Growing up in the 1940s on a Missouri farm had its challenges, especially coping with the nearly four miles of dirt roads that separated our family from the nearest highway. But looking back, one of the biggest challenges was our phone system – a long way from the pocket-sized cell phones we take for granted today. Although our primitive telephone lacked the wonders of today’s smart phone, it gave us an important lifeline to the outside world.

Our house had only a single phone — a candlestick type, about 15 inches tall, with a mouthpiece atop a vertical column, both with a black finish. On the side of the column was a metallic cradle supporting the receiver. Lifting the receiver opened the connection, which closed when the receiver was returned to its cradle. The phone rested on a wooden box containing a battery and a bell, which rang loudly when a call came in. On the side of the box, a handle could be cranked to activate the ringer and make a call.

We were on a party line, shared by seven other farm families. Two long rings meant the call was for us. Other families would be summoned by combinations of “longs” and “shorts.” But everyone on the line would hear all the rings, and could listen in to any of the calls – which frequently happened.

The system had its obvious disadvantages in its lack of privacy. And several neighbors sharing a phone call would reduce the volume and could make hearing difficult. I can remember my mother asking neighbors to get off the line so she could hear better. But there were times when she needed help with a recipe and used the party line to get advice from others. And any emergency, such as a fire or accident, was instantly shared throughout the community, with neighbors always quick to respond. In this way, a long tradition of mutual support in rural communities continued.

Other farm families had similar phones, but most were a bit newer than ours. Instead of the candlestick type, their phones were built into a vertical box, which contained the basic parts – mouthpiece, receiver, ringer and batteries. However, like us, they had to ring a series of “longs” and “shorts” whenever they made a call.

A telephone office, located in Granger, a small village about four miles away, connected us with long-distance callers and the outside world beyond our community. A single operator, who lived in a house attached to the office, worked at an old-fashioned switchboard. A large collection of connections, made by plugging in various lines to their receiving terminals, made it all happen.

Our telephone, and those of our neighbors, was manufactured by Western Electric, a company that dates back to 1869. The firm diversified into several areas, making products that ranged from teletypewriters to telephone switching systems and telephone booths. The company eventually became a subsidiary of AT&T.

In the days before many farm families had electricity, cranking a battery-powered phone was an important lifeline with the outside world. Although our farm got electricity in the early 1940s thanks to President Roosevelt’s Rural Electri-fication Administration (REA), World War II and the demands it made on major industries kept us cranking our telephone the old-fashioned way for several years.

Rural Missouri in the 1940s offered challenges for a youngster. Our farm was separated from the nearest village (and paved highway) by four miles of dirt roads. Winter snows – and the resulting mud — often left us isolated. But winter also inspired new adventures. Being an “only child” had its advantages, but it meant having to do most of my “exploring” on my own.

My parents gave me the run of our farm at an early age, even before I was a first-grader. I recall one frosty morning I decided to take a walk in the snow with my sled, an ancient fixed-runner from my mother’s childhood. I think I may have taken my teddy bear as a passenger, and plodded about a mile, to a one-lane bridge. When my dad finally tracked me down, I was seated on my sled at the edge of the bridge, admiring the frozen creek about 20 feet below.

A year or so later, my dad announced he intended to walk into town to pick up our ’39 Chevy, that was being repaired in a local garage. Thinking he had left without me, I hurried to catch up. After a couple of miles, I began to assume my dad had too much of a head start, but I kept going. When I finally reached the garage, it was closed. Disappointed, I began my four-mile return walk to our farm, as the setting sun turned to twilight, and it began to grow dark. I got to the creek bridge I’d explored with my sled a year or so earlier when I met my dad, who was on horseback. After a thorough scolding, I was hoisted onto the horse, and he took me home.

Country school days

Black Oak School, not far from our farmhouse, had been improved since its construction in the 1870s. The pot-bellied stove had been replaced by a furnace, and a vestibule had been added, making room for coat racks, a tiny kitchen area with a hot plate used for community oyster suppers, and a few shelves of books in one corner that served as a library.

The things that didn’t change were two privies – one for each gender — located at opposite ends of the school grounds. On winter days a “nature call” often meant a snowy walk to an unheated privy. And sorting out the proper coats and overshoes in the vestibule could be a challenge at the end of the school day.

But a long hill near the school turned into a fine “sled run” that we were allowed to access on several snowy days. Our “noon hour” was sometimes extended a few minutes as we finished sledding and retuned to classes.

A sledding misadventure

When I was 8 or 9, my folks bought me a “Flexible Flyer” sled, a big improvement over the six-runner antique my mother had kept. Our farm was called “Hillcrest Farm,” named for the hilltop the house, barns and outbuildings occupied. To the west, a pasture area extended for about a half-mile, offering a challenging sled-run.

Earlier snows that winter had been disappointing, too skimpy for good sledding. But one day freezing rain covered the farm with a thin coat of ice. The roads were so slick our country school was even closed for the day.

My child-brain began to visualize a new adventure. The pasture west of the barn had turned into an epic sled-run. It would make the slope west of the schoolhouse seem tame. The fence at the bottom of the hill marked the end of the run, but there was a gap in the fence, offering a nice challenge for anyone wanting a longer run.

Somewhere in my collection of “old stuff,” there’s a faded Kodak print showing the living room of our farm house at Christmas, sometime in the 1930s. A decorated cedar tree dominates the scene, with a nearby armchair featuring my mother’s favorite cat, Tux, taking a midday nap. Next to the chair is a small table with a Santa figure, brought out to celebrate the occasion.

The papier maché Santa, purchased by my mother from a dime store in her hometown of Kahoka, Missouri, was a seasonal guest in our house by the time I was born. It was one of the few “luxury items” my parents could afford when they married in 1928. Times got worse soon after that, with the stock market crash and resulting Great Depression — still in effect when my photo was taken.

Along with the photo, the original Santa found its way to a shelf in the back of a small closet in my house. For several years it has taken up space, protected from any strong lighting that would fade its red-painted suit. I recall that it was occasionally an object of interest to my family at Christmas-time.

Online research turned up little about the origins of my Santa. Papier maché was developed in China in the 1800s. By the 1920s it was widely used in toy manufacturing. Lightweight and easy to mold, it was ideal for toys and decorative items that would be shipped worldwide.

Like most paper maché Santa figures, mine has no maker’s name, so its origin is unknown. An internet search yielded similar figures, with prices running in the $30 to $40 range.

My earliest memories of Thanksgiving go back to the 1940s, when my parents and I often spent the day with my step-grandmother Lucy and my Aunt Ruth at their home in Hamilton, IL, about 40 miles from our farm in Missouri.

Lucy, who became a step-mother to my dad and his seven siblings in 1897 when their mother died, and anchored the family when their father died two years later, had turned 80 by the time I was born. She was “hard-of-hearing,” as they said in those days, and I was instructed to “speak up” when addressing her.

In one of our conversations, she told me that her parents had taken her to a Lincoln-Douglas debate in Quincy, Illinois when she was a “babe in arms.” While she had no personal memory of the event, the historic connection we made with Lincoln made a lasting impression.

Although the family had a few homemade recipes for grape and dandelion wine, Lucy considered herself a teetotaler. But one of my uncles gave her a bottle of French brandy each year on her birthday, and my aunt noted it had been consumed when Lucy’s next birthday rolled around. It apparently did her little harm, as she lived to be 98.

Each Thanksgiving, Lucy and my aunt often invited members of Lucy’s family, and occasionally my dad’s oldest sibling, my Aunt Florence, also would join us. There was a neighbor who occasionally joined us, a Mr. Fenton, who worked for the railroad and once gave me a ride on a switch engine – a real adventure.

Aunt Ruth, who had lived for a short time in France, took pride in her cooking, and the meal was always a great occasion. She also had a large garden, fertilized with compost from her kitchen. She also canned the surplus, and had well-stocked jars on shelves in the basement.

After the main meal, which left everyone stuffed, we all made room for ice cream, which my aunt frequently topped off with Crème de Menthe liqueur – making it a unique sundae, and another “exception” to the family’s teetotalling nature.

A recent visit to the Parkville Nature Sanctuary north of the downtown area in Parkville, Missouri revealed a tiny jail near the north edge of the parking lot. The structure is cube-shaped, measuring approximately six feet square, with a lattice of inch-wide iron strips. Along with an early-day cellar in the Nature Sanctuary that once stored food for students at Park College, the jail structure offers a look at Parkville history.

What makes the artifact strange is the “information placard” posted on one of its four sides. The heading, “A Tale of Two Spooky Witches,” describes the history of the tiny jail, including a macabre ghost story.

Under the heading, the placard describes the structure as Parkville’s first jail, abandoned in the woods when a new, larger jail was built, sometime in the early 1900s. According to the placard, Parkville was visited by two witches — sisters that lived in the woods and occasionally came into town to terrorize the children. One of Parkville’s early mayors decided to trap the sisters in the jail, and leave them there so they would never be able to scare the children again. Then, apparently, the abandoned jail was forgotten – at least according the placard.