Sunday, August 7, 2011

This is Increment no - 11 - of my story-August 7th,2011

This is increment no –11 –

They were using Oxen’s to snake the logs to this small steam mill, that is the only time that I had ever watched oxen’s at work.


The dwelling houses


Most of the houses were built for families just as the house was built for our family. They were built for the family when they were being hired to work in the town of Hillwood. All of the houses were being constructed with rough green lumber and with the wind and the sun it dried the lumber so the lumber shrank the lumber so bad that cracks developed between the boards that you could throw a cat thru the cracks. Most of the houses were built in the same design most were three or four room of shotgun style and no porches to sit on. We used 1x4 baton boards to cover the cracks devolved from the drying process.

None of the houses that had any of the convenience that you enjoy now. Very few had glass windows, most had shutters on the window openings, no screens on the windows. Homemade doors with no lock on them most had homemade latches to keep them shut, no screen doors. No electric lights or no appliances of any kind, no running water, no bathrooms or toilets.


Home heating

Our heating was a wood burning potbelly heater. Our cooking was done on a wood burning on a cook stove. The wood cook stove helped to furnish heating as well. There was plenty of wood material of several kind, we could harvest for fuel, we could cut down trees for fuel, there was plenty pine lectern lying loose in the woods that we could retrieve, there was ample supply of pine knots that we could pick up if we desire. The knots was good fuel, you could fill that heater at bedtime and lot of time we would still have heat in the morning. We could get cut off blocks from the sawmill or from the planer mill. Fuel was plentiful


Water for the family


Water had to be retrieved from a spring or a dug well. There were several good springs within the town limits. There were several dug wells over the years, I remember helping dig at least four wells over the years. It was usually the boy’s job to get the water from the springs or from the well, if there were any boys in the family. There were large quantities of water required for drinking, washing dishes cooking meals, and for baths. It was long distance between the houses and to the springs. The dug wells were usually some distance from your house because several families would go in together to dig the well and we would locate the well for it be convenient for all participants, and we would pick a spot that we thought we would find water.

This is end of increment no 11

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