With the first cold snap of fall we young ones put on socks and shoes as well as long underwear. We hated those encumbering clothes and shed them as soon as possible when spring came. The sheer joy of getting out of those is beyond the comprehension of people who never had the experience. There were drawbacks to going barefoot, but they were worth it. Being in the country, bare feet picked up lots of splinters and stickers. At night our parents laid us on the kitchen table and, with the kerosene lamp close by, picked stickers from our feet.
Having no inside plumbing, the required privy was located some distance out back of the house, necessitating long, cold trips during the wintertime. At that point, the timber industry hadn't realized the enormous market for paper products, so we resorted to old catalogues and even, at times, corncobs (a bit abrasive, but effective).
(Corncobs? Really? OUCH.)
All old Sears and Ward catalogues found their way to the outhouse and it was considered real deprivation when no pages remained but the slick ones. They were terribly inefficient, although they did fulfill another rather important function.
The slick pages provided about the only pornographic material for us boys, perhaps for some of the men also. Although there were no actual photographs of women in such scanties as bras and panties, there were some pretty sexy, colored pictures of them wearing only slips and that was sufficient to turn on any red-blooded boy. More wealthy and sophisticated families who subscribed to National Geographic had already been treated to actual photographs of topless women for thirty years. Understandably, those photos were never of white subjects, but always of dark skins, indigenous to strange and exotic lands, all under the guise of science.
Later, I came to learn of a furtive practice where women, as a hedge against the day that only slick pages remained, hoarded old dress patterns and stray tissue paper. In secret, they consumed their treasured supply, using it sparingly, with a mixture of luxury and apprehension, as when a scarce and highly prized commodity is consumed.
Usually we took one bath per week, in a washtub on the kitchen floor, ordinarily on Saturday night. We did dress up, putting on our "Sunday" clothes for Sunday school and church. This ordeal was also required on Wednesday evenings for attendance at prayer meetings. Less frequently, "dressing up" was obligatory for other occasions, probably only three or four times a year. Following church, we could hardly wait to get home and shed those awful Sunday clothes. All that dressing and undressing was time consuming and moreover a tedious bore. Mom must have grown weary of our complaints.
When I was five years old I started first grade at a one-room school. On average, there were twelve to sixteen students, scattered unevenly among grades one through eight. In front of the teacher's desk was a bench where one grade at a time gathered for their "recitations." After the teacher finished with the first grade then the second, third, etc, took their turn until all were finished. Students who were bright enough took advantage by listening in on other recitations and received a somewhat accelerated learning experience.
On Friday afternoons we often had ciphering matches, where children at the blackboard competed in arithmetic problems. The loser had to sit down and a fresh contestant came forward. Spelling matches were held under the same format. Starting with the lower grades and working up provided the possibility for a lower grade student to stay at the board, putting down students several grades higher than himself. This was always an ego booster, but I later wondered what damage was done to the older ones, being put down by some upstart kid several years their junior.
That scholastic arrangement seemed to benefit me, for when I was in the middle of fifth grade we moved to Arkansas City, and after testing the school administrators wanted to place me at least one or two grades ahead. Fortunately, my parents objected. Socially I was so immature it would have been a disaster.
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