Then and Now _ME

Then

Now and then, I think about my growing up years, Then and Now.... Photos taken in Manatee Historical Village.

I was born in Savannah GA in 1944 and had electricity, indoor plumbing the first 12 years of my life even though we lived in a converted chicken coop in my Aunts back yard.

In 1953 we moved to Clear Creek KY, I was 9 years old. We lived in campus housing and had a shower and indoor plumbing while Daddy went to school to be come a Baptist Minister. For those years I became very familiar with the out houses and no plumbing indoors, wells and pumps for water. The 3 room school I attended had a very large outhouse, one side for boys, one for girls and a pump like you see in the last photo, outside for drinking water. Daddy's first church was in DeWitt KY and about half of the members had pumps and out houses.

The people of KY welcomed us like we were family, even though they said WE had a funny accent. Ha Ha on that. Since the church was 40 miles of winding, dangerous hairpin mountain roads, we stayed all day at DeWitt and went home each Sunday after morning service, to have dinner and wait for the evening service. Each week we spent the day with a different family. I got to milk cows and climb apple trees and pet great dane puppies. NO daddy said NO to the puppy.

We were sitting at dinner and the man of the house pointed up the mountain that the house was perched on, and said See that far tire up thar?  We said Far? he said yes Far.. much laughter later we figured out it was a FIRE tower up there, not Far tar up thar.

they made fun of us because we said, we will come and pick you up and carry you to church if you need a ride. I loved the people and the lifestyle, but then I was 9 years old. My parents were the ones in culture shock.

One outhouse was built over a small creek, and I hated to use it because the mean attack geese loved to walk around under it. I was terrified of the geese and the fact it was over moving water.

Moving to KY in 1953 was very much like stepping through a time warp back into 1889 or during that time period. I LOVED IT. Except of course for the geese.

When I was 12 we moved 90 miles to Sloan's Valley KY for Daddy's second church he pastored. The parsonage had an outhouse and I walked 3 doors down to get buckets of drinking water, but the house had a cistern that ran rain water into the kitchen sink, for washing hair and cooking by boiling the water on the stove. And for heating to pour in the galvanized tin tub to bathe in every Saturday.

In winter, our kitchen became the bath place, in Summer it was down in the dirt floored, HAUNTED, basement where the coal came in a down spout to burn in the stove, that heated our home.

The only place to dress in winter was behind that blazing stove in the corner of the living room.

My brother and I would jump out from our beds up in the attic rooms, with ice on the inside of the windows and run down the stairs to huddle by that stove.

Guess who was in charge of bring coal up stairs for that stove? 

One of my many chores was taking the slop jar, some call it a chamber pot, out and down the hill to dump in the out house that looked exactly like the first photo today. I did not love that part, and was terrified of spiders/snakes that COULD be in the outhouse. I once took a tumble down the hill in the snow, while wearing my brand new robe my grandmother mailed to me for Christmas, and we had to put that silk robe in the garbage.

The bucket and pump insert, is what we had at the school. I had never seen a pump. I also had never used ONE common dipper to drink water from that bucket. The school had one bucket for all 6 grades, 3 rooms of kids. of course all 6 grades was a total of about 30 kids. My first day when I got thirsty, I took a piece of notebook paper, folded it into a drinking cup, went out side, held it under the pump and PUMPED. ha ha on ME, the gush of water destroyed the cup, I had to drink from the dipper and all the other children thought I was nuts since most of them had pumps at home.
I have always felt blessed to have spent 6 years in this amazing state and loved every moment. Until in the middle of the 9th grade, my parents dragged me crying all 12 hours of the ride, back to Savannah and dumped me in the 9th grade classes that changed by the hour. I was the hillbilly from KY even though I was born in Savannah...