Growing Up in Savonburg in the Sixties, Part 1

My daughter, Maria Roth, has started a series of articles about her childhood, so that her children can see what it was like when their mom was a child. Well, I've decided to let her and the rest of you read what it was like in MY childhood. I hope you enjoy it!

A Step Backwards in Time

In 1959, when I was nine years old, my parents got divorced and my Mom and my siblings moved to her hometown, a small town in southeastern Kansas named Savonburg. Her parents still lived there and they bought the house that they had lived in when my Mom was born. We moved into this house and it was like a trip back in time - this town of about 120 was yet to be "modernized" as the larger cities had been years earlier. Within the six years we lived there, the town modernized its phone system, water and sewer, and its schools. But for a while, it was more like living in the 40's!

Telephones and Operators

For example, the telephones were large wooden boxes mounted on the wall which had two large batteries in the bottom. They were connected to a switchboard located in the house of the operator, who was the automatic answering service for any missed calls; she would come out of her house sometimes to yell at people outside to go into their house and answer the phone! You rotated the "ringer" handle for varying lengths of time to signal the operator who was calling; our phone "number" was something like "two longs and a short". The operator then would find the associated plug and pull it out and plug it into her receiver. You then told her who you wanted to call. She would pull out their plug and call the person and tell them who was calling. Then she would connect you together (and listen in). If you didn't want the operator to "know your business", you had to talk face to face!

Water Supply

Savonburg had no public water or sewer systems. We had a well in our yard, which we primarily used to water our garden, although we would occasionally drink out of it in the summertime when Mom would lock us out of the house for periods of time, so we wouldn't be "under foot" while she was doing housework. We also had a cistern which held the water collected from the eaves and filtered through a charcoal filter system. This water was pressurized by a pump in our utility room. Sometimes, when the summer was dry and our cistern was nearly empty, we would pay to have a water truck deliver several thousand gallons of water, to fill the cistern. Every year or so, we would allow the cistern to run low and then we would clean it. First we would have someone climb down into the cistern and use a bucket to lift the remaining water out. Then we would clean the walls and take out any dead or live critters that might have fallen into the cistern (which made the water "less desirable" to drink)!

Doing the Laundry

We had a wringer washer with large washtub adjacent. The laundry was put into the washing machine, which had an open top. After the soap and clothes were placed inside, we poured hot water into the washer. It was turned on and the agitator would do its work until the laundry was deemed clean. Then, the external washtub would be filled with cold water and the clothes would put through the attached wringer, to press out the soapy water, and then into the rinse washtub. When all of the clothes had been transferred to the external tub, the washer was emptied and refilled with cold water. The clothes were now run back through the wringer into the washer. The agitator was turned back on for a short time and then the clothes were run through the wringer one more time into the wash basket.

The wash basket was then carried outside to the clothesline and the clothes were hung to dry, using wooden clothespins. One thing I miss with our modern dryers is the smell of clothes that have been dried outside in the sun - there's no dryer "sheet" that can give this "fresh" smell! Occasionally, Mother Nature wouldn't cooperate and a rain shower would appear and the clothes might need to be brought back inside to dry. In the wintertime, we would still hang the clothes outside, but they would be stiff when we would bring them inside. After a few minutes the moisture would sublimate and the clothes would be dry and soft again - it was like magic!

I will continue in the next part with stories of our winters.