Time travel at grandmas

N

ational Night Out is Tuesday, August 1. Come for a meal at 5 pm, stay to visit with friends and neighbors.

The Kettle River city council meeting is 7 p.m. on August 8 at the Kettle River senior center.

Ma & Pa Kettle Days is Saturday, August 12 with a pancake breakfast at 8 a.m., pie social at noon and Bingo at 3 p.m. Mark and Tina Tollgaard are Ma & Pa Kettle and Sam Huhta is the grand marshal. There will be a steak fry at the Star Club on Friday night and a presentation by Mark Munger at the Suomalainen Kirkko on Hwy 73 on Sunday.

The next Finnish Luncheon is 12 noon on Wednesday, August 16 at the Kettle River Senior Center.

Tickets for the rifle drawing are available from Legion members.

Get your team ready for the pickleball court which will be on the basketball court near the pavilion.

Memories

When I was young, we lived 40 miles from grandma, but it was like going back in time. Grandma had a crank party line phone. She still had the same phone until my son was about four-years-old.

Grandma had an outhouse at the back of her yard. There was a mulberry tree just outside the outhouse. The mulberry juice is like permanent ink if it gets on you. It takes forever to wash off. Grandma didn’t have running water. She had a hand pump in the house that pumped water from the cistern. It was not water that we could drink. When it would rain, grandma would have a flap on the rain drain that she would flip to drain the water from the roof into the cistern. The well for the drinking water was in the yard.

During the summer, grandma had a large pail on the top of the clothes line pole. She would fill it with water to be warmed by the sun. After dark, we could then use that water to shower. It had a spray nozzle on the end of a hose. You got a little water to get wet, then soaped up and washed, then used the nozzle again to rinse off.

In the winter, we took our bath in the wash tub in the middle of the kitchen in front of the cook stove. Her cast iron cook stove had a reservoir that we heated the water for washing dishes. She had an oil heater in the dining room that heated the house in the winter.

MARCIA SARVELA is a resident of Kettle River. To submit items for the column she can be reached by phone at 218-273-4045 or send a letter at P O Box 175, Kettle River, MN 55757

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