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Fifties Country Living
Sit down with me my children, come!
__I’ll spin a tale or two
About when I was just a kid
__in nineteen fifty-two.
No cell phones, televisions, laptops,
__email, or internet,
Connecting with each other face
__to face was your best bet.
Oil was for cars and tractors;
__Fat fried your potatoes.
No one ever heard of red
__Italian pear tomatoes.
A percolator on the stove
__would brew the coffee hot.
No Keurig cups to make you tea,
___just water in a pot.
Our chickens on the farm were what
__today they call free-range.
To lock them in the chicken coop
__would mean someone’s deranged.
Chickens had no parts called nuggets
__and certainly no fingers.
Limburger was a staple cheese
__and had a smell that lingers.
Curry was a kind of comb
__for horses’ manes and coats.
The outhouse was the only thing
__that you could call “remote.”
“Pizza” was a tower leaning
__somewhere in Italy,
And since it wasn’t a silo it didn’t
__matter much to me.
A “take-away” was done in math
__or in a robbery.
Indoor plumbing was the height
__of some folks’ snobbery.
Back then I only knew spaghetti
__as Chef Boyardee.
Pasta was unknown except
__for macaroni cheese.
Seaweed was not recognized
__as a food by either spouse.
Water came from cisterns and was
__carried to the house.
When we wanted water we used
__the dipper in the pail.
No one thought of putting it
__in bottles or for sale.
Welfare was a word that meant
__care for your own kin,
Helping out close relatives
__when things were getting thin.
Though you may think that there is progress,
__we former farmer folk,
Think that our lives were cozy then;
__hearth fires we would stoke.
.
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LTC Roy E. Peterson, US Army Military Intelligence and Russian Foreign Area Officer (Retired) has published more than 6,200 poems in 88 of his 112 books. He has been an Army Attaché in Moscow, Commander of INF Portal Monitoring in Votkinsk, first US Foreign Commercial Officer in Vladivostok, Russia and Regional Manager in the Russian Far East for IBM. He holds a BA, Hardin-Simmons University (Political Science); MA, University of Arizona (Political Science); MA, University of Southern California (Int. Relations) and MBA University of Phoenix. He taught at the University of Arizona, Western New Mexico University, University of Maryland, Travel University and the University of Phoenix.
A thorough reminder, Roy, of just how much ‘Life’ has changed, and, sadly, not always for the better. Nice job – 🙂
Thank you, Mark. I think the subject was something with which Upper Midwesterners can identify.
You’re dead right, Roy, and the finest thing my lengthy period of Iowa farm life afforded me (1955-ish to today) is my darling wife, Connie. Guessing you’d enjoy this fairly lengthy piece, I decided to share it privately. Naughty me – 🙂
On Being – ‘Farmer-Raised’
A few small clouds were drifting through a brisk October morning… sort o’ playin’ peek-a-boo with those of us below…
When Dad glanced up – doffed his cap – and threatened… “Won’t be long ‘til all the trees have lost their leaves an’ we’ll be gettin’ snow!”
Farmers have a knack, ya’ know, for knowin’ things like that… an’ Dad, and his dad, always knew – before the ‘News’ would say
If and when a storm was comin’ — when to close the windows — and if there’d be a need for puttin’ certain things away.
Just a couple years ago – the way it will in March – the temperatures were runnin’ back an’ forth twixt cold and warm,
When Grandpa Virgil leaned inside the shop and hollered out, “Better bring the combine in… we’re in for quite a storm!”
Cats an’ dogs for 30 minutes – golf-ball hail for 10 – with winds that tore some shingles off the old machine shed roof,
And when it fin’ly moved away, we drove around the farmyard taking shots — lots of shots, of what we’d need for proof.
No one had been hurt, thank God, and, yes… he had insurance… but as we slowly made the rounds – with me there in between –
The utter devastation to the buildings – and the crops – brought a look in both their eyes that I had never seen!
Neither one had wept in front of me since Granny’d died, but seein’ the cistern lyin’ there – all busted up… they did!
Grandpa yanked his hankie out, as Dad was takin’ pictures, figurin’ – if he used it well, he’d keep his hurtin’ hid,
But handkerchiefs are only good for three specific things: Wipin’ sweat — blowin’ your nose — and dabbin’ up your tears.
The first two options ain’t traumatic – every farmer does ‘em, but when you’re in the presence of a child of seven years –
Most will try – an’ rightly so – to minimize the harm that bursting into tears in front o’ real young kids can do,
And, still today, their teary eyes, from all those years ago, ‘ll come around to testify that what they say is true.
But seein’ Dad and Granddad crying helped me understand that even grownups suffer blows that ‘ll knock ’em off their feet,
And taught me that – by working as a team… if given time… very little comes along that a ‘Fam’ly’ can’t defeat!
By mid-July the corn an’ wheat had made a full recovery… the roof was lookin’ good as new… the cistern was rebuilt…
And – taken by a guy who dusted crops, the aerial-photo showed what – from the sky – looked like a green an’ amber quilt.
Something else that farmers have a knack for doing well is making wise, decisive moves… regardless what that is…
And having worked like hell to earn and – carry on – his dream, today what Father helped him farm for 50 years – is his.
And while his siblings sought their goals in “Life” by other means – choosing paths they felt would lead to that for which they yearned –
Even those who wandered off had known the special care that comes with being ‘farmer-raised’, and… steered by what they’d learned…
Guided by the greatest, well-intended love there is… one that always tries its best to help them make their way…
Know, without exception, there are anxious arms at ‘Home’ that yearn to hold them just as tight as those who’d chose to stay.
See… lives within the rural world are built on ‘Fam’ly’ concepts… hard to find outside therealms of tiny towns and farms…
And typically the ones who’ve rolled the dice and fled the flock will far more inconsistently enjoy their parents’ arms!
“Home” – despite how meager – is, of course, that person’s root… and how conditions nurture us affects the way we grow…
But I can guarantee you… being ‘farmer-raised’ myself… again, without exception… is the finest way I know!
Thanks for the walk down memory lane Roy. Kids need to hear such stories.
Great thought Russel about the kids needing to hear things like this. I remember, for example, trotting home a half mile over snow and ice to keep warm in the winter from where the school bus let me off.
Lovely and nostalgic, Roy – and 1952 was such a great year: the Chinese year of the Dragon, for starters, and also, most importantly, the year I popped out!
The year of your birth makes it a great year indeed! I have been blessed with your great poetry and kind comments.
You grace this page with yet another gem describing the self-reliance most people once possessed. My father remembers that they too had an outhouse when he was young.
Thank you, Cheryl. We did not get electricity on the farm until 1954. I could have added a verse of studying my school lessons by kerosene lamp.
While I was born in the 60’s, much of what you say resonates with me. This touching poem makes me long for the “good old days,” something I had mentally decided I should never do, but her I am. So much of the technology and changes over the decades have only made life less personal and more hectic, sadly.
Gigi
I feel the life changes as you have, Gigi. Some for the better and some for the worse.
I have recently submitted memoir essays with similar memories.
Thanks for your insight.
I look forward to those essays. Thank you for the kind comments and sharing.
Thanks for the stroll down 1950s lane! As James Sale popped out in 1952, so did I. I lived in suburbia, but I used an outhouse at my cousin’s house, breathing through my mouth the whole time. I am so very glad we had no computers or cell phones: “Connecting with each other face to face was [our] best bet.” Thanks again for the reminder of life in the past.
Thank you, Jeff, for sharing you lived in suburbia, but became acquainted with the outhouse air. Face-to-face communication is almost a lost art.
This a playful picture of farm life, and its simplicities.
I can’t recall who said it, but this was it: “There is no stable and firm basis for a nation’s culture and defense except a prosperous landed peasantry, working the land they live on.”
The flight from the farm has been our nation’s downfall.
Thank you, D. Salemi for the gracious comments and sharing your wisdom.
⁴Thanks, Roy, for some sharp comparisons between then and now on the farm
When I think about farming in California, where I grew up in the years after WWII, I wonder if one of the biggest differences from today may have been the absence of environmental legislation to frustrate farmers and slow them down.
Excellent thought about California.
I’m with you all the way except for Limburger cheese. Cheese that lingers isn’t something I’m nostalgic about, but everything else hit home.
I so agree. My grandpa loved it. When I stayed over at my grandparents house, I had the awful smell of limburger cheese combined with pipe smoke and amplified by wood smoke from the kitchen and living room stoves.
Roy, your gift of an uplifting, nostalgic, smile of a poem has cheered my heart today. It has made me want to sit the backyard, bask in the beauty of nature, and revel in the wonder of yesteryear. I must say your ingenious rhyming of snobbery with Chef Boyardee made me chuckle. Thank you!
Ah, the pleasant evenings spent on porches with the warm summer winds looking at the starry sky and learning constellations as a young boy were invigorating and created fond memories. Thank you for sharing in my nostalgia with a smile. You blessed my day.
What a knowledgeable nostalgic collection of then-and-now contrasts! Roy, you’ve stirred them up cleverly. What really makes me reflect is the food and drink items. Only one way to have coffee or tea or water! No pizza or pasta–except spaghetti and macaroni from cans. But the cheese–it was one of my favorites, and it was cheddar only. I did encounter Limburger, and isn’t it amazing with our immense array of cheeses now, Limburger has become hard to find. Smell snobbery, I guess! Thanks for the verses.
Margaret, I am so pleased with your wonderful comments. Yes, I remember macaroni from cans. Cheddar cheese still is my favorite. Our nostalgia can be markers in time as changes occur. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
Crikey, you’re making us all feel old, Roy.
Fish fingers I’ve always known, not so nuggets, so that probably gives away my age.
Funnily enough, and it was so weird I underlined it, in the Charles Dickens short story ‘The Haunted House’ (first published, 1859), the narrator invites some of his chums to stay with him in his newly-bought, supposedly-haunted house, one of whom is an old seafarer who ‘made some of the best dishes I ever ate, including unapproachable curries’.
I can only guess that curry was an exotic dish people knew about, which ‘Jack Governor’ the ‘Chief Cook’ in the haunted house, learned to make on his travels.
Thanks for a poem that left me smiling and nostalgic.
Paul, I can assure you there was no curry back then on the prairie. Thank you for the smiles and your enjoyment of nostalgia. Also, thank you for sharing the Dickens reference.
This is an absolutely delightful poem, Roy — a “list” poem which made me smile even as it made me long for a simpler age when people were more innocent. And yet it is not a simple “yesterday was great and today is bad” poem because you spin a good amount of self-deprecating humor regarding the unsophistication of the speaker as a child — the limitations of an outhouse, Chef Boyardee, unfamiliarity with putatitvely sophisticated things as diverse as “Pisa” in Italy or Keurig coffeemakers. But despite the speaker’s fond little laugh at his old life, it’s clear that it was a saner one worthy of the nostalgia expressed here — it is realistic rather than romanticized. I’d take it over what we have today in a heartbeat.
Brian, I am thankful for your comments and analysis of what it was like for me as a young child who had so much to learn about the bigger world outside my farm life in the fifties. I presented some of my experiences in a factual manner while comparing them to some of those experienced by later generations. My first pizza did not come until the mid-nineteen sixties and that was on a trip back through Omaha on my way to South Dakota for a family reunion.