BS: Lifestyle in rural communities

Subject: BS: Lifestyle in rural communities
From: Will Fly
Date: 30 Jan 12 - 02:18 PM

I was talking to one of my mates in the local pub this evening (the Old Gits' Corner, as ever...) who recounted tales of life in outlying villages. What came as a surprise to me was that, in the small hamlets clustered around my village, there was no gas and electricity until 1962 - only a mere 50 years ago. And, in some outlying farms, no water - just a pump connected to a spring.

Now, my guess is that, in the UK, we see ourselves as small and urbanised - particularly when compared to the US, with its vast spaces and isolated rural communities - but I must admit to being surprised at the late arrival of these basic utilities to communities not 50 miles from London.

Given that the average age of Mudcatters appears to be about 71 (I've done the survey), I'd love to hear tales from other folks on both sides of the water about living in times like that.

Subject: RE: BS: Lifestyle in rural communities
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 30 Jan 12 - 04:57 PM

When I was a kid, I had an aunt and uncle who still lived in the house my father grew up in. That house never had plumbing or electricity. Oddly enough, they did have a telephone, though. There was an outhouse out back, they got their water from a cistern, and they burned coal oil for light. (That's what they called it, anyway; I think it's the same stuff we now call kerosene in the US or paraffin in the UK.) There was a wood cook stove in the kitchen and a fireplace in the living room, and no heat at all, if I remember correctly, in the bedrooms. They may have also burned coal in the fireplace and stove. I'm not sure; I never visited in the winter.

This was up until about 1952 in rural Kentucky. After that, they moved into a new house that they built on the same property, closer to the road. The new house had plumbing and electricity from the get-go. The old house remained standing but unused for several years afterward, but since they didn't maintain it, it slowly rotted away. I was curious about it, but my parents wouldn't let me explore it. They thought it was unsafe. It probably was. I think they eventually burned it down.

Meanwhile, I had another aunt and uncle—my father's other brother—who lived in another new house maybe 10 miles away. They had electricity but no plumbing. They got their water from a well. There was no pump; my uncle lowered a bucket on a rope. There was an outhouse out back. I remember the house had a small room that was probably intended to be a bathroom, but they never got around to installing any pipes or fixtures. Instead, it was used as a storeroom. For washing up, there was an enameled-steel pitcher and bowl in the kitchen.

I think not having plumbing was just a matter of thrift for them. This uncle was "retired" for as long as I can remember. I believe he got a partial disability pension due to having been wounded in WW2, and he just decided to live on that instead of working. This meant they had to live very cheaply. I remember seeing a scar on his arm, but there didn't seem to be anything he couldn't do. They lived this way at least until I last saw them, which was, I think, 1964. After that, I left home, and so never went on trips with my parents any more, and so never visited Kentucky again.

Subject: RE: BS: Lifestyle in rural communities
From: Newport Boy
Date: 30 Jan 12 - 05:05 PM

On BBC2 Wales earlier this week a series about Welsh steam railways included an interview with a man who'd been appointed as Stationmaster in N Wales about 1960. When his family moved into the stationmaster's house, he found that there was no inside toilet. With two young children, he asked British Railways to install one. The reply was shown on screen, effectively 'This station is in rural North Wales. Many dwellings in rural Wales do not have inside toilets.' BR relented a couple of years later.

We moved into a large old house in a hamlet 12 miles from Bristol in 1978. I found two large galvanised water tanks in the roof, complete with all the galvanised plumbing, some of which was still part of the mains system. I had to cap the well in the hall, and found the shelf just above water level where the pump sat. The pump was in a stable and was almost serviceable. The well water was last used in the late 1940s, and the previous owners had had the water tested as OK during the drought of 1976.

Until 1980, the cottage village 'shop' over the road was run by two elderly sisters. By the time I knew it, 'stock' consisted of a few dozen tins of doubtful age, a dozen jars of sweets (ditto) and whatever vegetables came from their garden. They had mains water - one cold tap in a scullery, where the outer door had a gap of 8 inches to the earth floor so the dog could get in and out. There was no inside toilet, and the privy was 20 yards across the garden. 1980!!

Most places round here had mains electricity, but gas is still unknown outside the town. The population of the villages and hamlets in a 5 mile radius is now about 5000. And we don't have mains sewerage either.

I wouldn't swap it for a house in the city at any price!

Phil

Subject: RE: BS: Lifestyle in rural communities
From: Bobert
Date: 30 Jan 12 - 05:41 PM

It's not just rural areas... I went to work part time for the anti-poverty agency in Richmond, Virginia (USA) while in college and sent into areas where people might have electricity but no indoor plumbing... I vividly recall walking into an old brick home in "Fulton Bottom" that had been built in the 1850's and the floor had either burner out or rotter out and you had to step down where the floor used to be several cinder block makeshift steps to the dirt that used to be under the house... There was no water and no therefore no plumbing what so ever... There was very basic electricity but no heat other than an old wood stove sitting in the middle of the room with a long vent pipe going up thru the roof... An entire family lived there.... They drew water from a hand dug well and had an outhouse...

Several years ago I was in Mississippi and in a very rural area... Had gone back there for a family "picnic"... Same deal except they didn't have any electricity at all... I'd bet they still don't...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Lifestyle in rural communities
From: Deckman
Date: 30 Jan 12 - 05:48 PM

That's a very common time frame over here in Washington state also. My Finnish immagrant grandmother NEVER had her home in Eastern Washington wired for electricity ... for religious reasons. "The is no mention of electricity in the bible!"

My wife grew up in the woods on the west coast of the Olympic Penninsula. Her father was a logger, and they never had electricity until the late 1950's. bob(deckman)nelson ... who still heats home with firewood!

Subject: RE: BS: Lifestyle in rural communities
From: Ed T
Date: 30 Jan 12 - 08:58 PM

I was born in 1950. Grew up on a rural farm. I went to a one room school, with six grades (45 kids)

We had crops and livestock to serve our needs, not to sell. So, we ate very well. We canned, smoked, salted dried and cured and stored all our own produced food for the winter. (We also had an ice house for storing goods deep under ice and sawdust in the summer) We butchered a cow and pig and However, we had few consumer goods. Electricity arrived in about '58, so we had lights and gradually indoor plumbing.

We had the first TV in the community, and each night neighbours would call over to watch TV with us. Saturday night was "hockey night" and we would have from ten to twenty people crowded around the TV. My mother made sure everyone was offered something to eat half way through the game. It was fun.

We traveled into town every second Saturday for staples (Molassess and cooking supplies). If we kids (all six of us) were lucky, we would get a big box of Puffed wheat to eat later for a treat. We were excited.

We wore canvas sneakers, rubber boots and one pair of blue jeans until they wore out, then they were patched until they could be patched no more. Winter was rubber boots with hand made wool socks.

We had a wood stove. It was burned down each night, because house fires were a big concern for the dry wooden structures. It was cold (some times -25 C), but there were piles of home made quilts (some feather) to keep us warm. In the morning my father arose first and got the fire going. We would make the mad dash to huddle near the stove until it warmed up.

Good memories were music, square dancing and getting together to socialize at neighbours houses or community events, like homemade ice cream and strawberry social parties. I still enjoy playing cards, because of my childhood experiences.

It was kind of a community where we were all the same economically, as no family was better off than another. People pitched in to help each other, when needed. As I visit Cuba, I find the society much like the community I grew up in (minus the government/ communist stuff). We were poor in consumer goods, but so was everyone else.

We were not rich with consumer goods, but we are rich with memories.

Subject: RE: BS: Lifestyle in rural communities
From: Ed T
Date: 30 Jan 12 - 09:00 PM

BTW, my birthplace was rural east coast Canada.

Subject: RE: BS: Lifestyle in rural communities
From: jimmyt
Date: 30 Jan 12 - 10:12 PM

I grew up with the old 5 rooms and a "path," in rural Ohio. You did not linger in the outhouse in midwinter, and I remember I could pee my whole name in the winter snow on cold evenings and I had enough bladder control to come back and dot the I in jimmy.

Surprisingly, we just moved in to a new home where we heat entirely with wood in energy efficient wood fireplaces. I have 40 acre farm and enough trees fall naturally each wind storm to provide an endless supply of firewood. have revived my skills with a sledge and wedge as well!

Subject: RE: BS: Lifestyle in rural communities
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 08:47 AM

Went to Holy Communion last Sunday to a lovely old church with no electricity. The 'box pews' have doors and all you can see are people's heads. The organ is a harmonium which has to be pedalled. There are brass candle-holders mounted on every pew. An old lady had me in fits just before the service began, Apparently a few weeks before at Evensong, an old gentleman's scarf caught fire from the candle behind his head. "Oi sed ter him, yer smouldering, me old pal!" This is Bylaugh Church in Norfolk UK, not far from Dereham. The stillness and peace is beyond compare, and they only use the 17th Century Book of Common Prayer. A total time-warp. (Bit chilly though in the depths of winter!)

Subject: RE: BS: Lifestyle in rural communities
From: Rapparee
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 09:45 AM

Growing up we didn't have a refrigerator or electricity or a phone or a television (see electricity, above) or running water or any form of heating or clothes or a roof or walls or food or education or...wait, that's another story entirely.

I visited relatives outside of town who had cisterns, outhouses, and only intermittent electricity, and there are places I know of that still do not have indoor plumbing. One family who lived only a half a block away had an outhouse, but city water and electricity. This was in West Central Illinois, on the banks of the Mighty Mississloppy River.

Out here in Idaho the last last outhouse in town was closed up five years back, and there's a move on to the rid of all the remaining septic tanks.

Subject: RE: BS: Lifestyle in rural communities
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 10:52 AM

Once when I was visiting Ohio, a friend took me to Lehman's Hardware in Kidron. They specialize in selling non-electric equipment for the Amish and others who live "off the grid." Plus some people who, like me, like this stuff mainly for its nostalgia value.

Oil lamps and wicks, wind-up clocks, hand pumps, washboards, wringers, butter churns, hand saws, hand drills, scythes,—all kinds of stuff you probably thought they didn't make anymore, or only made out of plastic.

You will enjoy browsing their web site.

Subject: RE: BS: Lifestyle in rural communities
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 11:07 AM

I love oil lamps and heaters - my late grandmothers both used paraffin heaters and the scent of them seems so homely.

I'm trying to trace the records of the cottages cleared out of my village in the 60s - demolished as unfit for human habitation for not having running water or sanitation - but the web sites where there were discussions seem to have vanished or I have forgotten where they were!

Subject: RE: BS: Lifestyle in rural communities
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 11:41 AM

Out of interest, does anyone who's lived without electricity find a difference 'in themselves' once they get it? I have a theory that the magnetic force fields (or something) in a wired-up house have an adverse effect on the body. This church I was telling you about is isolated and miles from any power lines etc. I always feel a sense of physical clarity and relief when I sit in there, it's hard to describe but very obvious. I wonder...

Subject: RE: BS: Lifestyle in rural communities
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 01:43 PM

I have a tinfoil hat I can lend you

Subject: RE: BS: Lifestyle in rural communities
From: open mike
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 01:46 PM

I remember 35 years ago we had party line telephones in this area. I think there were 6 houses on each line...I remember as a kid, at my grandparents' farm they had their own "ring" as they had party lines too. The Grange organization (a group basically serving farmers) had as one of their main projects many years ago was Rural electrification and telephone service.

I recall hearing that my relatives on the farm had thier own power plant out in the barn...some mixture of jars and wires...so that they could listen to the radio. they might have had lights inside the house too.

I lived for years "off the grid" with solar panels and a hydro-
electric system...with power generated by a Pelton wheel....

Subject: RE: BS: Lifestyle in rural communities
From: Will Fly
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 01:52 PM

I'm loving these stories - which, taken as a whole, give a wonderful picture of different times in different communities.

Keep 'em coming!

Subject: RE: BS: Lifestyle in rural communities
From: frogprince
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 01:53 PM

I was born in 1942. I was raised, from the time I was a few months old, on a farm in southern Minnesota. Two rooms downstairs, three bedrooms upstairs. I think we still had a cranked telephone when I started grade school. By my earliest memory, the water pump was coupled to a 1928 chevy truck engine. I think we got electricity about the time I started first grade; lighting before that was kerosene lamps. There was never an indoor bathroom until my parents abandoned the crumbling old house for a double wide mobile in the late '60s. I can remember being bathed in a galvanized tub, but after early childhood bathing consisted of heating water in a teakettle, pouring it in a washpan, and retreating with soup, washcloth and towel to the corner of the living room which was out of sight from most of the kitchen. We were on honor to stay back from the living room door. Occasionally when my sister, 6 years older, was bathing, I would stick my head through the door with my eyes almost closed. My sister, glasses off and nearsighted like me, assumed I was just pestering her with my eyes completely closed. My mother would probably have killed me if she had caught on.

Subject: RE: BS: Lifestyle in rural communities
From: Ed T
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 02:01 PM

Telephone party line story from the Island Register (Rural Prince Edward Island Canada in the 1950's) :

"As in many Island communities, monthly Women's Institute meetings were family events in St.Lawrence (West Prince). While the women gathered in the living room for their meetings, husbands and children socialized in the kitchen.

Associated with the meetings was food for all, contributed by each member.

One Instutute member was generally known in the community as not putting great care into cleaniness. While many visited their family house, most were imaginative in finding reasons to leave before meals were kindly offered.

The day before one "Institute Meeting", while talking to a friend on a party line this woman stated that she was at first puzzled as to what food item she would bring to the meeting. However, she said her son found a large nest of eggs in an abandoned barn, and that she was bringing egg sandwiches. (The expiry date of these "vintage" eggs was open to speculation).

After that nights Women's Institute meeting, the host found egg sandwitches stuffed under every sofa, and in every nook and cranny. A solid testimony to the number of committed "listeners" on the party line in this community."

Subject: RE: BS: Lifestyle in rural communities
From: Rapparee
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 02:45 PM

I've known many Amish over the years and they seemed no different than those who lived in places with electricity, etc. No different illnesses, no more or fewer heart attacks, etc. Of course, I only lived in "Amish Country" for 28 or so years.

Subject: RE: BS: Lifestyle in rural communities
From: gnu
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 02:55 PM

Indeed, Will. Great stuff.

Subject: RE: BS: Lifestyle in rural communities
From: Dorothy Parshall
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 03:39 PM

The best place I have ever lived - 1989-99 - was in the middle of 100 acres, one and a half miles from my next door neighbour, thus fulfilling a life-long fantasy to live at the end of a dirt road. The snow plow came in as long as I lived there, turned around in a specially cleared area, by my driveway and went out again.

I had propane stove and frig and candlepower. I would have used kerosene/cola oil/paraffin lamps but had already found out - at my previous non-electrified home - that it makes me VERY ill.

I brought water in in jugs, which I filled at the local library or a youngster filled them for me (At his wedding, his mom commented on when he used to fill Dorothy's jugs!). I used a garbage can to catch rain water for washing.

I had two demand generators but they were noisy so were only used on rare occasions. Then one broke down and then the other. Then I had a solar installation and put in a bathroom. But the pump quit. I still had light using automotive bulbs - 22 candlepower lighted a whole room much better than the four candles I usually read by.

Life took a turn and I had to sell the "farm".

It was so beautifully quiet and peaceful in every way. Even the frig only had a very quiet purr. I could not bear to listen to music because it broke the wonderful silence, interfered with hearing the wind in the trees, the quiet snowfall.

This was in the Haliburton Highlands, about 5 miles south of Algonquin Park. My Shangrila.

Re rural telephones: I was living one summer on the coast of Nova Scotia. I had sent a letter to a friend in Labrador about an incident and he tried to phone me. The local operator (1971) told him, "Well, she doesn't have a phone but I can put you through to the next door neighbour." So they assured him I was OK but away for the weekend. Those were the days! Country life at its best.

Subject: RE: BS: Lifestyle in rural communities
From: Newport Boy
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 04:18 PM

Ah - listening in. In 1957 Anne & I cycled through Holland, Germany, Luxembourg and Belgium, mainly staying in youth hostels with the odd night camping. We were very poor students and bought nothing except our bed, breakfast and dinner. Lunch was purloined from the breakfast table.

Our extreme saving was on postcards home to our parents - we didn't buy any, but took plain postcards from home. It let us use a whole side for the message. We lived two streets apart on the same estate, and the postman's round passed my house before Anne's. We addressed the card to her parents, with a note to the postman asking him to read it to my parents before delivering it. He didn't miss one!

Three years earlier, I delivered papers on the same estate. The postman & I regularly exchanged items for a couple of streets for a very efficient delivery - post and paper in one drop! Totally illegal, of course.

Phil

Subject: RE: BS: Lifestyle in rural communities
From: Ebbie
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 12:16 AM

As I've said before, I was reared Amish. However, our own brand of it was not nearly as strict as in some communities. We didn't have cars or radios or most musical instruments, etc, but we always had electricity and running water.

One of my uncles, though belonging to the same church we did, built his new home without wiring. He was a carpenter by trade and it was a large, well-built house. But no electricity. They used gas lamps in the house and generators in the barns.

"Out of interest, does anyone who's lived without electricity find a difference 'in themselves' once they get it? I have a theory that the magnetic force fields (or something) in a wired-up house have an adverse effect on the body. This church I was telling you about is isolated and miles from any power lines etc. I always feel a sense of physical clarity and relief when I sit in there, it's hard to describe but very obvious. I wonder..." Eliza

As Rap said, I don't know of any benefits, healthwise, in doing without electricity. My uncle, for instance, eventually - many years later - developed heart trouble and then had a stroke that killed him. His children, my cousins, were the skinniest relatives I ever had. Their mother and one brother died of tuberculosis.

My guess, Eliza, would be that you react to the inherent peace of the church.

Subject: RE: BS: Lifestyle in rural communities
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 02:42 AM

You had a tap? LUXURY!

When I was young, if you wanted a cup tea, you had to dig a well with your teaspoon ……………







Sorry! ;-)

DC

Subject: RE: BS: Lifestyle in rural communities
From: GUEST,999
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 03:09 AM

Talk about luxury: you had cups AND teaspoons?

Subject: RE: BS: Lifestyle in rural communities
From: Will Fly
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 04:26 AM

Damn - the Four Yorkshiremen have got into this thread...

Subject: RE: BS: Lifestyle in rural communities
From: Musket
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 04:44 AM

Where I used to live, they have only recently evolved from six to five fingers. And then in some isolated parts....

I used to know a song about someone kept in the attic and fed fish heads...

Subject: RE: BS: Lifestyle in rural communities
From: Charmion
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 08:41 AM

I was born in 1954, and grew up in a dairying village on the Rideau River in eastern Ontario. Electricity came to Manotick some time before I did, but the supply was never very reliable until about 1960. Suppertime coincided with evening milking, and the farmers all tended to start up their milking machines (the newest and most exciting productivity improvement since the automobile) at the same time, causing our fragile grid to crap out just as village housewives were flashing up the oven to crisp that tuna casserole.

Our house featured a hermaphrodite cookstove, wood-fired on the left side and electric on the right side. When the power failed, Mum just shifted dinner to the left and put a match to yesterday's Ottawa Journal underneath.

Every pre-war house in Manotick bore indications that indoor plumbing, electricity and central heating were recent additions: a "Quebec heater" (heating stove) in the parlour; stove-pipe hole covers in every room, the backhouse, an abandoned "dry sink", the disused pump beside a kitchen sink boasting brand-new faucets, the oddly located bathroom, twisted wiring clearly visible along the baseboards. Until about 1960, Manotick's only restaurant, the Manotick Tea Room, offered only a backhouse for the customers' sanitary requirements, and I don't remember any facilities for washing your hands after.

We were the second-last family in Manotick to get a television. (You could tell who had TV and who didn't by the fishbone antenna on the roof.) The first TV belonged to Mr. Carson the milkman, who had a television before he bothered with indoor plumbing. Tsk, tsk!

Subject: RE: BS: Lifestyle in rural communities
From: Pete Jennings
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 08:56 AM

I spent my first few years in Ashington, a mining village in the NE of England. None of the miners' houses had bathrooms, just an outside toilet across the back lane. This was 1952-9.

The mine didn't have pithead showers so the men would come home coal black and the women would have a bath tub in front of the fire, filled with hot water from the kettle. (They had plumbing in the scullery, but no hot water). It was pretty normal to go into someone's house and see the husband having a scrub in the living room.

The Coal Board finally converted the houses in the sixties so they had a bathroom and a proper kitchen.

Subject: RE: BS: Lifestyle in rural communities
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 11:48 AM

I'll have you know life is still kinda backward back in the sticks. They don't have curbside pickup of trash and recycling. (They don't have curbs either, come to think of it.) Often cable isn't available, so you're forced to put up a satellite dish. That means you don't get broadband either, and are forced to get by with a DSL line. And if you live behind a hill, cell phone reception is terrible!

Subject: RE: BS: Lifestyle in rural communities
From: Ed T
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 02:22 PM

""And if you live behind a hill, cell phone reception is terrible!""

It's even worse if you live in a bunker under a hill-you have to resort to a cellar phone.

Subject: RE: BS: Lifestyle in rural communities
From: gnu
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 02:48 PM

Certainly radiation and e-m-waves from electrics are bad for you but do you wanna live to be 100 without em?

Subject: RE: BS: Lifestyle in rural communities
From: RangerSteve
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 07:10 PM

Although not rural, my parents' Brooklyn apartment didn't have hot water, you had to heat it on the stove. A lot of the old brownstone apartments were once single family homes, later turned into multi-family apartments. Toilets were usually placed in closets, and some friends down the street had their bathtub in the kitchen, which was, and still is, common in old New York City apartments.

Subject: RE: BS: Lifestyle in rural communities
From: gnu
Date: 02 Feb 12 - 04:34 PM

I do hope the stories do not dry up. Great stuff so far. Ed... I especially enjoyed your post.

Not that I am nudging you into posting more... >;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Lifestyle in rural communities
From: katlaughing
Date: 02 Feb 12 - 07:26 PM

Charmion, you've just described the big old Victorian farmhuse my parents bought in the 60s. The bathtub, obviously in a converted bedroom, was across a door, blocking access to an upstairs verandah. The windows were big enough, we could crawl through, though! The main drawback of the whole place was so many walls were taken out to open up the downstairs rooms, my bedroom and other rooms had no heat ducts. It was a bit chilly in the winter, but I still love sleeping in a "cool" room.

When I met my Rog, he lived about 15 miles out of town on 25 acres with an unfinished house built into the side of a hill. Great, southeast facing views, no water, but power and natural gas were installed. We hauled our water in a 250 gallon tank behind our Subaru, once per week. Then, the last year we were there, they put in water lines, but cut the gas line. So that last winter was spent with plenty of water, but no heat save the wood-burning stove we bought. It was an adventure living there and our kids look back on it fondly. It's all in a book I hope to have out by the end of the year.

Subject: RE: BS: Lifestyle in rural communities
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 03 Feb 12 - 10:33 AM

My uncle had a farm on the edge of Dartmoor in Devon from the 1950s to the early 1970s and had the luxury if an electric pump to raise water from the well. It was a puzzle to him why this pump would occasionaly stop working and have to be switched on again by using the on/off push button in the kitchen. He eventually discovered that one of his Siamese cats was sitting on the shelf alonside the button and pushing it to switch the pump off!

The toilet facillty there was an Elsan that had to be emptied.

The farm was on the side of a hill and did not stand very high out of the surrounding platform where it was situated.

Subject: RE: BS: Lifestyle in rural communities
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 03 Feb 12 - 10:35 AM

That seemed to submit itself then!
(continued)
He used to claim that he had a damp course - in the back door and out the front!