For the family of George Reed Bridges and Allie Mae Chapman 

Life on the Farm

From the 1st daughter:

I look back on these times as good ones.  I once told Mother that if my children looked back with the fondness on their childhood, then we had done good. 

• Mother said those were the hardest times in their lives (money wise).  We spent winter evenings in the front room, which was also Mother and Daddy's bedroom in the front of the wood burning stove. 

• We had lots of cats and dogs. 

• And we didn't have to wear shoes all summer long.

• We would spend a week with Grandmother and Grandaddy [Chapman] in their new house (they moved every year.

• Killing a chicken for Sunday dinner.  Mother tried to show me once how to wring its neck but I could not do it.

• I remember riding a horse with my Uncle.  I was about 2 and the horse was spooked by a rattlesnake. 

• I talked to Mother once about a tornado that I thought I remembered.  She told me that I was too young to remember it, even though it did happen when I was about 6 months old.  I don't remember a lot, just somebody running and getting in a ditch.

• I think I have better memories of daddy then most of my siblings.  I remember a time when I was about 11 or 12 and I wanted a bike in the worst way, why I will never know since we lived on a gravel road.  Daddy gave me a pig to exchange for Harold Kee's old bike.  I tried my best to ride it but after many attempts I had to give it up.  First of all it was a boy's bike and second of all I got tired of getting myself banged up on the gravel road.  I never did learn how to ride it, but the most important thing was that Daddy got it for me.

• I remember the rooster at the Huntingdon house.  I can't remember his name, but he sure did not like it when us kids came around.  I think he got our sister once and Mother was so angry at us for not watching her.  Remember that?  I think we both got it with a peach switch.

• We had pigs, which Daddy slaughtered in the late fall.  2 horses for plowing, which he let us ride.  We had cows, chickens and lots of barnyard dogs and cats.  Oh yes, we had a billy goat, too.

• Mother  raised chickens for food and eggs and we also had cows, horses, pigs and goats.  We raised pigs because we killed them for food. We would do two or three at a time. Daddy would shoot the hog in the head and then string them up by their back feet to let the blood drain out. Then they would be cut up and the meat put in a smoke house that Daddy had built near the house. There were many barn cats and dogs but they let us have one cat and one dog that could come in the house. I think the dog was Nickey and the cat was a white one we called mamma. We had the whole farm to play on and we loved it.  There was a stretch of woods behind the house and my sister and I would take branches and other things and make rooms for us to play in. We used old stumps and dead logs to form the furniture.  There was a pond in the field that we used for “swimming” . It was muddy and dirty but it was cool in the summer. Which is probably why none of us are great swimmers. The farmhouse was old and not very comfortable. It was sitting on cinder blocks and the floors or walls were not insulated. There was linoleum on all the floors to keep out the drafts. There were four rooms and a wrap-around porch on 2 sides. Mother and Daddy’s bedroom was also the living room; it had their bed, a couch and some chairs. There was a fireplace and a wood burning stove to keep us warm in the winter. Since the house was up on blocks there was room under the house to play, if one was so inclined. We had a lot of chickens so it was not the cleanest place in the world but it was cool in the summer.

• The town was about three or four miles from our house. When we traveled, we usually went by  a horse drawn wagon but at some point in time Daddy bought a Model A or Model T Ford, not sure which.

• Entertainment:  Daddy went to agriculture school on the GI bill but because he could never get any money ahead, he never had a chance to put it into practice. That is the only kind of book I remember him reading.  He used to get magazines from the drug store in town for us to read. The owner would give him what he did not sell for that month; none of them had covers on them because they had to be returned to the publisher to show they were not sold during the month. If I remember correctly most of them were movie magazines and love stories. However, we read every word and to this day all of us are avid readers. Therefore, I have to thank Daddy for whatever deal he had with the storeowner. He provided us with hours of pleasure then and forever more. We had a radio but there was no music in our house except country music. We all listened to the evening radio shows such as Fibber McGee and Mollie and all the others. Mother listened to soap operas once in awhile. (I know after Daddy died she used to watch the soaps on TV.)  Sometimes Daddy would take us into town on Saturdays and let us go to the show. Usually the western serials were showing.

• Us girls slept together in one of the bedrooms. When it was cold, Mother would warm bricks and wrap them in blankets for our feet. However, we had a great feather bed that really kept us warm. One of the bedrooms Mother let us use as a playroom. We had hundreds of paper dolls that we played with in there. We had some from paper doll books but most were cut from catalogues and magazines. We thought it was great because we never had to pick them up all summer. It was too cold to play in there during the winter.

• Daddy set us up a croquet game in the front yard and I remember playing it on Sunday afternoons as a family. That really is about the only thing I remember doing with all of us together.

• When it was summer, Daddy and Horace moved the big wood burning cook stove to the back porch, which was called the “summer kitchen”. Mother had to cook regardless of the weather. We had a big breakfast, a big dinner (lunch) and leftovers for supper. We had no electricity so the food leftover was covered and kept in a “pie cupboard”. We had an old icebox but we only got ice on Saturday when Daddy went to town. He would buy 100 lb block and wrap it in burlap to bring it home in the wagon. Some times it probably only weighed 50 lbs by the time he got it home. Mother also lowered the butter and milk into the well to keep it cold. It was a well about 3 feet in diameter with bucket attached to a rope. The rope was on a wheel pulled with a pulley. There was a bucket on the end of the rope and if I remember correctly, the well was not too deep maybe 10 feet or so. We could see the water if we bent over and looked into the well. I remember sitting on the front porch and churning cream to get fresh butter and buttermilk.

• Mother made ALL our clothes out of flour and feed sacks. I told Mother once that I hoped my children remembered their childhood with as much love as I remembered mine and she told me that it was the hardest time for her and Daddy.

• Our paternal aunts used to come down from Chicago to spend their vacations with us. We loved having our cousins to play with 2 weeks every summer but as I look back, it must have been difficult for Mother. I do remember that they use to just sit and let Mother do the entire cooking, cleaning, etc. because they were on VACATION. The best part was going down to Horace and Lou Willies on Friday nights for homemade ice cream. Since we did not have many beds, all the kids got to sleep on the porch on pallets.

• Daddy did all the farming with no modern equipment. We had horses and he used those to pull the plow and other tools. Mother was usually in the fields helping him and I was left to take care of my two sisters and make sure dinner was started. He raised mostly corn and cotton and sold it but never made enough money to do more than pay bills. I hated going out in the fields and chopping the weeds.  But mostly I hated picking cotton. It was hard because we had bags over our shoulders (feed sacks with a strap sewn on) and we went down the rows and picked the cotton out of the pods. By night fall, your back hurt from bending over and your fingers were bloody from the burrs. I did this from the time I was about 10 until we moved back to Chicago.

• Mother had a big vegetable garden and we had apple, pear and peach trees in the back yard. She canned a lot every summer on the wood stove with a pressure cooker. They are a little messy when they explode from too much heat. None of us kids were allowed in the kitchen when Mother was canning.

From the 2nd daughter:

I was watching the kids play the other day and I think our childhood was quite a bit different.  For instance:

• In the house in Huntingdon, there was an attic.  We'd play in the hot, hot, attic, using catalogs to cut out paper dolls and then drawing clothes for them and coloring them.

• Churning milk for butter and cream.

• Having a tea party down in the woods in a very special spot that was hidden, using acorns, I think.

• Playing croquet in the yard.

• I don't remember any specific toys, but I know that whatever we asked for at Christmas was usually under the tree.  I'm sure at great sacrifice to Mother and Daddy.

• No matter what hard times my parents had gone through during the year, they always made sure that we kids had a nice Christmas.  We'd all get 3 or 4 things we really wanted.

• Our Christmas presents were never wrapped.  Our parents didn't have the money for wrapping paper.  So around the tree were little piles of presents.  On one spot under the tree would be my presents.  On another spot would be my sister's presents, and so on.

• Sometimes on Christmas day, there would be a knock at the door.  No one would be there, but on the doorstep would be a large box of oranges and apples. And what a special treat we all thought that was.  Apparently we didn't get fresh fruit that often.  (It was Daddy who would knock on the door and then run around to the back of the house).

• Easter egg hunts out in the yard somewhere.  Reed had real eggs all around the yard - colored eggs.  I think our sister missed at least one because she was sick with something.

• That old kitchen wood burning range.  It had a resovoir on the left hand side to fill up with water.  You'd fill the stove up with wood and head up the stove.  When the stove was heated up, that would heat the water up, too.

• I remember Mother ironing with flat irons.  She had 2 of them.  When mother ironed, I think she put the irons on the range to get hot.  Then she would use 1 keep the other one on the stove, so it would get hot.

• Kerosene lights.  I think we all went to bed when it got dark because of the cost of kerosene.

• The vegetable garden:  we must have had one and I'm sure we worked in it, but I don't remember doing it.

• Picking cotton... I remember I had a little bag which I had to fill.

• I remember riding on the hay wagon.  I also remember falling off a wagon and cutting my head.  I had a little white bonnet that got blood on it.

• I do remember talk about a tornado.  All I know about it is running and getting into a ditch.

• Since we didn't have money, we had to create our fun.

• I remember the old well and the bucket and the dipper.

• I also remember something about a fire and being handed out the window to a fireman.

• I remember the bike.  I wanted to learn to ride in the worst way and I did.  I got on it and went down the hill in the back of the house and almost killed myself crashing into trees.

• Remember that rooster at the Huntingdon house?  All I can remember is that whenever we got off the back porch, we would get chased.  I think that he was eventually Sunday's dinner. Unfortunately, I also remember the peach switch.  Felt real good on the legs.

• I guess I also remember the wringing of the chicken's necks.  I don't know if I ever did it.  Mother would swing them by the neck over her head.  I remember the chickens flopping around on the ground, minus the head for about 5 minutes..

• I remember something about making molasses.  I vaguely remember a place we went to that cooked it.

• I remember taking castor oil for every ailment.  They put it in our drink.

• Mother and Daddy didn't have much money.  Mother made all our clothes out of flour sacks.

From the 3rd daughter:

I too have some pretty terrific memories of the farm. 

• Remember all the baby chicks and kittens to play with.

• The paper dolls of course.  My 2 older sisters would draw, color and cut out mermaids for me.  I would float them in the rain barrel until they would fall apart.

• We dug for arrow heads in the woods.  I think we must have had jars and jars full of them.  I also remember pottery shards and pieces of broken china that we would dig up, and wonder how they got there.

• The grocery bus.  It only came during the summer (maybe once a month?) and was a converted school bus.  It had one aisle down the middle with shelves along both sides.  Each of us was allowed to buy one piece of candy.

• The dog that caught rattlesnakes.  Was his name Nicky?

• Making butter.  If we didn't have a churn, Mother would put the milk in a canning jar, close it tight, and we all had to take turns shaking it until it was butter.

• I remember the rooster, too.  Maybe he was so mean because I can also remember chasing him trying to pull out his tail feathers.

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Janet Hagan Monnin
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This web site was last updated on May 29, 2011