A letter to my grandchildren

June 23, 2006

Today, I am seventy.

I look in the mirror and see Aunt Effie looking back at me. Where did that woman come from? I haven't thought of her in years. Suddenly, here she is. Uninvited. Living inside my bathroom mirror.

Seventy years is a lot of living to look back on. I envy old people who, when reviewing their pasts, see peaceful roads well traveled. When I dare look over my shoulder, which isn't often, I see bombed out terrain, frighteningly similar to pictures of a war-torn Europe.

Seventy years is a very long time.
Profound words should be spoken.
Here goes:

Don't take running water for granted. I know you think all houses are born with running water, but this is not true. The first thirteen years of my life water was pulled from a deep well, bucket by heavy bucket. Water needed for drinking, cooking, bathing, laundry, hair washings at home, foot washings at church, apple dunkings at school carnivals ... every wet drop came up out of the ground via a dripping water bucket attached to a strong rope.

Water gushing from a faucet is man's greatest invention.

Don't take electricity for granted. During the first thirteen years of my life there were no handy switches to flip. There was a lamp. The bottom part was filled with kerosene which we called coal oil. We carried it home from Alvin Short's store in a gallon can. A wick (something similar to a long beige colored hair ribbon)floated through the oil in the lamp base and was threaded up through a metal slot. We lit the slot end of the wick with a long kitchen match. A glass globe was placed over the flame and presto! night shadows melted away. The glow from that kerosene lamp was roughly equal to a 25 watt bulb today. A little brighter, maybe, if I had cleaned yesterday's soot off the inside of the globe. Mostly we got by on 25 watts.

Having no electricity meant we had no air conditioning ... not even a fan. On hot summer nights we carried old quilts out to the front porch and bedded down on the floor. However, since there was always the chance a snake might try to snuggle with us, I took my sweaty cowardly self back inside the hot house before sleep claimed me.

Having no electricity meant we had no refrigerator. We had an icebox instead. The iceman came once or twice a week and put a 40 pound chunk of ice in one side. The other side contained jugs of raw milk straight from the cow.

As ice melted, water dripped into a pan beneath the icebox. It was my responsibility to empty that pan at regular intervals. I often forgot and water ran across the linoleum floor.

Sometimes we bought extra ice for making ice cream. The recipe was so simple even a child could do it. We mixed cream, milk, eggs, sugar and vanilla flavoring, poured the mixture into an old fashioned hand-cranked churn, set a round galvanized wash tub beneath the old magnolia tree, placed the churn in the tub and surrounded it with chipped ice. Then, my brother and I turned that crank round and round 'til our young arms almost fell off our shoulders. The ice cream we produced was better than any thing we'd ever tasted before, or anything we've tasted since.

After our house was wired for electricity, Daddy bought an electric range to replace the kerosene cook stove that had replaced the wood cook stove of my earliest years. I thought life could never get any better than that electric range.

Old irons that required preheating on the cook stove were thrown out and a brand new electric iron made it easier to do the family ironing.

My father was always suspicious of electricity. When a wall outlet was not in use, Daddy tried to keep the little holes covered with tape so electricity wouldn't leak out and harm us. My brother and I laughed behind his back. Long years later, when scientists began acknowledging the damage electro-Magnetic hypersensitivity caused the human body, we stopped laughing.

Ten years from now, when I turn eighty, I'll be back to pass down more words of wisdom. Wait for me. Will you?

You and your parents are the highlights of my seventy years on this earth. I may not see you often, but your names and faces never leave my mind.