Drying canning jars in the Ozarks/ Library of Congress

ALAN writes:

People who lived in the Missouri Ozarks 85 years ago were poor in material possessions, but they were not poor otherwise. They had a wealth of moral fiber, common sense, imagination, self-discipline, sense of responsibility, respect for neighbors, and gratitude for simple pleasures.

Imogene Snider was one of them.  She was the youngest of eight sisters. More than fifty years afterward, she wrote about growing up on their family farm deep in the Ozarks in the 1930s.  Reading the memories of such people helps to keep things in perspective. They are an antidote to the unspeakable excess of the modern world.

Awash in that excess, modern Americans take for granted such things as water, electricity, supermarkets, insulated homes, push-button heating and cooling, instant entertainment, and dozens of flavors of ice cream available on a moment’s whim.

Keep all of that in mind as you read these few portions of her lengthy reminiscences:

            “The parlor was a special room…used when we had family gatherings and on holidays…  We kept our best pieces of furniture in the parlor…  There was also a piano…  We entertained our friends by playing the piano.  Music was a great part of life at our house….  Seven of the eight girls in our family learned to play the piano…  I spent many lonely hours at the piano for it was a great source of recreation and entertainment for me in the days when we had so little diversion or entertainment…

            “The winter nights were long and very lonely, and we had little for entertainment.  We strained our eyes reading by the yellow glow of the smoky kerosene lamp, and our reading material was very limited. We were not allowed to play cards, so sometimes we played dominoes…

            “Sometimes we borrowed a lawn mower, and I pushed it by hand a mile or so down the road, mowed the lawn, then pushed it back down the road home…

On decoration days in May and June, they would go to local cemeteries to decorate graves:

            “…I walked through the garden picking flowers for Mother to decorate the graves of friends and neighbors who through the years had shared their seeds and plants with her…   She paused to drop one flower on each grave.  This gesture was her way of remembering her many friends she had known long before…”

            “I always rode in the back of the 1926 Buick Touring Car in which I became lost in the beauty and splendor of the lovely breath-taking day.   …my heart would ache for the beauty of such a rare, peaceful day in June, filling me with a mixture of joy and sadness, realizing it could not last.  For a moment, it seemed I was gazing out through eternity, and I wondered what lay beyond the beautiful blue horizon many miles away, for hard times permitted us only to dream of faraway places…”

On some days in July,

            “…our brother would drive us to town a few miles away, where we bought an ice cream cone for five cents.  In more prosperous times people gathered in town for an all-day celebration on the Fourth near an old mill where there were stands with pop and ice cream.  Times got too hard for people to attend, and we were lucky if we had money to buy one ice cream cone at the drug store…

            “We remembered how rich we really were, finding delight in each day as we were greeted at dawn with the unsurpassed beauty of a summer sunrise, and later watched the sun set in the evening sky…

            “…with our mother’s guidance and informal teaching at home, the eight girls in our family acquired lifetime skills including cooking, sewing, tatting, knitting, crocheting, and piecing and quilting quilts. These skills were not taught in rural schools those days.  We were also taught time and money management at home…

            “At the end of the long busy day, the family all gathered on the porch in the evening shade…  The porch was a special place those days, a place set apart from the rest of the house, a place to escape from the endless task of inside activities, and a shelter from the rain and the heat of the sun.  [ Air-conditioning and electric fans were utterly unknown or too costly. ]  It was also a place where we could recall the day’s events and discuss family affairs, a place to visit with those who might stop by, and a source of comfort and enjoyment in the cool of the evening…

            “…in the peaceful moments of the twilight hours, we related the stories we had heard while visiting among friends and neighbors.  These moments we shared with family in the quiet time of the day were pure magic….”

          [Imogene Snider, “A Long Year’s Journey”, published in two parts in Ozarks Watch: The Magazine of the Ozarks in 2009-10, Series 2, Volume III, No. 1, pp. 30-73; and Series 2, Volume III, No. 2, pp. 26-65.  Also here.]

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