Labor Day in the 1930s-40s

All the years when I was growing up, Labor Day meant a two-hour trip in the back seat of a rumbling old car (or what we called a “machine”) to the outskirts of Dayton, Ohio.  When we passed a little road sign that said “VANDALIA” and saw a big billboard, we knew the next right hand turn on a country road led back to Grandma’s house.  There were just a few other houses on the road and lovely country scenery on both sides – something foreign to us, coming from Cincinnati’s inner city.  Finally, we got back to the little cottage with the screened-in porch, the big flagpole with the stars and stripes patriotically flying, and the dirt area that served as a driveway.

Sleeping arrangements were creative – people slept on couches or big chairs or sometimes on an ironing board between two kitchen chairs.  We always seemed to sleep well, listening to the crickets chirping and feeling a breeze blowing in the open windows.

We would be awakened in the morning by Grandma starting a fire in the kitchen stove so breakfast could be prepared.  There would be a trip down to the outhouse – along a path and far from the house.  The chickens were chased out and we used the smelly hole-in-the-board toilet before walking up through the chickens and wild flowers to have our breakfast.  We all took turns pouring very small amounts of cold water into an enamelware basin and washing up the best we could.

Breakfasts were hearty – bacon, ham, eggs, toast and real creamery butter, plus Grandma’s delicious blackberry preserves.  There was a glass bottle of milk – not the evaporated variety in a can which we usually had at home – rich milk with a layer of cream at the top.  In those days, the bottle was shaken vigorously before using to distribute the cream, but since I was undeniably the favorite granddaughter (mainly because I was named after Grandma), she would pour me a little glass of pure cream right out of the top, leaving milk for the rest of the group that was more like 1%.

Grandma Lillian

After breakfast it was time to get spruced up for the big Labor Day Montgomery County Fair.  The fair was an important event back then – we wore our best dresses and had our hair curled to perfection before starting out, crowded into the car with Grandma and any assorted relatives who were there at the time.

My parents – ready for the fair

We drove to the fairgrounds and each time it was a thrill to see the ferris wheel loom in front of us as we approached the gate and drove into the huge centerfield in front of the grandstand.  In that 1930s-40s era, Dayton, Ohio, was very prosperous and the fair was considered one of the best in the area.  Everything seemed large and modern and clean.

One year it poured down rain not long after we arrived and we had to huddle in the car for what seemed like hours.  My father had gone to the horse barns to wait out the storm, but Mother, Grandma, my little sister, my cousin and I were stuck in the car, dressed in our finery, waiting to go out and see the sights.  We were told to sit quietly and not get dirty which my cousin and I did, but my sister, Shirley, got down on the floor and got herself all tousled and grimy (at least in Mother’s eyes) so that when the rain finally stopped she wasn’t allowed to go on the grounds and had to stay in the car with Mother.

Grandma set out with my cousin, Dixie, and me and we looked around the exhibits and walked gingerly through the water-soaked midway.  Grandma had bought all three of us identical yellow silk dresses with brown bows and accordion pleated skirts.  She stopped at a a dime photo booth to have pictures made of Dixie and me and later Mother got Shirley straightened up, went out on the grounds and had her picture taken, too.

Lillian

Dixie

Shirley

I liked walking around the fairgrounds and  looking at the canned goods, baked items and various needlework exhibits.   I didn’t care for the rides at all.  My sister lived for the rides and I can remember her sitting in one of the little cars going around in circles and calling out to Mother, “Look, Mommy – I can let go and scratch!”.

What I loved was going to the grandstands and sitting by my father watching the harness races.  Just the sight of the horses and sulkies with the drivers in bright-colored caps and coats was exciting.

We started back home late in the evening,  riding along in the dark, looking forward  to passing through Lebanon because I knew that was the halfway point.  I just prayed I wouldn’t get carsick on the way home because my father was in a hurry and in no mood to stop.  He had to go to work the next day and it was our first day of school.

The fair on Labor Day was a glorious ending to summer and a new beginning to the school year.

Fairground Food

The midway – Carthage Fair, 1932

When I was growing up in the 1930s-40s, the fairground was a fun place to go with the family in the summer and fairground food was cotton candy, fried fish sandwiches, taffy apples and ice cream candy.  When my father was growing up in the 1920s, a fairground was his home for much of the year.  My grandfather was a blacksmith and horseshoeing was his trade…

My grandfather and my father, ca 1914

He took his business on the road during the county fair season and his large family came along.

Grandma Lillian, Annie, Frank, a neighbor, my father – Johnny

My grandmother (the original Lillian) did the laundry in a washtub outside the barn…

…and cooked the family meals on whatever kind of stove she could rig up.   My father brought along the memories of fairground meals when he married my mother in 1932.

I still make these two dishes today at age 77.

FAIRGROUND PANCAKES

• Servings: 2
• Print

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp. sugar
• 1-1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 2 Tblsp. vegetable oil
• 1 cup milk

In a small bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.  Add the oil and milk, mixing well.  Cook on a hot griddle until bubbles form on the surface.  Flip and continue cooking on the reverse side.  Serve hot with butter and syrup.

This makes six 4″ pancakes or as my father would have made them, two large griddle-sized flapjacks.

My father would have used bacon drippings or lard instead of oil and the milk would have been diluted evaporated milk.  He made syrup by mixing the right ratio of dark brown sugar and water (which I’ve never perfected) and boiling until of  syrup consistency.  And the meal would not have been complete for my father unless there were two sunny-side-up eggs on top of the pancakes, everything liberally sprinkled with black pepper.

My oldest daughter and I always have a pancake and egg breakfast, called our Fairground Breakfast, before we start out on a long trip.  It’s sure to hold us until lunchtime.

Another of my father’s fairground favorites was his chili.

FAIRGROUND CHILI

• Servings: 4
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• 1 lb. ground beef
• 1 large onion, diced
• 1 large can of kidney beans
• 1 medium can of tomato puree
• Water to fill one kidney bean can and one puree can
• 1/2 to 1 tsp. salt
• Grating of black pepper

In a large pot, brown the ground beef and onion until no pink shows in the meat and the onion is tender.  Add the kidney beans, puree and water from the two cans.  Simmer on the stove for at least one hour.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.   Serve hot – 4 servings.

My father liked his chili with lots of chili powder and saltine crackers.  He usually broke the crackers up in the chili.  One of the favorite aromas of my childhood was of beef and onions frying in preparation for chili.

I continued to take my children (and now my grandchildren) to county fairs.  Back in the 1960s, I took my three young children to the Owensville (Clermont County, Ohio) fair and stopped in a trailer parked on the fairgrounds to visit my father’s cousin and his very large family.  Bill was also a blacksmith and hauled his family around the fair circuit to make a living.  Inside the small trailer, 5 or 6 little kids were seated at a table and Bill’s wife, Mary, was at the stove frying mush in a big cast iron skillet.  She would slice the mush, throw it into the hot grease, flip it and then put it on one of the kids’ plates.  For the 15 or 20 minutes we were there, she never stopped flipping and serving slices of hot mush – there was always an empty plate and a hungry child yelling for more.  She invited us to have some, but we said no thanks and left her there to feed her kids.

So, when you hear the term, “Fairground Food”, it’s not always an expensive treat out on the midway – it could very well be somebody’s favorite meal.

Johnny and Martha – 1933

Johnny and Martha

They stand in sepia tone, his arm around her waist,

An inscription penciled on the border – “Johnny and Martha, 1933”

The grandchildren laugh and say they look like Bonnie and Clyde,

Reminiscent of depression-era robbers from an old movie.

They’re right – his darkly handsome face glowers at the camera,

She looks stern with her ash blonde hair tucked under a cloche.

They didn’t have the adventures of their look-alikes,

They only struggled to raise their family in hard times

And one day showed old snapshots to their grandchildren.

Honorable mention, 1997 Ohio Poetry Day Contest

Today, March 9, 2010, would have been the 78th wedding anniversary of my parents, Johnny and Martha.

They were married in 1932 in the middle of the Great Depression by a justice of the peace with only their parents in attendance – Mother was 15 and Daddy was 19.  In spite of their young age, they were always loving, strict, conscientious parents to my little sister and me.

Daddy passed away in 1978 and Mother, in 1991.

Beans and Dumplings – A Depression-Era Meal

One of my earliest memories is of sitting at a table with my mother, father and little sister.  We are in a one-room, second-floor flat on Elm Street in downtown Cincinnati in the mid-1930s.  All day, Mother has watched over a simmering pot of beans with a pig hock added for flavor.  My father has come in from his timekeeper job on the WPA and we are having about the cheapest supper possible in the midst of the Great Depression.  I have a plateful of beans and a tiny bit of the small amount of meat that is on a pig hock (my father gets the biggest portion of meat and my mother claims to love chewing around on the bone).  The beans are steaming and the teaspoon or so of meat is flavorful – I love it!  It was said in my family that you weren’t an Applegate if you didn’t love beans, so I guess I qualified as a full-fledged member of my father’s side of the family.

As time went on and my father moved to better jobs with the City of Cincinnati and then Dayton Acme (a World War II defense plant), there was more money in my mother’s food budget and she stopped using the mostly-fat pig hocks and either threw in a pork chop or two to cook with the beans or had crisp bacon or fried ham on the side.  This was the only time my father ate pork … along with his beans topped with chopped onion and a lot of black pepper.

By the time my future husband started coming to the house for meals, Mother had added a big cast iron skillet full of fried potatoes to the menu.  It was his favorite supper.  After we were married, I continued to have this meal one night a week.  Every time I hear the John Denver song, “Back Home Again” and the line about “supper on the stove” and the wife who felt the baby move, I think about my young husband coming home to an expectant wife in our little apartment with the windows all steamed up and a big white and red graniteware pot of beans simmering on the range.

My four children didn’t inherit their parents’ love of a bean supper and I got out of the habit of making it.  But now that I’m alone, I crave the beans of my childhood, especially in the fall and winter.  I make a healthier, easier version with a slow cooker.

GREAT NORTHERN CROCKPOT BEANS

• Servings: 1
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• 1/2 lb. Great Northern dry beans
• 6 cups cold water*
• 1-1/2 tsp. ham flavored soup base (L. B. Jamison’s)
• Salt and pepper to taste

Place the dry beans cold water in the slow cooker.  *I use this amount of water to insure that I’ll have enough broth to make dumplings.  Cook on low overnight – approximately 8 hours.  Add the ham flavoring, then taste before adding salt and pepper.

I was the only one in the family who liked dumplings with my beans and I used to make a one-person serving.  This works very well for me now when I want to make a meal just for myself.

DUMPLINGS FOR ONE

• 1/4 cup of My Biscuit Mix**
• 1-1/2 Tblsp. (approx.) of cold water

In a small bowl, stir the biscuit mix and water together to make a thick, moist dough.

Heat about 1 cup of bean broth and 1 cup of beans in a small pot to boiling.  Drop the dough into the boiling mixture by the tablespoonful, making three dumplings.

Lower the heat to simmering, cover the pot and continue simmering for 10 minutes without lifting the lid.  Note:  The white and red graniteware lid is from my original 1952 set.

Serve immediately with chopped onion and a grating of black pepper.  A small serving of meat is good, but not necessary (to me, at least).  Today, I happened to be browning hot sausage to freeze for my Thanksgiving stuffing and kept back enough to make myself a small grilled patty.  It tasted wonderful.  This is truly my soul food.

**MY BISCUIT MIX

• Servings: 8
• Print

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 Tblsp. baking powder
• 1/3 cup vegetable shortening (Crisco)

Mix together the flour, salt and baking powder.  Cut in the vegetable shortening.  Store in a covered container in the refrigerator until ready to use.

This is good for making individual servings of biscuits, pancakes … and dumplings. 

Recipe for Walt’s Polish Stuffing

In Praise of Buttermilk

Growing up in the years of the Great Depression, we didn’t have milk except from a can.  My mother loved buttermilk but there wasn’t any available in those hungry years.  When my mother was 73, she made an audio tape of family stories and her personal memories.  She said, “It was depression time and we all lived together – one big happy family!  And when you went to the table to eat you had better fill your plate up because it was never going to be passed around again – that was the only chance you were going to get.  But John (her step-father) would not take any kind of welfare or anything, he insisted on working.  And then we moved to Cincinnati where he got a job shoeing mules and the house went with us and the two boys, Frank and my husband, drove John around with blacksmith tools in the back of the car and he would go around and tell the farmers that their horses needed shoeing whether they did or not – even just a re-setting, that was $1.00 a shoe – and he would always come home with some groceries.”

The “house” consisted of the grandparents, my parents and their two children, two teenage boys, two teenage girls and an infant, all living together and trying to survive on the meager earnings of the traveling blacksmith and his two young sons.

In 1935, my father was able to get on the WPA as a laborer and he moved his little family to a one-room flat in downtown Cincinnati.  My mother always said the happiest day of her life was the day she moved into that little room and was finally able to have a place of her own.

My little sister and I continued to have our evaporated milk diluted with water and heavily sugared.  When I went to the first grade at old Raschig School on Central Parkway, imagine my delight at seeing a table wheeled into the room with apple butter sandwiches and huge metal pitchers of honest-to-goodness milk.  My father, remembering the farm-fresh milk of his childhood, straight from the cow, said this was just surplus skim milk provided by the government.  No matter, nothing ever tasted so good to me.

I always loved milk and as I grew older, I learned to appreciate my mother’s favorite, buttermilk.  Whenever we went to a county fair, Mother and I had the treat of a fish sandwich and ice cold buttermilk.  My father was sure we were going to get violently ill from such a combination but we never did.  We both loved that little half-pint carton of milk with big flakes of butter floating around in it.

When I have a cup of buttermilk left over, I like to make these yeast rolls – very simple – very quick – and very good.

EASY BUTTERMILK YEAST ROLLS

• Servings: 18
• Print

• 5 to 5-1/2 cups all-purpose flour, divided
• 3 Tblsp. granulated sugar
• 2-1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/4 tsp. baking soda
• 1 package fast rising yeast
• 1 cup water
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1/3 cup vegetable or canola oil

In a large mixer bowl place 2 cups of flour, sugar, salt, soda, and yeast.

Heat the buttermilk and water to 130 degrees F.  Add to the flour mixture.  Add the oil.  Beat with mixer paddle at medium speed for 3 minutes.  Insert dough hook and beat for 6:30 minutes longer, adding flour as needed until dough is elastic and no longer sticky.

Place dough in an oiled bowl, cover and let rise in a warm place for 30 minutes.

Punch down dough, form into rolls and place on greased cookie sheets.  Cover and let rise in a warm place for another 30 minutes.  Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Bake rolls in a preheated oven for approximately 12 minutes until golden brown.  Remove to a wire rack to cool.

Makes approximately 18 rolls, depending on size.

The Fragrance of a Horse Barn

One of my favorite bloggers, hensteeth, had a post recently about the smells of different kinds of food and the memories they invoke.  (Be sure to read through the other posts on her blog – she writes so well and comes up with unusual topics.)

This made me think of one of my favorite smells, which is not related to food.  I love the smell of a horse barn – the combination of straw, horses, dust, even a little manure.

My father spent his childhood in various horse barns since his father was a blacksmith and made part of his living traveling to county fairs to shoe the harness horses that were there for the races.  This is a ca. 1914 picture of my grandfather and my father in the doorway of their horse shoeing shop.

My father had been one of the youngest harness horse drivers in the area but gave up working with horses when he married and had two daughters to support.  Of course, we always went to the county fairs and spent most of our day hanging around the horse barns, talking to the owners, trainers and drivers.  One of my earliest memories is sitting on a big trunk in a barn, collecting pennies from the horsemen for singing, “When I Grow Too Old to Dream”.  I loved listening to the conversation as I took in the ambience of the dusty barn with the plaid blankets hanging on the wall, the sharp smell of the Absorbine used on the sore muscles of the animals, and the horses snorting, neighing and kicking their stall doors.

When I was very young, people would ask me what I was going to do when I grew up.  I always said I was going to get a job and help Daddy buy a horse.  Within months after graduation and getting my first job @ $30.00/week, my father told me he had a horse in mind and was ready for my contribution.  This is one of our early horses winning a race in 1955.  I made the jacket and cap my father is wearing.

I owned shares of my father’s horses off and on for many years until he was better established and my own expenses with four children didn’t leave enough to support a horse.  My father continued to be a top driver/trainer in the southwestern Ohio area.  In 1978, at age 66, he was driving a horse called Peter Horn at a track in northern Kentucky.  After finishing second in a photo finish, he died of a heart attack.  Our family said they knew if he died on a track, he died happy except that he would have wanted to be the winner.  This is a winning photo of my father and Peter Horn in 1975.

A few days after his death, I was at work when I suddenly got a whiff of a familiar smell – straw, horse, barn, tobacco – the unforgettable essence of my father in his plaid shirt and twill pants.  I turned around quickly, wondering who had come into the office directly from a horse barn and, of course, no one was there.  Or maybe someone had been there and walked briskly off, as he always did – always in a hurry to get to some horse or some fairgrounds or some barn.

Remembering WW II Veterans

Throughout my childhood, November 11 was called Armistice Day to commemorate the end of World War I  at 11 o’clock on the 11th day of the 11th month – the war to end all wars.  Then came World War II and somewhere along the line the name was changed to Veterans Day to honor the veterans of all wars.

There were many veterans in my family during World War II.  Three of my uncles served for the entire duration of the war.  The first uncle, Frank, was drafted before Pearl Harbor, just months after he had married a young girl who had to wait for 4 years before they could resume their married life.  Frank sent great letters home to everyone, including me.  My mother thought he made my letters especially history/geography related, assuming I’d be taking them to school and he was right.  Almost every day, someone brought a letter from some distant war zone to share with the class.

One letter from December 20, 1943, tells about a nine-day leave he had just completed in London.  He wrote, “I saw some good shows while I was there and ate at some of the most famous places, rode the subway and two-deck buses all over, and set my watch by Big Ben.  I had a good look all over the city and London was really blown up during the blitz.”

In a letter to my father dated May 29, 1942, he tells about a radio they were able to get to listen to news from home.  “The Lieutenant got us a radio the other day – an Echophone Commercial – it is made in Illinois and it’s a pretty good set.  It has 3 wave bands.  It’s an amateur outfit something like a Sky Buddy.  It has a B.F.O. and a jack for head phones if you want to use them.  It also has a band spread.  It only cost us about $32 American and that also included one of those long fish pole aerials, too.  We get the U.S. just as clear as if we were at home. “

Frank was a big guy, rather fair-haired with a loud voice and a hearty laugh.  He told a lot of jokes and funny stories, all of them punctuated regularly by his laugh.  In another letter to my father , Frank writes, “I am still getting close to the good earth.  I have holes dug all over to hide in and I can sure as hell use them sometimes even if it’s only to keep away from work – ha ha.”

Frank was part of Patton’s Third Army through the Battle of the Bulge.  He sent home these pictures captioned “Pagny (Moselle) France” and “Taken at Metz”.

My uncle Phil followed his brother into the service and served his time with the Merchant Marines.

Phil didn’t write as often, but we do have a couple of letters from his training days in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Phil wrote in 1942, “Well, I guess you still feel the after effects of Thanksgiving, eh?  Did you have turkey?  We did but I didn’t enjoy it at all.  Some of the fellows here didn’t get any turkey at all.  The cooks thought they had plenty and the ones that got there first sure got plenty.”  And, “By the time I get out of here the damn war will be over.  But I can tell people I was in the Merchant Marines in St. Petersburg, Fla.  Ha! Ha!”

It turned out that he did get out of Florida and saw action throughout the remainder of the war.

The third uncle to leave, Mike, was in the Air Force, was shot down over Germany, spent about a year in a German prison camp, and eventually escaped.  He served for the remainder of the war and after coming home, became an FBI agent.

Among the letters home, I also have a letter from their mother to my parents.  I had been with Grandma many times when she went to the big rural mailbox, hoping for word from one of her sons, only to find it empty.  In her letter of February 4, 1942, she’s concerned about not hearing from Frank.  “I am so worried about Frank, I don’t know what to do.  I have cried all day.  I could just scream as loud as can be.  We don’t know where he will be.  I had my picture and a prayer book for him but now I have to wait until I hear from him.  I sent him some homemade doughnuts and an angel food cake.  He said he wouldn’t leave until Monday and here he left on Saturday.”

“Frank sent me a fine pillow top and it has Camp Walters, Texas, on it in big letters and a flag and red roses and a mother reading on it.  It made me cry as I am so blue about him.  If I only knew he would be safe. 

I will close and say goodnight.  It is 10:30 PM and it sure is raining up here – a good time for the blues.”

All three sons survived the war and came home to raise families, take up careers and eventually retire.  These three veterans are all gone now, as are most of the World War II men after over 60 years, but on this Veterans Day, it’s good to remember them and the ones they left behind.