I was not born in a hospital, but at home with the
help of a midwife and Dr. W.R. Cadle who had recently
come to Emmitsburg.
We did not have electric until I was about 10 years
old. However, we had a wind pump which is a fairly high
tower with a good-sized slatted wheel on top which
pumped our water into a cement water tank. This water
storage tank had to be situated higher than any of our
water faucets because it had to come by gravity flow to
the house, barn and hog pen. It was cheap energy as long
as the wind blew, but we had a small gasoline engine
hooked up to a jack which pumped our water when the wind
didn't blow. If you watched the weather closely, the
wind did most of the work.
We used kerosene lanterns at the barn, but at the
house we had acetylene gas lights which means we had a
lot more light in our house than most of our neighbors
in the country. We received electric either on July 5,
1940, or 1941 from Potomac Edison after R.E.A., or Rural
Electric Administration, threatened to bring us electric
if the private power companies such as Potomac Edison
did not. I remember the Andrew Keiholtz family thinking
"how will we ever pay for this electric because we
live back a lane of some distance."
Because of the
lane, this meant additional cost because of the extra
distance from the public road. The minimum bill at this
time was $6.18 per month and many of the neighbors
thought, "How will we ever pay for it".
However, after we had electric, I don't remember anyone
having their electric disconnected. At this time, most
farm families only had electric lights, refrigerator,
radio and an electric iron and very little else. We were
still milking our cows by hand and cooling the milk with
cold water.
Early winter would find us butchering several hogs
with the help of several neighbors. After the hogs were
cut up, the farmers wives would clean the intestines (or
casings as we would call them) to put the sausage was
then put into a sugar cure brine and smoked with hickory
wood. This was especially tasty - you might call it
eating high on the hog. My wife really enjoyed the
sugar-cured sausage bladder.
After this, my father would
make a sugar-cure brine had to be thick to fleet on egg
in a vat that washed down the creek during a flood which
made an excellent tub for curing pork. (My father
thought someone up Tom's Creek was making whiskey or
moonshine in it and didn't want to claim it because it
was illegal during prohibition or anytime to make a brew
for anyone except family.) If you want to know if my
father's sugar-cured ham was tasty, ask Mrs. George
Whilhide.
Each year on the second day of butchering, the
farmer's wife would put on a fine meal which was the
best of "country cookin". On this day the men
with the help of some of the wives would make sausage,
render lard, make panhaus and pudding which was quite a
lot of work around the hot kettles. Of course, while we
were butchering, there was a lot of stories swapped and
catching up on the latest news.
My father started farming in the spring of 1927. At
this time, April I was the time of year when farms
changed hands or tenant farmers moved from one farm to
another. He farmed with six horses until the summer of
1942 when he bought an International Farmall H tractor
on steel wheels. He still kept four work horses to plow
corn and make hay. We cultivated our corn with two
horses pulling a one-row cultivator.
We still threshed our small grains such as barley,
wheat and oats with a stationary threshing machine.
Combines were not used much in our area until the
1950's. Here work horses were more efficient than having
somebody drive a tractor to pull a wagon. In early
September we filled our silos with field corn with
neighbors helping each other. Next we would cut our
field corn with hand corn choppers and make long rows of
shocks which made a pretty sight in the fall of the
year. Then we would husk the shocks of corn after dried
by hand with a Boss husker and this lasted a long,
long-time - usually a month of good weather.
Mother baked her own bread at the time. She also had
a flock of laying hens and would take the eggs to
Frailey's store on Saturday night in Emmitsburg and buy
our groceries for the next week. Also, this presented an
opportunity to visit with your neighbors who also
patronized Frailey's Store.
Economic conditions were anything but good in the
1930's. I remember my father receiving as low as 4.25
cents a pound for prime market hogs weighing about 200
lbs. We had a telephone, but my parents had the phone
disconnected for a few months so finances must have been
close.
When I think of growing up in the 1930's and
40's, I think of playing dominoes and chines checkers in
the evenings with several neighbors. It was a good
experience to be remembered. We worked together and
played together and shared. Today we all think we are so
self-sufficient, that we don't need anybody else, but is
that what life is all about?
Have your own memories of people in
Emmitsburg?
If so, send them to us at history@emmitsburg.net