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from the book Paper Dolls and Homemade Comforts

Paper Dolls and Blackboard Roofs

By Helen J. Morris of Harrisonburg, Virginia
born 1932

I have many memories of my childhood days on the farm, such as working in the fields, riding the wheat binder, and releasing the golden sheaves of wheat in even rows, then stacking them in the hay mow under a hot blistering roof. Tramping hay on a farm wagon pulled by horses and not to mention the thinning of corn with an aching back. Then there was the canning and the weeding of the garden.

I remember 5 cent candy bars and soda pop drank only if one was sick. I remember country stores and helpful neighbors.

On a lighter note, I can recall homemade ice cream that was made from a block of ice wrapped in a burlap sack and hauled home in the back of a car.

I can still taste the bucket of candy ordered from the Sears catalog every Christmas. When empty, the bucket was used as a milk pail.

I remember sharing the creek with the cows that ran through the meadow. An old dress was our swim suit.

I used to make adult clothing for my baby dolls, as there were no Barbie dolls back then. What a thrill that would have been. With the shortage of money, it is very doubtful that I would have had the pleasure of their ownership.

But my favorite memory is playing paper dolls with my sister. We had very few bought ones and even those were sometimes outfitted in apparel from the Sears catalog. We could hardly wait for a new book to arrive.

While visiting an Aunt, with her permission, we removed three catalogs from her outhouse. We each took a book and divided the third one. I do not know what she used for a replacement, as that was the main source of toilet tissues in those days. Oh the happy hours we spent cutting and playing with those dolls by a warm fire with our family spread out on the floor around us. It was almost like Christmas and we were in a world of our own.

I always looked forward to threshing day with the big meals and the new straw to fill our freshly washed chaff-ticks. When stuffed, they were so high you had to get a running start to leap upon them to go to bed, but by spring there were so flat the bed slats could be felt poking through.

My brothers once tunneled through the new straw stack that wound around and came out at the top. The pigs used this route as well as we did. One day I started to go up and met a pig coming back down. I don’t know which of us was the most startled. I’m sure I gave the pig the right-of-way.

One summer some neighbors decided to go on a picnic up in the woods close by. Sad to say my sister and I were the only ones to get chigger bites. We were salted down to ease the itch, wrapped in blankets and lay on the floor in misery.

I will never forget how frightened I was when the bell snickers came around; although my mother assured me they meant no harm. I still did not believe her and I wanted to run and hide. Much later I found out she was telling the truth. They were mostly the neighbors.

The Brethren church which we attended still used the old custom of the separation of the sexes during preaching. My sister and I would often sit with our father on the men’s side as we called it. He would doze off, as many others did, and we were free to do pretty much as we pleased. My mother claimed that was the reason we choose to sit with him, but we told her that was not the reason at all. It was the candy that the men carried in their pockets and slipped to us during services.

One Sunday, while my father dozed, I picked out part of the embroidery on the skirt of my new Easter dress. No one noticed until we reached home and I can tell you my mother was not too well pleased.

Most of our clothing was homemade and what bought things we did have was strictly for Sundays and had to be promptly removed upon returning home. My mother would sew for hours on her treadle sewing machine making our school dressed and underwear.

During the war, elastic was hard to come by so ties were used on underwear instead. One day at school one of my ties broke and I did not know what to do. Somehow, I got a hole torn, pulled the other tie through the hole and secured it with a knot in the end, hoping it would hold. I was not punished for the damage for my mother knew I had been in a bind.

White feed bags were sewn into sheets, dish towels and underwear. The flowered bags were made into dresses if enough of the same pattern could be found.

My father once bought a wind-up Victoria from a neighbor and we would carry it out into the kitchen to listen to records if it was too cold in the living room, as fires were only built on Sundays and special occasions. Finally the wind-up spring broke and that was the end of our music until later when a new electric one was purchased.

When neighbors got together there were sometimes a treat of watermelon or popped corn. I remember my father bringing up apples from the cellar and passing them around with a peeling knife. They would peel, talk and eat with relish.

Before electricity, without refrigeration, food had to be kept chilled in the cellar. Milk tightly covered in crocks along with the sauerkraut.

Every family had coal-oil lamps for lighting. They could also be used to heat curling irons. After a Saturday night bath, you simply put the iron down into the lamp chimney to heat, remove and roll your hair. Leave a few minutes until you could smell hair singeing, and then unroll.

Then electricity came along and the radio. The big decision was whether to buy one or not. But after listening to the ‘Grand Ole Opera’ every Saturday night, I suppose it was considered a wise choice.

We had a pet pig that would follow you around like a dog. We would go and hide and she would hunt until she found you. She was one of our favorite pets.

Also, we had cats that we tried to dress up in doll clothes. They did not like it and would sometimes run away. Nor did they like to be put to bed in the doll bed our father made for us one Christmas.

The washhouse was attached to the back of our dwelling and my sister and I would climb through the washhouse window and slide down the sloped roof on pillows until we reached the other side to the house. This was great fun.

We spent much of our time on a low roof over the chicken house drawing pictures with colored rocks we had col1ected. We had no colored chalk and the roof was our blackboard.

With these and other outside games children were never bored. There seemed to always be something interesting to do when friends dropped in. With children in day care, sleeping and eating on schedule, I do not believe they are as happy and free as we were, back in the good old days.