Columbus Kansas - THEY LIVED THERE

“THEY LIVED THERE”

By: Charles (Ed) Skidmore


Even though they have been gone nearly half century, I still have a most vivid memory of Grandfather and Grandmother Skidmore and the house in which they lived. Grandfather, Uncle Jimmy, as he was familiarly known, Fought in the Northern Army during the Civil War and was with Sherman on his March to the Sea.

Grandmother was a New England Ward, a cousin of Harriet WardBeecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Her claim to fame was that When a small girl she saw Abraham Lincoln who was president at the time.

Grandfather’s father was Andrew Skidmore jr., of Beverly, RandolphCounty, West Virginia. Great Grand-Father Skidmore, freed his slaves as the outbreak of the CivilWar, and promptly went broke. In the meantime, my grandfather, Uncle Jimmy, had moved to Vermillion County, Illinois, Where he enlisted in the Northern Army, 51st Illinois Infantry as a private in Captain John McWilliams Company E. and arose to the rank of 1st Lieutenant.

After the war Grandfather came to Kansas where he met and married Grandmother. The house occupied by the couple was typical of the age in which they lived. It was an old fashioned, one story structure with a wide Porch protected by a railing, shuttered windows and gabled roof, set well back from the street, partly hidden by gnarled cedars and elms.

A hammock swung between the corner of the house and a Crab apple tree. The summer house out on the lawn in one corner of the picket fence was covered with honey suckle vines.

There were bee hives under the apple trees in the back yard and a currant hedge along the back alley. The old red barn on the west side of the lot had stalls for old Dan, the horse, and Clover the cow. The loft over-head held the winter’s supply of hay for the horse and cow. On the front of the barn there were sagging boxes that served as shelter for pigeons for many years. The pig pen was on one side of the barn and the chicken house was on the east side of the walk leading out to the alley gate.

Halfway between the house and the barn stood the smokehouse. Inside, it smelled of hickory. Most of the time it hung with great slabs of bacon and sidemeat and hams. The smokehouse was shaded by a big plum tree back of which flourished a wilderness of gooseberry bushes.

An old fashioned cool grape arbor ran along the rear of the house. It had a bench beneath where grandfather sat on hot days and whittled and spit occasionally with unerring accuracy at an ant hill some five or six feet away.

On the other side of the house was the old cherry trees, set out the very year I was born, so said grandmother. And up against the house was grandmother’s rose bed, mulched with dead rotting leaves of years long past. And the trumpet vines that grew over the back porch were planted and cared for by grandmother’s patient fingers.

The well was on the back porch and the water was cool on the hottest days. Down deep inside, hung buckets of milk and butter and eggs. Who needed ice?

My mind slips back over the years. It was a late summer day nearly half a century ago. I was stretched out in the old hammock swing, a book in one hand and apple in the other, alternately reading, munching at the apple and day dreaming.

Birds sang in the trees overhead, bees droned around the hives under the great apple trees. Dust arose in clouds from the road as the herd boy came slowly homeward, shuffling his bare feet along in the dust that was two inches deep in places. A crooked stick in his right hand kept the cows with their tinkling bells in line. Lazy days.

I remember that the parlor in that good old fashioned home was aired of its musty odor only when company came. And on those occasions I got a glimpse of the tin types, the big pictures of father and mother taken on their bridal day. And there were large pictures of grandfather and grandmother and of their fathers and mothers and of the children.

Hooked rugs scattered about on the floor and a fancy hand-made doily was atop the four legged square stand table which had the large glass knobs on the bottom of the legs.

The old organ that Cousin Florence played occasionally on Sunday winter evenings that were too cold for the family to venture out to church, stood along the wall. On those occasions Grandfather read some from the Bible and the family sang stirring church hymns.

The dark blinds on the parlor windows were pulled carefully to the bottom unless company was expected during the day hours.

The kitchen was really the place that interested me the most. It seemed that grandmother spent most of her time in this room with its great coal stove in which a fire burned most of the day, every day of the year. It was from this stove that came the brown roasted turkey at Thanksgiving and Christmas and the big juicy pies and loaf after loaf of home-made bread. What I wouldn’t give now for a slice of that bread spread with home-made butter and sprinkled generously with sugar that the grocer had scooped from a barrel and charged grandmother a few cents a pound.

Grandmother canned tomatoes and all kinds of fruit. She put up honey from the hives and made all kinds of jelly. Enough potatoes came from the garden to last from year to the next. Grandmother baked bread several times a week and biscuits every day. Can openers were unknown.

In one corner of the kitchen was the wash stand upon which reposed a bucket of cold water from the well, the wash basin and the bar of soap, home-made from lye and grease. Everybody at grandfathers arose with the sun and ate breakfast at the same time. However, before eating, you washed your hands and face with the cold well water and brushed your hair.

Breakfast was the same every day of the year. Corn starch custard, made by Cousin Florence, served with pure cream came first. They didn’t ask you how many eggs you wanted at Grandfather’s house or how you wanted them cooked. Grandmother brought in a huge platter full and you could have all you wanted with the proviso that none were left on your plate. The eggs on the platter were edged in by stripes of home cured bacon, hand sliced more than an eighth of an inch thick. Any eggs that were left on the platter at the end of the meal were fed to the chickens.

The churn stood in the corner of the kitchen and on the wall hung the gabbage slicer. The coffee grinder was on the kitchen table. I remember The torture of twisting it as I held it on the chair tightly clutched between my knees. The ground coffee was in a small drawer that pulled out. Grandfather made the coffee around that place and he didn’t measure it either. Boiled with egg shells in the bottom of the pot to catch and hold grounds it was black as tar and thick as mud was Grandfathers Civil War coffee and a cup would almost take the skin off your teeth.

The combination living and dining room where the family spent most of Its time in the evening, boasted of a plate rail with fancy hand painted dishes, the oblong dining room table and its cake dish and spoon glass which was never removed with the exception of its journey to the kitchen for a weekly wash.

On one side of the dining room slightly out from the wall stood the round oak heating stove. On either side was a cigar box holding tobacco for Grandfather and Grandmother, both smoked a pipe in the evening but neither Inhaled. I didn’t see anything wrong about Grandmother smoking a pipe in those days and I don’t today. In fact I rather suspect she didn’t look any worse, sitting contently by the stove in the early evening hours, puffing on her pipe than these young ladies do today, walking down the street with a Cigarette dangling from the corner of their mouth.

Grandfather liked his nip, too. The old gent had a case of imported Scotch shipped in at regular internals. With each case he received a demo bottle of wine as a premium. Grandmother put this aside for medicinal purposes. When I knew him, Grandpap had an eye opener, a jigger before lunch, one before dinner and a night cap upon going to bed shortly after sundown. When prohibition hit the country grandad went on the water wagon but good. He refused to drink bootleg.

After the First World War was over, my cousin Andrew, who had been a Major in aviation took grandfather out to inspect an airplane flown in our Kansas town by a barnstorming pilot. Grandfather refused to go up in the Plane but saw it take off, fly around and land.

After looking the plane over good he said he had seen everything now and was ready to die. Grandmother had been gone these past several years and Grandpap was just hanging around waiting his call from the Man upstairs.

Grandfather always said he would die with his boots on and he almost did. The old gent was out in the back yard chopping up railway ties to burn, caught cold, it ran into pneumonia and up until he became unconscious he insisted on sitting in his chair by the Round Oak stove in the living room of his home. He was an old soldier to the end and he didn’t get his boots off until he became unconscious in the last hours of his final illness. He was 94 years old at the time of his passing.

Many times I have thought back over those old days. The evenings in those old fashioned homes of yesterday were something to envy. The family was together, father sat around the living room in his stocking feet. there were no houseshoes in those days. Father was reading, sometimes aloud, sometimes to himself. Grandmother was sewing, glancing over the top of her glasses every now and then to see if the children, who were playing on the floor, were getting sleepy.

None of the children, not even the 18 year old son, dared stay out after 9 o’clock, except upon special occasions. And when one of the young ones was out, grandmother always waited up and worried until the absent one was home.

There was a great deal of character building, a heap of living in those old times and a lot of folks can’t stop and think back to the days of picket fences, board walks and shuttered windows without some regret.

Life is easier today in a good many ways. The old smokehouse of yesterday went up in flames, cows and hogs were legislated out of the city limits, meat and other groceries come from the supermarket, the yard now covered with carpet of grass, called the lawn, is watered, fertilized and pampered. It is grown for looks and not for youthful feet to caper upon.

The fruit trees have long since died out from old age and lack of attention and have not been replaced. The piano was given to the salvation Army and the family gets its musical training by listening to television. The Bible has been put away so long it is almost impossible to find it when preacher is due for a visit. The only time the family gets together is at an occasional meal. Nobody ever knows what time the kids get in now, if they get in at all.

Of course the forgoing is not true in all homes of the nation but it is typical of all to many. There is no denying that our manner and mode of living has changed greatly in the past decades. Who knows what it will be like another twenty years from now.



Charles "Ed" Skidmore, Writer and Newspaper Editor - Columbus Kansas.
(Mike Skidmore - mskids001@aol.com)