I hope you will not feel too bad if I tell you some of what you missed not living during the 1920s.
I attended a one-room school during the first six grades. The teacher lived about four miles away. In winter, a teen who lived across from the school started the fire in the stove early each morning so to be warm when school started. One time the teacher was late coming to school. The students took their seats and waited for the teacher. The teen who started the fire in the stove would stand in front of the room by the stove and pour kerosene on the fire. It made much smoke and fire to jump out. He did that to get attention, I guess. During the day when our feet were cold, we could go up and stand by the stove awhile to warm up.
To my memory, during the winter the county had a large (I call) scraper with four horses to scrape the snow off the road, or at least make it level. Then it would freeze. Finally, the first real snow plow came. It was a caterpillar with a large V plow in front and a fan on each side. It would throw the snow over, or as high as the telephone wires.
My dad had a model 1919 (I think) Ford touring with side curtains. I don't think they had sedans yet. It had a large long top from rear to the front. It was attached to the windshield. One day the wind caught it and tore it so it was not good anymore. Dad drove the car without it.
Those days tires had inner tubes in them. Dad would carry a "patch kit" in event of a flat tire. It seems I remember crying to see the flat tire. Then Dad would jack up the wheel, take out the inner tube and patch it, put in back and pump up the tire with air.
The county road was made of gravel and clay. Rain would soften the road. Cars would make deep tracks. Some nights when cold, tracks would freeze. One time we were looking out the window in our farm house when a car came. The tracks were frozen. The tracks lead to a farmhouse. As the car came, kind of fast, it turned sharp to the right at the farmers entrance and immediately flipped to the left over on its side. We saw it happen.
We had very little to play with. We would raid mother's pantry and take pan covers to play car. I would have the largest, as I was the oldest. The younger would get the smallest cover. We would go marching, playing car. There was a large stump in the road near our home. We would play we were going to church by going to that stump. I would get up on the stump and pretend I was the pastor.
Leslie Swanson
Winona Lake
Editor's Note: This letter was edited to conform more closely to the 500-word limit state in our Letters Policy.
