Reminiscing with a Friend March 2000

It was during a Sunday afternoon nap when, what John calls our “doorbell” started ringing – actually it’s the barking of the dogs – telling us that company had arrived.  A longtime friend was out making pop calls on this beautiful March Sunday afternoon and stopped by the Windy Knoll.

First our conversation covered the weather as we wondered if this could actually be spring.  John had seen the first butterfly and the purple martin scouts have already been visiting and we expect their flock just any day now.  Our conversation also covered the blooming of flowers, etc., but quickly turned to things of the past.  We talked about how times have changed and how young people just don’t cook like older people do.

How the use of wood cook stoves came into the conversation I don’t know, but here’s the gist of our rather lengthy discussion.  When we would come home from school something to eat was always first on our minds – just like it is today I suppose – and we would head for that old wood stove with its warming closet.  Always there was something to be found there that we could eat.  Sausage and biscuit, baked potatoes or maybe a leftover piece of fried chicken could be found.  One sought-after goodie was friend pies.  My, my how exciting it was to find fried pie in the warming closet; however, I found it more exciting to find apple pies than peach.  Occasionally today John and I get in the fried-pie business—he handles the frying while I struggle with the crust and making of the pie.  The method of drying apples is somewhat different today as well.  Today we use a dehydrator.  Back then the apples were peeled and sliced then placed on a piece of tin and put out in the hot sun.  When a shower would suddenly come up, we always had to run “get the fruit in.”

Lots of wood stoves had a reservoir on one end for heating water; this water was used for many things – washing dishes, mopping, bathing or whatever hot water was needed for.  On winter Sunday mornings somebody would bring in a washtub and we would set it on spread-out newspaper in the warm kitchen, fill it with warm water and, in our case, the whole family bathed in the same water.  Me first (I was the only child at home at the time), then Mother and poor Daddy was the final bath-taker.

Featherbeds was another antique topic we covered.  We own two featherbeds here at the Windy Knoll and I keep threatening to make pillows from one of them.  As I remember it, one yard of ticking makes a pair of pillows (half yard per pillow).  It’s not the sewing up of the tick that’s the main problem; it’s the transfer of feathers from one place to another.  I’ve heard several methods discussed.  Probably sewing the two openings to each other would be the easiest way.  And another thing nobody picks chickens anymore and saves the feathers for pillows or beds. Mother used to pick the hens and fryers, and then hold them over an open fire to singe the pin feathers prior to being cooked, and, of course, she saved the picked feathers.  John tells about his grandmother picking the down from her live geese to be used for feathers.  Poor geese, imagine being held for somebody to pluck your feathers!  Well, there is not enough space to cover all we talked about, but this is how we spend our Sunday afternoons in our style of country living.