I visited with Edna's son this week. Russ Roberts and his wife Helen live in Lebanon. He is 99. Some readers may know him from his John Deere dealership that was in Lebanon.

Russ introduced Rosemary Letsinger ("Letsie") to John Hague (your editor's parents) in the 1940s. The rest is Broad Ripple Gazette history!

In 1932 came the closing of the banks. We had changed selling milk to Roberts Dairy [42nd & Millersville Road] to East End Dairy [somewhere southwest of 30th and Keystone] and hauling it ourselves. The day the banks closed [from the run on them during the Great Depression] we had our first check from East End and couldn't cash it. It was a good thing for lots of folks, that that condition was soon remedied. Mabel and I used to take milk to East End in the Oldsmobile we were driving with the back cushion removed. We only did that when the men were real busy. We have sure gone a long way since then!

Mabel and I were real busy about that time. The men worked together and we were first one place and then the other cooking for hay hands, harvest hands (shocking wheat and oats), threshing, baling straw, silo filling, etc all summer long. When the men worked away from home we took meals to them. The summer of 1934 0r 1936, I've forgotten which, was so terribly hot, we took turns taking cool drinks to the field, even took a big can of buttermilk from the dairy. It was so hot at night we slept in the yard.

With all of that were big washup and ironing (no permanent press) that kept us on the jump.

I had been using a rocker machine, run by hand, and had flat irons heated on the range. Russell bought me a washing machine with a gasoline motor. It had a rope to pull to start it and I used to wear myself out getting the thing started and sometimes had to call Russell in from the field.

(Margin: Repeat - the other account was before we were married - this one afterwards)

About that time we had a gasoline stove that had to have air pumped into it for pressure and an iron that worked that way, too. We had a big light plant in the basement and had to run it ever so often to generate electricity for the lights and pumping water, etc, and I'm sure folks in Castleton could hear it running. Then it didn't work we had a Rayo gasoline lamp with a mantle that was really delicate that gave a good light with good care along with kerosene lamps that needed to be filled and the chimneys washed each day. With my dad working on the project we finally got electricity. We paid a good sum for the line and I believe it was $20 a month or something like that for 3 years, we could use all the electricity we wanted. We really used it and that meant new light fixtures, new appliances - washer, toaster - refrigerator - iron, etc. Up to then we had used ice box for refrigeration. Russell decided we needed that when the children were small and we had a Leonard.

We put a card in the window telling the ice man what we needed and ice was carried in dripping across the porch and floor to be mopped up.

We finally fixed a drain for that into the basement that sure helped when memory had a way of failing to tell you when to empty that pan. I remember when electric refrigerators came into use. Dad was working at Vonnegut's and had one of the first ones, a General Electric. When they began talking about an electric refrigerator it seemed pretty far fetched. How could an electric refrigerator stay cool without ice? The G.E. the folks had, had the unit on the outside on the top. Our first one was a used Kelvinator in good condition. The only complaint was a small freezing unit holding only 3 ice cube trays. We were using a locker at Noblesville and then had no place to keep foods frozen after bringing them home so that made lots of extra trips to the locker. In 1940 we bought a Stewart Warner with a 50 lb. compartment for frozen foods that was really an improvement and convenience.

          end of part thirty-seven

A list of all of Edna's columns