Wistful Wednesday : 1958

We are having a heat wave.  Thanks goodness for air conditioning at home.  I would surely sweat to death without it this week.

Recently I was asked if those old rubber swim caps worked.  I remember that they did, but you couldn’t hear worth beans and sometimes they leaked and your hair still got wet.  Remember we had no blow dryers back then and once your hair was done up it was good for a week.

This is my baby brother and me in 1958 in the lake near Atwater Minnesota.

I was almost seven and my baby brother was four years old.  Apparently he needed nose plugs…I hated those things.  The inner tubes were great fun on the water.  If I recall correctly, this was at a lake place of a shirttail relative..but I am getting older and my memory is not what it used to be.  (Some people let us swim off of their lakeshore.)

Back to the swim cap.  They were a bugger to squeeze onto your head, sometimes you pulled some hair out, sometimes you got it on your head but your hair wasn’t all tucked in so you had to start all over again, sometimes you sweat so much under the cap that your hair was all wet anyway, sometimes the cap sprung a leak and  half your hair would be wet and half would be dry.   Did you ever wear a swim cap? :)

Wistful Wednesday: Ironing

I don’t iron much anymore.  A few table runners and my kitchen valences. I do know how to iron.  I double starched many a uniform for Far Guy and when the girls were little they had cotton dresses.

Yesterday I cleaned the laundry/furnace room.  I dusted off the iron..and vacuumed off the ironing board.  That is one old iron I think I have had it about 20 years, it used to steam, not so much anymore.  The ironing board is older, we got it for a wedding gift over 43 years ago.  I hardly ever take it out..if I iron something I usually put a towel on the cupboard and iron away.

I learned to iron when I was 7 years old in 1958.

My mom wrote on this photograph “My Helper.”

I was ironing in the old farm house kitchen.  There are clothes folded neatly on the table that is covered with an oilcloth and more laundry must be in that basket in the chair.

I know we washed one day, and almost everything was hung out on the line outside to dry.  In the winter the clothes freeze dried stiff as a board.  My Mom had a wringer washer in the basement.  She would painstakingly get everything ready to hang..she would fold the sheets in half and then put the four points for the clothes pins all together so they were easy to hang, one after another the sheets would go into the basket ready to hang up outside.  No matter what breeze was going through the yard, clothes were wrinkled after going through that wringer.  Dads pants would go on the pants stretchers..just so..so the creases were right.  Mom’s hands were constantly red and chapped in the wintertime.  Sometimes the unmentionables and socks would be hung on the old wooden drying rack.

I liked to sprinkle clothes and then roll them up and put them in the plastic bag to be ironed the next day.  I liked the smell of the clothes fresh off the line.  When you ironed that outdoor fresh smell filled the air and delighted the olfactory senses of the person wielding the iron.  Can you smell it? :)

Wistful Wednesday: 1958

I found an old Easter photograph.  My Mom must have taken this photo in the old farm house.  We are standing in the kitchen, the door to upstairs is behind us and the door to the living room is off to the left of the photograph.

Me and my baby brother in 1958. 

My Easter basket was marked on the handle with a crayon.  I am not sure what color my brothers was marked with..I think mine was orange.  We usually had some green grass and some hard boiled eggs that we had colored and some chocolate and jelly beans in our basket.  The oval baskets were our first baskets and the round ones got added later.  Can you remember those hard boiled eggs that used to sit in those baskets for days..not refrigerated..and then finally they became a table decoration..until someone ate them. Uffda..it is a wonder that we didn’t get a foodborne illness.

April 6 was Easter Sunday that year when I was 7 and my baby brother was 4.

See those chairs?  The ones with the rubber thingys on their legs so the metal wouldn’t poke through the linoleum?  Those were the “chairs” the ones that we had to sit in after church if we goofed off in church..or giggled..or squirmed too much.  I hated sitting still in those chairs..sometimes we sat side by side but most of the time we sat back to back so we couldn’t agitate each other…and giggle..it was serious business you know.

I would much rather sit still for one hour instead of two.  It was about this time that I learned to play games in church..God knew..I figured I would be struck dead..but wasn’t so my games continued.

What can you do in church to occupy an hour?  What do you see?  I saw THE LUTHERAN HYMNAL…so I would form words in my head every Sunday.  Most of the time it worked..it kept me out of that second hour where there was no THE LUTHERAN HYMNAL to occupy my mind.  Sometimes I just couldn’t control my giggles..and once I started it was really hard to stop.  The second hour became my time to daydream..making up stories in my head..ones where I was always the heroine..and famous..with beautiful sparkly dresses.

My parents were good church goers..they went every Sunday just like clockwork.  No one was ever excused.. I am not sure that was a good thing.  God is everywhere..in the flowers and in the trees and even in the snow covered countryside.  I can talk to him anytime..night or day…not just on Sundays:)

Wistful Wednesday: 1958

This was my first day of school in 1958.  I was in second grade.

A wonderful neighbor lady by the name of Minnie Zauche was my second grade teacher.  I adored her.  I loved reading..learning to read opened a whole new world to me.  I was a good reader.  Mrs. Zauche said I talked too much in the lunch room but I still had a fairly good year in the second grade.  Sometime during the year I had my tonsils removed and got to have soup in the kitchen with Arvilla until my throat was all better.  Arvilla was the school cook, I loved being sick enough to get special care in the kitchen.

This is the step that faced east in the old farm house.  Through the door was a porch that was cold and drafty. Another door in the porch led into the kitchen.  I think this was the year that the Christmas tree was out in the porch.

I think my coat was Robin’s Egg Blue, and my Mother sewed it for me.  The house was white..weren’t all farm houses white back then? :)

Wistful Wednesday: 1958

In 1958 I was seven years old. 

I wonder who I was aiming for.. more than likely I had a bead on my baby brother.  Then I probably pulled back the hammer and click.. hollering “Bang Bang your dead fifty bullets in your head.”  He would be clicking his gun madly hollering the same thing at the top of his lungs, he would have been four years old and an easy target.  I am sure it must have driven our Mother partly crazy.

Anyone else out there play with toy guns..??  I did because my brother liked guns.  As you can tell from the photo I had a holster and everything.  And look at that stance…

This photo was most likely taken by my Mom.  It was taken in the kitchen at the farm in the old farmhouse.  I am standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room.  Note the wild linoleum on the kitchen floor and the chalkboard that is attached to the door that went upstairs. We never used the upstairs ..well hardly ever..My Grandpa and one of my Uncles stayed up there during harvest one year.  We were not allowed to play up there.

My memories of the upstairs include flies buzzing between the screens and the windows.  Old pull down shades, some raggedy looking curtains and a different linoleum in every room.  The stairs were painted as was the bannister..blue or green..I think.  It was a long time ago:)

Wistful Wednesday : Fall of 1958

I believe that this is a second grade class photo, the photo would have been taken in the fall of 1958 at the Osage Elementary School in Osage, Minnesota. 

There seems to be nineteen kids in the class..Linda must have been sick that day as she is not in this photo..she owns the Antique Shop in town, and could name almost all of the kids in this photo.  I could only name fourteen. 

There were two Connie’s in this class..can you believe it? Connie H. and Connie Y.  Now I am Connie H. but then I was a Connie Y.

I was wearing one of my favorite dresses, my Mother saved it for me..it is in Far Guys Trunk..someday I will get it out and take a photo of it.  It was my favorite color sapphire blue satin, the front had some fru fru white lacey stuff and there was a fake red rose that was pinned to the front..fancy smancy. 

Our teacher was Mrs. Zauche, she was a lovely lady, and a wonderful teacher.  I loved her, well who doesn’t love their second grade teacher..she was also a very special neighbor lady. 

This is what she wrote about me in my progress report:

“ Connie Joy is doing good work in all subjects. She does beautiful written work and is very conscientious about finishing her work.  But sometimes she talks too much in the lunch room.” :)