Monday, August 2, 2010

The old home place

This is the story of Emma, an Amish girl born in 1974. I was 3years old and lived in the small house built onto my grandparents house,on a dairy farm with my parents Enos and Nancy Lee. I had a older brother Edwin, and two big sisters Amanda,and Laura, then little brother Mahlon, and baby sister Fannie.
My Grandparents names were Mahlon an Emma Sommers with aunt Amanda still living at home. Grandpa had a woodworking shop,And I just loved to go out and watch him the smell of sawdust reminds me of him to this day. but because of the danger of the wood saw he always had me sitting at a safe distant to watch.
And chore time was a highlight too as Aunt Amanda would laugh,and sing along,and taught me how to skip and we just had a grand time out in the barn,where the cows were milked by hand,its was a wonderful fun place to be.all the chores was done by hand, so there was plenty of time to hear all the morning sounds.    
    The times have changed a lot in my thirty some years.Many modern things that we have today were not available. And the Amish especially avoided these things. the house my parents lived in had no sofa, recliners carpeting, or coffee table. it had no pictures on the wall or light switches. The only furniture was a kitchen table with chairs and a wooden bench without a back.and a cabinet where the flour and sugar was stored in the top three doors along with the other spices,the baking pans were kept in the bottom doors then it had a granite counter top that you could pull out, where many pie crusts have been rolled out and bread dough was mixed together.the wall would of had a calender and a wall clock. The kitchen had a upright free standing cabinet with a recessed counter lined with stainless steel sheet metal called a dry sink, because it had no drain. A person had to dip the dish water out.the water came from a stainless steel bucket that was filled from a hand pump outside the house. None of the rooms had any but the most essential furniture.And there was no bathroom.The much trod path to the out house was laid with gravel to keep from wearing a rut in the dirt. No soft bathroom tissue either;(except for when church was held at our house.) the Sears and Roebuck catalog had to suffice, but as a little girl it was a lot of fun to sit there looking at those beautiful dolls and dishes,was a good spot to hang out in, when it was time to do the dishes, there was just nothing like desperately needing to go at that time,Mom used to call it the dish washing trots.But one time I went out there and a big black snake was hiding in there ,and I ran for Daddy to come and kill it, and ever since that day I check every corner to make sure it safe to go in. But to this day the out house is a great place to relax, probably because its far enough away you don't hear much else thats going on. neither can anyone hear me.

3 comments:

  1. Your childhood was very much like mine, though we weren't Amish. We lived in eastern Kentucky, without running water, no inside bathroom, very primitive. I think we enjoy the nice things even more, don't you? I know I sure enjoy my inside bathroom!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I enjoyed reading your post.We had an outhouse when I was a girl. I didn't like it in there because there were spiders. I never saw a snake in ours and it's a good thing or I wouldn't have gone in there again.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'm glad I never had to experience the lesser fun of a Sears catalog. Ouch!

    ReplyDelete