By Linda Clark
As I was reading one of the stories in the U.S. Legacies, I can remember back in 1964, when my husband Bill and I were first married. We moved into his mother’s home in Lebanon, PA. The only modern thing were water and electricity, which was required in the city. We lived on the edge of town, so we did not have sewer for a bathroom. There was an out house at the end of the yard and any dirty water was thrown out in the backyard.
For doing wash, I heated water on a coal stove. In the kitchen, sometimes we did not have enough coal to burn in the stoves, so the kitchen stoves were not always started. I can remember when a new soap came out called cold power. I used it in cold water to wash clothes in a cold kitchen.
Sometime then we bought, which was special back then, a water heater. Bill’s mom had it put in. Then the city decided to extend the sewer lines out to our area where it was required by law to hook up to it. You had to dig your own hole out to the street for them to hook you up. If you didn’t do it they did it, they fined you for it.
That meant a bathroom in the house. Oh I thought that would be great, so Bill and a friend of ours put in a small bathroom upstairs, right above the kitchen. They didn’t get the roof all on in one day, so they put heavy tarps up to cover the hole. That night it rained and the tarps held up, but it got full of water. When Bill and Paul went up to take the tarps off, I was standing below in the kitchen. When the tarps let go, you guessed it, I was soaked with the rain water. They stood up there and laughed. I guess I did look like a drowned rat.
After we cleaned up that mess they started working on the roof again, hoping that the next day they could get it finished. Then they started working on the inner walls. Again, the next day the sun finally came out and up, they went to finish the roof. I heard them laughing and knew they were up to something. They went over to the floor where a hole was for the bathtub drain. They took a can of water and waited and waited until I was under there and poured it through the hole and it hit me on my back. They laughed. They loved to joke around, but we finally got the bathroom finished. What joy not to have to go to the outhouse any more, or take a bath in a washtub sitting on the kitchen floor.
When you look back on those years, they were hard, yet you learned what things were all about. Things are so basic for people now days. Push a button. Turn a knob, and things are there. I miss some of the old things, but as I grow older I enjoy the newer things, too.
When I told my granddaughter that the boys used to play a game called kick the can in the street, she said what’s that? You put a can on the street. Someone is it and they kick the can. The boys run almost like it was tag. The first one caught has to kick the can and run. It didn’t make sense I know, but that was the boys game and they stayed out of trouble. Their parents sat out on the porch and watched them.
Now days, half the time people don’t know where their kids are. Some kids even try to tell their parents what to do, which is not right, but that’s just how the world and times have changed. They say go with the flow, but its hard to deal with the way things are now days.
I sometimes wish I could go back to the old days. But then you realize just how hard things were then. I grab a big bath towel and head for my nice shower in my bathroom in the house and think, I don’t have to throw the water out in the backyard anymore. That I like. I am all for modern things now.
Published U.S. Legacies March 2006
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