E reflect once again on life before electricity as we continue to celebrate our 75th year of service here in northeast Oklahoma. In this installment of Cooperative Memories, 87-year-old Spavinaw resident Annabelle Downum shares with us her recollection of days past.
I grew up during the Great Depression on a farm four miles north of Salina near the beautiful Grand River. My parents were Lige (short for “Elijah”) and Ethel Cagle. I was the eldest of their six children.
Being older than my siblings meant I had to help a lot with household chores, as well as work in the fields. Wash day was really a work
day. First, we had to draw water from the well, build a fire outside and heat the wash water. Then came the “rub-a-dub” on the wash board. We usually used homemade lye soap or P&G soap. Rinsing the clothes required us to draw more water.
Bedsheets and all whites were placed in a large copper kettle and boiled in lye water to get them really white. When they were rinsed a few drops of bottle bluing was put in the water to help the whitening process.
Ironing the clothes was quite another chore. We had two irons that were heated on the stove. We ironed with one until it got cool, then put it back on the stove and used the other one. Being the oldest, I did a lot of ironing.
A 1958 photo depicting Annabelle (then Whalen) with husband Raymond and children (in order of age) Marsha, Mike and Sandra.
It was a great relief when rural electricity came to our
community. The first thing we got was a washing machine. Next came an electric pump. Those additions sure changed wash day. Another prized possession was our electric radio. Having this meant we could do away with our battery- powered radio.
Most of us who had cattle milked them by hand and turned a cream separator (a device that separated the milk from the cream). The handle on the cream separator was
Northeast Connection 8
Spavinaw resident recalls days past W
difficult to turn, so it was really nice when we finally acquired an electric version. Having an electric separator, however, didn’t eliminate the chore of cleaning the machine. It had about thirty discs and a lot of other small parts that required scrubbing after each use.
On Saturdays, all the farmers (there were a lot of them back then), took their cream and eggs to town and sold them to buy groceries and other items that couldn’t be produced on the farm. We’d get tickets from the stores, based on how much we spent. In the afternoon, everyone in town would gather in a vacant lot for a drawing for money or groceries. Sometimes there would be a traveling salesman attend the drawing. He would be selling liniment or perhaps some other product.
I graduated Salina High School in 1942 and, after work- ing in a store several months, moved to Tulsa and went to work for Spartan Aircraft. I attended six weeks of sheet metal school and became a “Rosie.” I did some riveting but my job basically consisted of drilling holes for the rivets on the wings of B-24 bombers. While in Tulsa I met and married 1st Sergeant Raymond Whalen. He was raised on a farm in Poplar Bluff, Missouri. He had served in the Civilian Conserva- tion Corps in the late 1930s and
joined the U.S. Army in September 1940. Raymond and I decided early on that we didn’t want to farm, so a few months after his discharge, he got a job at a steel plant in St. Louis, Missouri. A few months later, the workers’ union went on strike and the steel plant closed. We came back to Oklahoma and rented a small farm and orchard back in the woods. Our closest neighbors lived two miles away.
Ray began farm training school, sponsored by the nation’s G.I. Bill of Rights. The official title was the
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