Farm Girl Read Online Free Page A

always feared them and wanted us to be able to get to safety quickly.
    One half of the storm cave had a lot of glass-sided batteries, about six inches wide and ten inches long, full of liquid, to store the electricity from the Lolley engine. After about fifteen years, the engine wore out, then my dad put a wind charger on top of the granary, and that charged the batteries and ran the electricity.
    Aunt Bernice, one of my dad’s sisters, had an Electrolux refrigerator that ran on kerosene. Mother wanted one of those so badly, but they cost $350, a lot of money back then, and my dad didn’t think it was worth it. We had 32V electricity that ran a fan, washing machine, lights and a radio, but it wasn’t enough for a refrigerator. Instead, we used an ice box. Finally, in 1950, Mother got the 120V electricity when the REA lines were built through our rural area, and she bought an electric refrigerator.
    The first car I remember was a Hupmobile touring car with a canvas top and no windows, just open on the sides. In the winter my father would snap on canvas curtains with ising glass windows so the driver and passengers could see out. Those curtains helped to keep out most of the rain, wind or snow. For real cold weather we kept a bearskin in the back seat to put over our legs for long drives, like to Red Cloud fourteen miles away.
    The speed limit was 45 miles per hour, but on the dirt country roads my father only drove 20-25 mph if they were dry. When it rained, the roads turned to mud and became slippery, then Dad put chains on the wheels and drove even more slowly. We tried never to drive on muddy roads or go anyplace if it looked like rain. More than once the car slipped into a ditch on one of the hilly roads close to home. If my parents couldn’t get it out, we’d walk home, then Dad took a team of horses and equipment back to pull the car out of the ditch.
    On rare occasions, maybe two times a year, we drove to Hastings forty miles away, the biggest town anywhere near us, population about 10,000. Sometimes my parents needed to see the eye doctor there; or if Aunt Bernice was coming in from Lincoln on the train or the bus, we went to pick her up at the station. Once in a long while, during the winter when there wasn’t much farm work and if the weather was good, my parents and I would drive to Hastings just for fun, to spend the day.
    We left early in the morning as it took over an hour to drive there. On the way we crossed over the Oregon Trail that so many covered wagons traveled back in the early 1800’s. I saw the old wagon wheel ruts crossing a pasture and thought about the hardships and adventures of those early travelers. Another place we passed was the fancy home of the man who had invented Kool-Aid.
    One thing I liked about going to Hastings was eating in a restaurant. One restaurant had meals for forty cents. Another time when I was about six or seven, we went to a cafeteria where we picked up the food we wanted. Dad was ahead of me and Mother behind me. I liked everything I saw and filled my tray with lots of things. My dad just laughed and let me take whatever I wanted. Mother knew I had more than I could eat, so she didn’t take much. I took about a dollar’s worth of food, more than my dad had. I ate only a small portion, so Mother had plenty after all.
    One winter we drove to Hastings with the side curtains on our Hupmobile. A cousin, Mildred Lutz, came along. On the way home, driving through the little town of Holstein, the sun shone in my dad’s eyes and he didn’t see a car turning in front of him. We collided and I ended up on the floor. Mildred would have been thrown out, but she got caught between the side curtains and the car. No one was hurt, just shaken up, because we were going so slowly, and soon we were on our way again.
    When I was three, Dad and Uncle Ford dug a big hole back of the shop and were putting cement in. Ford was shoveling and I got in his way, wanting to see what they were