The farmhouse I grew up in was built around 1900. It had a large kitchen, smaller dining room and parlor, and five bedrooms, two of them downstairs and three upstairs. We heated the house with two woodstoves: a cookstove in the kitchen and a larger stove in the dining room. As was common for rural houses at the time, the house was not insulated and had no storm windows. On winter mornings it was as cold inside the house as it was outside—or so it seemed to me.
The home of Eleanor and Herman Apps
The kitchen was the center of all activity on the farm. It was there that the food was prepared and consumed. There we entertained visitors, unless it was warm enough to be outside (the exception was city relatives, whom Ma seated in the little-used parlor). There farming plans were made and shared, Sears and Roebuck orders written, garden seed orders prepared, and baby pigs and chicks warmed on cold spring nights. The smell of our kitchen was a mixture of fermenting sauerkraut, wood smoke, baking bread, and the barn smells brought in with the barn clothes. It was a warm and cozy place, especially in the depths of winter. It could also get mighty warm on a hot July day, especially if Ma was baking bread, which she did at least twice a week.
A big wooden table stood in the center of the room, with five well-worn wooden chairs pushed up to it. Our family of five ate all of our meals sitting around the kitchen table, each in our place: Pa at one end, Ma at the other, me on one side, and my twin brothers facing me on the other. In this way we were like the cows in our barn; each cow had its own stall, without variation.
A red-and-white-checked oilcloth covered the table, and in the middle of it was a kerosene lamp, the kitchen’s main source of illumination. The wood-burning cookstove stood a few feet away from the west kitchen wall, its black stovepipe thrusting out from its back and connecting to a brick chimney. Black with a bit of silver-colored trim, the stove had four lids on its flat top, a warming oven a foot or so above the top, a reservoir on the right side that kept water warm when the stove was in operation, and an oven underneath with a big door that pulled open to allow access. A large teakettle sat on the stove at all times, providing hot water for cooking, warming up water for Saturday night baths, and making whiskey slings when one of us got a cold. (Recipe for a whiskey sling: Pour a jigger of whiskey into a glass of warm water, then add a little lemon or honey to help the concoction go down.)
Eleanor’s first wood-burning cookstove was similar to this one.
CAST-IRON SKILLET
A twelve-inch cast-iron skillet was my mother’s main cooking utensil. She used it for nearly everything, from frying bacon, eggs, and potatoes for breakfast, to frying fresh-caught bluegills, pork chops, ham, and even fried sauerkraut—yes, we ate sauerkraut fried in bacon grease. And that’s not to mention the squirrels, rabbits, and venison that found their way into Ma’s skillet. On winter days when the temperature dipped below zero, Ma used the skillet to make pancakes, a welcome sight when we came in after finishing our barn chores.
When it wasn’t in use, the cast-iron skillet was stored inside the oven, so it would always be at the ready. I don’t recall Ma ever buying a new one, and I imagine hers was a wedding present—what better gift for a farm bride?
BUCKWHEAT PANCAKES
1 egg
1 cup milk
2 tablespoons shortening, melted
½ cup buckwheat flour
½ cup wheat flour
1 tablespoon sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
Beat the egg in a bowl. Stir in all the other ingredients until smooth. Do not overmix.
Grease a skillet and set on medium heat. Sprinkle a few drops of water on the skillet to see if it is hot enough; if the drops sizzle around, the skillet is ready. Pour a spoonful of batter into the skillet. Cook the pancake until bubbles begin to form. Flip the pancake over to cook on the other side. Cook until golden brown.
A sink stood on the north wall of the kitchen, with a little counter space on each side. To the left of the sink was a water pail with a dipper hanging at its side. If you wanted a drink of water, you slipped the dipper into the pail and scooped out what you wanted—making sure to drink all of it, as water was not to be wasted. That single pail of water was the source for my mother’s cooking, for washing hands and brushing teeth, and for filling the ever-present teakettle. When the pail was empty, one of my brothers or I carried it to the pump house, lifted the handle to engage the windmill, and refilled the pail.
The icebox stood to the right of the sink, and next to the icebox was the door to the pantry, where such things as flour, sugar, and other staples were stored. A big crock of sauerkraut stood in the pantry from late autumn throughout the winter—or until all the kraut was consumed. On the far end of the pantry was the door to the stairway leading to the cellar, where all of home-canned goods could be found: fruits, vegetables, and meats in glass jars all stacked neatly on rows of wooden shelves that Pa had built. A smoked ham and a smoked side of bacon hung on hooks along the cellar stairway.
In winter, the only entrance to our farmhouse was via the kitchen. Ma didn’t want visitors traipsing through the dining room on their way to the kitchen, which is where you’d find her working at the kitchen stove most of the time in winter. Besides, closing the dining room door for the winter prevented cold air from entering the house in one more place. Doing so was common practice, and farm people knew the kitchen door was the entryway into a house. In fact, my folks pushed a bureau against our formal front door, which led to the dining room, so it was impossible to open. A city person—usually a salesman of some stripe—could be quickly identified as such if he tried to enter the house through the front door.
Off the kitchen was the dining room, a tad smaller. A door on the south wall of the dining room led to Ma and Pa’s bedroom; the front door of the house, on the east end of the room, led outside; a pair of double doors opened to the parlor; and yet another door led to the stairway leading upstairs. From late October until the following April, a wood-burning stove, Round Oak brand, stood a few feet from the dining room’s south wall, with its stovepipe thrust through the ceiling where it entered the chimney in the room above—the bedroom where my brothers and I slept during the cold months of the year. The stove had a big door on one side, large enough so an unsplit block of wood would fit inside. It had a smaller door beneath the larger one, where the ashes could be removed—an everyday task when the stove was burning. (An ash pile accumulated on the north side of the house throughout the fall and winter and was hauled and spread on our vegetable garden each spring—wood ashes make good fertilizer.) The stove was black with silver trim, and it stood on four legs that lifted it about a foot above the floor.
THE WATKINS MAN
The Watkins man visited our farm once a month, sometimes twice. He was one of many traveling salesmen who came by the farm trying to sell us everything from commercial cattle feed to magazine subscriptions. The Watkins man was special, mainly because Ma allowed him to come into the house, and she occasionally bought something from him.
My brothers and I were intrigued by the Watkins man and the big leather display case he carried into the house. I think Ma enjoyed his visits as well, especially in the winter, when opportunities to talk with folks outside the family were limited. He remembered our names, too, often beginning his spiel with “Well, Eleanor, what can I help you with today?”
As he talked he removed items from his black leather bag, lining them up on the table. Watkins salve in a big tin: “Cure just about any sore or scratch that comes along.” Watkins liniment in a big bottle: “Good for horses, good for chickens, good for cows, and by golly, good for people, too.” He kept removing items from the bottomless black bag until the kitchen table looked like the Watkins display at the county fair.
My brothers and I stood watching and listening and wondering if Ma would buy anything this time. I suspect the Watkins man was wondering the same thing as he continued talking about the virtues of each item. “Nobody has better vanilla than Watkins”; “Gotta go some to beat Watkins pepper.”
On occasion, Ma bought vanilla, allspice, cinnamon, or pepper from the Watkins man, and that was enough to keep him coming back. Pa also regularly bought Watkins liniment and Watkins salve, maybe twice a year depending on the health of the farm animals—and the health of the family.
From October to April, the front door was blocked off, and the double doors to the parlor were opened only when we needed to retrieve an item of clothing from the small, unused bedroom off the parlor. The parlor was used only for special occasions, such as visits from city relatives or a meeting of the church’s Ladies Aid group.
After the kitchen, the dining room was the most used room in the house. In the center stood a six-foot wooden table; with leaves added it could seat a crew of neighbors working on threshing, corn husking, silo filling, or wood sawing—as many as fourteen or sixteen hungry men.
In addition to accommodating the work crews, the dining room table was the center of our Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations, when the aunts, uncles, and cousins joined us. And it was around the extended dining room table that the quilters gathered to sew quilts on cold and dreary winter afternoons.
A party-line telephone that operated with batteries was fastened to the wall near the front door, adjacent to three large windows that lit the dining room during daylight hours. The phone, wooden with a talking piece jutting out from its front, a listening device hanging on the left side, and a crank on the right side for ringing, was answered only by our mother. Our number was 168 and our ring was a long and three shorts, but Ma usually “listened in” to other conversations when the ring wasn’t ours, a common way in those days of keeping up with what was going on in the neighborhood.
On the east wall, a loud-ticking windup clock stood on a clock shelf, a reminder to me when I got up in the morning that I was probably going to be late arriving in the barn for milking. Pa expected me in the barn by quarter of six each morning, every day of the year. On cold winter mornings, I dressed by the Round Oak heating stove, which Pa had started before leaving for the barn. The trip from my frigid bedroom and down an even more frigid hall and stairway had chilled me to the bone, and I tried to warm myself as I dressed. The clock’s “tick-tock, tick-tock” was a steady reminder to quickly pull on my clothes, grab my barn lantern, and hurry through the sharply cold morning to the warm barn.
In addition to the clock, the shelf held any important correspondence. Under the shelf sat a couch where we rested when we didn’t feel well and where Pa rested after a hard day’s work.
My family didn’t spend much time in the dining room during the summer months; there was just too much to do on the farm. In late March, Pa enlisted a couple of neighbors to help him haul the heavy woodstove out to the woodshed, where it sat until fall. We knew winter was on the way when the men hauled the old woodstove back into the dining room, positioned the stovepipes, brushed off the dust and dirt accumulated over the summer, and started the fire to make sure everything was properly in place.
I have fond memories of winter evenings when the snow was piled high and the temperature was below zero as the five of us sat around the dining room table. The Round Oak stove filled with blocks of oak wood kept the room cozy warm. A kerosene lamp sat in the middle of the table, casting enough light so my brothers and I could do our homework, Ma could work on her mending—darning socks and patching bib overalls and the elbows of flannel shirts—and Pa could read the Milwaukee Sentinel and the Wisconsin Agriculturist.
One cold winter afternoon when I was about three years old, my uncle George was looking after me while the folks had gone to town. I had just gotten Tinker Toys for Christmas, and Uncle George and I spent that afternoon at the dining room table making the most wonderful creations. Tinker Toys consisted of wooden spools with holes drilled in them, plus wooden sticks that could be placed in the holes. We made a barn and a shed and a windmill that actually worked. We laughed when our creations didn’t work—which was often. During a break from our building projects, we ate my mother’s molasses cookies, with coffee for Uncle George and milk for me. Uncle George was a quiet man, a bachelor who lived with my grandfather in Wild Rose. On this winter afternoon, I had him all to myself, and we got to know each other around that old wooden table.
2 cups sugar
1 cup shortening
4 eggs, divided
1 cup molasses
4 cups flour, plus ½ cup flour to use while rolling out
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
½ teaspoon cloves
½ teaspoon ginger
½ teaspoon salt
Blend the sugar and shortening until fluffy. Add 3 of the eggs and the molasses. Mix well. In another bowl, mix the 4 cups flour with the baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and salt. Add the flour mixture gradually to the egg mixture to make dough. Refrigerate for 2 hours or overnight.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees and lightly grease a cookie sheet. Roll out about one-third of the dough on a floured pastry cloth to about ¼-inch thick. Keep the rest cold until ready to roll out. Cut out the cookies with a favorite cookie cutter and place on the cookie sheet. Beat the remaining egg with a fork. Brush a bit of the beaten egg on each cookie. Bake until just set, about 10 minutes. Cool on a wire rack. Continue making cookies with remaining dough.