Family History

My family is pretty small.  I have one brother who is 10 years older than me.  As a child I don’t remember much about him.  I know he was around at least for the first 8 years of my life but I have very few memories of interaction with him.  One memory I do have is when I was about 5 or 6  and I was getting a spanking from my mother (across the knee kind) and my brother was peaking around the corner laughing at me.  I also remember he let me sit on his lap and steer his car as we drove through a park.  I was 8 when we moved in with my grandmother (mother’s side).  We called my grandmother “Mom”.  Everyone called her Mom.  We had moved back to Lincoln from Springfield, OH and my brother stayed in Ohio to attend Ohio State University. I didn’t really connect with my brother until I was in my 20’s.  Since then our connection and interaction has been strong.  It’s just the first 20 years I don’t have a lot of memories of him.  I also only have a picture or two of us in those early years.  This one was a couple of years ago when we visited he and Mimi in Alabama.

I do have vivid memories of “Mom’s” house.  It was small.  Two bedrooms large enough to hold a double bed and a small dresser. You couldn’t walk around the bed.  It fit wall to wall backed in to a wall.  Only one side was open.  One person would have to crawl over the other person to get in or out of bed.  I slept on the “davenport”…for 7 years.  The house had electricity but no indoor plumbing, water, bathroom, or furnace.  There was a coal stove in the living room for heat and a coal cooking stove in the small kitchen.  I used to carry coal in each morning from the coal bin at the back of the yard.  I would fill the coal bucket with the largest chunks I could find but Mom would make me take them back and get the smaller pieces.  They would burn faster.  I also had to rake the ashes from the stove.  The outhouse was by the coal bin.  I hated the outhouse.  I think it was a two holer…but, I never shared it with anyone. I hated the chamber pots more.  Baths were on Saturday night in large granite tubs heated with water from the kettle on the stove. Laundry was done in a winger-washer machine and hung outside on clotheslines…year round.  There were no dryers.  Have you ever taken frozen clothes off a clothes line?  I have.  Ironing was done with cast iron irons.  The kind you leave on the cooking stove to get hot.  She also had coal oil lamps. She would leave one lit in the parlor each night. 

We’re not talking about the 1920’s, 30’s or 40’s.  We moved in with Mom in 1956!  And, the house was in the middle of town.  I forgot to mention it sat on a street right across from the railroad tracks…maybe about 75 feet from the front porch.  I use to watch the trains go by with hobos in the box cars.  There were cabooses, too.  I miss seeing a caboose on a train.  It’s like an uncompleted act. The house would shake whenever a train passed.  There was also an air raid/tornado siren next to the tracks.  It’s a wonder I got any sleep.