dad said, "Jump," we asked how high.

Washing progressed from scrub board to a hand operated machine and finally to a gasoline motored one, then an electric Maytag the year the boys started to college at Cornell. Mother bawled and bawled. She wanted the boys to have an education instead of the machine but somehow Dad finagled and got both done. I can remember leaving for school in the morning when Mother would be starting the washing and she would still be washing when I came home at night. Probably during the day she had gotten a big dinner for the hired men and Dad.

Neither Mother nor Dad went through the 8th grade but they insisted that their children get an education. Three of us became teachers, one a registered pharmacist, one a farmer.

Our schooling started in a country school. We had one mile to country school where we went through 8th grade then two miles to town school. Transportation was on foot, by horse, or by sled — we’d slide down the hills and pull the sled up the next one. My brothers would take off and skate. I can still see the string of horses that would start with the first kids who lived 5 miles from town, and as they went along we others would join.

We girls only had two dresses. We had to change and put on chore clothes when we got home from school. Mother washed our dresses each week and got them ready for next week. We got one new pair of shoes a year, sent for from a catalogue. So often they didn’t fit but I was so happy to have them that I wore them anyway. Today I’m suffering the consequences.

Before we country school kids could get into high school we had to take a test that took two days and covered penmanship, music (we had to know whole notes, half notes, musical terms — the whole bit), math, geography, science, and history. We studied from Warp’s Review Book. Mother would work with us night after night to get us ready. THE TOWN KIDS DIDN’T HAVE TO TAKE THIS — ONLY COUNTRY KIDS. It made me furious!

I didn’t get home until kind of late from high school. I rode my horse and would ride back into town for basketball practice. When there was a game the coach would come out to pick me up. Such a thing would not be allowed today.

When I hear kids say they are bored, I’m sorry for them. I realize that I was never bored in my life. We had close enough neighbors that we could call to them, "Are you coming over tonight?" They would answer, "After while." And we’d get together. We're still close friends with those neighbors.

Some of the things we did for entertainment were dangerous now that I think back on them. We took the shafts off the buggy and tied ropes to the axle, then got on it and guided it down this great long, steep hill. The boys learned to swim in the creek and loved to get in it after there had been a terrible rain and the logs would be floating. They would get in and swim among all those logs. How did they keep from drowning?

In the wintertime we played lots of cards, checkers, went sledding down that hill. On Sundays after church kids would congregate from miles around and we’d slide until time to chore; then we would come back with our lanterns and slide until late at night. We had a great big sheet of tin and six or eight of us would get on it and ride it down the hill. We could have cut our heads off. We’d take a can and use it like a hockey puck, choose up teams and bat that can back and forth.

We had lots of bobsled parties. In fact, my first date was a church function, a bobsled party, 20 below zero. I went with that fellow quite awhile and then he moved to Chariton. In those days there was no transportation so we drifted apart.

In the summertime there was every game imaginable ·- Black Man, Darebase, Ante—over and others. We pitched lots of horse shoes. But it was understood that there was always work to do. I can’t ever remember anybody saying, "'That’s your job." When something needed to be done whoever was on hand pitched in and did it.

For Christmas each of us got one gift, and the big treat of an orange — a treat because we never had fresh fruit in the wintertime. One year I got a pair of striped overalls which was exactly what I wanted because that is what my brothers wore and I wanted to be like my brothers. One year I got a doll and the head was broken. Mother said Santa had broken it as he came down the chimney and she would have to send it to Sears and Roebuck to have it replaced, which she did. Of course, as I got older I realized that is where it came from in the first place.

I never wanted to face the fact there wasn’t a Santa Claus. I kept hearing it at school but turned a deaf ear. I recognized my Mother’s writing and when I was ten I couldn’t resist asking any longer. Christmas changed for me after that.

My mother’s attitude was that work never killed anybody and I don’t consider that I was ever overworked. I never thought I was abused and yet I got spanked. I am sure I needed it or I wouldn’t have gotten it. We were poor but we didn’t know we were poor because we were all alike. We all looked alike, all dressed alike (feed sack dresses mostly), and we probably all smelled alike.

We were happy - we didn’t know there was such a thing as "unhappy." We were busy. We had chores before we went to school and when we got home. My older brother and I would bring in corn shocks that were frozen, feed ensilage from the silo, milk, and tend hogs. Milk had to be run through a cream separator operated by hand-skim milk was fed to hogs and cream kept to be sold; the separator had to be taken apart and washed, all with no running water. You went to the well to get it. Saturdays you started at the top of the house and went through it — everything dusted, rugs shaken, all the hard way. No vacuum cleaners. The outhouse had to be scrubbed.

I wish I could take young people for just one week, go back to the farm, go to school as we went to school and they might realize what they have. Television has been their ruination, VCRs with the kinds of movies available and parents not supervising what the children are watching — it is terrible. We had no fear of people in my day. We didn’t have time to wonder who we were.

I graduated from High School in 1933. I was 16 years old. I went on to summer school at Simpson to get my Normal Training Certificate and had grades that warranted my getting it; but I had to stay home a whole year because I couldn’t start teaching until I was 18. I wanted to go on to school but that was the year of all the chinch bugs. During the summer I papered, painted, and cleaned house for other people -- anything I could find to do, lots of it free gratis.

In 1935 I got a school in Clarke County — $40 a month, eight months in a school year. I roomed with my half-sister, Mamie Holden, and walked two miles to and from school. It was a one room school house. I did my own janitor work, carried in coal and carried out the ashes, carried water and all that kind of thing. That year of teaching I saved $100 and had paid board and room, which meant that I saved 1/3 of what I made.

I enrolled in Junior College in Osceola and worked for my room and board. Tuition was just $100 a year. The next year the Superintendent told me I could work out part of my tuition. I was still working for my board and room so I did both. I taught one more year and was married. We had three children — Ronald, Ann and Charles Jr. We farmed near New Virginia, then near Woodburn, then south of Osceola and I have been there ever since, nearly 50 years. I didn’t live where there was electricity until 1944. Water was put in the house in 1954.

Chig had his first heart attack at the age of 41 and died in 1965 at the age of 54. The children were all married by then. I have continued to live on in the same place. Before he died, to supplement our income during World War II, I began teaching again in a country school. I was there for five years and then was transferred to town school. I had taught a total of 29 years when I retired.

When I went back to teaching I had let my certificate run out. Ralph Evans was County Superintendent and he told me I could renew my certificate by going to classes on Saturdays. The first year I went back to teaching Chig insisted I continue getting my education because I only had two years of junior college. So for years I took night classes wherever I had to go and I finally got my degree in 1963 from Drake.

At that time Jan Reynoldson was taking a carload of us to classes. On the way home I would take notes on the lectures and the outlines of the next chapters. My husband wasn’t able to plow at that time, so I taped those notes to the steering wheel of the tractor and said them over and over again so I’d be ready for the next night’s class.

I am accustomed to hard work and have continued to keep up my own place and help my family whenever they need it. For several years my grandkids had sheep on my farm and I took the sole care of them. At night when it was lambing season I might get up at 2:00 a.m. to go out and care for them. That is just the life of a farmer. At the present time I am helping with my brother’s affairs. That is the way it was in our family.  We helped each other and everybody knew what needed to be done.

When I retired I became a member of the Retired Teachers Association and Federated Woman’s Club. I have had various offices in the church, was Treasurer four years and on the Board of Trustees and others. In addition, I work a great deal in the kitchen at church. I was a volunteer at the Clarke County Senior Center for awhile and continue to work at the Hospital Gift Shop. I also have been helping at the school with projects like judging science fairs, literature etc. I went to Heifer Project, International and volunteered there for about three weeks.

I love being outside. I work in the garden and with flowers. I also sew and read. I have made doub1e·knit quilts for all my great grandkids - I made seven last winter, pieced the blocks and tied them. I intend for my grandkids to have them, too. Some are finished and I am working on the others.

I have 11 grandkids, 11 great grandkids and one on the way. They all live somewhere near here except for two in Texas and one in California. Two of them have followed me in the teaching profession.

I have a feeling that you get out of life just whatever you put in it. I wish everyone could get the same satisfaction out of being self-reliant as I do, then the government and the world wouldn’t be in such a big mess.

Whatever your hand finds to do,
do it with your might (Eccl.9:10)

Return to main page for Recipes for Living 1996 by Fern Underwood

Last Revised April 29, 2012