Well....this post reflects on youth days of 75 years ago! Probably Alice definitely remembers; Perry might; but I doubt if Ada does.
The standard Saturday noon dinner (and it wasn't lunch) at the EJK family home consisted of the following:
1. Quarter inch sliced potatoes cooked in water and then over spread with butter and salt;
2. Navy beans well cooked and over spread with ketchup;
3. I'm not sure of the meat selection but my memory says--home grown link sausage. Dad almost always was raising some hogs and the first very cold morning about 5 o'clock he'd roll us out of bed and have a "butchering." Uncle Joe would come with his rifle and shoot 2 or 3 hogs to butcher. From that process of "butchering" we'd make link sausage that Mother would "fry down" and with all the grease store the meat in a very large crock. The meat would not spoil because the grease solidified into lard. When needed one of us would go to the cellar and break off about 36 inches for the meal. Mother would heat up the sausage in the fry pan.
Well....LadyK did a great job to create a facsimilie (All but killing the hogs and frying down the sausage). And it was good to relive the Saturday Noon Dinner! mmmmmm-gooood.
Uncle Petely Meiss would say: "Clear good."
14 comments:
You would have a sit-down Saturday dinner? If so, I'm impressed.
Did your dad work all day or half day on Saturday?
Several years ago I watched a hog butcher do his work. Once was enough for me.
I sure do remember the Saturday dinner. I don't remember having the sausage very often. I would often have to walk down to the "Meat Market" and get 50 cents worth of round steak or liver or weiners. We would often have pie for dessert and then we would have sweet caramel rolls for supper. Where did she find all the time?
Those were the good old days!!
Yes, Rhoda, we did all sit down to dinner at noon. As I recall Dad went back to the office in the afternoon.
I don't remember the pigs in the lot behind us, but do remember the beans with ketchup on Saturdays. In fact, I fix it for Jerry sometimes with ham - he loves it.
I also had to go to the meat market sometimes - and hated it. I was just too bashful in those days - really!
Rhoda - we "sat down" at the table together at every meal except breakfast. On Sundays we always had to get up to eat together for breakfast also.
I must say I don't remember meals with my three oldest brothers as they were all gone from home - I just remember how excited I would br when they came home.
Fun to hear of the memories. It seemed to me she was always busy in kitchen. Mostly cooking, but I remember her having her sewing machine opened and working on sewing.
I love to put ketchup on pinto beans--people look at me like it's crazy--but maybe this is where it's from!!
Did Grandpa mow the yard and work around the house? It seems he might not have, if he worked all week and even all day on Saturdays. I doubt he did it on Sundays. So when did this work get done, and who did it?
The "Office" was open six days a week. On Saturday afternoon, we all would get our weekly bath; Mother et al would walk "uptown" and Dad would buy all of us an ice cream cone.
Mind you--5 cents!!!
Dad had three boys to cut grass, milk cows, feed pigs and chickens--of course until the boys left home after High School.
Then livestock was sold and Perry cut grass, I presume!!!
Didn't think about all the work!!! All of us worked in the elevator--scoop corn, soybeans, oats and (worst of all) COAL!!!
Dad could always find something for us to do! We did not have a water heater until I was 11, Ralph 14 and Jay 16. Bathing was a problem after hauling coal all day long!!!
Angela, great questions. I thought I knew the answer as Mark once said, "The older Dad gets, the harder he worked when he was younger." I assumed he must have done it all, but he set the record straight.
Just think how much harder the work was then as well--a rotary push mower vs. a self-propelled or riding mower, making sausage rather than buying Johnsonville at the grocery store, etc. I'll take my Saturdays.
Being the baby, of course, I didn't have to do much WORK!! I vaguely remember the wringer washer in the basement and sometimes Mother "let" me hang up wash or take it down.
What I do remember as my job as an adolescent was setting the dinner table. Dad had to have a glass of milk and a glass of water by his plate. The water had to be half/and/half - half from the cold pitcher in the fridge and half from the faucet. And he had to have two keenex by his plate and if I didn't put them there I would just have to get up and get them half-way through the meal!
All reather insignificant, I realize, but that's what I remember about dinner at our house. Oh, and I was (and still am) a very picky eater - and skinny as a bird as Aunt Mary used to say - and refused to eat many things. Dad would always try to make me sit and eat it, but Mother would eventually just casually take my plate and put it on the counter.
I want you all to know that I did have to mow the lawn quite a bit. And with a push mower.
My main job was to scrub the kitchen floor on my hands and knees.
Wow, things are so much easier now. Ada--sounds like you got away with a lot compared to the older ones!! The benefits of being the youngest!!
I enjoyed that meal very much, and well remember it. I think at times Mother served side bacon with the other items mentioned.
All very interesting comments.
I can vouch that:
1. Grandma was a great cook.
2. The rotary, motor-less push lawn mower.
3.The uptown meat market where Austin King worked (along with one of Uncle Dony's Gramm's boys? Was his name Kenny?
4. Don't recall the hogs at Grandpa's place, but know that Dad had a few down by Uncle Hank's dead-end street and fed them free weigh he got from the Gridley Cheese Factory and expired cereal from Uncle Chuck's grocery store.
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