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Although we were poor, most of the families and people that we knew were in about the same boat.

For the children and families that attended the rural schools of Barry County, late fall and Christmas was some of our favorite times of the year. For those of you who are over 65 years old and who attended a country school, this column should be a memory jogger.

And, for those under 65, hopefully this will be an insight that helps you look into the way some of your parents and grandparents grew up.

In the fall, and especially toward the late fall of the year, with the hay and fodder put up, with the milk cows drying up and the lack of daylight after you get home from school, the work day for farm boys went from about 2-3 hours a day to 30 minutes a day. We still had to feed hay to the cows and feed the pigs, if you had them.

For the ladies, since the garden was dried up and the canning was all done, their chores were reduced to the normal helping with meal preparation, laundry and doing the dishes.

During this late fall, early winter time of the year, we all looked forward to hunting, to Thanksgiving with large family get togethers, to Christmas, to the school Christmas program and to the bag of candy and goodies that we might get after the program. To help pay for the candy, fruit and goodies, sometime in late October, we usually had a “cakewalk” or “pie walk.” The mothers would make a pie or a cake and bring it to the cakewalk.

For those of you who don’t remember, a cakewalk was when you made a large circle and put 6 to 10 numbers in chalk around the circle. The kids and/or the adults would pay a nickel or a dime (and sometimes as much as a quarter) to be one of the people to walk around the circle. The crowd would sing a song, something like “Pop Goes the Weasel” for about 30 seconds. When the music stopped, the Master of ceremonies would pull a number out of a hat, and if you were standing on that number, you won a cake or a pie.

In November, we usually had another fundraising event called a “Box Supper.” The mothers and the young ladies would fix a light supper (usually consisting of a couple of sandwiches and some kind of dessert) and put it in a shoebox or some small box (decorated in some eye-catching fashion). The boys and/ or men would bid on and buy the box supper, and they would have to eat the supper with the young lady or woman who made the supper.

The big deal was, that there were no names on the boxes. The unattached ladies would try to drop hints to their favorite fella so that he would buy her box supper. It was always entertaining if the husband didn’t even bid on his wife’s box supper. It was especially entertaining to see which father bought the box supper of the only divorcee and to see what the reaction would be from his wife.

The box suppers usually only went for around a dollar, unless there were two young men who were really wanting to get a certain young lady’s box supper, then the bidding could get up as much as $4.

Then there was always the opposite problem. You didn’t want to get stuck with someone real young or real old, just not the right “girl.”

When I was in the 7th grade, I saved up my money (almost $2) and I tried to finagle around to buy Susan Baker’s supper, but someone outbid me. What I didn’t realize was that my dad had purchased Sandra Hoffman’s supper. Don’t get me wrong, Sandra was really quite pretty. In fact, she was Homecoming Queen when she got into high school, but I just wanted to sit with Susan Baker.

I didn’t know what to do, so I ran the half a mile all the way back home and hid in the chicken house.

Well, the good news is from these two fantastic fundraising events, a few of the mothers would get together and put together goodie bags for us kids. We would usually get two pieces of the ribbon candy, some candy corn, a couple of orange slices (candy) and a piece of fruit. In a real good year, we might even get a piece of chocolate or some mom might make homemade peanut brittle.

There was also the implied threat that if we didn’t participate in the Christmas program and do at least a little bit of a good job that we wouldn’t get our goodie bag. There was the added enjoyment of missing an hour of classes every day for a few weeks while we practiced for the Christmas program.

What amazed me, and especially now amazes me, was how one person could teach reading, writing, arithmetic, geography and a little bit of history to eight different grades and still put on a Christmas program.

Mothers, being who they are, normally would let us have one or two pieces of candy, and then usually collect the goodie bags as soon as we got home. We would usually get one or two pieces of candy a day until Christmas morning (Mom would break up the ribbon candy and the peanut brittle into approximately one-inch pieces so it would last longer).

For Christmas, Mom would have added another piece of fruit and some chocolate chip cookies to our bag. In some years, that would be all the Christmas we had except for some new socks and some new underwear, and maybe one toy.

I don’t know how she did it, but my sister could make her candy last till February.

One thing nice about having a rural Christmas was that we always had a real tree. Mom would let us decorate it whatever way we wanted to, and Decoration Day was always fun.

One of the things not so nice about being in the country in the winter time was that we usually only had one pot-bellied stove in the kitchen for heat. In one house, we did have a fireplace in the living room. Have you ever woken up with frost on the inside of the window in your bedroom. That’s a real treat.

Yes, growing up in the country was tough, but it was also very rewarding. We ate well, we learned how to work hard, we learned how to make and/or fix things and we learned how to appreciate the things that we did have.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Don’t forget Cookies and Milk with Santa on Dec. 7 at the Bayless/ Salyer House at 9th and Townsend. The kids can tell Santa what they want for Christmas and have cookies, milk and decorate cookies (if they so desire) from 2-4 p.m.

Also, let us know if you would like to use the Bayless/Salyer House for a family reunion, shower or other get together.

Lynn Hilburn is an officer in the Barry County Genealogical and Historical Society, and invites all to come and join meetings, to provide information about their families or to look up information about their families. Hilburn may be reached at hlhilburn@hotmail. com.