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Articles of Interest

Contents

Jefferson County Pioneer Association

Organized at Mt. Vernon on June 7, 1872, eligible residents had to have been a resident of Jefferson County for 50 years or more. Later, that requirement apparently was changed as some names on the list were here after 1822. The following names are listed in the original minutes now in the hands of the Jefferson County Historical Society.

Source: The Jeffersonian, May 2004

Article Index

School Days at Bethel

By Phyllis Dykes

I began attending Bethel School in the fall of 1938 when I was in the sixth grade. We lived in the extreme northeast corner of the school district. Fisher’s Lane [now Veteran’s Drive] was always in such bad condition that cars could never drive through except in the summer, so in order to drive to Bethel School we went north on Shawnee, then west on Perkins right past Edison School over to Tenth Street, then south out of town.

When we first moved to Mt. Vernon, two years before that, my parents paid tuition for me, and also my brother the following year, to attend Edison School, but with the prospect of another brother soon to enter school and tuition costs rising, it was decided we would go to school in our town district.

The walking distance was two and a half miles, so my older brother drove us to school each day and then drove the car on to high school. After school we would start walking home, and Bob would come along and pick us up. Sometimes, in nice weather, we walked all the way home.

Bethel School at that time was the original building. There were two classrooms separated by a wide hallway. One room was for the three primary grades, and was taught by Minta Jack. The other room was shared by two teachers who were husband and wife, Wilburn and Lurene Cullins. Mrs. Cullins taught fourth through sixth grades; Mr. Cullins taught seventh and eighth. They took turns having their classes come out into the hall to recite.

My class was smaller than some of the other classes. At first I was the only girl with about five or six boys. Then soon another girl moved into the district, and before the end of the next year a third one. When I was in the eighth grade, another classroom and a basement had been added during the summer. They used the basement for a cafeteria and started serving hot lunches that year.

They also began bus service that year. The first bus was a panel truck with two wooden benches in the back, one on each side facing each other. The bus would pick us up at the east end of Fisher’s Lane when it could get through, sometimes we had to walk down the lane to the Benton Road to catch it. Later Woodland Drive went all the way through, and the bus could go around that way.

Every once in a while we had ciphering matches and spelling bees. About once a month the entire period after the last recess would be devoted to this activity, and all grades from fourth through eighth would take part. In the case of the spelling bees, we would line up in two rows facing each other. Sometimes it was girls against the boys. As a person missed a word he would sit down until there were only two remaining, and finally one was the winner.

Sometimes for fun the teachers would vary the spelling bees, and we would have, for instance, “last letter spelling” where the first student pronounced then spelled a word of his choosing, and then the next person would have to spell a word beginning with the last letter of that first word. Of course, everyone spelled words like “box” and “tax,” and after the words “x-ray” and “xylophone” had been used, everyone who got an “x” was out of the game. Another variation was played the same way, but geographical names were used.

The ciphering matches always started with the lowest grades and worked their way up. Two would go to the blackboard, and the teacher would call out a problem for them to work. The one who had the correct answer first remained at the board, and a new contestant would replace the other one. Eventually it would get down to the last two, usually eighth graders. Even the kids who weren’t very good at math or spelling liked these Friday afternoon matches because they got out of their regular classes for that time period.

We had no gym at that time. Basketball games were played on an outdoor court. There was no such thing then as a girls’ basketball team, but one or two of the small schools our team played against had so few boys that they allowed a girl to be on the team.

A big event was the annual pie supper. Most of the girls and women brought a pie to be auctioned off. After they were all sold you were supposed to go sit with the man or boy who bought your pie and share it with him.

Two other big events were the last day of school and the day before Christmas vacation. We had programs in the afternoon to which our families were invited. There would be a play by the primary grades, one by the intermediate grades, and a couple by the seventh and eighth grades, plus a few numbers by the chorus and the rhythm band.

There were also a few recitations of poems and monologues, and the Christmas program always ended with a serious religious pageant. The Christmas program was followed with Santa Claus and a gift exchange, for which we had drawn names. On the last day of school there was an outdoor potluck dinner at noon followed by the program. I thought at the time the plays, monologues, and music were all pretty good, but now I wonder how my folks, with their kids spread out over several years, ever managed to endure all those years of school programs.

Source: The Jeffersonian, March 2000

Article Index

Butchering Time

By Eleanor Hodge

The once common practice of hog killing has about disappeared, but I remember well the hard work it involved as well as the pleasure we had in eating all that fresh meat.

I think my father, Walton Hodge, helped butcher as many hogs around in the country as anyone. Maybe this had something to do with his winning the Champion Hog-calling Contest of our state of Illinois in 1926.

When the first cool days of autumn arrived we began thinking about butchering a hog and loaning some of the meat until a neighbor butchered to pay you back.

Early in the morning a big, black iron kettle was set over a fire and filled with water. Then a scalding barrel was securely anchored in place. It had to be tilted at the right angle to hold water and yet make it fairly easy to handle the hog.

Usually the hog was killed with a rifle. Then came the “sticking" with a very sharp knife. I never could bear to see a hog shot and stuck. I have seen the pools of blood where the killing took place. From all of this came the saying, “He bled like a stuck hog."

Buckets of scalding water were put into the barrel. Then the hog was lowered head first down into it and sloshed up and down, and turned from side to side. When the hair began to loosen, the ends were reversed and the scalding came to an end. The hog was pulled from the barrel onto the platform and the hair was pulled or scraped off.

Next came the hanging. Slits were made in the back of the hind legs. The ends of the “Gamble Stick" were slipped in these slots, then the hog was raised off the ground - head down. The hog was splashed with more water to wash off any dirt or hair. Then it was slit down the middle and the entrails were removed. The liver, milt and heart were immediately taken into the house and put in a pan of cold water. Part of this was prepared for the noonday meal.

The head was cut off and put aside and the hog which had been laid on a table was halved by cutting along each side of the back bone. The ribs were removed and trimmed, yet leaving enough meat on to make them nice and meaty. The hams, shoulders and sides were properly cut and trimmed, later to be salted down.

The fat that had been trimmed off was cut into cubes and later rendered into lard. “Cooking out" lard was a skill that required much patience. The fat pieces were put into a big iron kettle over a slow fire. If the lard cooked too fast it would be dark. A constant stirring was required to keep it from sticking. When it had finally cooked enough it was pressed and strained and stored in crocks or jars. The cracklings were sometimes put in cornbread. This really added to the flavor and richness of the cornbread.

Usually when one person was cooking the lard another one was working on the sausage. Sausage was made from all the scraps and trimmings. Sometimes we cut up a shoulder and ground it into sausage, also maybe part of the tender loin. Our sausage grinder was fastened to a long-like board. Each end was placed in a chair. My job was to sit on one end of the board and feed the meat into the grinder, while the person who turned the grinder sat on the other end. After the sausage was ground it was put into long narrow cloth bags, later to be sliced and fried. Some was made into cakes which would be fried down and placed in jars with hot grease poured over it and sealed. We also canned tenderloin in the same manner.

Often we took part of the head and other lean pieces to make into mincemeat. The meat was boiled until tender and then put through a food grinder, chopped apples, raisins and other fruit along with vinegar and sugar were added to the meat mixture. Delicious mince pies resulted.

I can’t recall that we ever had pork chops. Our hogs were just not cut up that way. We had the pork tenderloin which was a choice piece and the backbone of which there is no comparison in the stores today.

Some people cleaned the feet, cooked them, or pickled them. Practically nothing from the hog was lost except the “squeal.”

I have been told that my great grandfather, James Hodge, came to a tragic end while butchering. The hog had been killed and just as my great grandfather started to stick it with a sharp knife the hog flounced, causing great grandfather to sink the knife into his own leg. An artery was severed and he bled to death before receiving aid from a doctor. This happened about the year 1873. My grandfather, Alex Hodge, was about 13 years old at the time.

Source: Prairie Historian Quarterly, 1973

Article Index

The Terrible Depression and the 10 cent Jar of Mustard

By Louise Goddard, ca. 1982

The third week in March 1932 was the depth of the Depression for our family! Our finances had scraped bottom several times before, but we had managed up ’til now. We had spent every dollar we had to buy a team of mules, 3 dozen hens and a cow during the winter after moving to a farm that we expected to cultivate during the summer of ’32. A new calf was expected in April, and we would have milk again, but NOW in accordance with farm practices we had to let the cow go dry for a month or 6 weeks.

With nothing to sell we had reached a critical point financially. There were no food stamps in that long-ago time, no unemployment compensation, or federal funds of any kind, no welfare except township relief which was for the truly indigent. We had the promise of a week’s work for a man and team, rebuilding a bridge that had washed downstream in the spring floods.

Today was market day and I had 2 dozen eggs to sell. We went in the farm wagon pulled by the mule team. Trading didn’t take long; some flour and half-pound of lard (the sugar would have to wait) and when the bill was totaled I had 11 cents left. What could I buy with 11 cents that would lift our spirits and add something to our nutrition. Most things cost more than 11 cents but as my eyes traveled down the grocery shelves I spied a bright yellow jar of mustard! Just the thing to go with our water biscuits and water gravy which had been our staple diet many times during the winter. Biscuits and gravy made with water instead of milk were rather tasteless, so I hid the mustard in the sack with the lard, saving it as a surprise for the evening meal.

When I introduced it for our heaped up plates of biscuits and gravy everyone got a teaspoon full, and needless to say, ambrosia never tasted so good. Even today, 50 years later, when I see the shining jars of mustard on the grocery shelves memories come flooding back about our experiences in the Depression that began with the stock market crash in 1929, and lasted almost 5 years.

Mt. Vernon’s main industry then was the plant that made railroad freight cars. It was closed - railroads were going bankrupt, no cars were needed. Banks were closing, no group was untouched. Many of our neighbors were worse off than we were, each family coped as best they could with an empty larder, but I don’t remember that we ever lost faith that the spring would bring better days.

Businessmen in the cities feeling utterly ruined were jumping to their deaths out of the 50th story windows, but with the first warm days in April we had baby chicks and a baby calf frisking about in the sunshine. We had added wild greens to our diet. Our neighbor found and cut a bee tree, and everyone shared in the honey, which went real fine with hot buttered biscuits, now made with real milk.

Our little jar of mustard lasted that one crucial week, and I shall never forget it, and I remember that we stayed on the farm eleven years, and reluctantly returned to town, when the car shops opened again to build the Tools of War after Pearl Harbor.

Note: This story is shared with you in remembrance of a special friendship with Louise Snow Goddard.

Source: The Jeffersonian, May 2000.

Article Index

The Little House Out Back

By Suzanna Horton

Let’s wander back down memory lane,
Let’s walk down a cinder path
To something we all remember so well,
The little house out back.

Now this unique little structure,
Usually constructed of wood,
Brings back so many memories
And some are not so good.

Like when father vowed to protect it
If he had to stay till dawn
And got tumped over in it
With the doorway side turned down.

As we draw near we’re greeted
By a moon carved over the door,
And as we enter we’re welcomed
By Sears and Roebuck on the floor.

The house that we’ve just entered
Has one high, one low, both round,
And we can’t tell whether the flies or wasps
Lend most to the buzzing sound.

We note the sweet aroma
Of morning glories twining about
Mixed with other strange odors
That are strong enough to shout.

To neutralize the odor
There’s lime in a brown paper sack,
Here in the permanent dwelling place
Of spiders both yellow and black.

One does not linger very long
Seated on its splintery throne
For the temperature ranges from hot as Hades
To frigid as the Arctic Zone.

If the saying’s true that necessity
Is the mother of invention,
It had to be here man first realized
His need to air-condition.

You can choose a corn cob
From a basket sitting there,
Or “Monkey” Wards lies on the seat,
It’s kept there for a spare.

The index pages and order blanks
Are always first to go,
Because they’re tissue paper thin
And wad up as soft as snow.

The other pages stay very prickly
No matter how you try,
You can sit and wad and straighten them
Until the day you die.

When I was a kid I worked out a plan
And could time my daily visits
To last exactly the same length of time
It took Mom to do the dishes.

But I improved my reading skills
Browsing through the dream book there.
I read about Lydia Pinkham’s Pills
And sneaked a peek at the underwear.

Should we ever be tempted to treat it with scorn,
Let’s keep these thoughts in minds,
It’s been a dire necessity
Since the beginning of mankind.

And that the backbone of our nation
Once rested on the holey throne
Of an outhouse very similar
To the one we had back home.

As we come to the end of our memory trip,
There’s just one more thing to say,
Old outhouses never die,
They just smell away.

Source: Prairie Historian Quarterly, 1983

Article Index

Remembering....Easter Time

By Linda Mick Short

In younger days, Easter always meant a new dress, hat and shoes for Sunday school. Shopping for these items with my mother was the highlight of one Saturday afternoon in March. Mom was an excellent seamstress but I frequently begged for a “store-bought” dress when it came to my Easter finery. The dress had to be frilly and pastel in color. The hat was perky with a starched flower or two attached. New soft, white, wrist-length cotton gloves were selected with particular attention given to decorative details.

This outfit was completed at the shoe store where I eagerly stepped up to the amazing machine that looked right through my shoes to show if there was plenty of “toe-room” in the shadowy picture of my foot. Of course, I always ended up with a pair of shiny, black patent-leather shoes with a picture of a red goose inside.

Just before starting for home, a stop at Woolworth’s was made to pick out an Easter basket. Coloring eggs was another ritual of Easter. We dyed dozens, hunting them over and over again in the yard until Dad tired of hiding them or the eggs self-destructed (we seldom ate any of them!) We would often discover a long-forgotten egg late in July still hiding in the grass.

What a feeling it was on Easter morning, stepping out into the warm sunshine, resplendent in my new duds, heading down the street to church two blocks away and my little Bible tucked under my arm. Somewhere down through the years the Easter outfit ritual was discontinued but it is still a fond memory to recall.

Article Index

Down Memory Lane

Source: The Register-News

Article Index