Aunt Gladys Snyder, niece to Snyd and GenevaToday, 9/01/2020, I am in Bennett Springs watching it rain but in my head is that old song "If I had a Hammer" it brings back good old memories.
My dad, Cliff Olson, always said a kid could have all the fun they wanted with a hammer and a bucket of old used nails. Many a time we tore down an old house or barn and we would collect the wood for building and the nails for whatever. Our biggest project was when I was about 7 and we built our house down on Beaver Creek, 1 mile north of Grainola and 3 west past Vea Harris house. In fact before you got to Vea's house you passed Jim Olsen's hay barn that dad and I built and Perry Stephens barn which dad and I built (with some help). Back to the wood and nails.
I always wondered when we tore down an old house, what memories would be gone. Right here is where I should challenge you to write down all your old memories for your children and grandchildren. Every time we tore down an old house I learned something or found something interesting. One time we tore down an old house just to discover they had built the house with plaster and wood laths, no insulation. Can you imagine how cold that would be? They typically had an old wood stove or as we called it, a pot bellied stove. Uncle Snyd (the WWII hero and prisoner of war) and Aunt Geneva (my first-first grade teacher, there were two as Aunt Geneva had a brain tumor and passed) had one and they burned coal. Another time I remember finding some old coins inside a wall. I have no idea how they got there but there was an old nickel. Most often the old houses did not have an indoor toilet. Grandpa Olson had indoor twin toilets. I should explain.
Grandpa Olson, who lived about 100 yards south of Jackson's gas station where we would get our strawberry pop and cinnamon rolls on Saturdays, had a pot bellied stove but he had the twin indoor toilets. In fact I suspect this is where they got the name water closet. You see in Grandpa and Grandma's bedroom in what we would think was a closet was a seat with two holes in it big enough for your rear-end. Under the holes were two white porcelain buckets about 2 or 3 gallons each. They were called slop buckets and that was where the waste went as you sat on the indoor toilet. Now do I need to explain further? OK, in plain English, those two buckets captured the poop and pea to be carried off each day.
Eureka, that was called indoor plumbing.
About those nails and boards. Many a time I would take some of the scrap boards and those bucket of nails and make something. I had one of the largest tree houses in the old elm tree right outside my widow made from those boards and nails. I made airplanes and trucks and whatever I could think of.
Well, what do you learn in the Osage?
- Fun is what you make it
- A song can last your life through
- A dream can be reality if you put your mind to it
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