- Utopia Memories, Part 2 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.
“My father butchered five large, fat hogs each fall. We had several large tables heaped up with fat. Sausage was made and crammed in cloth bags. The fat sides were salted down, the hams and shoulders were hung in a small building and a smudge burned under them for days to cure them. The fat was rendered in a large 30-gallon iron kettle set on a fire in the open, and stirred with a long stick. This was strained out into 10-gallon tin cans for lard.
“We canned cherries, black berries, goose berries, peaches and apples by the 100-half gallon jars. We had fresh apples in big wooden boxes, I supposed 6 feet square, in the cave. I remember brother Earl lifting me up so I could reach over the top of the box and get me an apple. We made lots of sour kraut which was packed down in 20- or 30-gallon jars.
“Wash day was every Monday, no matter what. Stacks and stacks of clothes would accumulate. There would be dozens of dirty overalls and shirts, bedding and towels. They were all soaked in cold water overnight. Then in a tub with a hand wash board, they were rubbed clean. Then they would be boiled in the large iron kettle in the yard. Using a two prong long handled wooden fork they would be lifted out of the kettle and into another tub of cold water and rinsed and then hung out to dry. One procedure did not do them all and the procedure from tub to tub went on for most of the day. By late afternoon we had clothes all over the yard, the long clothes lines were full and some were hung on the barbed wire fence around the garden and others laid out on the grass.
“All were starched and ironed by a sad iron (“sad was an old English word meaning “solid” and often referred to the heavier cast irons, usually weighing 5 to 9 pounds), heated on the coal stove. This meant many hours more of work before it was all done, and then we could start again.
“Later on, we bought a washing machine where you turned a wheel and some paddles swished the clothes around and washed them. I would stand on a chair and turn the wheel. This was a marvel intended as the last word in taking the drudgery out of a women’s work.
“The handles of the irons, at first, were made as part of the iron and so they would get very hot. You would use a pad of cloth to keep from burning your hand, but it still got very hot. Later they were made with detachable wooden handles, and we thought this was the last word, nothing could ever equal that.
“Perhaps two weeks before Christmas we would begin to hear that Santa Claus was coming. We had few pictures and colored pictures were very rare, so the image of that fabled man was more or less by word of mouth. We would each learn a poem about Christmas. On Christmas Eve we would hitch up the wagon and have some jingle bells on the harness. If it was snowing, the merrier it was. We could not find out why they were taking some boxes and packages, but we didn’t let that bother us. We would drive over to Utopia to the school house, where for a week or so the children had made festoons, a chain of popped corn and cranberries and had used some red and green heavy paper and made circles, looped and glued one to the other to make a chain, which were then festooned about the walls. We never knew how it happened, but expect our parents did, there would be a large tree of bare limbs draped with cotton battling with apples and oranges hung on the tree. They would have some candles on the tree and would light them just before Santa Claus came.
“Each of the children would recite their poem and sing some songs. After that, Santa Claus always came in with a bag of gifts. We would get cast iron toys, little trains and wagons, rubber balls and dolls. We wore mittens made by mother, but on Christmas we usually got some hand knitted ones, with checker blocks in two colors on the backs, which were highly prized. Everyone got a bag of nuts, candy, an orange and an apple.
“A day at school was quite different than it is today. Everyone washed their hands and faces clean and put on clean clothes. In the winter time, I wore a wool dress with an apron over it so not to get the woolen dress dirty as we had no way of cleaning it. Long black ironclad stockings, and in bad weather, long leggings that buttoned down the sides and high-topped shoes, sweaters, a wool coat and woolen stocking cap. Underneath all this, we wore long-legged and longsleeved heavy underwear. Of course, we got up in a bedroom without any heat and went to school in all kinds of weather.
“We walked a mile and a quarter to the Utopia school, and took our lunch. The school consisted of eight grades with one teacher, and 20 to 30 students. The school room had black boards at both ends of the room and windows on the sides. At the front of the room was a potbellied coal stove and a raised dais(structure) with the teacher’s desk. One class would recite, usually with blackboard explanations by the teacher, while the rest of the pupils studied. We used slates a great deal and washed them off with a wet sponge. This saved buying paper. We threw quite a lot of paper wads and Ruby Rimmer and I had lots of giggling spells. If the teacher thought some boys had misbehaved, they would be called up to the teacher’s desk and given a whipping with a switch.
“At recesses we played games, ran races and dug holes in the soil along the embankment beside the road. Around the north side of the building in the winter time, ice would usually form. I remember many times holding on to the coattails of Rollin Bailey while he ran as fast as he could and I would slide on the ice.
“In the afternoon we would be homeward bound once again, sometimes through deep snow and snow drifts, as they never cleaned the snow off the roads, as there was no equipment to do it with. One day the older ones (brothers and sisters) got ahead of me and I cut across Snider’s pasture and my mother had watched me coming. The snow was so deep and it was snowing more. She said all she could see of me was my head and shoulders and she really gave it to the older ones for not looking after me, But I had enjoyed every minute of it.
“One night, William Purkable, who lived about two miles south of us, knocked on the door and awakened us. The yard was light as day and our large barn was ablaze. It was too late to save anything. Five horses burned to death and large quantities of grain, hay, harness and saddles. The hay smoked for days afterward. We were a sad family for a long time after that. I remember brother Henry was so young he did not realize what had happened and he was laughing and father said he was the only one who could laugh.
“Another time, William Alexander came to our house after a bad storm and told us his house had blown away. His house was about a quarter of a mile northeast of us. Father and mother rushed to their aid. They had three or four small children and they were brought to our house and we had a doctor come out and those kids were bandaged from head to toe. The house was splintered into nothing. And our house had been moved about two inches on the foundation. We had no room for them, but they stayed for some time with us until they could get on their feet again and rebuild their house. For years after that we were scared of storms. We went to the cave every time a bad storm came up, whether it was the middle of the night or not.
“Because of the lack of communications and travel, our world was a small one and people lived close to the soil and God. We wore work clothes and Sunday clothes. The men wore tight fitting wool suits, white shirts with detachable collars and cuffs, the collars were made of celluloid, very stiff and very high. We did not have any in between season fabrics, so the men wore these heavy wool suits and coats on Sundays the year around. To go coatless, was unthinkable. The women wore dresses just off the ground, usually black, tight-fitting blouses, large sleeves and flowing skirts. Everyone had long hair and large picture hats were worn, trimmed either in feathers or hand fashioned flowers and ribbons.
“I remember getting our first telephone. It was a large box affair that hung on the wall and you rung whatever number you wanted. It had black carbons in it and every time it was lightening you had to take the carbons out and clean the black smoke off of them. We were on a party line and we kids would listen in every time the telephone rang. I remember the prize fight between James Jeffries and Jack Johnson, on July 4, 1910 in Reno, Nevada. Johnson was a negro and dad was so interested and thought it would be bad to have a negro beat a white man. The returns were telegraphed to Eureka by rounds and then someone in Eureka rung an alarm number on the phone and everyone on the party line would listen in as he gave the results of the round. (Johnson won in the fifteenth round after the fight had gone on for approximately one hour. Jeffries had not fought in six years. A little over 18,000 people attended the fight.)
“Our first automobile was a thrill with square fenders, running boards and the top strapped on with leather straps. The boys would take dad out in the pasture and teach him how to drive. Whenever he started it, it would take a leap and rock back and forth. I would ride in the back seat and giggle. I remember dad saying if I would be quiet, he could drive all right. Well, he never got so he could drive very well, as he was so accustomed to driving horses with the command of Gee, Haw, and Whoa.
“In looking backward, I was raised under the most meager of earthly possessions, but as I see it now, it was a heaven on earth, as I never realized I was underprivileged. What with the wonderful sun, the rain, the snow, the warm fires and good earth to cultivate and enjoy the fruits of your endeavors and knowing if you didn’t cultivate, there were no rewards. The pleasures of having the care and love from dumb animals in our world which was small, but never a thought but of peace and serenity with each sunrise, it was a happy time.”
