Life Was Hard, But The Food Was Delicious (cont)

When the chores were done, Portia studied by kerosene lamps as it was several years before electricity was brought to the farm. Telephone was not even a dream.

Just to the southwest of the house was the storm cellar. Some of Portia’s most profound early memories are of being drug out of bed in the middle of the night and scurrying in horrible downpours of rain and wind to the cellar. The cellar was a dark, dank place crawling with spiders and up to our ankles in water. As bad as it was, however, we all heaved a sigh of relief as our father pulled the wooden cellar door closed behind him and shut out the storms, many of them with monstrous tornados in their bellies. As our father lit the kerosene lantern that we always kept in the cellar for such occasions, the cellar terrors faded away to shelves of canned green beans, pickled peaches and homemade jelly. A few hours later, usually after we had had a good nap, Allen would gingerly open the cellar door and report on whether or not our house was still there. It and the barn were always left standing, but there were times when trees, fences and sheds were scrambled.

Allen continued to work picking up milk to carry to the Kraft factory and moving houses. He also hauled gravel and did whatever other work he could find. He bought a few cows and started selling milk. He continued to clear and fence the land. He worked every day from before daylight to after dark. Sometimes he took either Portia or Veta with him to haul milk or to move houses. Both loved tagging after their father. Veta especially remembers helping Allen move houses. When he jacked up the house, Veta crawled under the house to kick out the bricks that had previously held it up.

Virginia worked to make the house nice. But, she and Allen didn’t see eye to eye on how to spend what little money they had. He wanted to buy things for the farm, such as cows and a tractor, that would help to make them a living. She wanted curtains for the windows and toys for her children. She also wanted to go to town to the laundry instead of doing the wash on a rub board. They did go to town sometimes usually on Saturday night. They bought groceries and took in a picture show, typically a Western.

The family drove Allen’s truck everywhere we went as we had no car. We also had a wagon and a team of horses, or for a while, a team of mules. The wagon was just a big rectangular box with a board across the front for the driver. When the weather was bad, the half-mile dirt road to our house from the highway became very muddy. At those times we couldn’t drive the truck or even walk in the sticky mud. Allen would hitch up the wagon and take us to the highway to catch the school bus.