We finally got electricity in 1951. It was expected and though the poles had been installed for some time, the houses wired, and the wires strung, the promise of what was to come – didn’t. The impatience built and finally the older siblings thought it a stellar idea to just leave all of those switches in the house in the on position – just in case.
We came home from town one day and everything that could run was running. Everything that could light was lit. The juice was on!
Although it was an exciting moment my primary memory, as a seven year old, is how much it was simply taken in stride. We hadn’t missed it because we had never had it. Carrying the kerosene lamps up the stairs at bedtime and properly handling them so that we didn’t burn the house down was second nature and not considered a hardship. My mother’s sterling coffee pot and all of her pretty dresses did not fall short of anyone’s idea of living well.
With the limitations of reading by lamp light, the days tended to end not too long after the sun went down, of course, and the chores in the barn were done while there was still enough light. Baths were just Saturday night events because without electricity there was no hot water and bath water was heated on a wood stove. It was a big enough job that it wasn’t done more than once a week unless there was a family funeral or something else that required a midweek bath.
Electricity certainly was welcome even though running water was still three years away. Now there was an electric stove and a kitchen radio. Lights. Eventually an electric mixer for all the baking and a sewing machine.
Later still there was actually an electric butter churn, putting an end to the counting out of turns of the handle when the job had been done by the kids. Later still a Hi-Fi that played 45s, 78s, and the long plays.
It was welcomed as a useful and timely improvement in life but nobody assumed it made them more important, more useful, or somehow more accomplished. The kilowatts that would run the new equipment were a new expenditure in the household and would be monitored as carefully as the lamp oil had been.
The meter for each farm was mounted on the transformer pole near the house. We found it highly entertaining to go out and look at that meter when we had lots of company for a full day because that metal wheel that counted kilowatts used was going around really fast. When some of us kids had too many lights on and too many things running, Dad would come in the house and quietly say, “The meter is really going to beat the band out there……..” which was our signal to quietly scoot around and discontinue some of the unnecessary consumption.
Electricity was not obtained because of its luxury status – it was anticipated and appreciated because it would make daily workloads a bit simpler – eventually. The electric washing machines were of no use until we got plumbing, so the old gasoline machine continued to be used. We also still had a coal furnace and a push-back-and-forth carpet sweeper for the big rug in the front room.
The arrival of electricity was not a result of hedonism in our community as in “we must have it – give us more of everything.” Hedonism comes from within a person and I doubt there was enough hedonism in the entire county to get electricity for a single household. There might have been had we known for sure which people actually did go to the State Line Club twenty or so miles away – sitting right on the border with North Dakota, but nobody ever knew for sure (or admitted to knowing) who they were.
Necessity is the mother of invention and  invention can birth lots of memories. Did you know, for instance, about the summer entertainment found in activities involving small table fans in farm kitchens in the 1950s?

• A beginning activity involved having the fan on high speed and slowly lowering through the widely spaced protective metal bars a couple of kleenexes. If the contact with the whirling fan blades could be initiated at an even pace, we would have tiny bits of shredded kleenex flying around. We found that entertaining.
• On really hot days we might also take a cup of water and s-l-o-w-l-y pour it at drizzle-speed into the whirling fan (set on high) and presto! We had us a mist-er which would have a momentary cooling effect.
• Another activity performed just to prove we could do it without shedding blood required careful observation before turning the fan on – to be sure of which direction the curved blades rotated. After it was going full speed we would put our fingers in through those protective metal bars, extended at a flat-type angle, slowly press more and more firmly against the blade. Done carefully, this could bring the blade to a halt in about thirty seconds. This was fun to do for visiting peers who hadn’t thought about the potential and were sure we were going to amputate our fingers.

All of these activities were done when parents were not in the vicinity. They were what passed for excitement on the farm. There is something exhilarating about a buffalo stampede – and if you don’t have access to one of them you need to invent your own excitement. We worked with what we had.
Now the electric bill was always paid on the 20th of the month. Based on my dad’s records I see that our farm used a total of 8077 kilowatts and paid bills averaging $20 a month in 1951. The cost per kilowatt was right around three cents.
I compared the math for our Oregon home.
In a twelve month period from July 2013 through June 2014, we used 9509 kilowatts and paid an average of $95 a month with each kilowatt costing between eleven and twelve cents.
The price/K has quadrupled but there is another consideration. It was a fairly short list of items that were kept operating by that 8077 kilowatts in 1951.
Now in 2013/2014 9509 kilowatts have operated the following for twelve months: washer, dryer, paper shredder, microwave, can opener, garbage disposal, garage door, A/C, toaster, crock pot, mixer, TV, CD player, computer, curling irons and hair dryer, music keyboard, hedge trimmer, lawn edger/mower, and motion activated exterior lighting. None of these things were in our farm home in 1951. All of these are operated on 119 additional kilowatts per month.
Electricity-dependent products have obviously been improved in a remarkable way. And no – I will not automatically credit the enviros and EPA regs. This is what skilled American workmen, researchers, engineers, etc. have been doing whenever they have had the liberty to do it. I grew up watching them do it on our farm. Farmers didn’t know they had to have a college degree [or a high school diploma] to research or engineer a solution to a problem.

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Ok. Pull up a chair. Confession time.
I’ve been thinking.  (Heads up: my DH had a certain fixed response whenever I came flying into the vicinity of wherever he was and opened conversation by saying, “You know what – I’ve been thinking…..” His response was always, “Oh, no! Sharon’s been thinking!” And we went on from there…..)
This spring when my brother was here we got to talking about the stories from the young years, the methods of problem-solving that surrounded us, the conversational patterns both by those who lived there and those who wandered through. He reminded me of one our favorites which may have just been a family tall tale.
As the story goes, the old farmer is talking to a stranger who turned into his yard, thoroughly lost, wondering how he was ever going to find the point he needed to get to that was not on the map. Very little was on the maps fifty years ago. Once you left the pavement, you were on your own.
The old farmer says, “Where is it ya said ya need to be?” The stranger tells him.
After considerable thought and some mental gymnastics as he considers first one country road and then another, the farmer finally spits on the ground, takes the tooth pick out of his mouth, and says to the stranger, “Nope. Can’t get there from here.”
Well, that’s sort of the way I feel.  I need to get somewhere – and it appears that I can’t get there from here.
Here’s the confession. Late last summer, heading into the fall, I became aware that the word pictures of new MBOB narratives were more difficult to bring into focus. I need details, thoughts, stuff, action, framework, memories, a certain day, certain sounds, colors, patterns, buildings, meals, cookware, purposes, feelings, laughter. All of that is in a picture in my mind before a word picture can be made. Before I can paint a word picture I have to see a picture. That was becoming an issue.
I’d like to broaden the consideration of our MBOBs somehow, because the MBOBs of our own lives are precisely the places from which each of us draw strength, knowledge, understanding of all the things we can do with twine or ten different ways to solve this or that household problem. It seems that the problems and issues we are facing today ought not to be separated from the MBOBs.
The sum of anything good and strong, honest and clean that is deeply anchored in our hearts, spirits and lives came from some kind of MBOB back there somewhere.
I have never intended that MBOBs would be a place to hide from present reality, a cocoon in which to shelter. The MBOBs have simply been a report of what was: Here’s what I saw. Here’s what they did. Here’s how it felt.
There’s value to be brought into the present and I’d like to take a stab at tracing how so many have already done exactly that. Identifying how Grant and I did that. How my Wolverine Aunt did it. Bringing the story to the present day is still telling the story of the past as illustrated when tribes and cultures dependent on oral traditions to preserve their history tell it up to the present moment.

I need to change something about what I’m doing. I do expect I can get there from here.

Wherever there is, it will still be Mailboxes and Old Barns. 😉

Signed copies of Mailboxes and Old Barns ($18/including shipping) can be ordered by emailing me at [email protected]. Payment can be made by PayPal or by check to Sharon Torgerson, P O Box 513, Woodburn, OR 97071.