Memoirs of Pake and Beppe

Things continued on in a regular fashion.  I had steady work at the barber shop and over time our English got better.  I had to be at work for eight in the morning and closed shop at six at night.  I rode my bike to and from work.  Long days. 

Our little house was just that, little.  As the winter settled in things got very slippery around the house.  The house stood lower than the road and every time it rained the water pooled in our yard.  Very often the entrance to the house was wet.  An icy yard made things very tricky when nature called.  We didn’t have the modern conveniences of indoor bathrooms back then so our trek outside to the outhouse could be a cold one.  Or treacherous in our case.  In a family of seven it was without fail that when one had to go, more had to go.  We were happy when the one-seater became a two-seater. 

We were thrilled when Hamlin, our landlord, told us he was planning to put an addition on the house.  He doubled the size of the house.  The girls were excited to have a bigger room of their own.  We were excited to move the twins out of our room and gain a closet. 

The addition was equally as low as the rest of the house and had no basement underneath it.  You can imagine the dismay of the girls when they climbed out of bed one morning after a rainy night right into the water that covered the whole bedroom floor.  The foundations were level with the ground, so the water came right in.

It was such a different time back then, with nothing of the modern luxuries we so much expect today.  We were just glad to have a roof over our heads and the inconveniences of life were just how things were. 

We were grateful to Mr. Hamlin who said we could pick as many berries from the raspberry patch outback as we could wish.  The girls picked for him and he generously paid them a dime for a pint container.  Those berries were sweet and we were glad to have them. 

We had the two-seat outhouse behind the house.  It was my job to empty that regularly.  I spread that under the raspberry bushes.  And over the garden.  That was some good fertilizing right there.  Our garden was something else.  We grew cabbages so big that Mom could get four meals out of one cabbage.  Quite something for a family of our size.  We generously shared with the neighbours who took them readily enough.  Until one of the kids told them what fertilizer we used.  Then they wanted nothing of it and threw the cabbages back over the fence into our garden.

In the winter the “ton” (pail) in the outhouse froze up.  That was a real job to take care of that.  And to think that people complain about emptying the poop tank on their camper these days.  This was something else! 

We had a four-pit coal oil burner.  I would take the ton up in the entry and set it to simmer.  I would have to use a stick to stir things loose from the sides.  Every time I came into the living room I would announce “de bjenses pruttelje al” (the beans are simmering already)!  Always good for a laugh. 

When things had warmed up enough, I would shovel away the snow in the far corner of the property and dump the pot.  Then I covered it up again with snow. 

It was what we had to do. 

Mr. Hamlin also had a jersey cow that we were allowed to come and get a pail of milk from every day.  If he dried up for a time the rent would go down.  We were thankful for small mercies and saw again and again the providing care of our faithful Father. 

We heated the house with a coal oil stove, and we kept an icebox in the kitchen.  Two times a week we would pay fifty cents for a block of ice to keep the food cold.  The iceman would come by with the blocks of ice for us to buy.  It was in the back of a closed wagon with sawdust around it so it would not melt so fast.  We cooked our food on the coal oil burners we had brought with us from the homeland.

It was the simple things that gave us great pleasure in those early days.  One night after supper I announced to the kids that I had brought them home a surprise.  It was the dead of winter and bitterly cold outside.  When I had come home, I had put the package of ice cream out in the eaves troughs.  Well, that was a real treat. 

Every day we were thankful for health and safety and the daily food to feed our family.  Things were hard but we were getting by.  We were so grateful for the opportunities we had been given in this new land and things were going to be okay.