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gottawonderEdit: I talked with Sister E today (December 14), and went through the details, and a few things are a little different, so I changed this post a bit, but the overall gist is the same.
Sometimes I tell stories I know about my family, and it hits me how for my older siblings, it was almost like they lived in an entirely different era than I did.
First, it's important to understand that my Mom was born in the 1930's, and started having kids when she was just over 18. By the time I came along, she was 42.
That means there is an entire generation of difference between my oldest sisters, and myself. They are old enough to have been my Mom, instead of my sister.
So, their childhood was also in the 1950's, and mine was in the 1970's.
The 1950's on the prairies in rural Canada was still pretty darn rustic. My oldest sister was one of the last to attend a literal one-roomed school house for a few years before the system changed and they were bused to a newer school in a nearby town. The one roomed schools were literally out in the middle of nowhere, not part of a town, in order to service the farm kids before buses.
The kids (my oldest sister and some of the neighbor kids together) actually did ride in a horse-drawn school wagon with a wood stove in it, occasionally, as Dad's truck didn't have a block heater and wouldn't run in the colder months.
This very same school house was decommissioned (this is when my sister went to a school in town), but my family ended up living in it. I'll get to that later.
My parents met at a local dance, married, lived in Calgary for a while and decided to move back to Manitoba after all. At this time they had one child.
First they lived with my Uncle (Mom's brother) in the original farm house where they grew up together, while my Uncle was a young bachelor.
Then they lived in a farm house that they bought and moved to land that my Mom inherited, that was close to my Uncle's place. My Uncle inherited most of the family farm, and the house they grew up in, and my Mom inherited some land that she and my father were going to farm together.
When my older sisters were still very young, that farm house burned down only a short time after my parents moved it out to the land. For a year or two, my family lived in a former one room school house that had just been decommissioned (the one my oldest sister went to, and had been the school my Mom and Uncle went to when they were kids).
The next place my family moved to was our family farm, where I grew up. At that time, everyone went to a school in town and took buses to get there.
There is another one room school house near our family farm that had also been decommissioned before any of my family were in the area, but the farm people of the same age of my sisters had attended it when they were younger.
It still stands, and is cared for by members of the community.
After talking some more with my sister E, it did occur to me though, that when I went to Kindergarten, it was in a small building on it's own beside the larger elementary school. It MUST have originally been a one roomed school house as well, that had been renovated for power and bathrooms. So, I actually went to Kindergarten in a one roomed school house, though it was not an isolated building in the middle of nowhere.
Anyhow, when I think of these stories, it feels like a whole different era, and I realize that it kind of was. The 1950's was just after WWII, and everyone was just getting back to their lives, and a lot of things were still pretty much almost pre-industrial age out in the country. They had electricity and cars, but some people still used horses to do chores (my family did) and even using tractors to plow the fields was a pretty recent thing.
My family had a radio, but no television for a long time. Think of that, my oldest siblings didn't really grow up with television.
My sisters were teenagers when Polio was a big threat. There were people in their school who got it, and I know one woman who had permanent problems walking from Polio.
My sisters grew up without a modern washing machine. Mom had a wringer washer and hung up the clothes to dry. I don't even know if they had a refrigerator, or when they had an electric oven. By the time I was a kid, we had a washer and dryer, fridge, stove.
My family did not have an indoor toilet for my older siblings. They used an outhouse, and used a big tin washtub to bath in.
By the time I was born, there was running water in the house, a bath tub and sink, but we did still have kind of a toilet that had to be dumped outside manually, with a toilet seat on it that closed. Shortly after I was born we got a normal flush toilet.
I still grew up with one of the very old telephones that hung on the wall and was on a "party line" where we had more than one family on that connection. You had to wait to let it ring, because each house had a different ring. Ours was two long rings. You could listen in on other people's phone calls, but that was frowned upon. You would sometimes pick up the phone to call someone and have to apologize to the neighbor if they were still on the line.
I'm not sure that my sisters even had a phone when they were little. It took a long time to get phones out to the rural areas.
Anyhow, it makes me sound ancient to talk about how my sisters grew up, and it is hard to explain to others that there was this great threshold right somewhere around 1960 to 1975 where "modern living" reached the rural areas of Canada. There may have been electricity in the cities in the early 1900's, but it didn't get to the far corners of the rural areas until the 1940's.
It seems strange to think of all the conveniences we have now, microwaves and computers, cell phones and cars that start without a key, where hot water is expected as is indoor toilets and a gas furnace and so on. it's funny to think that NONE of that was part of my own siblings' lives.
The pictures I have of their childhood look so primitive. Black and white photos of a kid sitting on a bare wooden floor playing with a tin fire truck, standing in front of an unpainted old wooden door or in front of the wood stove.
It almost doesn't seem real. How could you ever make that seem real to a kid born now?
This is an old school near our family farm. My sisters did not attend this school, but many of the kids in that area the same age as my sisters did attend there. It closed just before my family moved to that area, so they were bused to a newer school in town. This building still stands and is maintained by the community, and is sometimes used for gatherings.
http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/mb_history/74/oneroomschools.shtml
Sometimes I tell stories I know about my family, and it hits me how for my older siblings, it was almost like they lived in an entirely different era than I did.
First, it's important to understand that my Mom was born in the 1930's, and started having kids when she was just over 18. By the time I came along, she was 42.
That means there is an entire generation of difference between my oldest sisters, and myself. They are old enough to have been my Mom, instead of my sister.
So, their childhood was also in the 1950's, and mine was in the 1970's.
The 1950's on the prairies in rural Canada was still pretty darn rustic. My oldest sister was one of the last to attend a literal one-roomed school house for a few years before the system changed and they were bused to a newer school in a nearby town. The one roomed schools were literally out in the middle of nowhere, not part of a town, in order to service the farm kids before buses.
The kids (my oldest sister and some of the neighbor kids together) actually did ride in a horse-drawn school wagon with a wood stove in it, occasionally, as Dad's truck didn't have a block heater and wouldn't run in the colder months.
This very same school house was decommissioned (this is when my sister went to a school in town), but my family ended up living in it. I'll get to that later.
My parents met at a local dance, married, lived in Calgary for a while and decided to move back to Manitoba after all. At this time they had one child.
First they lived with my Uncle (Mom's brother) in the original farm house where they grew up together, while my Uncle was a young bachelor.
Then they lived in a farm house that they bought and moved to land that my Mom inherited, that was close to my Uncle's place. My Uncle inherited most of the family farm, and the house they grew up in, and my Mom inherited some land that she and my father were going to farm together.
When my older sisters were still very young, that farm house burned down only a short time after my parents moved it out to the land. For a year or two, my family lived in a former one room school house that had just been decommissioned (the one my oldest sister went to, and had been the school my Mom and Uncle went to when they were kids).
The next place my family moved to was our family farm, where I grew up. At that time, everyone went to a school in town and took buses to get there.
There is another one room school house near our family farm that had also been decommissioned before any of my family were in the area, but the farm people of the same age of my sisters had attended it when they were younger.
It still stands, and is cared for by members of the community.
After talking some more with my sister E, it did occur to me though, that when I went to Kindergarten, it was in a small building on it's own beside the larger elementary school. It MUST have originally been a one roomed school house as well, that had been renovated for power and bathrooms. So, I actually went to Kindergarten in a one roomed school house, though it was not an isolated building in the middle of nowhere.
Anyhow, when I think of these stories, it feels like a whole different era, and I realize that it kind of was. The 1950's was just after WWII, and everyone was just getting back to their lives, and a lot of things were still pretty much almost pre-industrial age out in the country. They had electricity and cars, but some people still used horses to do chores (my family did) and even using tractors to plow the fields was a pretty recent thing.
My family had a radio, but no television for a long time. Think of that, my oldest siblings didn't really grow up with television.
My sisters were teenagers when Polio was a big threat. There were people in their school who got it, and I know one woman who had permanent problems walking from Polio.
My sisters grew up without a modern washing machine. Mom had a wringer washer and hung up the clothes to dry. I don't even know if they had a refrigerator, or when they had an electric oven. By the time I was a kid, we had a washer and dryer, fridge, stove.
My family did not have an indoor toilet for my older siblings. They used an outhouse, and used a big tin washtub to bath in.
By the time I was born, there was running water in the house, a bath tub and sink, but we did still have kind of a toilet that had to be dumped outside manually, with a toilet seat on it that closed. Shortly after I was born we got a normal flush toilet.
I still grew up with one of the very old telephones that hung on the wall and was on a "party line" where we had more than one family on that connection. You had to wait to let it ring, because each house had a different ring. Ours was two long rings. You could listen in on other people's phone calls, but that was frowned upon. You would sometimes pick up the phone to call someone and have to apologize to the neighbor if they were still on the line.
I'm not sure that my sisters even had a phone when they were little. It took a long time to get phones out to the rural areas.
Anyhow, it makes me sound ancient to talk about how my sisters grew up, and it is hard to explain to others that there was this great threshold right somewhere around 1960 to 1975 where "modern living" reached the rural areas of Canada. There may have been electricity in the cities in the early 1900's, but it didn't get to the far corners of the rural areas until the 1940's.
It seems strange to think of all the conveniences we have now, microwaves and computers, cell phones and cars that start without a key, where hot water is expected as is indoor toilets and a gas furnace and so on. it's funny to think that NONE of that was part of my own siblings' lives.
The pictures I have of their childhood look so primitive. Black and white photos of a kid sitting on a bare wooden floor playing with a tin fire truck, standing in front of an unpainted old wooden door or in front of the wood stove.
It almost doesn't seem real. How could you ever make that seem real to a kid born now?
This is an old school near our family farm. My sisters did not attend this school, but many of the kids in that area the same age as my sisters did attend there. It closed just before my family moved to that area, so they were bused to a newer school in town. This building still stands and is maintained by the community, and is sometimes used for gatherings.
http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/mb_history/74/oneroomschools.shtml
