My grandma JoAnn first experienced electricity as a young child while living in rural Wheeler County, near Bartlett, Nebraska where she was born. She was the sixth child in a family of nine children. She and her family lived on a cattle ranch where there was always work to be done.
Life before electricity meant having parents and older siblings fill lamps with kerosene and clean blackened lamp chimneys for lighting the house. There were never enough lamps for the bedrooms so they were dark and scary for Grandma and her younger siblings! Without yard or barn lights, kerosene lanterns lit the way for early morning and nighttime chores such as milking cows and feeding cattle, horses, pigs and chickens. My grandma’s mom, Great Grandma Mildred, had a washing machine with a gas motor on it so Grandma said there was a lot of blue smoke and noise in the house on washing day. When a cow or hog was butchered, all of the meat had to be canned or cured right away to keep it from spoiling. They ground meat with a hand crank meat grinder. My grandma’s sister lost the end of her thumb when pressing the meat into the grinder while their older brother turned the crank! Cream was separated from the milk with a hand crank separator, butter was hand-churned, and cake batter was whipped by hand. When the wind didn’t blow enough to make the windmill pump water, they had to pump it by hand. Almost everything they did or made had to be done by hand.
In 1948, when my grandma was six years old, a fifty-six foot tall wind charger was erected at their ranch providing 32 volt electricity. The house and all of the outbuildings were wired for electricity except for one chicken house. My grandma’s neighbors were very envious! The wiring they used could handle 110 volt electricity since it was rumored that the R.E.A. (Rural Electric Association) would be coming in a few years. Twenty-four large batteries were installed in the garage room in the back of their house, and when the wind didn’t blow enough to keep the batteries charged, they ran a Delco generator. Grandma said that the generator was really loud, but wonderful! The lights were so bright!
Having an electric clothes iron and toaster, and having electric motors on the washing machine, milk separator, and food mixer was very handy and saved lots of time. Kerosene lamps and lanterns only had to be used for emergencies, and the deepfreeze worked well for freezing garden vegetables and butchered meats that otherwise would have taken a long time to can. A pump jack was installed on the windmill with an electric motor, so there was no more pumping water by hand. Daily outside chores were so much easier for Grandma and all of her siblings with lighting in the buildings.
R.E.A. electricity arrived at the ranch in 1953 via large power poles. Grandma’s family could then use as much electricity as they needed without being limited by the power source. They acquired new useful equipment for the shop, such as a welder and a grindstone to sharpen mower sickles that were used for mowing 1,200 acres of grassland. An electric motor was used to power a buzz saw for sawing wood to fuel the wood burning stove and range in the house. New smaller electrical appliances were also purchased to adapt to the 120 volt electricity.
There were lots of great things about having electricity, but modernization and safety were the biggest factors for Grandma’s family. The excellent lighting made reading, sewing, and playing games in the evenings fun and safe, since using kerosene lamps and lanterns in their home and outbuildings—where there was often hay—was very dangerous. Grandma said that they did have a lamp start a fire in their cellar underneath the kitchen once. Grandma and her siblings were supposed to be sprouting potatoes, but were instead playing follow-the-leader. My great grandma had to chop a whole in the kitchen floor with an ax to put out the flames! Electricity saves time, is more efficient, and is much safer than manual labor. It changed life for my grandma at the ranch, and for everyone else who got to experience having it for the first time. Hearing what Grandma has to say about electricity and the stories she has from the ranch before electricity, make me truly appreciate having it in my home and my life.
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