I feel old! 🙂
Last night Vince and I were watching old music videos and in one Alan Jackson was sitting on a porch at an old house . . it looked like it had been closed in and there was a water heater there. Vince said “Look at the water heater on the porch!” I told him . . That’s how they did it back in the old days. The houses didn’t have indoor plumbing and then when they got it, there often wasn’t a place to put the water heater so they stuck it on the porch and closed in an area around it.
My grandparents’ house didn’t have indoor plumbing til I was probably in middle school . . maybe high school. They took the small third bedroom, made part of it into a bathroom, and a separate room for the deep freeze and a closet. They added running watch to the kitchen. Since the house was up off the ground, they ran all the pipes under the house, put the water heater on the back porch and closed it in.
But, at first, even when they got indoor plumbing, there was no hot water so they still heated it on the stove . . which was not so great in Louisiana in the summer time with no air conditioner.
Sometimes I have to really think about how far we’ve come in such a short time.
My grandma loved getting the newspaper . . once a week in the mail. She would have really loved the internet. She was so smart and loved learning. I have her cookbooks and recipe box. She loved to cook and to have access to all the recipes we can now get on the internet would have been so unbelievable for her. Even though we lived just two hours apart, we’d write letters back and forth to each other and it would take almost a week for them to reach us. When I’d get a letter from her, I’d go right to my room, read it, and write her back, mail it the very next day. I loved my grandma so much and I think that’s why I want to spend so much time with Addie. The memories I have with my grandma are the best memories I have and that’s saying a lot considering there was no TV, no running water, and no air conditioning at their house but there were chickens, old Spot (the cow), Butch and Blondie (the cocker spaniels) . . there was no place on earth I wanted to be more than with my grandparents.
w jordan says
I to can agree with all you written about living/staying with grandparents i did myself. It was great they were wonderful and I enjoy every minute of everyday. I was blessed I lived across the street from them from age 5-13, then just a block away till 18. But then I went to live with them in the country when they moved there at age 18. I wouldn’t trade their kind of life for the ones these days at all. Life was simpler and better I think.That was one reason I bought the house next door to my daughter when it came up for sale. Not because I like the house because I don’t. But so I can be close to my only grandchild. Is is GRAND……
Liz says
We lived in Michigan and my grandmother was in Florida, but we went to visit them 1-2 times a year. and she would travel up north every couple years. She made the most wonderful lemon curd and I remember standing in the kitchen trying to write the recipe down since she was a “pinch here” and “a bit of that” type of cook. She became frustrated with me when I asked to measure her educated guesses.
Lee says
Grandma memories are the best! One of mine lived much like yours, heating water on a stove. She became widowed when I was only four. She also had no indoor toilet though did have a chamber pot for winter/evenings. The other one had more conveniences from my personal memory; I know they moved a lot, but at one time they lived in a converted chicken coop and another in a one-room school-house. Some of us of our age, have the memories more closely associated with those who went through those depression years and struggled for decades after, but our grandparents lived through them, often with very little, and with very little complaint, and a whole lot of gratitude for what they did have later. I always loved staying at my grandmothers’ homes and being with them.
Joyce says
My grandparents also had their water heater in a little closet on one end of their back porch. The porch also had the washer, dryer and a deep freezer. In the summer the porch was screened in. For winter they covered the screens with plastic. If it got really, really cold for very long they set up a space heater out there to keep the pipes from freezing…
They added indoor plumbing by converting a small bedroom well before I came along (thank goodness!). As a child I never really thought about why they had such a big bathroom. 🙂 It also had a window that opened up to the back porch, so you had to be careful to close the window shade, so people didn’t see you sitting on the “throne”. LOL
Dottie says
I’m with you – LOVED being at and spending time at my grandparents….it was the absolute best (even without air conditioning, etc.). Sitting on the porch, eating watermelon, spitting seeds, LOL, shelling peas, etc.
Carolyn Sullivan says
You should write a book! about your memories of your grandmother, and her recipes, I bet it would be seller,
Nelle Coursey says
I sent a letter to my grandparents in Bronte once when I was a kid. All I put on the address on the front was Nana and Grandad Rogers; Bronte Texas. Back then there was no zip code, and in that town everyone knew everyone and they got the letter with no problems! I look back and wonder how many people did things like that and not just kids! But everyone knew my grandmother and grandfather. She was the seamstress and he was the “domino” player. Right! He played poker! We all knew!!
dezertsuz says
I hope Addie grows up just like you! The house I was born in had no running water and indoor bathroom at the time, but I don’t remember that, of course! I do remember when we moved into a house we bought. It had two bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, one bath and a tiny concrete front porch with 4 steps up. 5 of us lived there!