My mother, father, and grandfather remembered this time well. I do, too - partically. I was born in 1950. I remember living in my grandpa’s house that had electricity (REA), a well, and an outhouse out back.
I remember as a young boy getting baths in a big galvanized tub filled with hot water taken from the well and heated on the stove. Heat was a coal burning stove/heater that was in the kitchen/open room in the center of the house...the whole house was about 750 square feet, 4 rooms. When my mom swept the floors all she need do was sweep the dirt through the cracks in the wood to the dirt below.
He was a carpenter, my dad a veteran serviceman with a 5th grade education. It wasn’t hard with their help to do better than they did. I worry now, with Obama and his socialists, if those times of my childhood will be visited on my grandchildren.
By the time I was born in 1948 my father’s father had lost the farm and was dead. I’m not sure when but my older brothers remembered grandpa and the farm. We never talked about that time. My grandma with a maiden sister lived in a three room shack in a tiny town that is now almost extinct. My uncle, who had gotten a college education and was working for a newspaper, had purchased it. It did not have running water. It did have electricity. I think that there was either a gas stove or an electric stove. The old wood burning stove was still there but unused. You had to pump water and use an outhouse. My aunt, who had married a doctor, provided for them. She wanted them to come to KCMO to live but they refused to leave Pettis county. I now have figured out why. My other uncle who was bi-polar and an alcoholic, lived there. You don’t leave family who needs you.
My father’s maternal grandfather came over from Ireland in 1850 at the age of 8 with his brother’s and parents to escape the potato famine. Now that was really hard times.
You described my home exactly, moved in to it in 1943, I was 5 years old. Dad bought the old house from a mining town that disappeared as the war wound down. I remember riding in the house as it was moved, how excited we were, our family had a home all five of us. Mom did put linoleum in the kitchen. We had an ice box and everything. Several years after the war we had a refrigerator. Gasoline engine powered washing machine. I would take those days in a heart beat.