(If you missed Chapter One: In the Beginning, you can find it here.)

The Story of Lois Ann Meyer Bergeson

Daughter, Sister, Wife, Mother, Aunt, Grandmother, and Great Grandmother …

By Lois Bergeson (Reprinted with Permission)

CHAPTER 2: MY HOUSE

What kind of a house did you grow up in?

My growing up house was a four roomed bungalow on my parent’s farm. The kitchen was the biggest room. It had a wood burning stove, a homemade wooden table with chairs on one side and a bench on the other. (My siblings will dispute the bench, but it is what I remember, because it had no back and I would hike myself up and sit on the window sill. One time I sat too far back and broke the window! One never forgets when a mistake is made.)

The kitchen had a pantry with shelves on both sides. Under a window at the west end was one shelf, table high, where we could make school lunches and other things. In the floor behind was a trap door which led to the dirt floor cellar. That is where canned goods and other food stuffs were kept as it was a cool place.

Off the kitchen was the north bedroom where my parents slept in an iron full-size bed. In the other corner was an iron single bed where my 2 brothers slept. In the room was a dresser made by a family member of long ago. It had been painted many times so it chipped easily. (I have this handkerchief dresser now and prize it as I stripped it and have it in its original wood finish.) A small closet opened on the south wall. There clothes, boxes, next year’s seed corn and in winter the toilet pot were stored.

There was the south bedroom where my sister and I slept. It had an iron full-sized bed. A dresser with an attached mirror stood in one corner. A cedar chest was in another corner beside the door to the clothes closet that was always overflowing with stuff. By the window was a long flower stand that held my mother’s prized potted plants. 

The fourth room doubled as our living room/dining room. A large oak round table graced the center of the room with plain chairs around it. In winter a very ornate coal burning heater cheered the room, showing flames through the isinglass front. We kids often scampered from bed, to each take a side of the stove so we could dress in the warmth it radiated. On winter wash days, ropes were strung crisscrossed around the room to hang the wet clothes to dry. It was great fun to play tag around the hanging underwear.

The house had a screened in small porch to the north. It was the place we sat in the summer, shelling peas or husking corn for canning.

Did you have a secret hiding place?

I don’t remember. Probably, we hid under a bed when we were naughty. We would escape to the trees to play. My most favorite place was the very large flat-topped rock that stood by the fence line in the pasture. I would scrape my knees until they bled, trying to get on top. There I would stand and sing, pray or preach. The cows were my only audience.

Did you have your own bedroom bathroom?

I shared the south room with my sister. When she graduated and went to work in Seattle for the war effort, we built an upstairs to our house. Then I had my own room. It was my haven. I loved reading books, especially when it rained, and I would curl up in my bed and be lulled by the rain falling on the slanted roof above my head. Our bathroom was our toilet, two holer, east of the house. We had to duck the clothesline to get there. In the dead of winter, we used the toilet pot in the closet, which had to be emptied every day. For bathing, it was the sponge bath routine. It was too much work to haul water from the pump to put in a tub.

How did you keep your soda cold?

Soda? Maybe we could get a treat of some ‘‘Orange Crush” in town. We always drank nectar from the Raleigh Man. The water was very cold from our well. To keep other things chilled, we would hang them in pails in the water of the cream cooler. This was cooled by well water that filled the large stock tank right next to it.

What kinds of lights did you have?

We had kerosene lamps for a long time. The Aladdin lamp was popular later, but we could only afford one of those. Electricity came to the farm when I was in college. When the upstairs was built on, wiring for electricity had been done. It was very different to have a yard light that burned all night. Finally we could go out at night and see the lights shine from the farms around. It made one feel not quite so alone as when it was all dark. One thing, though. We had to move away from the light to see the stars.

Did you have jobs to do around the house?

Yes, we took turns at filling the wood-box. The wood was used in our Home Comfort kitchen range. We always were to fix our own bed. Once I tried to sneak away to play in the wood without doing my job. I was sure Mother would do it.

Was I surprised when I came in for our noon meal? The rumpled quilts were still in evidence. No one said anything, but I fixed that bed right away and never tried that again.

Growing older, I always got the cleaning jobs. My sister got to do the baking. We had to do the dishes after a meal. Sister washed and I wiped. On Saturdays I discovered there was a program of opera singing on the radio, I would turn the radio on softly with my ear up to it, listening. It was dishes time and my sister complained that she was doing the dishes all by herself when I was PRETENDING to like opera music and getting out of work. That was one of the things I got away with. Being a lover of music, Mother encouraged me to listen if I wanted to. I wasn’t pretending. I really have always loved the trained voices of opera singers.

I had to take care of the chickens after our new chicken house was built. I would feed and water them. Picking eggs was not always fun. If a hen was still sitting on a nest of eggs, I often got pecked at. One day I went to an old shed we called the hog house, to get feed. I knew there were mice in there so I always made a lot of noise so they would hide until I got what I needed. I had my pail with feed and was on my way to the chicken house when I looked down and saw perched on top of the feed, a beady eyed mouse. I screamed and threw that pail and its contents as far into the trees as I could. It was days before I would go out into those trees again. That must be where I got my fear of mice. I am not afraid of much, but mice send me into a panic. When we bought our Ortonville house, the seller pointed out that there was cement all around the bottom of the walls to make it mouse proof. That is what sold me on the house. We never did have mice either.

I wanted to do what the boys did, so I pitched hay, fed pigs, and shocked grain at times. We took turns bringing pails of water to the house from the well. The chore I liked the most was mowing the lawn. It would take me all day, but I could dream and make up stories all the while I worked. It was a time by myself, when no one bothered me. We always had a big garden. Weeding was our job. One hot summer day I was out there so long I got a sun stroke. I never had to weed after that. When the peas had their pods filled up, I would fill the skirt of my dress with peas and find a sheltered spot to eat them. They were so fresh and good. I used the garden for one of my 4-H projects, One year I got a ribbon for the best record turned in. I still have the pin I got. Maybe that prize encouraged me in my writing.

How did you keep cool in summer?

We had no fans, I remember folks sitting in a hot stuffy church, using a paper to fan their faces. In our house, if there was a south breeze, we opened the south and north doors. The breeze would blow right through the house and keep it cool. We never did that when the wind was from the north. Then we would get barn and manure pile smells. That wasn’t good. In the summer we did not use the wood burning range in the kitchen. We had a 4-burner kerosene stove we used. This helped keep things cooler.

The summer we jacked up the house and put a basement under to replace the cellar was fun. It was very hot so we moved the table down in the basement where we could sit and eat comfortably. It was sort of like camping. The lumber stashed there we used as our “side board”!

Did firemen or police ever come to your house?

No police, but I remember when members of the school board came, as they had been told that my older brother was the one who tipped over the toilet at the country school on Halloween. Actually it was a bunch of older guys and my brother just had a finger on it. I do think Dad had to pay something for that. When the men came, my younger brother got so scared that my older brother would go to jail that he hid in our toilet.

We had no fire departments in the early days. When our barn was hit by lightning and burned to the ground, many neighbors were looking out their windows and saw it. Inside of 5 minutes our alfalfa field was full of cars. The people were our fire crew and water brigade. They kept the fire from spreading to the other outbuildings. That is the way it was, neighbor helping neighbor.

Did anyone besides your family live with you?

During summers, Dad usually had a hired man. In the early days, before I was born, the hired man might stay at the house. I remember the story of one man bringing bed bugs along with him. My poor mother worked and worked to get rid of those awful things. At the time of the barn fire, we had a hired man. He would eat with us but went home at night. My little brother was a tot, and he loved our hired man. He would crawl up into his lap and pull out his watch from the breast pocket on his overall and put the pocket watch up to his ear to hear the ticking, which made him giggle. During the building of the new barn, we had a man from Twin Valley sleep down in the barn. He was one of the building crew. He also helped build a dog house for the puppy.

Stay tuned next week for Chapter 3: Holidays.

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