EMZ-Piney Post

A Special Name

2009-04-11T20:09:00.000-07:00

(Posted for Lil Red Hen)

For most people, Easter Sunday coming on the 12th of April simply means it’s about as late in the year as Easter can come. Since it is not a fixed date, Easter can occur from late March to late April, on the first Sunday following the vernal equinox or the first full moon of spring.

Easter brings to mind new clothes for the youngsters, filling baskets with green plastic “grass” and hard-boiled colored eggs, marshmallow bunnies, and jellybeans. Then there’s the meal of baked ham and casseroles, concluded with angel food cake or coconut cake. All this comes after the morning church services, attended by some for the first time since the previous Easter Sunday.

On April 12, 1914, Easter Sunday brought special meaning to one family; another baby girl was born into their family. They already had three girls and had lost a baby boy, so more than likely they were hoping for another boy. Therefore, after using the traditional names of Marie, Hazel, and Louise, what could they name this new baby girl? Somehow she was given the name, Easter Lily; after all, it was Easter Sunday and lilies were Easter flowers.

One woman, hearing about the name, said, “Poor girl! Can you imagine growing up with a name like that?” Maybe it would be the source of ridicule among children in today’s society; however, Easter was always proud of her name. It was unique, original, and had a special Christian meaning to her.

Some probably think, since she was born on Easter Sunday, that she had a birthday every Easter; but, as mentioned before, Easter has no fixed date. By searching the internet and using “A Perpetual Easter and Passover Calculator,” I have found that Easter’s birthday coincided with Easter Sunday only three times during her lifetime, including the year in which she was born: 1914, 1925, and 1936. She passed away in 1987.

Happy Birthday, Mama.

Charlotte

We're on Baby Watch...

2009-02-17T18:09:00.000-08:00

We've acquired several animals on our farm over the past couple of years, and the time has come for the cows and the ewes to have their babies. So far we've had three calves -- two little bulls and a heifer. But today we had a new experience - our first lamb was born.

It's a little female lamb, and the funny thing is that she is black when both her mother and her father are white. She makes the cutest little bleating sounds, and her mother makes these soft, low sounds. Lily named the baby "Fluffball," which doesn't seem all that appropriate right now, but maybe some day!

Now we're just keeping our eyes on the rest of the cows - I certainly hope the rest of the babies arrive with no more trouble than these did.

Apple-head Update

2009-02-10T17:32:00.000-08:00

It's been a week since the last update and two weeks since Lily started her apple-head doll. The apple has now developed a personality!

When Lily was cutting the mouth in the apple, I didn't want to say anything to discourage her, but the mouth was obviously off to one side. However, as the apple dried and shriveled, the mouth sort of migrated so that now it looks like a twisted smile. Her apple looks like a kindly little old soul!

If we're going to make a doll out of this, we need to put a body with the head. Anybody have any suggestions as to how to do that?

Fun Both Before and After

2009-02-02T18:23:00.000-08:00

As it turned out, we didn't get any ice, after all. We consider ourselves most fortunate when we see the damage that was done in Northwest Arkansas. Many people are still without power.

Although we didn't get the bad stuff, school was still cancelled two days for my husband and kids (this is Arkansas - sometimes the threat of bad weather is enough to call off school!). As usual on a snow day, my daughter got in a "crafty" mood and pulled out the kids' science experiment books. She settled on the experiment to make an apple-head doll. So I went to the crisper and found a Granny Smith apple that was starting to shrivel a little. And we embarked on the project of making the head for a doll like a little girl Lily's age might have had two hundred years ago.

I peeled the apple for her (she's still a little young for something that takes that much control of the knife). But I let her carve out the face by herself. The mouth was a little tilted off to one side, but that's part of the charm, right? The directions in the book said to paint the apple with a mixture of lemon juice (to bleach the apple's skin) and salt (I suppose to help start the drying process). Then we set the apple aside to dry.

Well, it's been a week, and the apple now looks like this: It's definitely smaller, and the features are more exaggerated. It's quite obvious now that the mouth is off-center! But the lemon juice seems to be doing its job; the apple hasn't turned brown, except for the very bottom. She must not have painted that area as thoroughly.

I suppose we just keep watching to see how shriveled it will become. I'll post an updated picture (if it's worth seeing!)

A World of Pain

2009-01-26T18:34:00.000-08:00

(We're supposed to get as much as 1.5 inches of ice tonight and tomorrow. IF it happens - after all, this is Arkansas! - our power will probably go off and I may get a chance to try out my skills of living like someone from a pre-electric age!)

Last night, I was reading a passage from An Involuntary King by Nan Hawthorne in which the king is being treated for an arrow wound he received in a battle. The passage reminded me of two other things I've read: the scene in Janice Holt Giles' Hannah Fowler when Hannah and Tice are treating a wound on her father's badly infected leg, and a scene in a young adult book called The Apprenticeship of Lucas Whitaker, by Cynthia DeFelice, in which Lucas helps the local doctor with an amputation. The thread that tied all these thoughts together in my mind was, "Wow, people back then used to have to bear up under a lot more pain than we have to today!"

I guess what really made me think about that is that the healer in Hawthorne's book gave the king a little stick of wood to put between his teeth so he could bite down on it when the pain got too bad. I'd heard about women in childbirth being given a bit of leather to bite on; I guess I always thought it was just to give the patient something they could transfer the pain to - sort of like the old joke of hitting your thumb with a hammer when your toe hurts. But the healer told the king it would keep him from biting his tongue, which makes a lot of sense. I guess a person could also conceivably hurt his/her teeth by grinding them together while in pain.

I remember when I was reading the scene in Hannah Fowler thinking I didn't see how anyone could bear up under the treatment they were giving him - scalding hot rags applied to the outside of the wound, with nothing more than rum to dull the pain (it didn't work). Hawthorne's book had an even worse scenario - the healer was using boiling hot oil to cauterize the inside of the king's wound to stop the bleeding. The thing is, I trust both Giles and Hawthorne as researchers and believe that what they described must be a real method of treatment they found in records of past times.

I suppose we are a "soft" generation. We use ibuprofen to ease the slightest headache. Codeine is a part of any medicines we take to ease our sore throats, and pain medication is prescribed as a routine practice as a followup to any major injury or a surgery. Epidurals administered during childbirth are so common they've become a stock element in jokes. Don't get me wrong; I'm relieved that we have methods of pain relief that would keep me or those I care about from having to endure the terrible pain of these fictional characters. I do wonder, though, if we are doing ourselves something of a disservice by removing all trivial pain from our lives (if there is such a thing as "trivial" pain!). Does it make us less able to tolerate pain - emotional as well as physical - when it's necessary?

'Til Death Do Us Part

2009-01-24T13:36:00.000-08:00

A man from our church died this week. I didn't know him well, so he may have had a lot of accomplishments in his long life. The one thing I did know about him was that he and his wife had been married for 74 years. Wow! That's a LONG time!

My husband and I just celebrated our 19th anniversary a month ago. We still haven't yet made it to the point where we've lived with each other longer than we lived apart (still about 6 years to go). Still, it's hard to remember (or imagine) living without him. Can you imagine how much more true that would be if you'd been married to someone for a period of time as long as some people's actual lifespan?

When my husband and I got married, I remember joking that we would both have to live to be 100 or more to be able to celebrate our 75th anniversary. (I also remember joking that I might have the tablecloth I was crocheting finished by that time!) But in the 19 years since then, I don't know that we've consciously thought about trying to achieve that milestone -- or any other. We've been too busy with daily life, with going to work and paying the bills and raising the kids. And somewhere along the way, we've accumulated 6,968 of those days. I guess that's how it is for any married couple - the days keep coming, passing quickly or slowly. And one day, if we stick with it, we look up and those days equal 25 years, or 50, or in a very few cases, 75.

The Long Winter, Southern-Style

2009-01-19T08:57:00.000-08:00

We had a couple of REALLY cold days last week, which happened to coincide with the time when my husband was away on a business trip. That meant I had the responsibility of caring for his livestock (notice I said his livestock!). The main concern was keeping water for them, since the temperature was well below freezing both days. I wasn't so worried about most of the cattle, since they get their water from a running source, which is less likely to freeze. However, the sheep's water was covered with a layer of ice about an inch thick, and the hens' water was frozen solid. The pond the bull drinks from also had some ice, but I don't think it was frozen over completely.

Anyway, I carried water to the hens and broke the ice on the sheep's tank with the splitting maul (like a sledge hammer with an axe edge on one side). That was a perfect tool for the task, and it didn't take much effort. As I was walking back to the house, I remembered reading in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Long Winter about the cattle whose heads were frozen to the ground after a blizzard. The temperatures were so cold that the moisture in their breath froze, trapping the cow in an icy muzzle. Laura's Pa had to go to each of the cattle and break their noses free of the ice. It made me glad to live in the South, where weather is the teens is considered "frigid," and we don't have to deal with blizzards and sub-zero temperatures, and any cold weather we do have is generally short-lived and followed by days in the 50s or 60s!

Definitely not "Easy Mac"

2009-01-15T11:45:00.000-08:00

I'm on those last few days before I start back to school, and as usual, I'm trying to cram as much into those days as I can. One thing that I always end up doing is cooking some of those kinds of foods that take a lot of time. Yesterday I decided to cook some dry pinto beans. I very rarely make them, because they have to cook so long. I scooped a couple of handfuls out onto the cabinet, checked them for little stones and withered beans, washed them, and put them on to boil. The first time I lifted the lid to check on them, I smelled that rich, earthy aroma. And it made me reflect on how much different food is now than it would have been back at the time of our ancestors.

While the beans were simmering all morning and then all afternoon, I thought about all the other foods I rarely cook because they take so long. Baked potatoes, for example. I love oven-baked potatoes, but there's just not enough time once I get home from work to cook them in a timely manner before it's time to start getting the kids ready for bed. So we don't have baked potatoes. I know, I could bake them in the microwave, but they just don't taste as good and they get hard quickly. I also don't cook roast beef (except once in a while in the slow cooker, but it's just not the same). I never make hot rolls - they have to rise, not once, but twice. I don't even make homemade biscuits for breakfast; there's just not enough time.

It occurs to me that the so-called "time-saving" devices really haven't given us more time; they've just made it possible for people to fill their time with more stuff. Cooking for the family would have been a major activity of the day for a pioneer mother. Maybe it would have even been THE major activity of the day, given how time-consuming real cooking is. Whether it was making loaves of bread, or roasting and basting a turkey, or peeling potatoes, or whipping up a cake from scratch, cooking a real meal for a large family would take a long time. That was her job (assuming, of course, that she wasn't also helping in the fields and having to cook supper after she came in - which I'm sure happened plenty of times).

But now cooking supper is something that needs to be done quickly between getting home from work and getting the kids to bed at a decent time so it won't be too hard to get them out of bed the next morning to get to school on time. So it's less about "cooking" than it is about "throwing something together." I scanned through my cabinets and found the following items: packaged noodle mix, a taco kit, some Easy Mac bowls, muffin mix in a package, biscuits in a can. All of it can be "thrown together" in 20 minutes or less. Of course, canned biscuits aren't as good as homemade biscuits, and Easy Mac isn't as good as my homemade mac-n-cheese. But I guess we sacrifice some taste for some convenience.

Don't you wonder what a woman from 100 years ago would think if she looked into my cabinets???

Make a Joyful Noise!

2009-01-09T06:44:00.000-08:00

I finally gave in to temptation yesterday and bought an mp3 player. It is such a cool little gadget, and I really like being able to listen to my music or podcasts as I go about my housework (I can see it will be helpful while grading papers, too). But as I was listening last night, I couldn't help but wonder what this little wonder gadget that everybody has is costing us as a culture.

One of the books I used quite a bit as a resource while researching my historical novel was Flowering of the Cumberland by Harriette Simpson Arnow. In the chapter titled "Social Life and Diversions," she says, "More widely enjoyed than the keeping of journals, and possibly second only to conversation as a pastime was music, especially singing. Everybody sang: the boatman sang to the river, the teamster to his team, the baby tender to the baby, and even the hunter, rejoicing in his kill, might sing...." She then goes on to catalog some of the types of songs people sang: work songs, play songs, traveling songs, ballads of unrequited love, songs written specifically for special occasions, the hymns of Watt and Wesley.

Thinking about it, I don't recall that I ever hear anyone singing in daily life today, unless it is to add their voice to the song already playing on the radio or CD player. I myself almost never sing outside of church. I remember when I was growing up that my sisters and I sang quite a bit. We sang "Playmate, come out and play with me, and bring your dollies three, Climb up my apple tree. Look down my rain barrel, slide down my cellar door, and we'll be jolly friends forevermore." (I'm sure that's a song my mother taught us, because I remember hearing my grandmother sing it too.) We learned "Polly Wolly Doodle All the Day" and "Chicken crowing on Sourwood Mountain" in music class in school (with Mrs. Stewart playing along on the autoharp). We sang "Blessed Assurance" and "Sing to Me of Heaven" as we were swinging under the mulberry tree, and I remember one occasion when my youngest sister made up a very long and very dramatic song about a little deer. So it's not that I was never a singer.

It's like we've delegated music-making to other people, the same way we've delegated making our clothes (and more and more lately, cooking our food) to others. Instead of singing ourselves, if we want some music, we stick a CD in the player or turn on the radio or poke in the earbuds. I guess there's nothing so wrong with that -- except that the music we're listening to is a "product" that is produced in a corporate studio and shaped to fit a particular market that researchers tell excutives like certain characteristics. And if you're listening to popular music, whether it's rock or country or pop, chances are it all sounds sort of similar with only minor variations. In the Intro to Mass Comm class I taught a couple of times this was called "cultural homogenization," and it's just what it sounds like. Take a country song, add a dance beat behind it, and you've got a hit with the pop crowd.

The problem with homogenized music is that we lose something unique. The problem with recorded music is that we lose some ability to express ourselves. Sure, we can put on particular music that fits the mood we are in, but is that really the same as breaking in to "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen" when you are feeling low, or "Joy to the World" when you feel exuberant? There's just something about producing the music yourself - even if it's not perfect! - that makes it seem like more of a expression of what's going on inside.

I have to go hang some jeans on the clothesline now, and I'm going to sing out loud while I do it! I encourage you to sing today, too. Find a place where no one's around if it will make you feel better, turn off that radio, and let fly. It's what our forefathers and mothers would do!

The Borrowed Toothbrush

2009-01-04T17:54:00.000-08:00

For some reason, a visit to the dentist is usually not an experience a person enjoys. I was told once, by my dentist, if my husband had looked in my mouth before we were married, he wouldn't have married me. I didn't take it too personal and continued going to him for treatment until, at the age of 46, I took the big plunge and got braces. Now when I go to the dentist, I only see him once a year; the cleaning, x-rays, etc. are done by a dental hygienist. We talk and have even become friends in some cases.
There is no reason now to have dirty teeth. After each visit, the hygienist gives me a "goody" bag containing a new brush, toothpaste, and dental floss. Over time I've accumulated quite a collection of brushes.
Brushes have not always been available, or maybe affordable, for all children. As a child, I knew how to break off a little stem from a sassafras bush, chew one end until it was frayed, and then use it as a toothbrush. Of course it was pretty stiff and rough on my gums. I had a store-bought toothbrush; the sassafras brush was just something to try and I liked its taste.
I'd think all children have access to a toothbrush now and most probably complain about the chore of cleaning their teeth. This brings to mind a little story about my mother when she was a child:
Mama wanted a toothbrush; a real one with soft bristles and a celluloid handle.
She was tired of the rough, sassafras brushes she made and used on her walk to school each day. Two girls in the school had store-bought brushes and she was sure her teeth never looked as bright and shiny as their teeth. She looked with envy at the real brush someone had given to her baby brother. He didn't use it much; why couldn't she borrow it? So without anyone knowing it, she slipped the brush out of the house and brushed her teeth. How clean they felt! She ran her tongue over and around every tooth, savoring their sleekness. She went inside and looked into the mirror; how pretty and white her teeth were! But now she must put the brush back before someone missed it. First she would wash it good. There was a pan of hot water on the heater; she could use it to scald the brush. So she took the pan to the porch and poured the water over the brush. To her surprise, the bristles began falling out of the celluloid handle and in a jiffy they were all out. The brush was ruined.
Now I don't know what kind of trouble she was in, she didn't tell me that. However, it made such an impression on her that she remembered it for the rest of her life.
How spoiled we are!

Not ANOTHER Burger.....

2009-01-04T11:15:00.000-08:00

This post is one last leftover from our Christmas trip. Since we were traveling in the car and staying in hotels rather than taking our camper, we ended up eating a lot of fast food. That means we had a diet of mainly hamburgers and fries, which we certainly tired of long before the trip was over. That made me think of the type of diet pioneers survived on. While it wasn't burgers and fries, it wasn't much more varied, and I'm sure they got tired of it too.

While I was writing my book, I noticed that it seemed the characters were always eating some form of cornbread - cornpone, hoecake, cornmeal mush. When they could get it, the meal might include some salt pork or bacon. Those two items, cornmeal and pork, formed the heart of the diet for most people, especially poor people. Of course, a garden (if they had one) would supplement that diet with beans, greens, squash, potatoes, sweet potatoes, or pumpkins, and a man could bring in fresh meat by hunting (assuming game in the area where the family lived had not been hunted to the point that it was scarce). Occasionally, an old hen might end up in the stew pot or skillet, but until a flock was built up enough to supply cockerels, the hens were too valuable for the eggs they produced. So for most people, the two most reliable sources of food were corn (which grew readily in the United States) and pork (since pigs are easy to care for and since the meat could be preserved by salting it or smoking it in the era before refrigeration).

Even if they were grateful for the food, I'm sure there had to be a day once in a while when someone looked at his/her plate and thought, "Corn mush? Again?"

Don't Let the Bedbugs Bite!

2008-12-29T16:21:00.000-08:00

The beds in the hotel we stayed in last night seemed small to me. Actually, they seemed to be about the same size as the replica of the bed President Lincoln died on in the Peterson House (one of our quick stops while in Washington, DC). I'm not complaining; it just got me to thinking about "hotel" travel during the early 19th century, when all beds were probably that size.

The earliest travelers would have slept on the ground as they camped, but as the country became more "civilized," a traveler would have the option of staying in a tavern. A couple of years ago, I took a tour of the Arkansas Territorial Museum in Little Rock, which included a reconstruction of one of these taverns. Downstairs was a large room with tables and a bar from which customers were served; upstairs were the rooms for the patrons who would be spending the night. And here's where things start to break with the pattern we are familiar with. Since the tavern was more than likely the same building the owners lived in, there were a limited number of rooms for customers to sleep in. As a result, a family or a couple didn't get a private room. Instead, all the men bunked together in one room, and women stayed together in another. Actually, according to the tour guide at the Territorial Museum, during the early years of the century, if a man was traveling with a female companion, he would find a reputable family in the community with which the woman could stay. As I recall, he said the woman would carry a letter of introduction which would be presented to the family as a way of assuring them this was a woman of good reputation.

Whether she stayed with a local family or in the tavern, the sleeping conditions for a woman and her male companion were the same. Just as there was no private room, there was no private bed. As many patrons as could fit in a bed would sleep together. Somehow I always imagine this to be three people, though I suppose it could be more. The thought of having to share a bed with a single stranger is unpleasant enough, but when I think of being crammed into a small bed like the one we had last night with two strangers.....we have certainly developed a different idea of privacy over the past two centuries! Imagine that one of those strangers snores incessantly, or one has a cough, or one has a tendency to roll over frequently during the night....I'm beginning to think I would prefer to sleep on the ground in the woods!

Add to that the fact that sanitary conditions were probably not up to 21st-century standards, either. We expect the sheets in a hotel to have been changed and washed between visitors to a room; I doubt our ancestors had the same expectation. It was probably more likely to sleep on linens that were washed maybe once a month (or less frequently - see the earlier post about laundry). I also imagine that there were beings sharing the bed other than those snoring, coughing strangers -- I bet it was a common occurrence to find lice or bedbugs in one's sleeping quarters.

On second thought, I have nothing to complain about!

A Christmas Eve Surprise

2008-12-28T16:46:00.000-08:00

(The family and I seem to have stayed for the last five days in the only hotel in America without free wireless internet. So this post is later than I would have liked.)

We've been visiting family near Washington, DC, for Christmas. On Christmas Eve, we needed something to fill some time while waiting to go to my brother-in-law's house for an evening get-together. We didn't have enough time, really, to go into the city, so we scanned the map for something closer to our evening's destination, something that would take only a couple of hours or so. We found Harper's Ferry, which we thought would meet all our criteria for a day's outing. So that's what we did on Christmas Eve afternoon, and it turned out to be my favorite place on our trip so far.

All I knew about Harper's Ferry was that John Brown had led some kind of rebellion there just before the Civil War (and as it turned out, what I thought I knew wasn't entirely accurate!). I'm not ashamed to admit that I was completely amazed to find the town has a fascinating history that goes back to before the Revolutionary War, when Robert Harper chose this place where the Shenandoah River joins the Potomac to locate a ferry. A couple of decades later, George Washington urged the Congress of the new United States to make an armory at the strategic location. Merriwether Lewis used the town as a base while he got together the supplies (mainly weaponry) he would need for his exploration of the new Louisiana Purchase. A school to educate former slaves was started at Harper's Ferry not long after the Civil War, and W.E.B. Du Bois met with a group of African Americans on the college campus early in the 20th century to plan the first stages of the civil rights movement. All this, and John Brown, too! There was a museum that did a very thorough job of explaining the whole set of circumstances that led to John Brown's death.

As if all the history that happened in the town was not enough, there were also a plethora of other museums that gave me a chance to see what life was like in days past. My favorite was a dry goods store, which I told my kids was the 19th-century equivalent of Wal-Mart. This store was stocked with everything from (wax) hams and fruit to bolts of fabric to dishes to pieces of leather to medical remedies to a small collection of toys. Unfortunately, we could only step about three feet into the store because it was roped off; I would have loved to have been able to go from shelf to shelf, looking at all the wonderful things. Of course, it's probably a good thing I couldn't - I don't think my family would have appreciated having to wait for me!

I have to also say the physical location of the town was fascinating to me, as well. I didn't realize the Potomac was so rough and rocky, or that it lies between such imposing bluffs. The town itself is literally built on the side of a steep hill. We climbed a set of winding steps that were carved into the rock to get to the old Catholic Church at the top of the hill (which tolled a solemn, resounding tone throughout the valley on the hour).

My daughter (age 10) kept saying she was afraid of the ghosts in the town. Of course, we told her there were no ghosts, but I can understand why she was saying that. It was a cloudy, cool day with some blustery wind, and there were only a few other people wandering through the deserted streets between the old buildings. But while she saw the "ghosts" as something to be afraid of, I think of them as possible friends, waiting to tell me their stories.

Greetings from East Tennessee!

2008-12-22T19:01:00.000-08:00

The family and I are on our way to visit family near Washington, DC, for Christmas. Today we traveled from Nashville to Knoxville, Tennessee, a distance of about 160-180 miles, which took about 3 hours on Interstate 40. As we were speeding along, I couldn't keep from thinking about my historical novel Dancing in the Checkered Shade (to be published next year by EMZ-Piney Publishing). In the novel, a young pioneer couple travels roughly the same distance in the opposite direction, from Campbell County to Nashville. However, since it's 1823, they are on foot and leading a horse carrying all their worldly possessions, and progress is definitely slower. Given those conditions, I estimated that the couple would be able to travel about 11-12 miles per day. That means it would take them about two weeks to make the same trip we made in a morning!

I think in our mobile and super-connected society we forget what our forefathers and foremothers faced when they had to travel any distance. I'm not talking about a trip to see nearby family or to a local trading post; I'm thinking about those trips when a farmer might be taking a load of produce to market in New Orleans or when, as happens in my book, a family decided to strike out for land in a different part of the country. They might travel by wagon, or by flatboat if their destination was downstream, or if they had little means, on foot. Regardless of what method they took, more than likely traveling meant they were losing contact with their family for an extended period of time - at least until mail routes were established in the area they were traveling to. What a far cry from picking up the cell phone or shooting off an email to let everyone you care about know you've reached your destination safely.

Warming the Body and Soul

2008-12-16T15:44:00.000-08:00

It's been really cold the past two days. The temperatures have been in the mid-20s, which I guess is not all that cold compared to the 20 below people in Montana have been dealing with. But it feels cold, piercing and damp. How nice it is to have a fire to cozy up to on an evening like this! I love to back up to the fireplace and feel the warmth soaking through my clothes.

But what if the fireplace was my only source of heat, as it was for the pioneer family? What if it was my cookstove?

There are a few things I've noticed about having a fire that might be tiresome if I had to have one all the time instead of just when I want one. For one thing, it takes quite a bit of wood to keep a fire fed. In the age of the chain saw, it's an afternoon's work to cut up and stack enough wood to last for several days or even a couple of weeks. Imagine if every piece of wood that went into the fireplace had to be chopped with an axe. How much of a man's time would be taken up with providing enough wood to keep the family warm all winter? And how tired would his back get after splitting the logs into pieces small enough to manage?

All that wood that burns makes a lot of ash, too. I imagine cleaning ashes from the fireplace would be a job that would need doing every few days. And what a nasty, dusty job that would be! I always have trouble figuring out what to do with the few ashes that come from our fireplace. What would I do with them if I had to get rid of some every few days?

Finally, it seems to me that a fireplace requires a lot of attention to keep it going well. If it's left too long before new wood is put in, the coals will burn down to the point that more kindling has to be put in to get the fire started again. I am never able to keep a fire going overnight so there is something to restart the fire in the morning - I have to start from scratch. Did the pioneers get up during the night to add wood to the fire? I've read in different places before about people "banking" a fire, but I don't really know what that means. I always assumed it meant scraping the burning coals together into a pile and then pulling ashes around them to insulate them through the night so some of them would still be glowing the next morning. I never seem to be able to do that, though, so maybe I'm wrong about what it means.

Still, for all the work and trouble it takes to have a fire, there's nothing as cheery on a gray winter day as a glowing fire.

The Christmas Doll

2008-12-13T09:50:00.000-08:00

I don't consider myself as being a pioneer, but I was raised in the early "40's -50's" when things were much simpler than today. As children, we had to use our imagination in our play and be creative with what was around us. I don't remember getting toys from town too often so Christmas was special. Our tree was a cedar cut from some fence row, decorated with a few glass balls and icicles, kept from year to year and probably taken from the discarded tree used at the church program. Mama usually allowed $5.00 each for the limit on what she could spend on her two children's gifts. My gifts might have included "store bought" paper dolls, a jigsaw puzzle, and a baby doll. Dolls she could afford in those days usually had heads made of compressed sawdust so it was no wonder that I longed for a prettier doll; however, I don't remember ever not liking what Santa brought to me.

The following is an excerpt from my book, In the Shade of the White Oak:

Outside the theater, Charlotte waited in line to get on the school bus. She turned around, and there, in a window next to the theater, was the most beautiful doll she had ever seen! She was wearing a white satin wedding gown. Spread out all around her were clothes of every kind: pants and shirts, a coat with a fur collar, flannel pajamas, and a red taffeta evening dress. The doll had silky blonde hair and blue eyes with long lashes
Charlotte tugged at Wanda Sue's hand. "Oh look at that beautiful doll! Wouldn't you love to have a doll like that?"
A sign near the doll had these words: Win this beautiful doll! Buy a chance on her today! 25 cents per chance!...
Charlotte thought about nothing else but the doll the rest of the afternoon. She told Mama how pretty it had looked...Whenever Mama had seen the doll, she said to Charlotte, "You didn't tell me someone is selling chances on the pretty doll. We don't buy chances on things. If we spend money we have to make sure we're getting something for it."...

Have a wonderful day, and stay warm!

String Quilting

2008-12-11T10:10:00.000-08:00

What a cold, cold morning we've had! Didn't the quilts feel good last night? With all the fine fabrics we have to make our quilts from now, it's tempting not to use the beautiful creations for bed covers. In days gone by, they were a necessity; with no electric blankets or automatic heaters to keep one warm, the quilts were piled high each night on several beds in the household. Fabrics to make these quilts were most likely not purchased in yardage as we know of today. For utility quilts, as these were called, most every little scrap was put to use, no matter its shape or size or color, and patterns were kept simple. String quilts, being the easiest and fastest to make, were found on beds in most homes. The strings were probably not even the best scraps, such as those left from making dresses and shirts.

To make a string quilt, a woman would first decide what size blocks she wanted to make, and did she want the strings to run up and down the block or diagonally. The blocks required a foundation block on which to sew the strings. Unless she was fortunate enough to have newspaper or catalog pages from which to cut the foundation, it had to be made from fabric: pieces from a worn sheet or feed sack. If she decided to make her blocks six inches square, she would cut a piece six and one half inches square to make allowances for seams. Sewing by machine would make the task go smoother, but it could be done by hand too. So, with foundations in hand, the stash of strings was brought out and the construction began.

1)The first string was placed right side up on the foundation. 2)A second string was laid along the edge of the first with right sides together and sewed, using a very short stitch. This made it easier to tear off the paper later. 3)The second string was then flipped out and pressed (for best results this step needed to be done after each seam was taken.) Now it was time to pick another string and sew it to the second string. When the foundation was covered, the block was flipped over. 4)It looked rather messy at this point, but after trimming the excess off even with the foundation, she had a neat block. 5)Tear off the paper and it's ready to sew to another block to make a quilt top. With her own carded cotton and a lining made from feed sacks, the top was ready to be quilted and put over the little ones for the rest of the cold winter.

I use string piecing quite often in my doll quilts. Here are some examples of how I have turned strings into quilts:

It's Beautiful, Whatever It's Called

2008-12-12T18:02:00.000-08:00

I heard on the radio today that tonight's full moon is supposed to be the biggest one of the year, because the moon is at the point in its orbit when it's closest to the earth. I just happened to catch a glimpse of the moon out of the corner of my eye as I was cooking supper. It had just risen and was hanging heavy and orange over Tater Hill. I took a moment to go outside and just look at it. (Sorry the photo's a little blurry. I tried to use the zoom to bring the moon closer, ha ha.)

According to the Farmers' Almanac, Native Americans had a name for each full moon of the year. December's moon, the almanac said, could be called the "Cold Moon" or the "Long Nights Moon." It makes a lot of sense. I can't help thinking about our ancestors who didn't know about the orbit or the varying distance of the moon from the earth, but who looked up at the big, bright moon on a cold night in December, one of the longest nights of the year. Were they glad to have the moon's silvery light during those long hours of cold and dark?

Another Autumn Treat

2008-12-10T20:20:00.000-08:00

A week or so ago, a man we know gave us a little bag of persimmons.

A pioneer cook would no doubt know just what to do with these sweet fall fruits; I did not. The persimmons sat on the kitchen cabinet until my husband pointed out they were starting to get very soft. I knew I had to do something with them or let them go to waste. I went to the handy-dandy internet and found a recipe for persimmon bread, something I thought a pioneer cook might have made if she had gathered a bag of persimmons. The recipe was on the Allrecipes site. I thought it seemed like something with simple ingredients that a pioneer cook would have had in her kitchen (although I do wonder - was cinnamon available? Probably not on the frontier, I would guess.) I substituted pecans for the walnuts and left out the raisins (personal preference - I hate the way they get all swelled-up and soft!)

The worst part of preparing the recipe was making the persimmon pulp. It seemed that it would be impossible to peel the persimmons with a knife, so at first I tried to pull the skin off - it was a mess! Finally, I had the bright idea to scrape the pulp from the skin with a knife, and that worked much better. I was also pleasantly surprised that it was easy to remove the seeds. A persimmon has several seeds about the size of a thumbnail. Once a long time ago, I picked up some wild persimmons and tried to make bread with them - all I remember is that there seemed to be as much seed inside that skin as pulp, and it was almost impossible to separate the pulp from the seed. Of course, these persimmons were a domesticated variety, so the job was easier, and it didn't take as many persimmons to get my one cup of pulp as it would have taken if I had been using wild persimmons. I guess, though, if you didn't have sweets very often, it would be worth it to sort through those wild persimmons to get the pulp.

End result? The bread was very dense (I guess since soda was the only leavening agent) and dark, but moist and sweet. It reminds me a lot of pumpkin bread. It made a nice breakfast, something different from the typical sausage biscuit or cold cereal. The biggest drawback, though, is that this loaf of bread used only a few of the persimmons the man gave us. The rest are still sitting on the cabinet. I might try a cookie recipe, or I might put the rest of the pulp in the freezer to use for more bread later. Any suggestions?

Pumpkin - A Pioneer Cook's Treasure

2008-12-08T17:31:00.000-08:00

"Almanzo ate the sweet, mellow baked beans. He ate the bit of salt pork that melted like cream in his mouth. He ate mealy boiled potatoes, with brown ham-gravy. He ate the hame. He bit deep into velvety bread spread with sleek butter, and he ate the crisp golden crust. He demolished a tall heap of pale mashed turnips, and a hill of stewed yellow pumpkin. Then he sighed, and tucked his napkin deeper into the neckband of his red waist. And he ate plum preserves, and strawberry jame, and grape jelly, and spiced watermelon-rind pickles. He felt very comfortable inside. Slowly he ate a large piece of pumpkin pie." -- Farmer Boy, Laura Ingalls Wilder

One of the staples of the pioneer diet was pumpkin. Not only could it be prepared in a variety of ways, but it also was one of the few foods that could be kept for a period of time and cooked "fresh" in the era before refrigeration. Stored in a cool, dry place, a pumpkin would go for months before beginning to deteriorate.

If pumpkin pie was on the menu, however, a pioneer cook had some work to do before she could mix up the pie filling. In the rest of this article, I'll outline the process of going from pumpkin to pulp.

First, the seeds and stringy matter inside the pumpkin had to be removed. Most pioneer women probably saved the seeds, either to plant the next season or to roast as a crunchy treat. The easiest way to separate the seeds is to dive right in with one's hands -- although it's not a job for anyone who doesn't like the feeling of something slimy!

Once all the stringy insides were removed, the pioneer cook had two choices of how to prepare the pulp. She could either boil the pumpkin or roast it. To use the boiling method, the cook would cut the pumpkin into chunks.

The chunks were put in a pan with a small amount of water and simmered until they were mushy. The excess moisture was then removed from the pulp. I used a sieve, running the pulp through several times, but a pioneer cook probably would use cheesecloth or something similar.

To roast the pumpkin, large pieces would be placed in a dutch oven and set in the coals until it was soft. Although the pumpkin could be peeled first, I left the skin on - because it's fun to peel it off once the pumpkin has been roasted!

Although roasted pumpkin doesn't have as much moisture as its boiled counterpart, there is still a lot to be removed, not surprising when you consider pumpkins are 90 percent water! The more patient the cook, the more times she will drain the pulp, and the better the end product will be.

A medium-sized pumpkin like the one I worked with produces a lot of pulp, and with no way to store the processed pulp, the pioneer cook would no doubt be kept busy making everything pumpkin - pies, bread, stewed as a vegetable. Although she wouldn't have known it, she was serving her family a tremendously healthy food packed with antioxidants and beta-carotene. She was probably just glad to have something to add variety to the limited choices in their daily diet.

Thank Goodness for Maytag!

2008-12-06T18:41:00.000-08:00

Like one of my counterparts from the 19th century, I save all my laundry to wash on one day (Saturday in my case, most likely Monday in hers). I've seen articles before talking about what a chore it was to do laundry back then, but today I had an extra insight into what it really must have been like. Lately, to save on electricity, I've been hanging jeans and towels on the clothesline to dry. However, since the days have grown shorter, I have to get them on the line early or they won't have time to dry before the sun sets. This morning, I went out with a load shortly after breakfast -- and it was COLD! The temperature was probably in the 30s, which is not so bad, but there was a bit of a breeze that made it seem significantly colder. As I hurried to pin the eight pairs of jeans to the line, I thought about the women who didn't have the choice to throw their laundry in a dryer.

Now, it's possible people weren't quite so picky about hygiene on the frontier in the nineteenth century, so maybe if the weather was cold, a woman would just skip washing for that week. However, I think it's unlikely that she would be able to avoid the chore for the entire winter. So imagine what a dreadful job it would be. First, there would be all the water to haul -- from a well if you were lucky enough to have one, from the creek if you were not. There would, at least, be a fire to heat the water, although if you've been around a campfire you know your face can be burning hot while your backside is cold. Would a woman work up a sweat, even in cold weather, stirring the clothes in the tub? Her hands would be in and out of the water as she scrubbed dirty spots and as she wrung the water from the clothes. If she had dry skin like I do, before long her knuckles would no doubt be cracked from the constant change of temperature. That doesn't even take into account that she would be using lye soap rather than detergent, which if it wasn't made just right could be caustic. Once the clothes were scrubbed and wrung out, everything had to be hung out to dry, or spread over a fence or whatever was at hand if the family didn't have a clothesline. Although a little breeze would help things dry faster, it would feel quite cold to arms and hands still slightly damp from the washtub.

I'm sure washing was a job that had to be done outside, and I also imagine a woman washed only what had to be done during the winter months -- no bed linens. I'm very thankful for the machines that make it possible for me to have clean, fresh-smelling clothes and sheets year-round, with a minimum of effort on my part.

"I'll Do It Myself...."

2008-12-04T13:32:00.000-08:00

Fortunately, I won't have to "do it myself" for this blog. I'm pleased to announce that the Lil Red Hen (aka Charlotte Rowbotham) will be joining me as a contributor. Charlotte is the author of EMZ-Piney Publishing's first book, In the Shade of the White Oak. The book is a memoir of her childhood from 1941-1951. I'm discussing with her the possibility of posting an excerpt from the book over the holidays.

I look forward to seeing what the Lil Red Hen will add to our exploration of days gone by!

What's It All About?

2008-12-03T12:37:00.000-08:00

My favorite toys when I was growing up were the Johnny West action figures (of course, we called them "dolls" back then, lol). I spent a lot of hours making up all kinds of stories and acting them out with the Johnny West figures and the Barbies. The Barbies, whether they liked it or not, always had to be pioneer women, not fashion models; the Johnny West figures NEVER were transported to the 20th century! Even then, I had a passionate interest in what I think is now called "social history" -- how people lived in times past.

I never outgrew that passion. My favorite books are historical fiction, mainly about the 19th century, along with the occasional non-fiction book about some historical topic. My favorite family vacation was when we went to Fort Boonesborough in Kentucky, where they have displays of what the cabins probably looked like when people first lived in the fort and demonstrations of the skills people had to have to survive. My favorite hobbies are hiking through the woods, or sewing, or knitting, or something similar that my great-great-great-grandmothers probably did as a daily chore.

Lately I've found myself looking at things around me with that "history eye" again. When I'm hanging out clothes on the line, I think about what it must have been like for a pioneer woman to try to do her laundry without a washing machine. When I walk past the black walnuts crushed in the parking lot at work, I think about the pioneers who probably picked up and cracked out every black walnut they could find for a mid-winter's treat. Even a gloomy, cloudy morning makes me think about how very dark it must have been inside a cabin with only one window, or maybe none at all.

So that's what this blog is about. Sometimes we'll ask the question "What must it have been like?" Sometimes we'll tell the story, "Here's what it was like." Along the way, I hope we can stir that passion for things historical in a few more folks.