Bits and Pieces | rogersreflections

Bits & Pieces

Memories of an earlier period often come in a rather disorganized fashion. Here are some short, random items among my reflections about growing up on the farm.

First Flight in an Airplane

I was the first member of the Baird family to fly in an airplane. On a warm Sunday afternoon in early November1931 we boys became interested in a small airplane that was flying around and seemed to be landing a short distance south of us. Dad hadn’t been feeling well that day, but we finally convinced him that we ought to go down and see what was going on.

Johnnie Wicker and a friend had a small airplane and were barnstorming —offering airplane rides—from his parent’s pasture a mile south of our house. The cost for a ten-minute ride was a dollar for adults and a half-dollar for children. I was the only one in our family that wanted to go. Dad was concerned about safety, but when Johnnie convinced his mother to go up—and there was one seat left beside her—Dad said OK. I was really thrilled. It was a great flight to Bethany and back. What an experience for a seven-year-old! And this was just four years after Lindberg’s historic solo flight across the Atlantic to Paris.

In her diary Mother reported that after I was in bed that night I said, “Every time I close my eyes I see little tiny houses!” I remember trying to explain to Lynn Burrows the next day that from that high up “horses seemed smaller than a quarter of an apple.”

Barbershop in the Kitchen

All my life through high school years Dad was my barber. He regularly cut hair for all us Baird kids, and he was really quite good at it. He cut with hand-powered clippers (remember, no electricity). His standard remark at the end of a clipping session was, “I think maybe it looks better now—but, anyway, it sure looks different!”

We sat on a high stool in the kitchen for our haircuts with one of Mother’s aprons pinned around our neck. When we were quite young Dad favored a “bowl cut” style where all hair within an imaginary bowl placed on the head would be uncut—but everything below the bowl’s outline would be clipped short. However, as we grew older, he was quite good at tapered cuts.

I can only remember two times when I got an “outside” haircut before I went to college. Once Dad was particularly busy with something and I needed a haircut for a special occasion so Ray Lindley, a neighbor who did some haircutting in his home, gave me a trim for 30 cents. The other time was when I had gone to Decatur for my high school graduation photo. I stopped at a real barbershop and got a 75-cent haircut. That was really a splurge—I don’t remember how I happened to have so much cash available.

Dental Care

Poor teeth seemed to run in our family. We all went to see Dr. Watters in Bethany a couple of times a year and usually we each had two or three cavities to be filled every time we went. (Despite regular trips to a dentist I had lost all my teeth and had full dentures while still in my forties.) I assume that the cause for our poor teeth was primarily hereditary. But, on the other hand, taking good care of one’s teeth was a lot more awkward back in the days when the only water available in the house was at a hand pump at the kitchen sink and baking soda was used for tooth powder.

How I dreaded those trips to Dr. Watters. His office above the hardware store was stark and his equipment was primitive. He was a kindly man and tried to be patient with children—but that drill really hurt!

Shoe Repair at Home

We had a shoe repair kit that was drug out of the store room a couple of times a year to fix shoes. The main part of the kit was a home-made wooden box about a foot high, a foot wide and twenty inches long. On top was mounted an iron stand (about 18 inches high) that was designed to support iron molds—of various sizes-- shaped to fit the inside of a shoe. Inside was an assortment of shoe molds—from tiny to large, a heavy-duty needle and waxed thread devise for stitching, tacks, glue, scraps of leather, etc.

For every-day use we wore heavy work shoes with leather soles. When a sole wore through, you could buy “half-soles” at a dime store in Decatur, then tack and glue them to the old shoes. When a heel wore down you could buy replacement heels to be tacked on. Shoes were regularly handed down from boy to boy, so some of our old shoes had seen a lot of wear. It’s no wonder we could hardly wait for May 10th to arrive so we could kick off those heavy old shoes and go barefoot all summer.

Dad Hid His Age

Dad was quite open about almost every topic—except he never told us anything about family finances other than the very general observation that “these are tight times” during the Depression years. So I have never understood why he tended to be so secretive about his age. We celebrated his birthday every year on June 16th, but there was never any indication that it was his 50th birthday when we celebrated in 1935. We kids never knew what birthday it was. In fact, at a time when it was popular to put your driver’s license in a little holder that fit around the steering column in the car, Dad put a tiny piece of blank paper over the “Date of Birth” section. I am a great admirer of my father and my memories of him are all very positive—but I have no idea why he wanted to hide his age from us.

The Spanking Machine

Fraternal organizations were more popular in the thirties than they are today. Dad was a member of the Odd Fellows Lodge that met in the Prairie Home Hall. (Earlier Dad and Uncle Sile were active in the Masonic Lodge in Decatur. I have seen a photo of Dad in his Knight Templar uniform, but I don’t have a copy of that picture.) Once Dad brought home the “spanking machine” the local lodge used as a part of their initiation process for new members, in order to make some adjustment in the mechanism. It was a pretty simple machine. The blindfolded new member was asked to stand on a shallow box and bend down to pull up a little handle on the box that released a spring-loaded paddle that sprang up and whacked him in the behind. We boys were rather fascinated with the mystery of the secret lodge and we each tried out the spanking machine—but since we already knew what was going to happen there was no surprise element. We soon decided that this was “no big deal” and lost interest in it.

A Penny Per Hundred

We had trouble controlling the weeds in an area of the yard just north of the front porch of the house. In those days we didn’t have herbicides like Weed-B-Gon, so one wet spring Mother “hired” Paul and me to pull weeds. I think we were about five and three at the time. We agreed on a price of a penny per hundred weeds pulled—and Paul and I were eager to make our fortune. The weeds were plantain and something we called buckhorn (or maybe buckthorn?). We took this job seriously and we pulled a lot of weeks. As I recall our best day was 1,100 weeds—eleven pennies! But we didn’t spend it all at once. Times were tough and we didn’t often get a chance to make money, so when we went to Mr. Patton’s store we would only spend two cents apiece at the penny candy counter.

We had a big yard and we cut the grass with on old-fashioned reel mower. Often other farm jobs ganged up on us and the yard work was neglected until the grass grew too long for easy cutting. I remember that Donald and John sometimes teamed up with one boy pulling—with a rope tied around his middle—while the other boy guided and pushed. A few times when they tired of this hard work they would hitch a horse to the little mower, with Donald leading the horse and John guiding. This was a lot less work, but it was awkward; when the lawnmower jammed from too much tall grass, the choked mower was dragged a few feet before the horse stopped. Then it had to be unhitched for unclogging before repositioning and starting up again. We often resolved to cut grass more often so it would be easier, but lots of times we got involved in other things and again let it grow too long.

Another problem with working in the yard was chigger bites. These tiny little insects—not much bigger than the period at the end of this sentence—are like miniature ticks. They crawl up your leg and burrow into the skin, particularly the tender skin in the crotch area, and cause very intense itching. I haven’t had a chigger bite in sixty years—but I still remember that crazy itching!

Thanksgiving Dinner at a Restaurant

In 1931 it was “our turn” to host the Thanksgiving dinner for the extended Baird family. However, Mother had not been feeling well that fall, so Dad arranged for dinner to be served at the Pioneer Café in Bethany. According to Mother’s diary the menu included turkey, dressing, noodles, gravy, sweet and Irish potatoes, peas, salads, ice cream and cake. The cost was fifty cents a plate. This meal stands out in my memory because I can’t think of any other time during the Depression that our family ate in a restaurant.

There were 22 family members sedated at one long table: Uncle Sile, Aunt Ella, Aunt Mary, Aunt Nannie, Uncle George, Lee and Edna Boland, Everett, Grace, Edna Bea and Helen Louise McClelland, Dave, Ella, Margaret, and Robert Laughlin and we seven Bairds from Prairie Home. Dad had brought in a pumpkin to be hollowed out for a centerpiece and filled with apples and pears that he also supplied. Aunt Mary brought fancy place cards. Mother reports that everyone was pleased with the delicious dinner. After dinner everyone returned to our house for visiting and games.

We Were Robbed

On the farm we never locked the house when we went away and we left the key in the ignition when we parked the car at church or in Bethany or put it in the garage. I had never heard of any instance of anyone robbing a house in the Prairie Home community—until one night in the mid-thirties we came home from a church supper and found that our house had been robbed.

Not all that much was taken as I recall. A toy bank that contained several old coins that Dad had been given as a child was taken from his upstairs desk. This was more of a sentimental loss than a serious financial loss. And six or seven dollar bills were taken from Mother’s pocketbook, which she had left on top of her dresser. That was about it.

The sheriff came and tried, unsuccessfully, to get fingerprints from doorknobs and Mother’s pocketbook. We suspected a neighbor boy who lived a couple of miles away—but there was absolutely no proof. A few nights later there was a school program and John stayed home with Dad’s revolver—but nothing happened. There were no other incidents at our house or anywhere else in the area. We sometimes locked the door when we left after that, but our door key was a simple “skeleton” key—you could buy one for ten cents at the dime store.

Beating Carpets

I would guess that today most people—particularly younger ones—would have no idea why anyone would want to “beat carpets.” But in rural America sixty or seventy years ago this was an important springtime job, usually assigned to grade school-age boys.

In the days before we had electricity on the farm in1939 (that is, before we could have an electric vacuum cleaner), Dad took the area carpet from the living room out each spring, hung it on the clothesline, and had one of us Baird boys beat it thoroughly with a “carpet beater.” In those days a carpet beater was a standard tool in every home. It had a wooden handle and a pair of very thick wires that formed a loop out about three feet. The boy hit the carpet as hard as he could with the beater and dust flew out in a big cloud. He continued beating, one side and then the other, until he could show that further strenuous beating raised very little additional dust. After getting permission to stop beating the big living room carpet, the designated boy would be given half a dozen much smaller carpets (such as 3 x 6 feet) to beat until they, too, were relatively dust free. No boy liked this dirty job—but at least he got rid of some of his frustrations by whaling away at those carpets with all his might!

Shopping in Decatur

Compared to the farm routine at home, a shopping trip to Decatur was sort of a high adventure. It was a lot different from shopping in Prairie Home or Bethany. We had two general stores in Prairie Home and four grocery stores in Bethany. In each of these stores you went up to the counter and told the proprietor or salesclerk what you wanted and he/she gathered your list of items and put it on the counter. (These days this kind of retail store is called a “Ma and Pa operation.”) But there was an A&P Supermarket in Decatur that allowed you to make a vastly larger selection of merchandise and brands and regularly offered specials that the local grocery stores never matched. This was the first store in the “Decatur trade area” to offer modern supermarket practices and it quickly became very popular. And there were two ten-cent stores in Decatur, Kresge and Woolworth, where we kids did most of our (very limited) shopping. I remember clearly that even when I was in my early teens I would go from counter to counter in Kresge’s agonizing on how to best spend a dime, which was all the money I had in this world—and ten cents more than I usually had. Sometimes I ended up buying nothing; the security of having a whole dime in my pocket was greater than anything Kresge’s had to offer.

I also remember that in those Depression days there were many more unfortunate people on the streets with now-correctable medical problems. Birthmarks (liver-colored blotches on the forehead or face) were quite common. On almost every trip we would see at least one or two persons with a club foot, a cleft palate, or a hunchback. Fortunately these problems are rarely seen anymore, since in modern times these defects are routinely corrected in early childhood.

Double Names

We always referred to my sister as Mary Grace—using both names. Later in her life she shortened it to simply Mary, but everyone in the family still calls her Mary Grace. Her friend Nellie Marie Burrows was always called by both names, as were our cousins Edna Beatrice and Helen Louise McClelland. Lots of girls had double names in those days. The prize for multiple names would have gone to our neighbor Amantha Rose America Belle (Pogue) Wicker. Another local lady was named Goldie Flossy Ivey Pearl—but I can’t remember her last name.

Not many boys had double names, but in East Center Marion Nelson Davidson went to school with me and Bobby Joe Boyer attended later.

Back then it was fairly common for a boy to use the term “Junior” as a first name. Junior Sanner signed his name that way, rather than Jay Sanner Jr.—and everyone referred to him simply as Junior. The same with Junior Roby. In my high school graduating class the diploma, class picture, etc. all listed “Junior Egnor.”

Homemade Soap

Mother made her own laundry soap. The main ingredients were lard and Lewis brand lye, along with water and borax. The ingredients had to be stirred constantly in a shallow porcelain pan until the lard was all dissolved; by this time the mixture (without being otherwise heated) was hot and smoking. It then cooled overnight into a butterscotch-colored solid. When it was cooled we cut it into cakes (or bars) and on washday we took a paring knife to cut the cakes into chips that would dissolve readily in the hot water we had poured from the wash boiler into the gasoline-powered Maytag washing machine. Our work clothes would get really dirty on the farm and this homemade soap did a good job of getting them clean. Once in awhile we ran out of homemade soap and cut bars of P&G (Proctor & Gamble) laundry soap into chips. There was no such thing as granulated or liquid laundry soap in those days.

Dickson Mounds

A few times each summer we would make a Sunday outing to an interesting place to visit. The longest such trip I remember was to Dickson Mounds Museum near Havana, a small town on the Illinois River—about 120 miles from Bethany. The museum featured exhibits of skeletons of Indians that had been buried in big burial mounds.

We were surprised to find that the private museum charged and admission fee of 75 cents for adults and 25 cents for children. Dad said this was just too much money and was ready to turn around and head back home, but the family insisted that Dad go in and he could then tell the rest of us about it. While we waited Paul and I played with a friendly Siberian husky dog that was there—we had never seen a husky before. Dad was a great storyteller and he gave us such vivid descriptions of the exhibits that we all enjoyed our visit to the museum. (Dickson Mounds is now a free state museum showing artifacts and multimedia presentations of the history of Indian tribes that once lived in the local area. However, out of respect for the Indians the excavated skeletal remains are no longer on display.)

Saving a Butchered Tree

One summer when I was four or five years old Mother asked Donald at breakfast to cut down a little “sucker” tree that had started up from the roots of a maple stump in the front yard near the orchard fence. I misunderstood and thought that she referred to a nice little maple tree in the side yard, near the smokehouse, that had been transplanted from the timber a couple of years earlier. I thought I was being helpful when I attacked the wrong tree with a butcher knife. I couldn’t cut the tree down with the butcher knife, but I did strip all the bark off from the bottom to the lower branches.

Donald had recently read an article on grafting fruit trees—and he thought he might be able to save the little tree. Dad took him to the timber where he found a small maple tree of about the same size and carefully removed its bark in one piece. He then painstakingly fitted the bark around the tree I had damaged, wrapped it with string to hold it in position, and put melted paraffin around all the seams. It worked! Donald carried a bucket of water to the tree every day and was proud of his work when it had completely recovered.

Tribute to John Harris Baird

I absolutely love this tribute to my grandfather, John Harris Baird, from The Baird Scrapbook, which was written in the 1980s by my Mother and John Jr. Unfortunately, I never got to know my grandfather because he died in 1917, more than five years before I was born. He must have been a really special man!

“John Harris Baird was a large man, rather heavy, and a fine looking man. He was outgoing, kind and affectionate, and he liked everyone and everybody liked him. He was jolly and liked a good joke. Being a descendent of the musical Travis’s of Wales, he loved to sing. Nothing pleased him more than to join a group around an organ or piano and have a regular concert. He sang in the Prairie Home choir for many years. He was also the Sunday School Superintendent for years. In 1905 the Prairie Home congregation and neighbors surprised him with a rocking chair in appreciation for his services. He was an elder for 35 years. He loved children. His children adored him and he could take any child or baby from its mother. He was a good neighbor and often helped John Garman with his hay and butchering. He loved to hunt and especially to fish.”

I have never heard of anyone else described as being so lovable that “he could take any child or baby away from its mother.” What a tribute! Wouldn’t we all hope to be able to live our lives so wonderfully that we might some day warrant such a magnificent testimonial!!

Pepper Was “Bad” For Boys

We never used much pepper at our house. There was a salt-shaker on the dining room table, but no pepper-shaker. Mother had heard that pepper was “bad” for young boys—that it might over-stimulate their hormones, so she used very little of it in her cooking. We boys never got used to pepper seasoning, so we didn’t miss it.

Once when young Donald was having breakfast at Uncle Sile’s he happened to notice that Aunt Ella had put pepper on her scrambled eggs and exclaimed, “Aunt Ella, your eggs are all dirty!” Some years later I traded a couple of cookies for a piece of fried chicken that Austin Sanner had in his lunch box at grade school and was delighted at how good that chicken tasted with pepper on it. After that I offered to make a trade whenever Austin had fried chicken for lunch. And I still like to season food with pepper.