If the outage was during the winter and quite probable because of ice storms, then Dad would light the fireplace in the living room and that was our source of heat for the entire house. When we had the old coal furnace we didn’t have this problem because the hot water from the coal furnace would travel to the radiators via convection but when Dad upgraded to an oil furnace this wasn’t possible because the furnace required electricity to operate. I guess an improvement is only an improvement when everything is working as it should. A fireplace is not considered a modern improvement but at least it works when nothing else will. When nightfall arrived and it was time for bed, Mom and Dad would go to their bedroom which was next to the warm living room and use extra blankets while we three kids would make our nests on the floor in front of the fireplace. It was great!

During the day, Dad would go to the “shop” which was just an old garage that was out near the barn. He would build a fire in the wood furnace that he had in the corner and in about thirty minutes the shop would be as warm as toast, so that is where he would spend his time until the power came back on. I don’t know if Mom ever figured this out, that she was suffering in a cold house with three kids while Dad was doing his thing in total comfort. I imagine that if I asked her, her response would be a somewhat sarcastic “Oh, yes, I knew”! The reason I know what Dad was up to is because when I got older, I would go hang out with him in the warm shop.

Looking back at some of the old appliances that Mom had to deal with, I remember when she got her first electric stove to replace the old wood burning unit. I don’t remember too much about the old stove because I was really young when she got the new stove. Another appliance that was relatively new on the farm was the refrigerator and although I do not ever remember not having one, I know they hadn’t had it too long before I was born because it was always referred to as the “ice box”. I don’t think I stopped calling a refrigerator an ice box until some time in the sixties. We still had the old ice box and it was used in Dad’s shop for storing seeds that he wanted to keep away from the mice. For those of you who don’t remember ice boxes, they worked by placing large blocks in the upper portion and the cool air generated by these blocks fell into the lower part where the food stuffs were kept. Simple but effective. Ice was still in demand when I was a kid because Petersburg still had an ice house or ice factory. Not to get away from the farm theme but I’d like to mention some of the old industries of Petersburg that disappeared as I grew up. Probably the one’s I remember the best would be the brick yard, ice house, slaughter house, green house, four auto dealers, three farm implement dealers, cheese factory (gone before my time), blacksmith, glass works, and two train depots. There were probably others but these are the one’s that stand out in my mind. Just proof that Petersburg was relatively self supporting, which all changed with the improvement of transportation. Alas!

Let’s talk rugs! How’s that for a change of subject? As I was growing up, shag carpet didn’t exist, or at least it hadn’t made it’s way to rural Menard County. The reason I mentioning rugs, it was my responsibility to take the small throw rugs out to the clothes line, hang them over the line and then beat the heck out of them with a heavy wire looped rug beater. Man, would the dust fly and it was good therapy. One of the few jobs that I had that I could take out all my pent up frustrations that a small child can have. Now that I’m older, I don’t know why Dad didn’t do this instead of taking out his frustrations with me on my hind end. Before Mom got her first upright Hoover vacuum sweeper, all the carpets were cleaned either as I mentioned before or the large carpets were cleaned with a mechanical sweeper that had two rotary brushes that rotated as the sweeper was pushed back and forth and these brushes would kick up the particles into a tray located between them. This tray had a door that opened and usually had to be taken outside to be cleaned to avoid dust and lint from going all over the house. It wasn’t too efficient but it was better than nothing. The hard wood floors were cleaned by tying a cloth (usually an old pillow case) over the bristles of the broom which was then wiped over the floor. We also had what was called a dust mop which did the same thing. The rag over the bristles of the broom was also used to get rid of the spider webs in the corners of the walls and ceilings. Spiders and farm houses seem to have a natural affinity to each other and are very good at building unnoticeable webs, at least until we would have company over and they would point them out to Mom, much to her chagrin. It was then pointed out, by Mom, to my sister Pat and I that we had been shirking our duties. I don’t want to make this sound like a commercial for Electrolux but Mom purchased one during the late fifties and she still uses it to this day. Now that can be construed a couple of ways; that the machine is tough or Mom is lacking when it comes to vacuuming, which I know is not the case.