Column

Quite often my sister, Mary Hecker, comes out from Marion to have supper with me, and one of our favorite meals is ham and scrambled eggs with toast and coffee. A simple but filling meal that I can put on the table in about 10 minutes with the help of a Teflon coated skillet, my microwave, and electric toaster and instant coffee.

We often reminisce about our growing up years, and the tales told us by our parents and grandparents of their lives. I remarked to Mary that my grandparents wouldn’t know what a Teflon skillet or microwave was, and would be amazed at how easy cooking has become, and that led to visualizing them preparing a meal like we were eating.

On farms in the 1890’s when my mother and dad were growing up, corn was grown to feed the sows that had litters of pigs that were nurtured until they were butchered. The hams hung in the smoke house over a slow fire of hickory wood for curing. For the cookstove, wood was cut from the downed trees in the nearby woods, split and stacked near the kitchen door. Water was pumped from a well and along with the wood was carried inside. The chickens laid their eggs daily, and were usually gathered by the youngest members of the family. The coffee boiled in a pot on the stove, and the homemade bread browned on a wire rack in the oven. Great quantities of food was prepared since she was cooking for six or eight instead of two.

I remember stories my Grandmother Lucy Sheneman told me of growing up in the years following the Civil War. Their farm in Leesburg Township, Union County, was self sufficient except for a few staples. They made trips to Marysville only twice a year to trade for white sugar and coffee and a bolt of calico. They raised sheep, spun yarn from the fleece, and wove woolen cloth on looms in their home. They raised flax to combine with the wool, and produced linsey-woolsy for the men’s shirts. She described the processes for making cheese and soap. She told of tapping sugar maple trees for sap, boiling it down, and making enough maple sugar each year to fill the wooden “sugar chest.” I now treasure that beaten-up old chest. She described the evening the family was gathered around the fireplace when a copperhead snake was smoked out of his hiding place and crawled into the room.

When Lucy married Emanuel Sheneman in 1872 they lived in rented log cabins until they purchased a seven acre plot west of Pharisburg in 1879, and built a log house. In 1890 my mother was the first of their nine children to be born in a frame house. Lucy died in Marion when she was within three days of her 103rd birthday. She saw the advent of the railroad, automobile, and airplane. She enjoyed church services by radio when she could no longer attend in person. She could never quite understand how TV worked, and often talked or waved to those on the screen.

But I think what would have amazed her most is how easy it is for me to prepare a meal of ham and eggs, coffee and toast.