Generation to generation

I usually get up first each morning, and two things are a toss up as to which is first. If the necessity isn't real bad, coffee comes first. After my first couple coffees, Marge and I go out and feed the cats and grain the steers. It doesn't take very long, but it gets their day started off right. I always figure on a cold morning some grain gets the juices flowing and they can warm up easier.

When we had gotten through with the chores the other morning, it felt so good to just sit and enjoy the morning. My mind for some reason got to comparing the generations that I am familiar with, which would be those born somewhere in the 1900s. Dad was born in 1903 I believe, and I came along in 1950, and our boys in the 1970s with grandkids around 2000. A lot has taken place from Dad's time up through today. Up through the 1950s and 1960s, many were still using teams of horses to feed and hay and farm with. Some had switched over to tractors, but they were ancient compared to those modern ones of today.

The older the generation the more primitive the tools and the more labor-intensive the work. Mom talked about one of her tasks as a child was gathering cow chips to provide heat through the winter. Down where we live in Southeast Missouri, we have an abundance of wood, so firewood isn't an issue. Up in the Sandhills in Nebraska, there was no firewood so cow chips were a necessity. Winter started for them in October or so and lasted up through April. It was a long winter.

Back in the early 1900s washing the clothes was tough compared to today. Many used the old washboards and homemade lye soap. Washing machines came along around the '30s or so, but most couldn't afford them. Mom had an electric one when I was growing up in the 1950s. She heated the water on the kitchen stove and poured it into the clothes washing machine. Water had to be hand pumped and carried by the bucket to the rinsing tubs. It was work.

What I've noticed is that with each generation tasks have gotten easier and less time consuming. Cooking in the early 1900s involved starting a wood or cow chip fire in the old kitchen stove. If it was wood, the pieces of wood had to be short and small to fit in the fire box on the kitchen range.

Fast forward a generation or two and now we turn the dial and a propane or natural gas burner lights up or an electric burner heats up. Today we have the option of smooth top electric stoves or even a microwave. Today we have the insta-pots or even a crockpot. Nothing like back in the first half of the 1900s. Women back in the middle of the 1900s had a lot of menial tasks to get done on a daily basis.

Fast forward to the next generation, which would make them 40 years old or so. This generation was born in the '70s or so. All the tasks now take less time and less effort. Now we have automatic clothes washing machines. Dump in a batch of clothes, add some soap and turn it on. In almost no time the clothes are washed clean and wrung out. No need to hang them on the clothes line. Simply dump then in the clothes dryer and in no time the clothes are dry.

The tractors are bigger and the implements are bigger. It takes less time to prepare the soil for the seeds. I remember when we first moved to Scott City in 1986, I rode with a local farmer as he chiseled his ground. It was a huge tractor on a rubber track. I was used to a 20- to 30-horsepower International C or H, and I'll bet this tractor of his had 200 horsepower. I was impressed.

But jump to the next generation, those born in the last part of the 1900s. Now we have clothes washing machines that almost seem to think for themselves. Ice boxes, or should I say refrigerators, have the ability to know when one is low on certain items like milk or eggs. One now can walk up to the ice box and there is ice and cold water available on the door.

Tractors and combines and sprayers are simply massive. Some of the disks probably are close to 40 or 50 feet wide. I'll bet some of the combines with corn heads can harvest 15 or maybe even 20 rows of corn at a time. Back when Dad was younger, they picked the corn by hand using a corn box being pulled with a team of horses. Dad had a corn husker he'd put on his hand that fit in the palm of his hand. One ear of corn at a time. If Dad was alive, he probably wouldn't believe how much corn these machines could harvest.

As we go from generation to generation there is a ton of innovations that make like simpler and easier and safer. But even as things have improved from generation to generation much has been lost. My grandkids were born around computers and cell phones and Wi-Fi and all that stuff. I can kind of run a computer and a cell phone, but they understand them. But they will never understand what it's like to help a cow have a calf and then get it on its feet and hook it up on a milk faucet. Or feeling the necessity of going out back of the house to the outhouse in the dead of winter with snow on the ground.

I miss the old days and the old time ways, but at the same time I'm really appreciative of the modern innovations that we have today. But there are times when I'd like to journey back in time and pump some water for someone like my grandma and help her start up the wood cook stove to bake a batch of homemade bread. Or help her churn up some butter from a batch of sour cream.