Life in Rural Missouri

Because life has changed a great deal over the last century, and because our family is scattered a long way from its roots, I asked our cousin Dean McClure if he would write something for us about life in rural Missouri when he was young. This page is the result of that request, and he did a "bang-up" job of it, too. He has given a very clear picture of what life was like on a farm in the first half of the 20th Century, so that all of us can see just how very different life has become today. I hope all my children, grandchildren, and their children, will read this carefully, and think about what it would be like to live as our grandparents and parents lived.

Photos below: Top photo is of cousin Dean McClure (our author) and another cousin, Bob Barckley, evidently on one of the family farms when they were 10 or 12 years old, so it would have been taken in about 1935-1937 or so, just shortly before I was born in 1938.

Bottom photo is of the park, or possibly town square, in Seymour, Missouri, the town nearest to Dean's family farm, a distance of about 7 miles apart. The location in a broader sense, is east of the town of Springfield, in south-western Missouri, near the Ozark Mountains.

Rural Missouri Life in the First Half of the 20^th Century

Since I was born in 1925, my early life, living on a farm in rural Missouri, took place during the period they now call The Great Depression years; the drought years, and the locust and grasshopper infestation years of the 1930’s and early 1940’s, none of which were years to be fondly remembered. Most every family was financially poor and life was very hard. But, living on a farm, we didn’t have to stand in a “bean line” for food as many people did who lived in cities. That helped to keep our spirits livable.

However, during the drought years life was pretty miserable! Not only did the heat burn up our crops, the nights were so hot and dry that we had to sleep out in the yard with a wet sheet over us that cooled us as it dried. The locust and grasshopper years were bad also; hordes of the creatures would fill the sky, then would move into a field, covering a crop and stripping all of the vegetation, i.e., a corn field would be left just a field of stalks with no blades, no kernels left on the cobs, etc. And, when we were working in the hay, we even had to carry our pitchforks to the house while we ate lunch or these voracious insects would literally gnaw on the wooden handles so badly they were left covered with splinters.

For many years (until after WW II) most farmers were poor, with farms that were small and diversified; usually with dairy, beef, hogs and chickens. Their crops were hay, small grains, and a little corn. The dairy, hogs and chickens were very confining, requiring feeding and care twice a day (Saturday and Sunday also), so you couldn’t leave home for long. But, since most of our food was “home grown,” we could have an assortment that produced a variety of foods not only for us, but some of it could be sold for a much needed cash income.

Electricity was not available until 1946, so refrigerators, well pumps, milking machines, furnaces, air conditioners, and even electric lights or a fan could not be used. The lack of tractors, combines, corn pickers and other powered equipment meant all of the planting and harvesting had to be done with horse drawn equipment or by hand, usually using pitch forks, shovels, etc. We had plenty of grass, so four-legged horsepower was used for plowing, cultivation, mowing, and in some cases, traveling to town for groceries, to have livestock feed ground, or to go to church (for two years after we got a car, money was so scarce that we couldn’t afford to buy a car license until July, when they could be bought for half price, about $3).

Living on a farm did have pluses; we had a large garden during the summer and we canned much of it for the winter months. We had milk, cream, butter, cottage cheese, and meat from the cows. We had fresh pork when we butchered, as well as smoked, salted, or sugar-cured pork for winter. We had eggs and chicken meat, fresh during the summer or canned in winter, and wild blackberries and gooseberries for jams, jellies, cobblers and pies, just to mention a few.

Our area had several large fruit orchards full of apples, pears, peaches, and grapes, and usually we could pick our own fruit for a reduced price. Most fruits were canned or dried for winter use. The dried fruit was wonderful for “turnover pies” but it was very time-consuming to dry it. First the apples and peaches had to be cut into slices. Each morning a bed sheet was spread on a metal shed roof, and then the fruit had to be spread out on this sheet to be sun-dried. Before doing our chores every evening, we had to gather all of it up and take it inside in case it rained. It took several days of this for each batch of fruit to be dehydrated enough for preserving.

Sugar cane (sorghum) blades had to be stripped from the stalks, then the stalks were taken to a sorghum mill for squeezing the juice out and cooking it down into molasses (we usually kept 6 or 7 gallons for cooking and table use). We had many black walnut trees and walnut kernels were a good source of income for us to buy sugar, coffee, etc., that could not be home grown. So, during the winter months, a part of our “entertainment” was sitting around the table at night picking walnut kernels out of the shells.

All water for family use – cooking, drinking, bathing, washing dishes and clothes, had to be carried from a spring, drawn from a well, or hauled to the house and inside, in some manner. During the drought years, many farmers also had to haul water in barrels to water their stock and for their gardens and fruit trees. Our water source was very cool spring water located at the foot of a hill about 3 or 4 city blocks from the house. This spring was also used as our refrigerator to preserve milk, butter, and other foods that had to be kept cool. The food had to be carried down the hill to the spring to keep it cool until the next meal, then water and the food both had to be carried up again for cooking and table use at every meal. Those trips will help you maintain your “girlish figure.” The large quantity of bathing and wash water usually was hauled on a sled with a 90-gallon barrel, pulled by a horse.

The lack of electricity meant that we had to milk 14 to 20 cows twice a day, all by hand, which is not a small job in itself, but then this milk had to all be processed.

(1) It must be strained and cooled if being sold for cheese. Cooling required the cans to be taken by two-wheel cart (Guess where?); yep, down over the hill to the spring and cooled. This doesn’t sound like an insurmountable job, but our milkman was a farmer also and he was always in a hurry to get home, so he could get more farming done. We happened to be the second customer on his route, so he tried to get to our place by 6 a.m. Now, the cheese gets more binding. This meant that we had to find our cows (in the dark) between 3 and 4 o’clock in the morning, milk by kerosene lantern, run the milk down to the spring and cool it before he came, or…

(2) The cream could be separated with a “hand-cranked” separator twice a day after each milking, and only the cream would be saved for a week, and then taken to town to be sold. The skim milk was usually mixed with shorts (a wheat flour by-product) and left to ferment until the next day, then fed to the hogs and chickens. Of course, the hogs thought they were in “hog heaven” and they would literally run over you to get to their food in a trough. Also, to eat, they would stick their snout down into the liquid mash “up to their eye balls” and slurp so loudly you could hear them for a hundred yards.

The laying hens were fed “hand shelled” corn with some protein feed plus oyster shells to promote egg production. For baby chicks, a few could be hatched under a setting hen, or for larger quantities (100 to 500), commercial brooders were used. Brooders require constant controlled heat and the eggs have to be turned daily for three weeks. The pullets (baby hens) were used for replacement in the hen house and the young roosters were sold or butchered when they were old enough. Butchering requires them to be caught, killed, scalded with hot water and the feathers picked off (plucked), then the meat cut up into various pieces. If it was to be canned, the meat had to be partially cooked before putting it in the jars.

We had several timbered areas, so we heated our home, and cooked, with wood. Now, these trees don’t harvest themselves. They have to be cut down, limbs trimmed off, and the trunk cut up into lengths that can be loaded and hauled on a wagon to the woodpile. Later, a fellow with a gasoline-powered saw came to saw the logs into firewood lengths; this operation required several neighbors to help. This is just the preliminary work. Every night, enough wood had to be carried or hauled to the house for the heating stove to burn all night and the next day, plus some had to be split and carried for the cook stove.

Butchering hogs, beef, or chickens makes for a very long day, and part of the night usually. In the case of hogs and beef, it also is a very cold job. Working outside, scraping off all the hair and cutting up the meat with wet hands, in 20 degree weather, is very unpleasant, but it had to be done when the weather was cold to keep the meat from spoiling until it could be preserved or canned. Some things like sausage and fryer chickens had to be partially cooked before canning. So, this was not a day to work your shift and quit, nor was there overtime pay. However, this food was very rewarding during the cold winter months.

The wild blackberries and gooseberries do not come in boxes or sacks, ready picked, when you live on a farm. To pick them, you have to fight the chiggers, the heat, and the very sharp briars for every single berry. Then the gooseberries had to be stemmed individually, at both ends, before they could be baked into a pie or canned. It required a whole lot of labor to harvest and preserve food for winter usage, but if we wanted to eat, we had no choice. In fact, we were quite thankful and much better off than many people during those times.

Commercial radio broadcasting was developed in the late 1920’s, but only a few people had a radio receiver (because they were tube operated that required three expensive, special high voltage battery packs for operation) and the only newspaper was weekly, so members of the community had to basically entertain themselves. To do this, one night each week our school was used for what we called “Literary.” On those nights, we might have a debate, a kangaroo court (mock trial), a funny skit, a school holiday program, or a pie supper (where the girls brought a pie and the boys bid on it to get to eat with them). All of the programs were volunteer; participants and admission was free, but sometimes, a group would gang up on a boy at the pie supper (who was sweet on a certain girl) and run his bid up pretty high. It was all in fun and usually well attended.

For several years, my dad sang in a quartet with three farm neighbors, and they usually got together one evening a week for what they called “practice;” usually some singing, but always a lot of visiting. We children were relegated to the kitchen or outside in the yard to entertain ourselves, and most of the time, we did that very well without adult supervision.

For years, most rural schools were a one-room building with one teacher teaching seven grades. The 7^th and 8^th grades were usually alternated. This one teacher, in addition to teaching all of the subjects to all seven different classes, was also the official fire builder, the lunch monitor, the playground monitor, program director for all holiday programs, room decorator, and helper with coats, overshoes, and hats. All of this for very low pay, and sometimes, not many even said “thank you.” However, these teachers could begin teaching after completing only a few college hours, they did not have to have as much schooling as they do today.

During the 1930’s, most rural schools put a partition across the middle of their building to form two rooms and hired two teachers; one teaching first through fourth grades, and the other teaching fifth through eighth grades, and they shared in the other duties.

We only lived three-quarters of a mile from school but some students lived as far as 3 miles. While most families had a car, they didn’t have the money to drive their children to school and there was no bus service for rural schools. And, our school did not have facilities for a horse, so that meant we had to walk both ways each day. Actually, a stroll with other students that was very pleasant on nice, warm, sunshiny days, but on rainy days or during the winter months, with the wind and snow blowing in your face, and heavy overshoes weighting your feet in the snow or mud, the pleasure was soon lost.

During the 1930’s, whisky was sold in half-pint and one-pint flasks that were curved to fit in the rear pocket of farm overalls. Our schoolhouse was located near a branch (stream) of very cool water and we boys would find one of those empty flasks, wash it out good, and carry it to school full of milk to lie in the cool water and drink with our lunch. The flask was a good fit in our pockets also. With no soda pop machines and no cool drinking fountains at school, this cool milk was a real treat and those flasks sold or were traded among the boys for a premium.

During the 1930’s, school bus routes were established for the High School in Seymour, Missouri. Even though we only lived 7 miles from town and I caught the bus at 7 a.m., I did not arrive at school until just before 9 a.m., when school started. Those were very long days for me, considering that I had to be up much earlier than that to help milk and feed all the livestock, eat and dress for school, ride the bus two hours, work at school all day, ride the bus home (about 30 minutes), help with all the evening chores, eat supper, pick out walnut kernels, and then sleep a very short night. As you can see, there wasn’t any time for just lazing around, visiting with friends, or anything else, for that matter.

From 1939 until 1941, the owner of our school bus (who operated two buses) agreed to bus a load of us to the roller skating rink in Marshfield (about 11 miles away) one night a week. The rink owner agreed to reserve the rink for us on that night with a special low rate. At first, there was utter pandemonium, because out of the whole busload, only 3 or 4 people could stand up on skates. Even if you were able to go for a short distance, it was a sure thing that someone would fall right in front of you and then others behind them would pile on top. Eventually, enough of us learned how to skate so we could help others to learn. It became a community thing and a very pleasant evening at the rink. In fact, it became so popular that it took both buses and sometimes 2 or 3 cars to haul the entire group.

December 7, 1941 (when Pearl Harbor was attacked) changed the lifestyle of our whole area. With some of the people going into the service immediately and others taking jobs to help the war effort, lots of marriages, and people moving to other areas, etc., it was the beginning of the end to our former way of life, one that was never to be seen again.

Note: If you would like to send comments to Dean about his story, use the email link below, and I'll forward them to him. Thanks!

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