In a recent article from my DAR magazine I was reading of a house in New Hampshire which was built in 1807. It told of the innovative features built into the kitchen. One of them reminded me of my sister's kitchen stove. This house featured a copper set kettle which set was over mortar blocks with an ash pit underneath it. It was located in the scullery where food was prepared, clothes washed and water heated. In my sister's kitchen the stove had a copper water holder built into one side. That was how she could get hot water for bathing and washing dishes. That may have been her first kitchen stove, before electric water heaters were commonly installed in houses.
My brother tells me that our mother had a water heater in her kitchen stove. Maybe that is where I remembered seeing it also. He said it was his job to keep it filled with fresh water and it took a lot of water for all of our family ! People used to use hot water to wash clothes in, but that has changed with the newer soaps.
Visiting my second oldest sister was always so much fun. Her first home was in a coal mining camp. I remember riding my bicycle out there with my friend Marian Weiler. Our mission was to visit the camp store and buy a bottle of chocolate milk. It was in a glass bottle with a metal cap. No doubt it was whole milk for it tasted so good. We may have visited with Frances but mainly we were just out riding our bikes for fun with a little reward midway in our trip.
Frances' next home was more up to date with running water but the stove with the copper water heater still served a purpose. The name of the community where she lived was called Grays Knob. It had a front porch with a swing wide enough to fit about 6 to 8 people. She lived there for many years. We were always welcomed and she made a special effort for us to have fun.
When I was around 16 I baby sat for her while she went with her husband to campaign for a political position in the county government. Philip was the youngest of her three children and I watched over him . The two older children Brownie and Mary Lynn no doubt were in school. I have a picture of Philip in his little white dress and he is just adorable.
Some of our family pictures were made at Frank's home. Frank was our name for her but her husband, Carlyle always called her Frances. When I was newly married my husband and I lived with her while we were both teaching in the county. We had a large front room upstairs. The house had many rooms both downstairs and upstairs. I used to marvel how she could handle all of the work she had to do to maintain her household. When I mentioned this to her she said, "Well I did not start out doing all of this at once, I worked up to it". I suppose that is the secret of how we all handle many jobs, we work up to them.
Frank could make wonderful peanut butter fudge. She would make it when we went camping with her. She had a little portable cooker. It was put on a picnic table and while everyone was swimming in the lake she was busy making fudge for us when we came up dripping wet. That is a priceless memory. She also made great pimento cheese spread. Grated cheese was not available in the groceries then so she grated it herself. Possibly she made her own mayonnaise, for it was a memorable treat.
Her husband Carlyle had a large garden in back of their home and she canned
green beans as well as tomatoes and other vegetables he grew. My sister Ruth was so fond of her canned green beans that when she visited, Frank sent her back home to Ohio with a box of her canned green beans. Frances was the most generous person I have ever known. She and Carlyle would go camping and take any of the kids in his or her family who wanted to go. We went to Norris Lake in Tennessee. Their large tent would not hold all of us, so we slept in cars or on cots. I very well remember sleeping one night in the back seat of a car with my feet out the window.This old picture shows Frances and Carlyle on the right with Philip peeking from behind Frances. Gene is the young man second from the left. The other couple are the Howards who were campers at the same site.
It was on one of these camping trips that I witnessed a snake swallowing a frog. I learned to respect animals in nature from my brother-in-law. He had spent a lot of his young life in hunting with his father and walking the mountains. His father had a lot of hunting dogs and I remember seeing them at his home. Carlyle learned a lot from reading his favorite books, an encyclopedia. He would have loved to surf on the computer.
Another talent of my sister was her sewing skills. She made clothes for her family and even for me and our sister Ruth. She would make duplicate dresses for us. She sewed for our mother as well. On the night before my mother's death she was fairly dancing across the room wearing a red dress that Frances had just made for her. That is a happy memory for me as it was told to me. I did not witness the scene as I was many miles away in another state.
Though some of our modern technology does go "out" from time to time, we still have our memories to remind us of the many happy times from the past.
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