Marlene
My dad's mother wrote down many stories about
her life. She was a school teacher, a farmer's wife and a mother of two. This
story is about her life before age 10, from 1909 to 1918, in the northwest part
of Michigan's lower peninsula. I've transcribed her stories as she wrote
them into an electronic format so they can be shared. I hope you enjoy
reading it.
Cathryn
Memories of my Early Life (Before 10)
By Bertrice Irene Leffel Hallett, February 16, 1983
(c) 2010 by Cathryn Hallett Hondros
My Father: Guy Wellington Leffel
My Mother: Bertha May Chubb Leffel daughter of George L. Chubb and Amanda (Ann) Hinchman Chubb, and granddaughter of Alonzo Chubb and Elizabeth Sutherland Chubb
For a person who died so young (December 24, 1918), my Mother was such a well rounded woman. I can’t remember her failing in anything. But of course, children always see only the good things about their mother who they love so much.
Our mother, no more than 30 years old when she died, was an excellent cook. Things always were so tasty. There were no prepared foods then; everything was made from “scratch”. I especially remember warm dark chocolate pudding made from flour, cocoa, milk, vanilla and sugar cooked real thick, then served with ice cold milk. (Milk with the cream left in.) We’d have it for supper.
Mother had to cook for threshers, too. If we had fried chicken, they weren’t bought like Kentucky Fried Chicken or bought at the store all cleaned and cut up. We had to chase down young roosters. Pop had to chop their heads off. The chickens would flop around for a while and then lie still. Mother would scald them with feathers on by dipping them in a pail of scalding water, then lay them out to cool somewhat. Then she would pull off their feathers, take out the guts, then cut them into serving pieces and put in cold water to draw out any blood. Then she’d dry off the water, salt and pepper the pieces, roll them in flour and fry in lard and butter or in thick cream that she browned first. Sometimes father shot either quail or squirrel for a meal, sometimes for breakfast.
When we walked to a country school carrying a tin lunch pail our mother often had to fry chicken early in the a.m. and lay a piece on the top of the lunch before she put on the lid. Sometimes mother would mix some Karo syrup with peanut butter for our sandwiches. We usually had an apple or canned fruit sauce, too.
Mother would also churn our butter from the cream that she had obtained from the separator. The cream kept cool daily in the well. She would put the thick cream in a crockery butter churn. There was a wooden dasher that reached down into the cream and extended through a hole upwards. To make butter she would pull the dasher up and down till she felt the cream getting very thick and then it would turn to butter, gathering in large chunks in the buttermilk. She would then take off the lid and with a butter paddle (wooden) lift it into a wooden butter bowl. She would work it with the paddle to get every bit of the buttermilk out (pouring off the buttermilk as it accumulated) leaving solid butter. If the day were hot, she’d used some ice from the ice house, in the bowl to keep it solid as she worked with it. After buttermilk was out, she’d salt it and if it were winter she might add a few drops of orange butter coloring and work it in evenly. (In summer the cream was more yellow due to the green grass the cows ate.) The butter was put in a crock or for company dinner, sometimes mother would make small fancy prints with a design on it from wooden molds or prints. Sometimes butter was sold at the local stores to help buy needed groceries. Other times the collected hen’s eggs were given in exchange for groceries.
The buttermilk wasn’t wasted either. Sometimes people liked to drink it cold. Again it was used to make cake, pancakes or cornbread or biscuits. If there was too much it wasn’t wasted, but the pigs got some along with the separated skim milk. This was mixed with a dry, ground grain mixture and put in the trough, The pigs really “pitch in” making lots of noise and getting so enthused they’d often put a front foot or so in the trough. I guess that’s where the expression came from “eating or acting like a pig.”
Mother also made her own carpeting. She would cut strips of cotton material in various colors and hand sew them together making them into large ball as large as your head or bigger. When a great number of balls were finished, she would take them to a man who wove them into long strips of carpeting about one yard wide. Mother would hand sew these strips together so she would have a carpet to fit our living room. Mother and father would put down clean straw (from our threshing) down on the floor as a pad, and then they’d use a stretcher to make the carpet real tight. After they would use carpet tacks to keep it in place. If the carpet got too dirty after a year or two, it would have to be ripped up, then strips washed, rinsed and hung on the line for drying and then again sewed together and put down.
Sometimes Mother or Grandmother would sew either all wool or cotton strips into a long string and then crochet them into circular rugs, sometimes with an all one color stripe or two.
On wash day, first water was pumped by hand for the rinses. Rain water was heated on the range stove, carried to the washing machine that was turned by hand and wrung by hand, too. Sometimes the white clothes were put in a boiler on the stove and boiled, (supposedly to make them whiter).
Father and Mother butchered and then cut up and cured their own pork meat (about 4 animals). Father would have a neighbor come over and they would build a hot fire under big black iron kettles that were filled with water.
The animals were usually shot, then stuck with a sharp knife in the throat. (We girls would usually put our fingers in our ears so we couldn’t hear them shoot the animals.) After the animals bled well, they would drag them over and put them into the kettles, then quickly take them out and lay them on long tables to scrape them clean of any hair or bristles leaving the skin, pinky white. Then the pig was slit and gutted and washed in cold water until clean and the blood gone. Then the heads were cut off and the carcasses hung up until next day so that the cooled properly. (Butchering was done in cold weather, as a rule.)
Next day they were cut in pieces – hams, shoulders, bacon strips. Nothing was wasted. The liver, heart, head was used. Sometimes liver and heart was given to neighbors. The head was cleaned and cooked and made into a cold meat called head cheese. The meat was cooked, put into a food chopper, then into a loaf pan. Some cooked liquid from the meat poured over it, then pressed down with a weight. The gelatin from the cooked bones would jelly and hold the meat together. Of course seasonings would be put in as it was mixed before pressing. Sometimes the legs were cut into chunks, cooked and pickled and we called them pickled pig’s feet.
Some of the small intestines were emptied, (scraped and scraped) and cleaned and washed and used to hold the ground sausage meat after sage, salt and pepper were mixed in. Then the sausage would be smoked (at home). Without freezing or refrigerators (as today) the sausage would be partly fried then put into cans and the hot lard poured over it to seal. When it was used at some later date, the sausages were forked out of lard into a frying pan and fried until golden brown to be eaten with pancakes.
Father raised sorghum corn and had sorghum molasses made from it. We used either this or honey (from bee hives on the farm) on our pancakes along with our homemade butter. (Sometimes Karo syrup.) If the weather was extra cold some sausage was kept fresh in the cool well.
The hams, shoulders and sides were cured with a mixture of brown sugar, salt, pepper and salt petre. This mixture was thoroughly rubbed into the meat and the meat lay on long tables a few days then turned and the procedure was repeated several times. After the meat was satisfactorily cured, a new cheesecloth was wrapped around each piece. A wire was put through the smaller end then it was hung in a small closed building (called a smokehouse). A fire was then made of hickory chips on the ground within the building. It was smothered so it would only smoke the meat. (Taking in the smoky essence for a few days), the smoked flavor went clear through to the bones. After this, the meat was hung in a very cold place, perhaps the ice house or basement until used. Because of the cheesecloth, flies or insects didn’t get into the meat. Meat fixed this way had a very special flavor and taste. If you haven’t ever tasted any like this you’ve missed something very special.
We didn’t get beef so often. Once in a while a neighbor might butcher a young beef and send over a roast or a piece of steak.
Mother also helped pick fruit and preserve it. She canned applesauce and put it in one-half gallon size tin Karo syrup pails. Then she would put on the lids real tight and dip the pails upside down in hot, melted paraffin to seal them. When we left the farm to go to Copemish, Michigan to live with Grandma Chubb for the winter (while our dad and grandpa worked in War plants in Muskegon winter 1918, wartime), mother took some of this canned applesauce along for winter.
We had a big blue Concord grape orchard my dad had planted. It seemed in those days things didn’t need to be sprayed so much as there weren’t as many insects.
Mother would take Ardath 12 and Bertrice 10 and a large milk pail and go back to the rear wooded section of our farm to pick wild black and red raspberries. She would pick both colors into the same pail. Sometimes we’d get the big pail full. She’d serve us some fresh, with separated cream, then she’d make jam or can the remainder. Once when mother had the big milk pail about full of berries we heard an animal (a bear we thought) make a loud noise in the woods and mother hurried to get out, climbed over a fallen log, and spilled nearly all of her berries.
This time Ardath and I (Bertrice) got tired of helping pick berries and we wandered over to cleared land. We saw a hole in a fence post and looked in. It was a bird’s nest with eggs in it. To our surprise a snake was coiled in the nest eating the eggs.
Another day in July or thereabouts, Pop, Mom and us children would ride in the wagon with just the boards across, take a basket of lunch and perhaps milk or lemonade and go back to the hills and pick wild huckleberries. They were darker than blueberries and somewhat smaller, but sweeter. They grew on bushes close to the ground. Our father would also do some fishing while the berries were picked. We’d spend the greater part of a day. The fish would be cleaned and fried at home. We really had to look out for the bones so we wouldn’t get one caught in our throats.
Mother also grew rhubarb for sauce.
Father would also take the wagon and several crates in late summer or autumn and go several miles away and pick several bushels of peaches to can. After he picked and paid for the peaches, the owner would let him pick up from the ground several bushels free. Mother used these for making peach butter or jam. The neighbors would ask him to bring some for them also.
In the fall Ardath and Bertrice would be enlisted to help pick up potatoes for a few cents per bushel. Father dug them with a fork throwing two rows together in the center. We girls might earn as much as fifty cents per day. We would use this as spending money, perhaps buying some little trinket or dish.
Father would sell some bushels of potatoes in town or trade for groceries or needed supplies. The remainder of the crop would be put in deep pits in the ground. These pits were lined with straw and would keep the potatoes from freezing and in good condition even till next spring. Perhaps carrots, turnips, vegetable oysters, etc. would be put into the pits, too. These were dug up and sold when the price seemed right. Some were shipped and some were used for cooking and some for seed potatoes in the Spring.
Now and then Father would take a bushel or two of summer yellow transparent apples into Mesick (a small town) and trade for groceries. Perhaps only getting a couple of dollars for two bushels.
Father also planted about ½ acre of cucumbers. We girls (10 and 12 years) would have to get up early in the a.m. while dew was still on the vines and pick them. They would be sorted into tiny ones, dill pickle size and “so on”. Father would haul them (by team) to Mesick, Michigan. Heinz Pickle Co. had large round tanks of salt water beside the railroad tracks. The farmers would drive up, pour their crates of cucumbers into the brine and get paid quite a bit for the tiny ones, but then, there wouldn’t be so many of them either. Mother would use some of the cucumbers for slicing and canned pickles. Father would have from ½ to 1 acre of cucumber vines and we girls dreaded picking them perhaps twice a week.
Another chore we girls had to do early after milking was to take the cows back to pasture. Sometimes we’d grab the cows by the tail and switch the cows getting them to run real fast. Sometimes to our misfortune, the cows would relieve themselves and we, going so fast, would have to step in it barefoot. We weren’t allowed to run the cows when bringing them up from pasture at night before milking time as that was supposed to keep them from releasing so much milk.
Another chore we had was to gather and bring in wood chips (where Pop had chopped the wood for our stoves.) These chips were used as kindling to start the fire in the heating stove in the living room and the wood range in the kitchen.
Another chore was to gather the eggs each day. Sometimes an old hen would peck us as we reached under the for eggs.
Mother also sewed most of our dresses. At one time she sent away by catalogue for white embroidery cloth to make us Easter dresses. When the material arrived, she was disappointed with the material, but because the time was short, she made dresses anyway. We girls looked real “Eastery” in them. Usually, in those days, girls wore long black stockings with all clothes.
Many times we children went barefoot and wore shoes only for “dress ups.” That made us a chore of washing our feet in summer in a basin of water on the back porch before we went to bed. It seemed, because we were barefoot so much, it was difficult to get into our shoes when we needed to. They seemed tight.
Also on Saturday night we took our weekly bath. Of course, with no inside plumbing, we heated a big wash tub of water on the wood range. In winter, mother filled the tub “sky high” with snow and let it melt and warm. We didn’t have to pump it, but enjoyed soft water. One after another we used the same tub of water, which had been placed in the middle of the kitchen floor. Then up to bed with one of us carrying a kerosene lamp. The upstairs was always very chilly as the rooms were warmed only by the heating stove in the living room and the kitchen range.
On Sundays we always attended the next door country school which was used as a Sunday school and church. Sometimes Mother made a big cake and took over to the Sunday school for an ice cream social (homemade Ice Cream, of Course). When we had socials at Sunday School, we young people played singing games outside.
I remember one time when a little child had died in the neighborhood, mother went out to her flower garden and gathered a pretty bouquet of flowers and arranged then in a cut glass basket and had us girls carry them down to the home (more than a mile away) for the funeral.
One time after church we all drove into Mesick to the Manistee River and our minister at the Country Schoolhouse baptized some people. I think my mother was one of them.
At regular school at recess time, we played ball, Anti-I-Over (woodshed), Run Sheep Run, Fox and Geese in the Snow, made Angel Prints by lying down in the snow banks and spreading our arms up and down to make wing shapes on the angels, also Hide & Seek and Pom Pom Pull Away, Come Away or I’ll Fetch You Away.
For Thanksgiving and Xmas, if we went to Grandma Leffel’s, we’d go “Over the River and Through the Woods” in a sleigh box pulled by a team. In the box would be fresh straw and a couple of comforters and we children would lie down and cover up to keep warm. Mother and father would sit up in front on the spring seat braving the cold wind and driving the team. It would be closer to go through the woods and often the snow would be less deep.
If we stayed at home on Christmas, father would take his ax and go into the woods and cut us a nice tree. We would decorate it with strung popcorn and perhaps some paper chains we had made. There were few gifts – maybe a doll with homemade clothes, some warm mittens or clothes and an orange for a treat (we didn’t get oranges very often.)
One time our folks let Ardath and I drive one horse hitched to the buggy to Bagnell a few (3 or 4) miles distant alone to get some groceries. The stores in those days were much different from today. Everything was in large containers like wooden barrels (of cookies), peanut butter was dipped into paper containers and sold by the pound. Lard and sugar was weighed as you watch. People bought flour by 25 or 50 or 100 pound bags (gunny sack material). People traded eggs, apples and the like for groceries. We had an itemized list of groceries to buy (we girls) and were told we could have the money left after paying for the groceries to buy candy. Storekeeper was out of some of the things, so of course, being children with not that much judgment, we came home with lots of candy.
When the family rode anywhere in the buggy, Mother and Father rode in the seat and perhaps a child or so between them or on Mother’s lap. There was no protection from the sun, wind or dust. I guess these kind of things kept us tough. Ard and I usually sat on a board facing our parents near their feet.
One time our folks left us at some friends of theirs named Meyers while they went to town. Ardath told these folk she was getting new shoes for “going away” as she had only shoes to “stay home” now.
One time when we were all eating watermelon, brother Russell (5 years) wanted some and Bertrice said “Oh, no! I’m only eatin’ it, cuz it waste-ess.”
Russell less than 4 or 5 years old used to like our little yellow ducklings on the farm. He really loved them and we’d have to watch him as he’d pick them up and hold them with fingers around their neck and they would choke because he held them too tightly. When the duck was dead, Russell would show his father and say, “Papa, ducky seepy.” (Sleepy).
There wasn’t much money for boughten toys in those days. We improvised and made our own toys and fun which probably taught us a lot. Ard and I made a Ford car from a table leaf and an old wagon body. We wrote “Ford” on the back. That was the only kind of car there was then (1917). We would put up the tongue of the wagon (car), sit on our “car” and coast down the hill. We made a playhouse in the back of our “grainery” (where we kept grain). We had an old fashioned old couch and an old table and some chairs that had been apple crates. For a telephone we used some tin cans and lids with a longer can for the receiver which had a string attached. Of course the telephone was nailed to the wall. (This was an old fashioned wall telephone that had a crank which you rang to get central.) They in turn called your party. Many nosey neighbors would “listen in” to the real telephone conversations and get the neighborhood news.
Another thing father made us to play on was a “whirly-gig”. He cut off the top of a big tree that was in the shade. On the top of the stump he bored a deep hole. He put a long plank across the top of this stump. It also had a hole in the center to match the stump hole. He put a long bolt through the plank into the stump. We would teeter totter on this and someone would push us around like a “Merry-go-Round.”
A place we would play was up above the cow stable. The roof was low and our father would put threshed bean pods above the cow stable ceiling to keep the cows warm in winter. Then there was the high barn roof over this. This made a small enclosed room and would be go up there and play. It was a “hide-a-way” I guess.
And we also played (in the summer) in the center of a large lilac bush out near the front road.
We got a newspaper perhaps once a week in the mail. That is how we found out World War I was over. When we heard this our whole school and teacher went to town (Mesick) to celebrate. We took kettles and pans and beat on them as we paraded up and down the streets. Then we went to a place where a gunny sack dummy of Kaiser William was hung by a rope, then a fire was made under him. To get money for World War I (1918), one neighbor was appointed by a government agency to go to each home to get farmers to buy War Bonds of different denominations.
Our mother was a very kind, loving, and sensitive person. One night I (Bertrice) couldn’t get to sleep as
a friend of my mother’s had died and my mother was upset. This kept me awake after retiring. Our mother came upstairs to see if we were covered and asleep. She found me still awake and I told her I couldn’t sleep because I was thinking about death and dying. She quickly went downstairs and brought me up a peeled orange. (We didn’t get oranges that much and that did the “trick”. I soon was fast asleep.)
The land was poor and very sandy up where we lived, north of Cadillac, Michigan. Newly cleared woodlands raised pretty good crops – beans, potatoes, corn, grain, sorghum; but if there was little rain the crops dried up easily. Our father said either frost or lack of rain or grasshoppers seemed to get the crops so much, it was difficult to make much money. If there was a big crop of potatoes or navy beans, the prices were very low.
Father usually milked from four to six cows and had perhaps two or three horses. One horse was old and had trouble getting up if he lay down. So father wanted Ard to warn him very quickly if it looked like the horse was going to lie down. If it happened, father had a heavy canvas rigging that he put around the horse’s belly and back. This canvas aid was attached to a pulley that was fastened to the ceiling beams so the horse could be raised to a standing position. Father would hurry and put this on the horse before he lay down if possible.
Snow got very deep in winter on the farm and Pop would shovel a tunnel from our house way down hill to the barn. When he walked down to milk and to do the chores all we could see of my father was the top of his hat.
As I look back you would think that our life was very crude on uninteresting and dull.
This didn’t seem to be so. Country folk at that time were very sociable, kind, considerate of one another’s families. They were helpful, generous with the little they had. They were so busy with their many tasks just to keep food on the table and keep the household going. Most everything was homemade, even presents, largely. We had many picnics, wedding parties, Sunday School and church socials, the County Fair where farmers and their wives took their best produce and homemade fancy work and competed for prizes. Family members were close. Many things were done together as a family. The neighbors were so cooperative. Men came and helped when the barn was to be raised or house built or threshing or butchering to be done. And the women came to help with the cooking.
We would have taffy pulls at the neighbors’. At one I remembered a little girl getting the taffy stuck to her hands. She put it on the floor and stepped on it to get loose.
One neighbor owned the first car in the neighborhood. His wife was very proud and sat very tall as she rode down the road looking to the right and to the left hoping people would notice her. But one day, the same woman invited my sister Ardath and I to ride the Ford thirty miles to the County Fair for the day at Cadillac, Michigan.
One man cut hair well and children and men would walk to his house and he cut a head of hair at almost no expense. Women didn’t have short hair then.
The schoolteachers usually boarded at one of the more prosperous farmer’s places.
Sometimes a covered and enclosed wagon of gypsies would stop down the road. They wore loud, loose clothes with gaudy earrings and scarves tied around their heads. They’d come to the door and beg for foodstuff like potatoes, eggs, vegetables, fruit, chickens, etc.
Sometimes while one gypsy was at the front door talking, another was out back stealing something. They would stop off in the woods, cook and sleep and then go on down the road.
Another visitor might be tramps or peddlers. They (one at a time) would come to the door and ask to have a meal and perhaps stay all night. They would have a pack on their back. They would open the pack and if they were in the mood and had been fed or housed for the night, perhaps give the woman some of their goods. If the food was not liked they would complain about it.
Another thing I must put down is a surprise we gave our parents. They had gone to town. Ardath and I thought we’d surprise them when they returned. We took off the glass shades from the kerosene lamps to wash while they were still hot from use, as they would get so blackened up from burning. And as we put them in cold water, of course they broke in many pieces. Our parents were really surprised. We probably got a good spanking or scolding, too. I can’t remember.
I also remember the most sad time when our whole family, mother, grandmother and uncle had the flu at once. It was the day before Xmas, December 24, 1918. Father Guy and Grandpa Chubb had gone to Muskegon, Michigan to work in the war plant for the winter. Men with children were excused from war service, but must work in war plants. Our mother and us four children were living with my Grandma Chubb for the winter. My uncle, Ira Chubb, about twenty years, was still at home there, too. We all got the flu. At that time nobody knew what to do for the flu, not even the doctor. It was a new disease. They only gave us quinine. We had one nurse, but she was to care for my Grandmother in her room. My Uncle Ira was sick in his bedroom. Mother lay in her bed in another bedroom. We four children 2, 5, 10, 12 years old lay on a common cot with both sides up in the same room. We were all so sick, but there was no one to help us. Several times Ardath, my older sister, and I (Bertrice) sat up in bed and tried to dress so we could get up, but we always had to lay back down – we were too sick.
Finally, my father Guy and my Grandfather Chubb cane home because they too, had contracted the flu. My father was real sick, but he stayed up and tried to cook something and help us. Of course there was no bathroom facilities then and water had to be pumped outside. Mother was pregnant (about four months) and she died Christmas Eve. Father Guy woke us children up and asked if we wanted to see our mother before they took her away. We children sat up and looked across at her. Her mouth was wide open. That was the last time we saw our dear mother. I hope to see her in Heaven some day.
One half hour later that night in the same house my Mother’s Mother (Grandma Chubb) died, too, just one-half hour before midnight. The next day (Christmas) my Uncle Ira died in the same house. So the three of them in less than twenty-four hours.
There were no funerals, they didn’t allow them for fear the flu epidemic would spread, People were dying like flies, We lived on the bend of the road to the cemetery. The road had continual processions going to the cemetery. We saw it all.
We had a bleak Xmas Day. It was snowing hard with large fleecy snowflakes coming down, I remember I stood at the window watching the snowflakes falling so gently and thought of a poem we had memorized a short time before at school there in Copemish, Michigan. It was called “The First Snowfall.”
The First Snowfall
The snow had begun in the gloaming,
And busily through the night
Had been heaping field and levy
With a silence deep and white.
Up spoke our own little Mable saying
“Father who makes it snow?”
And I told of the good All Father
Who cares for us here below.
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