Jess grew up in a log house. The neighbors all got together and helped her folks construct the house out of logs cut from the trees on their newly-homesteaded property of 120 acres. One of the twelve babies died shortly after birth, but eleven grew up on that homestead and helped their folks with all the house and farm chores.
I grew up in a ready-made house with a mortgage, which my parents paid on monthly for many years. We just had one small lot in Davis, with a front yard and a back yard-- no 120 acres to explore or care for. And there were only four of us, counting Mom and Dad.
Jess grew up in a house with a log-burning stove that was used for both cooking and warming the house. Someone in the family had the job of cutting down trees and chopping the logs for use in the stove. Pa had the job, until the boys were old enough to take over this task. There was no such thing as air conditioning in Jess’s youth, except for the wind and snow that nature provided. The Lemon children loved to play on the snowy hills, build snowmen and have snowball fights.
We had a gas stove used primarily for cooking. In the summer, we hated to use the oven; it produced more heat in the already hot kitchen that had a westerly sun beating in the windows at dinnertime. Just like Jessie Belle, we had no air conditioning; I remember the first air conditioning in Davis was in the cow barns at the University campus. In winter, we heated the house primarily with the central heating system. We had no snow to play in during the cold winter winds, unlike Jess and her siblings. We did have a fireplace that burned logs that my dad bought from anyone who advertised logs for sale. Occasionally, he might have to chop a few to make them fit in the fireplace, but most were ready to burn. I don’t think my brother ever had the opportunity to chop even part of a log. Our fireplace was more aesthetic than functional, as it actually drew heat from the living room up and out the chimney. But it was great fun to sit in front of the fire in winter; we told stories and popped corn with our hand-held screened popper, which we shook over the fire to keep the kernels from burning and turning to soot.
Jess and I both adored our mothers and never considered it a chore to help them around our homes. Housework varied a great deal from her farm in Minnesota in the early 1900s and my house in Davis in the 1950s.
Jess’s family had no indoor plumbing, so washing clothes meant that someone had to pump water into a bucket outside, haul it into the kitchen and heat it on the wood stove. Clothes were washed by hand on a washboard, using lye soap that had been made at home. We had indoor plumbing, an electric washer and a clothes line outside for nice days, and a clothes line in the basement for rainy days. We bought our detergent at the grocery store. At Jess’s house, the clothes were hung outside on the line in good weather to dry in the sun. In winter, they hung the clothes in the house on a line strung across the kitchen.
At Jess’s house, cleaning the floor meant sweeping the dirt outside with a homemade broom, then scrubbing the floor on your hands and knees with a bucket of heated water and a brush. Because we had carpet in most of the house, we pulled out the Hoover vacuum, plugged it into the electric outlet and ran it over the rugs. When we wanted to clean the bathroom and kitchen floors that didn’t have carpet, we used a mop and a bucket with a built-in ringer.
Jess’s house had no electricity; light after dark came from homemade candles and glass lanterns that burned kerosene purchased at the general store. We merely walked to the wall and flipped on the light switch, which illuminated the electric lights we had throughout the house.
Jess’s family had no electric appliances. When Jess’s mom wanted to beat something in a bowl, she used a big wooden spoon. When we wanted to bake, we got out either the electric mixer or our manual hand-held eggbeater. By the time I was in high school, we also had a hand-held portable electric mixer, which eliminated the need for the eggbeater.
If Jess’s family wanted nuts in their cookies, they got out a knife and cut up the nuts. We reached in the cupboard and took out the nut chopper; it consisted of a cross blade with a long plunger attached to the lid, which we used in a glass jar with a removable wooden bottom. By the time I was in high school, we had an electric blender.
To be continued
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