By Phil Brown, Commentary
In 1959, Louise Paine Mardis, a child of the Great Depression, wrote about her experiences growing up in Enid and spending summer vacations on her grandmother Pearl Magdeburg’s 80-acre farm near Hennessey.
The late Bob Gray included Louise’s lengthy paper in his book “The Fifties: Enid and The Cherokee Strip.” The paper provides a down-on-the-farm, behind-the-scenes look at rural and small town Oklahoma after the stock market crash of 1929. Surprisingly there is no bitterness or anger in Louise’s writings despite the fact they, and just about everyone else, were dirt poor. There was no television to create discontent with displays of luxuries and sexy, glamorous people. There were no credit cards.
Sometimes Louise would buy a Denver Post newspaper just to read Little Orphan Annie, Dick Tracy and Apple Mary. Her dad would save back a nickel to buy Liberty magazine to work the cockeyed cross-eyed puzzle, or a nickel for the Saturday Evening Post magazine, and that was just about the extent of their 1930s window on the world.
There was no electricity on Grandma Magdeburg’s farm. Without even a radio or a telephone, much less Doppler radar and TV weathermen, their grandmother kept an eye on the early summer skies during the tornado season. If it looked as if a storm was brewing she would take everyone to the storm cellar, completely equip-ped with a rocking chair, lots of shelving and a bull snake. Louise said grandma would not let anyone kill the nonpoisonous bull snake because she said it ate the bugs and spiders. Bull snakes can grow to be pretty big, and they can make a loud hissing sound.
Grandma would sit in the rocker and sing songs to the eight kids until they all fell asleep. They would sleep on the empty shelves until daybreak, when they would go to the house for breakfast. Some mornings she would open a quart jar of canned corn, making a cream sauce to feed the eight children. Louise said no one ever complained.
Louise also remembers her grandmother frequently made bread. If the kids were hungry and couldn’t wait for it to rise, she would tear some off and fry it. She remembers her grandmother never complained, never raised her voice or yelled at any of the children. If she was unhappy, she never displayed it. If grandma baked a cream pie, someone would have to go to the hen house and gather some eggs. Louise said she could never put her hands underneath a laying hen – she was afraid of them.
Their home garden was a big part of the food chain. They depended on the fresh vegetables for a large amount of their food needs. Consequently, they all had to hoe weeds in the garden. She said none of the kids ever rebelled or made excuses not to go. At first light Grand-ma Magdeburg would wake them all up and tell them it was time to go. She wanted to get started before it got too hot. They would work, hoeing in the garden until about 10 o’clock, when the hot sun would tell them it was time to stop and have breakfast. If there was enough flour, grandma would make biscuits, a big pan of homemade gravy or maybe a big pan of oatmeal. Louise said they ate “with gusto.”
The box of oatmeal always included a pretty glass or tea towel. She said after a while her grandmother accumulated a nice collection of glasses and tea towels. Louise remembered the farmhouse floors were covered in shiny linoleum, which Grandma Magdeburg would mop and clean. Louise recalled coming into the house on a hot afternoon and lying down on the cool floor. She said it felt like heaven on earth.
Flies, something we seldom see anymore in our closed up tight and centrally air-conditioned homes, were a common nuisance back in the 1930s — especially down on the farm. Louise’s grandmother frequently would give each of the kids a towel and tell them to chase the flies out of the farmhouse. Louise said it was a wonder what a towel could do to chase out flies. In her daily battle with the pesky flies, Louise said her grandmother kept a pie pan in every room of the house with a piece of black paper in each pan. Adding water to the black paper made it poisonous, she said, and it was goodbye flies if they landed on the water.
How did eight kids take a bath without gas, electricity or running water? They got a big tub, filled it with water early in the morning, and let it stand all day in the sun. The sun would warm the water. In the evening they would all get in the tub and scrub and clean. Louise said they all used the same bath water. “Anyway, we thought we smelled better.”
Brown is a former managing editor of the Enid Morning News.
