- Utopia Memories, Part 1 of 2,
“Lucy Rockhill Moore was born on the Rockhill farm near Utopia, on Feb. 17, 1899. She graduated from Eureka High School in 1918 and was married in 1922 to Morgan M. Moore. They operated Moore Abstract, established in 1887, until she retired in 1969, two years after her husband died. During her lifetime, Mrs. Moore was recognized as one of the first women in the State of Kansas to be licensed as an abstracter.
What follows are some of the memories Lucy had growing up near Utopia, located about eight miles northeast of Eureka.
“Our sitting room was carpeted with hand loomed carpet made from old clothes cut in strips and sewed together, stretched very tight over a matting of straw and tacked at the edges of the room with carpet tacks. There was a wood or coal burning stove which belched forth smoke every time the door was opened to put in additional fuel. There was a shelf on the wall, on which we kept an eight-day Seth Thomas clock, which needed winding once a week. On each side of the clock, we would have photographs of family members, or dear departed ones. In the center of the room was a stand table on which we kept our reading material, consisting of Capper’s Weekly, Youths Companion, Drover’s telegram and the Bible. There were straight back, wooden chairs and a small rocking chair, without arms, so it was easier to handle and rock a baby to sleep.
“Our kitchen was dominated by a large iron stove, four lids, an oven and a warming oven above. It sat out a few feet from the wall, because of the intense heat and between the wall and stove, we kept our fuel box. We had an oblong table covered by an oil cloth. At one side of the wall was our wash stand, with a small mirror above it. On the wash stand was a basin to wash our faces and hands in, and a water bucket with a dipper to drink from. Towels hung above this, and there was a closet in the lower part to keep the towel supply. In one corner of the room was a board nailed to the wall, with other nails protruding to hang our coats, hats and sunbonnets. Just off the kitchen and opening into it was a pantry, a small, dark closet of an affair, with shelves to the ceiling. We kept our sugar, flour, coffee, oatmeal, rice and some home-canned food in this. It was so you could walk in it, and we hung our dishpans on one wall and hung the tea towels over the pans. Some of the floor space was taken up with barrels of food.
“We had three bedrooms. One had just one bed for father and mother. It was oak with the head part very high, about six feet, and the foot part almost as high. There was a dresser to match. A straight back wooden chair was also in the room. The two other bedrooms had two beds and there was no room for anything else. The clothes closets were small and dark and were always bulging with clothes.
“The house was completed with two small porches, in the front and the back, with iron scrapers to clean our shoes before stepping on the porch, and a gunny sack on the porch to finish the job.
“Everything was utilized. When the dishes were broken, the bits were hammered down and broken up into chicken grit. (Given to chickens to aid in their diets and digestion). A garment was bought, or as so many times happened, was homemade, and worn until it was in holes or threadbare in spots, and then it was made over out of the best spots into a garment for someone a bit smaller. When it was no more capable of being used as a garment, it was cut in strips and made into carpet. When the carpet was worn, the old pieces were used to place over a coop of small chickens with an old hen to keep out the weather, and when it no longer could be used for this, the last shreds were put in some ditch with other refuse to keep the soil from washing.
“Our mode of travel was a spring wagon with a seat across the front for the driver of the horses, and we usually had some hay in the back part where us kids rode. We later had covered buggies and finally had a surrey, which was really a spring wagon with a top. If we came to Eureka, it meant an all-day trip. We went to church every Sunday at the Utopia School house, and some of the time, to School District #19, northeast of Utopia. Later, a church was built at Utopia. We had large crowds at church and I remember having oyster soup suppers in the church basement. I remember the ladies of the church having quilting bees in the second story of the Utopia store building.
“We had very little sickness among the children, but my mother seemed to be sick quite a lot. I remember her having the hives so bad. To get the doctor meant a drive to Eureka and then the doctor driving back with a horse and buggy. We had Dr. Dillon, a tall man with a long beard and mustache. My grandmother smoked Cubebs, a medicinal cigarette made from the pepper plant, Piper cubeba, for catarrh (which was build-up of mucus in the nose and sinuses).
“My earliest recollections in such a large family are mostly concerned with food. Our winter fare was mostly meat and potatoes. I remember cutting the tops and roots off a three-gallon crock full of radishes, taking them out to the well and pumping water on them and pouring the water off, spilling most of them out on the grass and repeating the process until they were nearly clean, and all were eaten at one meal.
“The only things I remember we bought from Joe Smith’s Grocery Store were flour, about 10, 100-pound sacks at a time; sugar in 100-pound sacks; coffee beans, which we ground; salt and pepper. At rare times, such items as prunes, rice and cranberries were bought. Joe Smith’s Grocery Store was located in about the middle of the block in Eureka, on the west side of Main Street between Second and Third Streets. I remember a small glass covered case where he kept store candy, gum drops, candy corn and licorice. Barrels of crackers, pickles, prunes, tobacco in big slabs which was cut off for chewing. The back part of the store had 100-pound sacks of flour and sugar. We would bring a lunch with us and we small kids would sit on the flour sacks and eat. I was always shy and he would always say to my mother that I had such blue eyes. I rather wished he would just go away and keep his compliments to himself.
