Peru, Iowa

About 1945 or so, Gramps and Granny bought a farm north of Peru, Madison County, Iowa.  This big old 8+ room farmhouse was on that farm.  Doesn't it look magnificent!  But it wasn't.  It was uninsulated.  It had been built onto . . . but not well.  The foundation was crumbling.  It was so drafty in the winter that the wind would come thru the walls/foundation and lift the living room rug.  The folks shut the house down to about 3 rooms in the winter and still couldn't keep it warm -- kitchen, sitting room and one bedroom. 

Uncle Gary was born in this house (or up the road at Gramma and Grampa Austin's and brought home here) in 1945 so Gramps and Granny lived here with 5 children.  This house was heated with wood or oil and there was no electricity yet, out in rural Iowa.  With no electricity, the water would have been carried in by hand and that would have been a lot of firewood to cut and split and and a lot of water to carry to cook and heat with. 

Can you imagine caring for a baby thru the winter in these circumstances?  Gary, born in October, would have been crawling in March or April.  Could one put a baby down on cold, unheated floors to crawl?  I don't know the answer!  That was one question I didn't ask Granny!  I'm thinking not tho . . . so baby would have been left in the bed or sat in a high chair or there was an early bouncy seat but don't know if it was that early or not.  I asked my sibs in an email.  How do Fall babies learn to get around in a big ol' house with cold floors . . .

From Kathryn, 3/5/2012:

Sunday, March 4, 2012 11:15 PM

I don't know how they learned to get around. There was no play pen, ever. I, according to Mom, walked at 10 months--but I did not crawl. Maybe because I wasn't let down on the floor? Gary was the last baby to go thru a winter in that cold house but I think we had a pot bellied stove in the living room the first winter in the new house. Or maybe part of that first winter. (Sometime in there we all had whooping cough and Mom was really worried about Gary as he was little.) I loved that big Green Colonial furnace, the heat registers where on the inside walls, not in the floor, and when the blower was going that whole patch of wood floor in front of the register was WARM!

The bouncy chair as I remember was only for Mary. Somebody loaned or gave that to us.

I think you would actually have called that washhouse a story and a half. The knee walls upstairs were only about 30 inches high, if that. But I only remember that from playing in it later. I do think we all slept upstairs and may have had only one window. I don't really remember about the hole in the south end and whether there was already a window there or not, it's more like I can remember talk about him (nh: Gramps)  knocking the end out. I do remember being in bed up there when someone came to visit and we were not allowed to get up but we were awake and that it was hot! I do have a partial memory of living in there and Granny was there and in my memory the stairway went up 2 or 3 steps on the north wall (in the north west corner of the room) and then turned and went up along the west wall. But that may not be right as that would have made the stair coming up along that short wall upstairs ? ? I do think there was an outside door downstairs to the east and also a door on the south that would have originally been from the single story room between the house and the washhouse (where we separated). Boy, I may be wrong, as I thought I could remember running clear around the house to play and hiding in one of the nooks on the south side.

Meanwhile, just to wash the clothes would have required more fire wood to heat the water . . . and more buckets of water to carry in.  Once you had all those diapers washed and the kids' school clothes, how did you get the laundry dry.  There was no dryer.  I'm surprised my Mama kept her sanity . . . but on the other hand, folks didn't know any different.  It was just a way of life.  A hard way of life. 

After World War II, the economy picked up a little but the supply and demand of building materials was at an all-time low as all the the wood and metal in the country and been used, salvaged, scavenged, bought, bartered and sold for the War Effort.  No matter, Gramps had it in mind that by guess or by golly, he was going to tear down the big ol' inefficient house and build a smaller, more energy efficient house with the wood and materials savaged out of the farm house.

So, he moved the family of 7 into a story and a half Wash House which wouldn't have been as big as a two story garage, now a days.  I don't know how they arranged the Wash House.  Where was the cook stove?  where was  Gramps and Granny's bed, where did the kids sleep?  Did they sit on the bed instead of a couch? 

Aunt Kate remembers being about 4 years old and being in the attic of the old house when they were tearing it down.  Gramps warned her and Marion only to step on the floor trusses.  Otherwise, they would step through the ceiling plaster.   They had to carefully step ON the wooden floor joists. 

The kids' job was to pick up a brick from the chimney Gramps was tearing down, carry it to the window and throw it out to the ground, 3 stories below.  Imagine the stress on a child of 4!  Don't fall through the ceiling!  oh, poor babies!  but maybe they felt totally necessary!  a part of the family?  omgosh. 

So Gramps (and 2 or 3 older children -- 3, 4 or 5! and Granny as she could) tore that house down.  Gramps' didn't get as much material out of the "Big House" that he had hoped.  He used what he could, then he chased down used material all around the area, trying to find 2X4s and boards and windows, walls and flooring material, so that he could build a 3 bedroom house, almost a ranch, on a basement with garage.  Not quite a Cape Cod. 

Right after the War, houses were built without any overhang on the roof as there just wasn't the lumber for such excesses.  There was no electricity yet, in rural Madison County, but Gramps wired the house for electric because he knew it was coming. 

Gramps' had been wiring other people's houses for electricity, for extra money.  He said he'd go into a farmer's house and see what requirements they had for electricity and all they expected or wanted was one electric light over the kitchen table.  That's where they all sat of an evening, with the kerosene lamp.  They sat at the kitchen table to do their homework or for the parents to read the daily or weekly paper.  Or maybe even the Bible reading for the day.  Maybe they played a game of Rummy or checkers.  The kitchen table with the Kerosene Lamp was where the daily recreation and family interaction took place.  Gramps would have to persuade them to put a light at the top of the stairs or an electric outlet by the easy chair in the living room. 

As usual, Gramps got her done.  He built a tidy, 3 bedroom, 2 story good looking house.  WITH a garage.  That house sat for 65 years looking good . . . usually lived in . . . until someone went to remodel it last year, 2011, and it burned.  It burned beyond repair.  Meanwhile, back in 1945, here's Gramps' pride and joy. 

And here is how it looked in 2002. 

I took Granny for a ride and we pulled into the drive way. 

Even after 50 years, the roof line is level.  Straight as a string. 

I don't see a sag anywhere, except maybe in  that lean to

built on to the east end of the house.

I won't put in the 2011 photo of the burned shell.

It was too sad.

This is this the house I came home to as a newborn baby.

I lived here until I was 18 or 20 months.

I have one memory of sitting inside the back door

waiting for the older kids to come home from school. 

I was off to a fine start!