If getting up each day is hard, consider what our mothers and grandmas had to do upon waking. Most of us are not old enough to remember our pioneer-stock grandparents. Many of us are too young to have been raised by parents who were children during the Depression. The frugal habits ingrained in them were, in turn, deeply engrained in my sisters and me, in our 1960s-70s childhood.
But this. This was early 1980s, when I'd come home from college, and we'd wear hats and mittens at the kitchen table. Why? Why???
The furnace had broken down again. Dad didn't want to pay the repair bill or worse, the replacement cost (never mind that this furnace was ancient, rusty, loud, and complaining it wanted to retire).
Meanwhile Dad kept how many bins full of unsold grain because market prices were low again. How many thousands of bushels of corn and soybeans sat in bins, awaiting a market price he'd sell at? Not gonna go there. Not gonna tell how many decades passed. (Just, some of the bins exploded....)
No no no, my five minutes are running out! Quick, to the point:
How many times a day, not just upon waking,
did my mother lug two 5-gallon buckets of corn to burn in the basement? When home for the weekend, we'd take our turns, but Mom was the first one up each day, seven days a week. I swear to God, not one single time did we see our dad lugging these buckets from the barn to the house.
The corn-fire would die out in the night. Come morning, we'd wear mittens and hats to the breakfast table. I'm surprised the faucets didn't freeze up.
Dad must have gotten tired of having to lie in bed waiting for the house to warm up in the morning: eventually, he did relent and invest in a new furnace.
And for once, five minutes is ENOUGH for the topic of the day.
Painting by me, early 1980s
@# Thank you @mariannewest for the prompt and for all your time and attention to Freewritehouse!
Day 1845: 5 Minute Freewrite: Thursday - Prompt: time to get up
2021 photo by me, showing how the sides of a bin are splitting
For @myjob, here is a link to HOW TO GROW & HARVEST YOUR OWN ORGANIC CORN SYRUP - #satire alert!
And a video for those who've never witnessed harvesting (we say "combining") corn:
And now I'm off to see if anyone else here posted about mornings on a farm (up with the chickens at the crack of dawn; my husband's father was out feeding cattle before the sun came up).
