Pneumatic Cashier

[larryJ]

I don't remember kerosene stoves.  Living in SE New Mexico when I was a kid, we had natural gas heating and cooking.  But, we did have an ice box and the ice man cameth every few days to put a block of ice in it.  Ice picks were a totally necessary utensil to have for chipping off chunks for cold drinks.  Once my oldest brother was in the Army and making a decent salary, he was able to bring home a refrigerator.  I well remember that day as I was playing in my neighbor's yard and my other brother was calling me to come home to see the new fridge and my brother.  I told him no and he came over and punched me in the mouth, chipping my front tooth. 

I think around 1956 or so, my mom and I moved to a lumber camp in Wyoming for her to teach school there.  The first year we were there, we rented a cabin with wood burning stoves for heat and cooking.  Baths were taken by heating buckets of water on the stove and pouring them into a galvanized tub big enough to sit in.  The cabin also featured its own "two holer" about twenty feet behind the kitchen door.  My job was to keep a path shoveled between the kitchen and the outhouse at all times.  We moved back to NM for a year and then back to Wyoming for two years.  By this time, the owner of the lumber camp had built a modern duplex for the two teachers and we had propane gas for heating and cooking and indoor plumbing.  I still had to keep a path shoveled from the back door of the duplex to the front door of the school (about twenty yards) for the two teachers to get to the school. 

Larryj

[W. Gray]

If you are a little kid, and don't know anything else, an outhouse is not that bad even in winter. In ours we always had regular toilet tissue available, but I recall that at the grandparents on the farm, there was always a sears catalog or similar item available. That is an experience that one will never forget.

Once you have indoor plumbing there is no going back. We moved into a house around 1948 that had indoor plumbing. But, there was no sewer line. The house had a septic system with a holding tank and leeching field buried in the back yard.

About 1958, the city extended the sewer lines to our area and everyone was required to hook on. Boys, being boys, will watch all facets of road construction or sewer construction. The sewage pipe coming from our house looked to be the six sided terra cotta pipe of about 18 inches or so in length laid end to end on gravel without any seals, as far as I could see, between them. It would seem to me that tree roots would have entangled that line something fierce. Someone must have come along after the pipe was down and threw a dab of concrete between the sections.

Just a short time after the sewer line was up and running, the top of the holding tank in the back yard gave way and we had a large hole in the yard. The top was only a few inches below the soil.

[larryJ]

I remember that outhouse in Wyoming was better than most.  It was bigger and even had toilet seats for each hole.  However, I think we carried the toilet tissue with us on each trip as it would get moist and useless.  And, too, remember that Sears catalogs as well as others, were printed on softer paper, almost cloth like, as opposed to the paper they use today.  A good example might be the phone book which uses a softer paper.  But paper then was pretty soft in order to get the most production out of the ink. 

Another aspect of that cabin was no running water.  All water was drawn from the well outside the back door.  That was my job also, carrying in buckets of water.  Chopping wood for the stoves was another of my chores.  However, when the lumber mill would do the finishing touches on the 2X4's, they would leave little 2X2X4 blocks and we would have one of the companies trucks bring over a load of those thereby saving me from having to chop wood.  Speaking of wells, I seem to recall that either my Aunt Bernadine's or my Aunt Emaline's farmhouse outside of Howard was equipped with a small pump handle in the kitchen eliminating the need for going outside.  Now that I think about it, I don't know where the water was being pumped from.  Might there have been a tank piped from the outside well?  I don't know.  I do remember thinking that was a nice feature so that one didn't have to go outside to get water. 

Larryj

[Dee Gee]

We had a cistern under the porch that the rain water was collected in from the roof of the house, so all we had to do was go out to the porch and pump a bucket of water, but it was used just for cooking and drinking.  The well for bath and wash water was about 200 feet from the house and the one that carried and heated the water got to take the first bath everyone else got to take a bath in used water. Now Grand mother's house had the little pump in the kitchen from the cistern so you could fresh water right in the house.

[W. Gray]

The below may pop up elsewhere. I posted it but it disappeared. I did a search but could not locate it, so it may just have disappeared into cyberspace.

My grandparents had a kitchen sink with a drain but no running water. My grandmother washed dishes there with water heated from the wood stove. And, I am thinking that she washed dishes with the lye soap she made. The sink drained directly into the yard. There was no goose neck in the drain line—did not need one.

She always kept a two gallon white porcelain bucket filled with water on the kitchen counter next to the sink. The bucket was filled from a "well" having a large pump just outside the kitchen door.

I just learned this past summer that the "well" was actually a cistern. I never saw him do it, but my granddad had to fill it with water transported periodically from town.

One summer when we arrived, the kitchen sink had a small red pump sitting right on it. By pumping the handle you could put water directly into the common dipper for a drink. The pump was connected to the cistern.

We always had to take a bath in the kitchen in one of those round galvanized laundry tubs. Grandma would heat the water on the wood stove and prepare a bath. Once we had our bath using the lye soap, we had to go to the parlor and stay there while each grown up had a bath.

They actually had a bathroom adjacent to the parlor. It did not have a commode but did have a claw foot bath tub that was intended to be filled with water carried from the kitchen. The tub also drained directly into the yard. I never saw that anyone used that tub, though. I think it was too much of a chore to fill it by carrying hot and cold water from the kitchen.

One summer when the wife and I were walking around Howard, we stopped and talked with a local farmer parked on a street next to the city park on the west side of town. He was filling a truck mounted water tank from a city well—that may have been where my granddad stocked up.

[Wilma]

There are a lot of people still hauling water from the whatever it is called.  It is located on the west side of the west park and is about 2 blocks north of me, just a block east of Joanna.  So I see tanks full of water going by here quite often.  It takes a lot of water to supply a house with all the amenities.

[W. Gray]

There was a sign there, when I spoke to the local farmer filling up. He was reading a book to kill the time.

I walked over there today and there is no sign but the pump is coin operated, so many gallons per quarter.

I suppose the local folks using it already know the procedures, etc.

There is a small "well house" covering the pump apparatus and there is a flexible hose that will direct the water to whatever is being filled.

[Janet Harrington]

She finally decided to connect me to the operator which happened to be my Aunt Bernadine Redmond Weyrauch.  I gave her mom's message and two days later, my grandmother and one of my Aunts came into town.  Back then I thought Aunt Bernadine was the only operator! 

Wow, Larry.  I didn't know we were related.  Bernadine was my great aunt married to my great uncle John Weyrauch.

[larryJ]

Yep, we are related by marriage.  But your mom and I had this conversation some time back.  Bernadine was my aunt, my mother's sister.  She had married Forrest Redmond who was injured in an accident and died.  Bill and Bob, and Edith Redmond were her children.  She married John Weyrauch and they had the farm SW of town.  So, I might be a step-uncle to you, if there is such a thing.  Anyway, it is nice to be related to you.

Larryj

[W. Gray]

How about when the old automobiles had a metal cylindrical button under the foot pedal that engaged the "passing gear" when you floored it.

And the foot pedal, brake, and clutch all had their connections going straight into holes in the floor. Sometimes, broad daylight came through those holes as the car went through heavy wear. You could see the roadway flying by underneath.