Heat and humidity was summer. Cold and ice was winter. We opened the windows when it was hot and sticky and closed them when it was raining or cold and windy. I suppose air conditioning was when the windows were open and the lace curtains flapped outside in the breeze. Most families felt lucky to have a roof over their heads and to have survived The Great Depression. If it was hot outside it was hot inside. Heat and humidity were accepted with summer. Spring and autumn came and went without complaints.
Spring was the time when the long underwear came off and were washed and hung out on the clothesline to dry. Mothers would store them away for the summer and hoped they still fit when autumn’s frosty mornings returned and school started over.
Autumn was when kids carved faces in pumpkins, and played tricks on neighbors to get a piece of candy as a treat. Parents talked about the start of school — you had to try on this and that to see if it still fit and most of the time it didn’t.
Boys wore high-top shoes called “clod-hoppers” that were a couple of sizes too big when first bought but shrunk over the summer and were too small by fall. Mothers traded used shoes to keep from having to buy new ones. Most fathers had the necessary cobbler tools to make new soles for wore out shoes.
The trousers that had rolled-up cuffs in the spring were rolled down in the fall. Trousers from last year were too small and the pant leg came just below the knees—obviously too short.
New patches were added where needed on overalls, shirts and sweaters. Most kids wore sweaters with holes worn through the elbows. Buttons were missing on clothes and safety pins were used to replace them.
I have never seen a movie that did a country school justice. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, school was about making it to the 8th grade and nothing else. Most kids never went on to high school—parents thought an 8th grade education was enough educating.
Kids needed to know how to hoe tobacco when it was growing. Boys had to toss hay from the ground up on the hay wagon. Children were expected to help on the farms and milking was something all children had to do.
If you lived in town, like I did, you still had to feed the chickens or chop their heads off and dress them for the dinner table. Gathering eggs was a twice a day chore and we all had chicken houses for our meat and eggs.
When the dandelions bloomed the last of May, school was out for the summer and we walked home with our grade cards that showed our final grade and told whether we passed or failed.
The only thing good about summer was playing all day long or sitting on Harleman's front porch playing Monopoly while rain pummeled the snowball bushes.