My Early Life

I was born on May 2, 1929 in a small wood frame house in Hillje, Texas.  It was a home delivery with a doctor on hand.

On May 5,1929 I was held in Baptism by my sponsors, Emil and Johanna (Janie) Erdelt-Moms (Eunice) oldest sister and brother-in-law, and baptized by Rev. V.S. Raska in St. Andrews Catholic Church.

My dreams were the first thing I can remember of my young life.  Dreaming of floating on white clouds and then the clouds disappearing and I would wake up on the floor.  (Falling out of bed) I would dream the same one over and over.

Grandpa Joe and Grandma Mary Dornak lived a short distance from our home.  They lived in a big house with a porch on three sides.  I loved their living room.  Had a beautiful chandelier hanging from the ceiling.  A colorful wool rug.  A small table with a pretty shawl on it.  Was black with red flowers and green leaves with tassels and a pretty table lamp.  Also a pump organ with buttons on it. I spent many hours pulling buttons and pumping it and I thought I was making pretty music.

Big Grandma sat on the front porch and always told us stories.  Once we had a smell apple party under the trees.  We cut them up into pie wedges and ate them.  As I remember they were very good.  A few times we were allowed to watch the haymaking. I was able to follow the horses round and round as they pressed the hay into bales.  Also had a molasses mill when cooking the molasses.  He would put a little on plates for us.  We could not or were not allowed to put our fingers in the sticky mess.  Grandpa Joe was very clean and had a trick rules.

Daddy Sig. hitched the horses to the wagon on cold rainy days and took the kids to school.  Before I was old enough to start school, he bundled me up and let me go with him a couple of times.  The wagon was a covered one that must have looked like the ones from the west.

When Daddy and Mama worked in the fields, we had a few sitters.    When Butesy was born we look at the books and were taken out doors and play. We came in to see her, and then went to Grandma Dornaks.  We stayed with her for about a week.  Little Grandma came to help Mom for a week.  I never remembered being jealous of her. Elenora and I were very close.  We did everything together.  Maybe that was the reason I didn’t mind if I wasn’t the baby anymore.  We went to church on Sundays and holidays.  Had a car we called the “Rain No More”.  It was a model A and had no top.  It didn’t dare rain.  Once while going to church it had rained and was windy.  My hat blew off and Daddy wouldn’t stop to get it.  I didn’t realize it at the time; we would have gotten stuck if we stopped.  We never found my hat and how I did cry.  It was a beauty.  A big white brim with a pink ribbon on it.  Mama bought me another one to replace the one that was lost, but it wasn’t as pretty.

Once we went to Houston.  Went to the big Sears store.  Uncle Louis, Aunt Lydia and cousin Loraine Dornak were also there.  Loraine and I were running around playing and I ran into the corner of a big post in the middle of the floor and put a big gash on my forehead over my left eye.  It bled a lot.  Daddy got his shirt all bloody.  They took us into the managers’ office, cleaned and doctored my cut.  They gave Daddy a shirt and me some rattan doll furniture and a kitty windup toy.

Daddy cut our hair straight with bangs.  My first permanent was sitting under a big curling machine (electric).  Got hot in places.  The beautician would put cotton between curlers and scalp and fan the hot spot to cool it.

Daddy and Mama went to dances in Hillje.  Took us with them. We would slide on the dance floor.  During intermission everyone went outside and visited and got refreshments.  We nickeled Daddy to death.  We ate a lot of Popsicles.  Sometimes we would get a free stick and we got another one free.  Mama would take quilts and when we got sleepy we would sleep under the benches or in a small room off the big dance floor.  There was one girl our age that we were afraid of.  She would pinch me real hard and made me cry (Georgie Balceck).

When I was five we moved to another farm.  It was about 12 miles Northeast of El Campo.  Swanson owned the farm.  The house had 2 bedrooms, living room, dining room, and kitchen.  A porch in front and a small one in the back.  We had a bench on the back porch and kept a water bucket on it with a dipper hanging over it.  We all drank from the one dipper.  Also a washbasin with one towel.  We all used the one towel.  Had an upstairs where all of us girls slept except Butesy.  Elenora and I did a lot of reading at night.  We didn’t have lights so we would read by flashlights under the covers unless Daddy caught us and told us “lights out”.  Martha and Lois slept together and had a number of fights.  Took turns kicking each other out of bed.  I don’t ever remember fighting.  Elenora and I would walk around with arms around each other’s neck.

Had an ice box that we would get ice for when Daddy made a trip to town.  Phonographs were one source of entertainment.  We played the records over and over.  Mostly Chech polka’ and a few western songs-Tex Ridder.  The needle had to be changed pretty often.  The record sounded funny when it wound down and the turntable went slower and slower.  When that happened we turned the crank to get the record to normal speed.  Had a battery radio, but we weren’t able to listen often.  Had to save the batteries.  Some of the programs we listened to were Intro Sankton Mystery that came on Saturday mornings and Lone Ranger. 

During the summer we also belonged to a meat club neighbors.  Took turns butching a calf and every one got fresh meat once every two weeks.

Had a wood kitchen stove.  Mama was a good cook.  I can almost smell the wonderful aroma coming from the area.  Lots of home baked bread and noodle soup.  Wood burning stoves was our only means of cooking and heating.  All of our family sat at the table for a meal.  No one ate or even tasted food before all the family were seated and prayer before meals were said.  Food was plentiful and always tasty.  We could have as much as we wanted, but once it was on our plate, we ate it all.  I do not remember anyone in our family ever saying they did not like any food that was on the table.  We were never picky about any food we ate or had.  Leftovers were never wasted.  They either went to the dogs or put in a hogs slop bucket.  The leftovers were mixed with whatever was suitable to make the slop for the hogs.  Our breakfast was freshly fried eggs with lots of bacon, honey, jelly or sorgum syrup and homemade bread.  For supper we ate cold cornmeal mush with milk.  Drank clobber.  A few times Elenora and I had to catch a rooster and then kill it.  We used a long wire with a hook on one end to catch him by his leg.  Then we got an axe I would hold the rooster over a block of wood.  One hand holding the body and the other stretching his neck.  Elenora would chop and never did she cut the head off with one lick.  Of course it would scare me and I let go of the rooster and off he would flap all over the yard.  Blood splurting everywhere until we caught him again to repeat the process.  Brought him to the house where Mama had the hot water then get him cleaned.  After killing a chicken and plucking it clean of feathers it was singed by twisting a newspaper- hold it to a fire till it caught- and then holding the chicken over it and turning it to burn off all the fuzzes and pin feathers.  Milk was never wasted.  What we did not drink was left to sit and form cream on top and the rest to sour and clabber.  Cream had many uses.  Was used in mashed potatoes, in cooking, or made into butter.  Some of the clabber was made into cottage cheese by heating it up, put into a cloth and hung on the clothesline to let the liquid drain.  Mama made it into cheese kolaches or cheese pies.  Ate a lot of Irish potatoes, sweet potatoes, and sauerkraut.  Baked rice with meringues on top.  Ate Jell-O in the wintertime. Make it and sit it in a cold place.  We always had milk.  Made banana puddings and ice cream.  Lots of vegetables.  Daddy did his own butchering hogs.  HOG KILLING - On a good northern a hog was killed.  The dead hog was placed on a sled and hauled close to the kettle that had hot water.  The hair was scraped off the hog by applying scalding hot water on it and keeping it hot by putting the sacks on it.  Then was pulled up with a block and tackle.  Daddy gutted it and let the insides drop into a wash tub.  The head, heart, livers, tongue was put into a separate pot.  Cooked and used to make headcheese sausage.  The intestine were scraped with a knife, rubbed in salt, turned inside out and carefully washed in clean water.  These were used as casings for sausage.  The larger ones were used to make headcheese sausage.  Some of the hog was used to make bacon cured by smoking.  Most of the excess fat was cut off and boiled in the kettle for making hog lard what was kept in crocks and used in place of shortening and also for making lye soap. 

Insecticides were not used on garden crops.  There were potato bugs.  As soon as they showed up, we picked them off the plants, one at a time and put them in a can partly filled with kerosene

Mama did a lot of canning.  When we made sauerkraut. Daddy would cut it. Then it was put in crocks.  They would wash my feet real good and I had to sit on a chair to keep them clean.  When it was layered they would put me in the crock and I would pack the cabbage tightly.  Our breakfast consisted of oatmeal, eggs and bacon and syrup.  Sometime for supper we had cold mush and milk.  Also clabber.  For lunches or snacks we would put sweet cream on a slice of bread and sprinkle sugar on it.  Oh that was good.

We had a glass gallon butter churn that had paddles.  The churn had to be turned slowly to make butter.  The butter would form little balls and gradually stick together to form a large ball. Then we drained the liquid off the butter and put it in our butter bowl for our use. 

One of the ways we enjoyed milk was by seasoning it with sugar, vanilla and nutmeg and pouring it over fresh snow. (On the rare occasion when it snowed)

There was no electricity in our home.  Wood burning stoves was our only means of cooking and heating.  There were no hard surface roads except a very few graveled roads.  We got our water, one bucket at a time from a windmill and hand pump.

When it was cold Daddy started the fires, put chairs by the stove, put quilts on the chairs and we were able to sit in front of the fire to keep warm.  Sometimes when the baby chicks hatched in the winter, they were brought into the house, put into a box and put by the wood stove to keep them warm.

We also had an incubator and hatched our own chickens.  There was a thermometer and we had to keep the heat level under control.  The eggs had to be turned individually every day.

Daddy was very good to us.  We respected him.  If he asked us to do something we did it.  We never talked back to our parents.  Daddy did not like us to play cards.  But we were able to do lots of reading.

Elenora and I did a lot of outside chores.  Our jobs were cutting wood and keeping the woodbin filled for our stoves.  Mama washed clothes on a washboard.  We pumped water to fill the kettles.  The soiled white clothes were put in the kettle to get them clean.  We did a lot of feeding chores (fed chickens, geese; turkeys and gather eggs), shucked corn and also shelled it.  I bet Elenora and I shucked and shelled more than a million ears of corn, one at a time.  We had a hand cranked Sheller that shelled each ear, leaving kernels in the box that it was mounted on.  Corncobs had many uses.  They were burned in our stove and under the kettle.  Cobs make good stoppers for jugs and made good cork substitutes for fishing poles.  People always joked about using cobs along with Sear roebuck in the outhouse. 

Turkeys mixed with the rest of the chickens at feeding time but got off in their own group.  They found unusual places to roost separately and also to lay eggs.  Our turkeys laid more eggs in the pasture then at the barn.  They were very skilled at picking out places to lay their eggs, which were hard to find.  If the eggs were located and in any way disturbed the turkeys’ abandoned that location and found another place.  Sometimes we would follow them to find their nest.

Copyright 1998-2005  Richard Collins, All Rights Reserved

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