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When
Children were Children
My Home the
Schoolhouse --- Part 1
By Sharon Hopper
Litterally. When I was four going on five when we moved into an old
brick building that used to be a schoolhouse. My aunt and uncle
actually owned the house and did some of the basic home improvement
work on the original building but then sold it to my mom and dad for a
very good price. It had to be a good price because my dad didn’t
believe in financing anything. Cash or nothing was his motto.
My parents were products of the depression and watched many people lose
everything. So as I was growing up we waited a long time for things to
improve or to have anything new. Looking back on it now the man was
brilliant. No bills, no worries. But we did suffer a bit. Let me try to
remember a few things that I first remember about that place. It won’t
be hard.
No bathroom, only and empty small room in the house that was to be the
future bathroom. It had a bucket of water, a basin, and a small
cupboard for personal items, soap, wash cloth, towel, and a “slop jar”.
Now if you need to ask about that you are really a lot younger than I.
Or you were a lot richer. Maybe both. That was where you went potty in
the very cold, or in the middle of the night. Dad carried it up to the
outhouse every day. It did have a lid. A tight one.
The outhouse was the place where dad read the paper and it was just a
“single holer” but we kept a bucket of lime and extra toilet paper in a
can, and a flashlight handy for those dark days and nights. I never
went after dark to the outhouse. My little cousins who stayed overnight
went to the little room where I went and used the “slop jar’. The
adults usually went up the path to the little house. It was not too bad
because we had it cleaned every couple months. Well that was bad
enough, but …….
We had no water in the house and the well had not been drilled yet so
we had to cross the road, go into a pasture, and follow the path down
the hill to a spring fed well to get out daily buckets of water. That
trip was done about twice a day.
On bath night several more buckets were needed. I even had my own
little bucket and one learned fast not to spill the water or you had to
go back and get some more. Funny thing us kids thought this was rather
fun until winter set in. My aunt and uncle who sold us the house had
three children and as I grew a bit older I understood why they moved to
an apartment in Butler, Ohio where my Uncle Bill had a bakery.
I particularly remember a day when my mother and I got halfway down the
path to get some water when she screamed at me to run to the gate.
Skipper usually went with us and this time he was a blessing. There was
a bull in the pasture. That was not a good mix. That old bull was
trying to get a cow interested in him and he was not in a good mood.
Skipper barked at the bull and distracted him so my mother and I could
escape the pasture.
Needless to say she made a quick trip to visit the farmer and explained
that he needed to warn us of that situation. It was shortly after that
the well was drilled and we had a hand pump right outside the kitchen
door.
Now we had water not only for the house but to play in and being the
creative geniuses we were as children, we found lots of way to use that
water. After all it was there and all you had to do was pump. And
mother was so happy to have the water close to the house. It was like a
little bit of heaven had come to visit us.
Now all we had to do was get adequate heat into the house. Next time I
will continue with the addition of the coal furnace in the basement.
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