Our Backyard—A Place of Activities Called “Work” Before Electricity
All of my brothers and sisters certainly can identify with the many activities that happened in the backyard while we were growing up. This was in the days before our home had electricity, which I believe we received about 1939 from the Laurens Electric Cooperative. The use of electricity reshaped the lives of farm families in so many ways. Most of us think that electricity was the best thing that ever happened to us. Just think of all the things we have today that were made possible because of the availability of electricity.
Even though I was about 14 years old when electricity came to our home, I feel a sense of sorrow for those who were born before me. They had to experience many more years of their lives without the conveniences and labor-saving devices that the use of electricity made possible. I wish Mother and Dad could have lived all of their lives using the modern conveniences that electricity brought. Most of you who have never experienced life without electricity and telephones probably will never be able to appreciate them to the fullest. I will try to recall some of these backyard activities of hard work in the sections to follow.
The “Wash Place”—A Place Filled with Memories Before Electricity
The “Wash Place” was located about 10 steps from the back of our house and about half the distance between the old kitchen on the south end and the office room on the north. What was the Wash Place? There were no washing machines then, and all the family’s clothes had to be washed by hand. This was done in the backyard if the weather permitted. The Wash Place consisted of a large, round, black iron pot that held about 20 to 25 gallons of water. The pot had four short legs that usually were placed on top of some flat stones. This would raise the pot up high enough so that a wood fire could be built beneath it. The hot fire would heat the water to the boiling point.
I can recall Mother sending me on many occasions up the road to Bob Wilson’s Store to get a cake of Octagon soap and a box of Gold Dust washing powders. Wilson’s Store was located a little more than a half mile up Abner Creek Road near the church.
The operation began as Mama placed the white clothes into a large tub that was placed on a long table and filled with warm, clean water. The top of this table stood a little less than waist high, making it possible for Mama and my sisters Mildred and Irene to wash the clothes without having to bend over too far. (I remember that fairly often other women from the families that helped on the farm would be hired to do the washing, which was a great help to Mama.)
Mama then would pick up each piece of the white clothing and squeeze the dirt and water out of each article. She then would put the article back in the water and repeat this operation over and over again to further separate the dirt from the clothes. When she thought the clothes were almost clean, she would take them out of this tub and put then into the hot water in the black wash pot and stir them around with a smooth wooden stick. She never put any clothes into the wash pot until she had finished the preparation process of washing the articles and squeezing out all the dirt that she possibly could.
After the white clothes had been thoroughly stirred in the wash pot water, she would run the wooden stick under the clothes and lift them out of the pot. She would then place them in another tub of clean water that had been placed on the table. The white clothes were now ready for the final rinse. During this process Mama would use a little stick of “blueing,” which was blue in color but somehow made the clothes appear whiter than normal. I never did understand how something blue could make white clothes look whiter. After thoroughly sloshing the clothes around in the tub of clean water, Mama would again pick them up and squeeze all the water out of them that she possibly could.
Now the clothes were clean and ready to be hung on the clothesline to dry in the sunshine and fresh air. After the clothes dried, they were taken into the house to be ironed. Can you imagine all the hard work it took to get the clothes through these processes? Sometimes the weather would be burning hot, and then again it might be rather cold and windy. The good dress clothes that were worn on Sundays and special occasions had to be processed differently and handled more delicately.
The dirty work clothes were always washed last, after the nice white clothes had been processed through the various operations. By this time the water in the wash pot was not quite as clean as it was when we started. But it was still clean enough for the work clothes, such as overalls, work shirts, and “bum” jackets. Thank You, Lord, for giving us a better method for washing clothes and taking baths, as well as going to the “johnny”!
Can You Imagine Ironing Clothes Without an Electric Iron?
There was no such thing as an electric iron in our home before 1940. The irons used then were heavy and were made out of real iron. These heavy metal irons had to be heated by placing them in the hot coals of fire in the fireplace or placing them on the metal top of a hot cook stove. There was no easy way to do things back then.
Of course, the irons had no way of retaining their heat for long periods of time, and the heating process had to be repeated quite often. Ironing was, and still is, a rather labor-intensive chore that no one really likes to do. Today many women watch television while ironing, which makes the time pass faster. Back then, about all they could do while ironing was to sing some old gospel hymns. Later on, after electricity became available, they could listen to the radio. The wash-and-wear materials of today have been a blessing to mankind (or should I say womankind), along with the electric iron.
I can remember the term “battling stick.” I believe this was a flat wooden stick about 3 feet in length which was used to stir the clothes in the iron pot filled with soapy hot water. It was also used to lift the clothes out of the pot and place them into the tub of rinsing water on the wash bench. I think the name “battling stick” is fitting. If the work clothes were extra dirty, Mama would lay the wet, dirty clothes out on the wooden table in a bunch and strike then rather hard with the stick. This action helped make the dirt turn loose from the fabrics.
My brothers will remember that all the water used in the house or at the Wash Place had to be drawn from our well. Unfortunately, our well was located a distance of about 50 steps from our house and the Wash Place. The water had to be hand-carried in buckets or tin tubs. Apparently, this well was already there and was located near the historical Log House which had been the home of William and Sarah Hendrix and other ancestors since the late 1700s. This well was located about halfway between Daddy’s new home, which was built about 1915, and the barns. He chose to use this old well rather than to dig a new well closer to our house. It would be interesting to know how many steps were made between the well and our house from the time Daddy built our house in 1915 until we got an electrical water pump about 1940.
Processing Hogs at the Wash Place
The Wash Place was used for more than washing clothes. My dad raised many hogs to sell and to supply the meat for our table. We usually slaughtered several hogs each year for our family needs. Sometimes we would process one for neighbors who might not raise their own hogs.
To begin the process, we would first fill the old black wash pot with water from the well. Next, a fire was built under the 25-gallon wash pot, and the water was heated to the boiling point. Now we were ready to go to the hog pen and select the right size hog for processing. I will not go into the procedure that was necessary to get the hog ready for processing.
After the hog’s life had expired, it was carried from the hog pen to the Wash Place, usually on a wooden sled. Then real hot water from the wash pot would be poured into a 55-gallon barrel which was assembled at a 45-degree angle so the hot water would stay in the barrel. The lifeless hog was then placed into the barrel of hot water for a few minutes. The hot water was necessary to loosen the hog’s hair. The hog was then removed from the barrel so the hair could be scraped off with a butcher knife. Sometimes a sack would be placed on the hog, and hot water would be poured on the sack. This procedure softened up the hair quicker and made it easier to scrape off.
After removing the hair, a rope was attached to each hind foot. Then, by the use of a pulley attached to a strong limb on a nearby pecan tree, the hog was pulled up to a vertical position where the processing could be handled more easily. Again, I will not describe the details. When this part of the processing was complete, the meat was carried to the nearby Smokehouse. (The Smokehouse is a little house where the meat was further processed and preserved until it was ready to be prepared for the table.) The Smokehouse was so named because some people used smoke to process the hams. This process is still used today, and you may still hear the term “smoked hams” when you go to the meat market.
So much for the memories! The availability of electricity during the 1940s and thereafter brought running hot and cold water, hot water heaters, and mechanical washing machines. We wouldn’t want to go back to “the good old days” even if we could. God is so good!
“Sto-Wood Pile” and “Cook Stove” Replaced by the Electric Range
What a time it was! Use your imagination for a moment. I wish I had a real picture to show you. Just a little below the Wash Place, a distance of about 25 steps behind our house, there were two huge woodpiles. Looking a little to the right as you face where the lake is today and toward my Grandpa Hendrix’s home place back then, you would see a large pile of wood. This pile of wood was known as the “stove wood pile.” We kids thought they were saying “sto-wood,” and that is what we called it. This type wood was used in the cook stove where Mama cooked a lot of delicious meals including biscuits, fried chicken and gravy, vegetables, pies, and cakes.
And now I will try to explain just what sto-wood was, and how it was used. The source of sto-wood was pine trees that measured from about 6 inches to 12 or 15 inches in diameter. The trees had to be cut from the forest using mostly an axe. After the limbs were cut off, the long trunks of the trees, sometimes measuring 20 to 30 feet in length, were loaded on a mule-drawn wagon with the wooden body removed. Then they were transported to our backyard and stacked in a pile.
To make sto-wood, someone would have to cut those long tree trunks into 15-inch lengths using a sharp axe or hand-held crosscut saw. After cutting the logs into 15-inch lengths, which we called “blocks,” we then would lay the block upon a sturdy platform made from 3 logs. Using the axe, we first split the blocks in half, next in quarters, and then in eighths, depending on the diameter of the block.
The work was reduced considerably when Daddy contracted with a neighbor to bring a stripped-down old car to our home. The contractor would jack up the rear end of the car so the back wheels would not touch the ground. He then removed one regular rear wheel and replaced it with belt pulley. A circular fabric belt was placed around the wheel pulley and extended by the length of the belt to another stationary pulley attached to a circular saw.
When everything was in place, the contractor started the car engine and engaged the car’s gear. The back wheels began to turn. With the pulley and the belt attached to one back wheel and the belt also attached to the pulley on the circular saw, the saw began to turn. When it was determined that all the parts were securely in place, the contractor began to speed up the engine until the circular saw was spinning so fast that you could barely see the saw teeth. Two men would pick up one of the pine logs and engage it with the whirling saw. It would saw through the log in just a few seconds. This process was repeated every 15 inches until the log was completely sawed into numerous 15-inch length blocks. This gasoline-powered machine manned by two men could do in half a day the amount of work that it would have taken the same two men a month to complete. Thank the Lord for the invention of the wheel, pulley, belt, and the gasoline engine.
As stated previously, the sto-wood was used in a wood-burning cook stove. Remember we did not have any electricity for electric ranges or natural or propane gas to operate gas ranges. The wood-burning cook stove was made of iron and stood upright on four short legs in the kitchen. There was a firebox in the stove’s bottom compartment which had a door on the front. The firebox was usually located on the left-hand side.
We placed some wood inside the firebox and started a fire. To help start the fire, we placed old newspapers underneath the wood or poured a little kerosene on top of the wood before striking a match and placing it on the flammable materials. Sometimes we would hear about some people making the terrible mistake of using the wrong can and using gasoline instead of kerosene to start or rekindle the fire. This usually resulted in an explosion, sometimes causing serious injury to the person and occasionally the burning of the house.
The cook stove had a flat metal surface and 3 or 4 round flat metal eyes positioned similar to the eyes on our electric ranges today. If the sap had dried out of the wood, the fire would burn furiously. The metal surface on top of the stove would heat up in a hurry, and the metal would show a red glow. Now you were ready to cook much like you would on an electric range using your pots and frying pans. On the right-hand side, there was an oven about the size of the ovens on electric ranges today. The heat from the firebox also heated the oven and made it possible to cook biscuits and cornbread and to bake cakes.
The heat from the wood stove was almost unbearable during the hot summer months. The temperature in the kitchen would reach well over 100 degrees, and there were no electric fans. How did our mothers and grandmothers endure this extreme heat? You can bet there was a lot of love. In the cold wintertime, the heat from the cook stove was welcomed because it helped warm the house and kept Mama warm while she was cooking on those cold mornings. It also kept us children warm while we were eating at the kitchen table.
The older boys and hired farm laborers did the job of cutting the trees and hauling them to the backyard and converting the trees into sto-wood. The younger children like Everette and me had the burden of gathering up armloads of the sto-wood and carrying it into the side porch adjacent to the kitchen. Here it was handy for Mama to use. The woodpile was probably as large and as high as a good-size room. You can imagine how many loads of wood we had to “tote” to the side porch.
Farm boys were great inventors. Everette and I rigged up an old straight chair and somehow managed to put an axle and two wheels under it. Now we could load up the chair with a large amount of wood and roll it to the side porch. When we arrived at the side porch, we would have to pull the chair, loaded with wood, up about three steps. Finally, we were on the porch, and we unloaded the wood at the final destination. Even though this was a lot of work for little boys, it was much more fun than gathering wood in our arms and walking to the porch. The chair did not have a motor, but that was not a problem. We always made the sound of a running engine with our mouth to make us think we had a motorized vehicle.
Thank the Lord Again for Electricity—“A New Day”
In order for it to be feasible for Laurens Electric Cooperative to run the power line down our road, each household had to sign a contract agreeing to purchase certain appliances that would use the electricity. Of course, the first requirement was that the house would be wired and the homeowner would use electricity to light the home. It was very difficult for most families to purchase appliances because we were in the midst of the great economic downturn known as the Great Depression of the 1930s. However, with the excitement of the possibility of getting electric lights most landowners went out on the limb, so to speak, and made at least one or two purchases.
I can remember we purchased an electric range, which after electric lights, was our number-one need. What a great day! No more sto-wood to cut and handle! No more extreme hot kitchen temperatures for Mama while cooking the meals. The second appliance priority was a refrigerator. What a wonderful invention! This machine would really turn water into ice.
Now we could have ice tea more often. Before this time, the block ice that we purchased from the Greer Ice Plant would give out, which stopped the ice tea making. I can still remember the smell of the warm tea just after Mama had finished making it. She placed it on the little shelf on the side back porch to cool. The shelf was just across the porch from where the old wooden icebox was located.
The “Old Wooden Icebox” Replaced by the Electric Refrigerator
My brothers and sisters will remember this wooden icebox. The box did not have any cooling system, but all the inside surface of the box was lined with some type of metal insulation that helped to slow the melting of the ice. Of course, the ice cooled the inside of the box, which allowed it to serve the purpose similar to a refrigerator, but not as cold. While we had adequate ice, Mama could keep some perishable items in this icebox instead of taking them down to the cool spring of water located on the branch behind our house.
The old wooden icebox probably would hold about a 50-pound block of ice. The ice truck from the Greer Ice Company was operated by Stanley Jackson. He would come by once a week in the summertime from Greer to supply our ice needs. Stanley would split off the right size block of ice and put it in our icebox on the side porch. This meant we were going to have some good ice tea again.
On special occasions, like Mama’s birthday, which was on July 4th, we might get an extra block of ice for making ice cream. Sometimes this extra block of ice would not fit into the icebox. We would wrap it up in a couple of clean burlap sacks, dig a hole in a pile of cottonseed, drop the ice in it, and cover it over with cottonseed. This would insulate the ice from the hot outside temperatures and thus preserve it until we got the ice cream made.
Before electricity and the refrigerator, some people would put milk and butter in the well bucket and let it down to the bottom of the well. Here it was cooler, and the temperature remained constant. I also remember carrying milk and butter to a spring on the branch behind our house and placing the bucket into the cool spring water. This kept the milk and butter from spoiling. The spring was located about where the earthen dam for the lake is today. The spring of water was always interesting. Most of the time we would see some crawfish or spring lizards that made their home there.
The “Firewood Pile” Supplied the Fire in the “Open Fireplace”
Over to our left, at the back of the house, was a smaller pile of wood which was known as the “firewood pile.” This type of wood was cut also into short lengths of about 18 to 24 inches so that it would fit into the open fireplace. It was always referred to as “firewood.” This stack of logs was cut from the hardwood variety of trees, such as oak, which was the best type. Other hardwoods that were burned in the fireplace were sweet gum, poplar, hickory, and black gum. We always tried to have some hardwood logs hauled up when the man with the power saw came to saw the pine logs into sto-wood lengths. We made every effort to have the hardwood logs sawed into the fireplace lengths using the gasoline-powered circular saw. There was so much less labor and so much time saved compared to using the ax.
Of course, getting the firewood into the porch near the fireplace was still the job for Everette and me. When the wood was freshly cut and had not dried out, it was very heavy. We couldn’t carry too many sticks of wood in our arms or on our newly invented chair with the two wheels.
We eventually stopped using the fireplace method of heating the house and switched to a wood-burning space heater called “Warm Morning.” This space heater was hooked up to the chimney across the hall in the room known as the “parlor” at one time. The heater didn’t have a thermostat, and it wasn’t easily regulated. Later on, Mom and Dad installed an oil-burning space heater, which eliminated all that firewood cutting and handling.
The “Fireplace” Replaced by an “Oil-Fired Central Heating System”
After all of the kids were married and had moved out, Mom and Dad put in a central oil heating furnace with a thermostat and air ducts running to each room. This automatic control was made possible because Laurens Electric Cooperative made electricity available at our house. We had no idea that my brother Bill and I would both serve as Trustees or Directors for this consumer-owned electric company in years to come.
No more fires to start. No more wood to haul, cut, and “tote” in! No more throwing wood on the fire to keep it from going out! No more ashes to take out! Just set the thermostat to the desired temperature and forget it. What a life! I wished Mama and Daddy could have had this all their lives. O what a wonderful world we live in today!
Laurens Electric Cooperative Ran Power to Our House
Life was so much easier after we got electricity in 1939. My dad installed a Myers water pump about 1940. Oh, what difference electricity made at our house on the family farm. Duke Power Company power lines were a mile or two away from our house, but they had refused to run a power line down our road because they said it would be too expensive. They said there were not enough houses, and it would not be profitable to their company.
However, it wasn’t long until the Lord began to take care of the poor farm families. Under the direction of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, legislation was passed in the United States Congress creating the Rural Electrification Act about the middle 1930s. This legislation, known as the REA, provided a program that began to build and run power lines to the rural areas of this country. The Laurens Electric Cooperative was created under this program and covered much of the rural territory of Laurens, Spartanburg, and Greenville counties, including our home.
This was probably the most important thing that ever happened to rural America and changed farm life drastically after 1940. I think we can safely say that because of the availability of electricity more progress has been made from 1940 to 2010 than in the previous two thousand years. I wonder what it will be like in another fifty years.
What Change Electricity Made in Our Lives!
Can you imagine life without electricity? What was it like? The first fourteen years of my life, and even more years for my brothers and sisters, were lived without the conveniences provided by electricity. We carried kerosene lamps from room to room. We studied by lamplight, we ate by the lamplight, and we went to the barn and Outhouse with the light of a lantern. At night we had to carry our light wherever we went. Can you imagine a bunch of kids sitting around a dining room table trying to study with one little kerosene lamp in the middle of the table? Today children have their own light and sometimes their own room to study in.
Getting electricity at our house was one of the “highlights” of my life. Just flipping the switch or pulling the cord to see a beautiful light bulb light up was wonderful. We had a light fixture that covered the living room light bulb, and the glow was just fantastic. Just think, a light in every room. No more lamps to fill with kerosene and light up with a match. No more lamps to carry from room to room. No more glass lamp chimneys to wash or wipe out clean with a newspaper. No more trying to find something in the dark. This happened over seventy years ago, but I remember it just like yesterday.
After we got the lights about 1939, our family purchased a small radio for Christmas. Just plug it in, turn the knob, and hear someone speak. It was amazing. We could hear the Lone Ranger calling out to his white horse named Silver. A lot of people liked to listen to Little Orphan Annie and Daddy Warbucks. When the news reporter Lowell Thomas came on, all the children had to be quiet so Daddy could hear the latest news. I’m sure some of you can remember these wonderful times. I can recall that most every family would stop what they were doing to listen to two fifteen-minute radio programs at night. Amos ’n Andy and “Kingfish” came on at 7:00 p.m. followed by Lum and Abner at the Jot ’em Down Store at 7:15 p.m. Families who didn’t have a radio would walk a mile to a neighbor’s house just to hear these continuing comedy programs.
Even before we got electricity, a wire was run through the country and was connected to a receiving box in some houses that allowed people to hear some of the programs. I have been told that the “sending station” was located in Laurens, South Carolina. It has been related to me that the sending station was located in the home of the grandfather of our own David Wasson, who is the current and long-time manager of our Laurens Electric Cooperative.
You had only one station. You could only listen to whatever the base station sent over the wires. I still have one of the receiving boxes that were so prominent in the 1930s. The system was known as “the grapevine” and was probably so named because the same wire was used to let grapevines run on. The grapevine didn’t run by our house. We had to go two miles to my older brother Bill’s house to listen. Bill lived in Grandpa Wilson’s home place at that time.
The greatest thing about the radio (run by electricity) was that my brother Everette and I could hear the baseball World Series. The World Series would come on the radio in the afternoon in October while we were picking cotton. It was about the year 1940. My brother Everette and I would plug in the radio up on the screened back porch and turn the volume up as loud as it would go to tune into the World Series station. We would get our cotton picking sacks, called “laps,” and go pick cotton on the rows nearest the house. Of course, in order to hear the crucial plays, we would have to stop picking cotton sometimes and cup our hand behind our ears. We would stay bent over so it would appear that we were still picking cotton all the time.
Because of electricity we got running water piped into the house. No more drawing water from the well! We thought we had died and gone to heaven! Because of electricity we got a bathroom about 1940. We didn’t have to go to the Outhouse anymore. We just let the spiders take over the Outhouse. In the outhouses, there were times when we would have to clean the spider webs off the hole where we were planning to sit down. How we ever survived without getting bitten by a black widow spider I’ll never know.
The Outhouse is still standing today but not in operation. It still doesn’t have running water or a light bulb. My grandson Wes Fisher recently renovated the old worn structure and improved its appearance greatly to retain it as a part of history.
How did we take a bath? Not very well! Most everyone used a small metal pan called a “wash pan.” We would fill the pan about one-half full of water, which amounted to about one-half gallon. In the wintertime we would heat the water on the kitchen stove in a metal container known as a kettle. In the summertime we used the water straight out of the water bucket, which was at room temperature. Can you imagine taking a bath today in one-half gallon of water? Of course, we used a cake of soap and a washcloth, which we called a “washrag,” and a towel. There was no such place as a bathroom, so we had to find privacy anywhere we could. In the summertime, I can remember using the “backroom” which was our bedroom or another place known as the “Little Back Porch.” In the wintertime, we tried to find a little privacy around the glowing fireplace or the kitchen stove. I know the present generation will have a hard time trying to visualize all of these proceedings.