Living in rural Kansas, Grandma Nellie and Grandpa Joe had very few conveniences of modern life. Over the years, they raised a large family. To do so, the family farmed, gardened, kept house, sewed clothes, cooked, and more without electricity, running water, or many mechanical devices.
Electricity
The family used gas and oil lamps for years, but lighting was one of the first things to be modernized in Nellie and Joe’s home. They moved from “The Home Place” (a.k.a. Dewey’s house) to the “new” house (a.k.a. Ed’s house) in 1947 primarily so that they could have electricity as electricity became available west of highway 7 before it was available on the east side of the highway. The house, of course, had no wiring, fuse box, or outlets. Thus, Ed became the resident electrician, installing everything needed to bring light into the home. Over the years this changed very little.
Heating, & Cooling
The entire two story house had a single wood-burning stove in the middle of the house, Which means the house wasn’t really heated very well at all. Nellie and Joe continued to have a single heating source even after they moved to their “new” house. Central heat or a secondary heat source was never added to the homes. However, their sons did update the homes with a propane heater to eliminate the need for chopping wood or buying coal.
The cooking stove’s goal was not to heat the house. However, it tended to heat the house at all the wrong times. It always amazes me that food was even edible after being cooked on those old wood-fired stoves as getting the temperature just right must have been terribly difficult. It does explain, however, why my dad liked many foods just a bit burnt.
Like heating, cooling came from a single source – windows. Electricity, which was the motivator for the move to the “new” house, allowed for the use of fans. Later, electricity also came to the original home (a.k.a. The Home Place). So, fans could be used there as well. It was long after Nellie and Joe lived at Ed’s house that a window air conditioner was finally added.
If you wanted ice to cool off, you better hope it was the middle of winter and the ponds and rivers were frozen over. Then, you could cut as many blocks as you wanted. The rest of the time, you had to purchase ice if you wanted to keep something colder than the temperature of the cellar.
Clothes
Nellie, who preferred sewing to cooking, left much of the cooking to her daughters while she made or patched clothes. She used whoever was home as a model including using Ed to be her model for his sister’s dresses when he was home from school sick. Neither her equipment or materials were what most people would use today. The most advanced non-electric sewing machines were treadle-powered and many of the dresses were made out of flour sacks.
The clothes were cleaned with a washboard and steaming hot water. Later, after Joe and Nellie got electricity, Nellie had a wringer washing machine. After cleaning the clothes, they were ironed with old fashioned irons that were heated to do the ironing. Like the cooking stoves, it is amazing that these irons didn’t do more harm that good.
When Grandma was in her later years, she still had a basket of scrap cloth for patching clothes. And, she still did it the old fashion way. However, she washed her clothes at a fully electric laundromat and ironed them with an electric iron.
Running Water
Water for cooking, cleaning, or bathing meant a trip to the well. Baths were taken in the kitchen and the water was used over and over. Fortunately great-grandpa William J. Peelle had designed the kitchen in The Home Place so that water would all run to one corner where it could drain out of the house.
Communication
The family could connect with the outside world through newspapers and radio. Nellie and Joe had a battery operated radio no later than the late 1930s as Joe listened to all the news and kept up to date on the war brewing in Europe. However, the radio wasn’t too reliable. If it was somewhat working, it might pick up stations that were far away. Yet, at the same time, it didn’t always bring in the local stations. They also had a telephone on a party line, but the quality was less than desirable, especially if someone was listening in or the call was long-distance.
The radio and telephone improved over time. By the late 1950s, Joe and Ed were watching Gunsmoke on the black and white television in the new house. But, it wasn’t until around 1984 that Ed upgraded to a color television. Until then he hadn’t seen a reason to get a color television, since the color in TVs wasn’t that good and black and white worked just fine.
In 2006, a computer was added to the household. However, internet didn’t come to the home until the end of 2021. Like the old time radio, it was a bit flaky. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. The same could be said of cell phones. Depending on the phone and the provider, it might work, might work sometimes, or might only work on rare occasions.
Farm Work
Work on the farm was no easier than work in the home. Everything was done by hand or with horses and mules. Plowing fields was done with a walk behind plow pulled by horses. The same for the harrow. Haying was a very manual process and milking cows was as well. Some things, such as the brush cutter, did have engines to run them, but they were still plenty of work.
The family didn’t have a tractor until in the 1950s. After they got it, Joe very reluctantly sold his horses. He didn’t want to, but he said that he couldn’t justify keeping them. He must have thought about it a lot and discussed it with others as his quandary over his horses was mentioned in the newspaper.
Despite the sale of the horses in the 1950s, many pieces of equipment from the horse-drawn days remained at the new farm the rest of Ed’s life, including singletrees, doubletrees, wooden stirrups (likely Nellie’s for her horse Beauty), a horse collar, horse-drawn implements, and more.
And, Ed’s 1954 Ford tractor was still running nearly 70 years after it was built. No fancy air conditioning. No power steering. However, implements for farming did come along throughout the years – a rake, hay baler, an elevator, and more. Again, nothing fancy and if they worked or could be fixed, they were never replaced.
So change did come to Nellie and Joe’s lives and the properties they owned. But, it came slowly!