My
Childhood Memories of My Grandparents’ Farm
Ivan
Alfred Macbeth: 1904-1972 (Maternal Grandfather)
Nora Elsie
Hoffman: 1899-1994 (Maternal Grandmother)
Here is a
beautiful aerial shot of my grandparents’ farm, taken in the early 1960s when I
was a little girl. This is the farm that lives in my memories.
Whenever I
think of my grandparents’ farm, I think of the following old children’s song:
Oh
playmate, come out and play with me
And
bring your dollies three.
Climb
up my apple tree,
Look
down my rain barrel
Slide
down my cellar door
And
we’ll be jolly friends forever more.
My
grandparents’ house had the song’s essentials: the apple tree, the rain barrel
and the cellar door. The large garden on the far side of the house had a few
ancient apple trees. The barrel was used to catch rainwater from the house’s
downspout. My grandmother liked to wash her hair in the rainwater from the
barrel—it was softer than the well water pumped by their windmill. She also
used it to water plants. The cellar had double doors set in concrete on a
slant, perfect for a little girl like me to slide down (and run down, although
that wasn’t good for the structure of the doors). In my young mind, the song
must have been written about the Macbeth farm place—it all fit.
I’ve been
looking, unsuccessfully so far, for a photo of that cellar door. I can remember
the steps that it covered, leading down into “the root cellar”—the original
basement under the oldest section of the house, with cemented fieldstone walls
and shelving for canned goods and containers for storage of root vegetables--
and the “basement”, the concrete-walled section under the newer part of the
house where the plumbing was laid in. That space contained a toilet, metal
washing/soaking sink, and the washing machine.
|
My mom, Ione, and her little brother Rex play in the snow in 1937. Living room windows visible, along with roof of barn at bottom of the hill. |
The old
house underwent several changes over the years. When it was originally built,
indoor plumbing and electricity weren’t available. My mother, born in 1928,
remembered still using the outhouse as a young child, and having to pump water
from the windmill to carry into the house for washing and cooking. During her
early childhood, her parents had indoor plumbing installed. They converted the
smallest upstairs bedroom into a bathroom with tub, toilet, sink and a closet
(one of only three closets in the house). In the late 1930s, thanks to FDR’s
Rural Electrification Act and Administration, electricity finally reached rural
Le Ray Township. My mother told me how magical the moment was when they first
turned on the electric lights in the house—the oil lamps were no longer needed.
They also added an oil-burning forced air furnace to replace the fireplace.
|
1934 photo of Ione Macbeth's 6th birthday. Windmill behind her, and old porch on front of house. |
The house
originally had two open-air porches. There was a small one on the “front” of
the house that faced the road. It is visible in the attached photo of my mother
in 1934, with a wood floor atop a crawlspace, posts supporting the porch roof,
and a low white rail at the right side. In addition, there was a long one that
stretched the length of rear of the house where it faced the farmyard. At some
point during the 1940s, my grandparents modified both porches. The long rear
one was rebuilt with a concrete foundation, the sides covered with windows from
waist height upwards, windows which had screens only—no glass. They called this
porch, appropriately enough, the screen porch. It was used as a sort of mud
room and storage area for garden tools and snow and work boots, as well as a
play area for us grandkids in warm weather. The play space contained a wooden
toy stove and oven painted in a muted pale green, and a doll buggy and old
metal toy tractors and bakelite farm animals.
The front
porch received an even bigger makeover, including a new foundation and concrete
floor, walls and real windows with glass as well as screens. The new porch is
visible in the photo of my mother and her cousins below, circa 1949. My
grandparents referred to this as the “sun porch”. By the 1960s, the trees in
the front yard were huge, making the porch a shady, comfortable spot in summer,
and a warm spot in spring and fall when the leaves were small or fallen. Only
in winter was the space too cold to use. My grandfather had a bentwood rocker
out there, and he loved to sit there, read a book or the newspaper, do the
crossword puzzle, and smoke his pipe or a cigarette. There was a floral couch
where the rest of us sat to chat and listen to the birdsong.
|
Left to right: Joanna Macbeth, Renee Macbeth, Ione Macbeth, Wilfred Macbeth and Dwight "Rex" Macbeth. Windows of Ione's bedroom on top floor above living room bay window. New front "sunporch" at right. |
My
grandparents put in raised flowerbeds around the exterior of the front of the
house. They are visible in the photo below, which shows the bow window in the
living room.
My
mother’s old bedroom was right above the living room. It featured pale pink
walls, filmy white curtains framing two large windows with white frames, and a
black and white granite-look linoleum floor that made a sort of crackling noise
when I walked on it. The room had a white iron double bed with a pink floral
chenille spread. Every summer my brother and I would stay at my grandparents’
house for a couple weeks, and I loved sleeping in that room. I felt like a
princess. Someone once told me my great-grandmother died in that bed, which had
my vivid imagination conjuring ghosts in that airy bedroom. Leona Hoffman had
died long before I was born, so to me she was just a sweet-faced old lady with
white hair in a photo on my grandma’s dresser. She didn’t seem quite real to me
as a young child, so I quickly got past my fear and slept easily in the bed.
My brother
stayed in the adjoining room, which used to be my Uncle Rex’s room. The two
large windows looked out at the windmill and down the hill to the barn and the
fields beyond. It was a marvelous view. That bedroom also contained a bookcase
filled with children’s books—mostly chunky Big Little Books from my mom’s 1930s
childhood, still marked with their ten-cent price. I loved their squat size
(about 4 x 4 inches) that fit nicely in my hands, and the musty smell of the cheap,
thick paper they were printed on.
|
A Big Little Book from the 1930s |
The upstairs
bedrooms were reached via a narrow wood staircase. The risers were painted in
the palest gray with rubber stair treads tacked on them to prevent slips and
falls. The steep steps were perfect for sending the old Slinky toy down—I loved
the odd little whisk noise the Slinky made as it uncoiled and recoiled down the
steps.
At the top
of the staircase was my grandmother’s Singer sewing machine—a newer electric
machine mounted in the old wooden stand that used to hold her treadle machine.
She had an old piano stool tucked beneath it to sit on when she sewed—both the
stool and Singer cabinet were painted white, and were bathed in the light from
the window just to the right.
|
My brother and me with our grandparents Ivan and Nora Macbeth--Grandpa's 60th birthday in 1964. Taken in Macbeth kitchen--window to left looked out on sunporch. Door on right was sunporch door. |
My
grandparents used the bedroom downstairs which was entered from the living
room. It had a lovely, dark hardwood bedroom set, and had pale walls (blue I
think) and two windows—one facing the garden and the other looking onto the
screen porch.
I have
wonderful memories of playing on the concrete platform that supported the
windmill, the source of the well water on the farm. I also liked to dance on
the round concrete top of the water cistern. When we were little and Grandpa
Ivan still had cattle and hogs, we’d run down to the pig pen to feed them
potato and apple peels, and we would watch the cows being milked in the big
barn and would play with the barn cats and kittens. I’d scare myself by
sneaking into the old outhouse, home to spiders and wasps, and I’d pick
strawberries from my Grandma Nora’s berry patch.
|
Me with farm cats--age 4. Round cistern to my rear right. Corn crib behind me. Photographer (grandpa) was standing by cellar door and back door entry to screen porch. Clothesline post next to the electric pole. Windmill out of photo on right. |
And then
there was the marvelous hill from the house down to the barn. In the summer, my
brother and I would roll down the hill over and over—the grass stains on our
clothes probably drove our mother crazy. All Grandma asked was that we avoid
her peony bushes at the bottom of the hill.
|
Closeup of aerial photo showing windmill, cistern, screen porch all along back of house, sloping cellar door just to left of car's front bumper. Windows to Rex's bedroom facing windmill. Hill leading down to barnyard at front left, with grandma's beloved peony bushes at bottom left. I believe that's Grandpa Ivan getting out of the car. |
While the
old Macbeth farmhouse still exists, the outbuildings are gone and the house is
changed—it no longer looks like my grandparents’ farm place. But the Macbeth
farm still lives in my memory, in old family photographs, and a 1960s aerial
photograph. Grandma and Grandpa, I love you and miss you.