Seldom Ever Wasted (contributed by Sue Von Feldt)

The folks did not get indoor plumbing until 1962; the year after I got married. At that time they remodeled the house and took out the walls between the kitchen, dining and living room. Joe was working for Hughs construction and so I am sure he helped with it. Also took out a big storage closet and turned it into a bathroom. Also remodeled the kitchen, put in new cabinets, etc. We must have taken the old wood cook stove out of the kitchen sometime around 1949 or shortly thereafter. I think we got electricity in 1949. I remember the gas cooking stove that Rick was talking about was in the kitchen when I was between 5 and 8 because there is a chip in the enamel on the left side…..I got mad at Joe and threw a battery at him and he ducked and I hit mom’s new stove and put a chip in it! I was in big trouble; I remember I felt really bad about it and I am sure the end result was a spanking. During those few years, I was known to display a temper.

The out building beside the stove was the outdoor toilet. Geez, I hated those…so cold in the winter time! We had a smaller outhouse and then when the Catholic grade school got indoor plumbing, they sold the outdoor toilet and dad bought it and so we had a really big outhouse; a three seater. The other side of the building was also an outdoor toilet (boys was one side and girls other side), but we used the other side for storage. In fact, I think that is where the old organ from the living room went to storage, but then it got damaged from the elements and it ended up getting thrown away. I am surprised they never gave it away instead of leaving it sit out in the out building like that. Things were so seldom ever wasted back then. Grandma Patzner is the only one who could play it, so after she died in 1949, then sometime after that it was moved to the building for storage.

There was so much hard work that had to be done back in those days. Just to cook anything, the kitchen wood stove had to be fired up. And you cooked three meals a day back then, as people needed the meals for energy for all the work they did. And all the canning in the summer, was also done on that stove, in the heat of the summer, no electric fans, You would get started early in the morning so you would be done by the worst heat of the day. On laundry day, the hot water was heated on that stove. Just to make coffee, you had to cook it on the stove. Sure a lot easier these days, push a button and you have coffee, push a button and your clothes are being washed from beginning to end without ever touching then again to rinse them, push a button and the dishes are washed and dried. I was little enough I wasn’t allowed around the stove that much, but, as Dorothy mentioned, I also remember Joe and I making the “potato chips” by laying the potatoes on the stove top and adding a bit of salt and we thought we had a great treat. However, the better treat was when we would get off the bus and we started walking up the driveway to the house and I swear you could smell the aroma of the home baked bread and then we would make a dash for the house.

Dorothy and I were talking about how we don’t remember talking with mom that much when we were young. I told her the reason was because mom was always so busy working hard. Farm wives worked hard from the crack of dawn until the last one to bed in the evening, and then they got up and did it all over again the next day. I remember walking along with her while she did the evening chores of taking care of the chickens. The chickens were hers to take care of. I remember how you had to sometimes pick that hen up by her tail and lift her up so you could get the eggs out from under her…oops, that should be another story.