We know now it was a good life
by Dean Ebert
St. Helens, OR
It wasn’t until just the other day, 2/13/09, when a young lady asked me what it was like growing up in my day. I thought for a short moment than said she had to pick a subject. She replied well what did you eat, say like briefest for instances. Well I said; we had fried eggs, eggs right over fried potatoes, fried bread (toast) all on top the old woodstove. Sometimes fried leftover creamed wheat cereal with an egg spread out as a patty, then flipped over and made into a golden drown, grilled egg wheat patty. Bacon was always fried in the cast iron skillet so we would have grease to put down before frying eggs. We’d clean off a spot in back near the stovepipe, and lie out bread to make toast. Then drop a spoon of grease for an egg or two on a front ring having brown fried or scrambled eggs.
She stopped me with another question about the brown eggs; She wanted to know if there was a difference in the brown eggs other than color? I couldn’t let this one get past me I told her it was the way we knew if the eggs were ripe or not. Boy did I get a look from her.
You see Dad would get up first and started fire, wake us kids up going out the door taking Mom in to town; she would catch a ride to Vancouver where she worked. By the time Dad returned my two brothers, L and W had the milking and other chores done, I had the toast made, water pumped from the hand well and had it hot so the boys could wash their hands. Brother L would put the milk through the strainer and it was my job to clean it up.
Each day was pretty much the same but the weekends were an exception. Mom was home and would make us pancakes and eggs, or waffles, and sometimes she’d put muffins in the oven. If there was leftovers hash from Friday nights super we got what I called vegetable burgers at noon on Saturday. The same goes when it came to the old bread left from us making school sandwiches, this was made into French toast.
The first year we had a big garden and a large harvest of beans and peas. We always had milk and so that winter we had a lot of creamed peas, beans, beets, chicken at each meal, oh yes and a lot of creamed hamburger.
We didn’t know it at the time but we had a grilled breakfast each morning, and at our other meals were with the cream le-upon over just about everything else. In today’s world many would consider it to be a gourmet way of eating, it was a very big deal.
The weekend, Saturday’s were also laundry day so there was a lot of water to be pumped and heated on the old stove. With a Maytag ringer washer going she’d have me help hang out the wash to dry. After evening chores it was bath time for Sunday church, after church it was Mom’s day for doing her things. Most of time Dad had us doing things for her so she could iron clothes for the next week.
During the week Dad pretty much kept the house straight and cleaned for her and an eye on us kids.
