Walter & Emma Smith: Their Family's Story in Their Own Words

Christopher Progress Newspaper

Emma Lutes, 1921

CHRISTOPHER, January 1921 — At 11 o’clock last Sunday night the stork visited the home of Constable C. W. Lutes, 512 South Emma Street and presented him with a fine nine and three-quarters pound baby girl.

Mr. Lutes was all smiles Monday morning and although he preferred a boy, he was as proud as he could be of his little daughter. Both mother and baby are doing fine.

The Progress congratulates Mr. and Mrs. Lutes.

###

Growing Up In Christopher, Illinois by Emma

I don’t remember being in my mother’s womb, being born at home in January 1921, or losing our house, car, and piano during my early years. I don’t remember being ill at all as mom must have made it easy for us.

I do remember living on South Emma Street in Christopher and playing house with my sister Laura, under the round, dark dining room table covered with a lace cloth that dropped down to the floor.

I remember giving my doll a bath in the rain barrel that sat under the down spout from our roof. The doll was ruined since it was made of paper. I remember going with my dad who was fire chief to see the fire wagon pulled by horses named Dan and Bob.

When I was born on the south side of Christopher, mom (Bessie Duckworth Lutes) and dad (Charles W. Lutes) bought the house that dad’s nephew, Russell owned. The nephew went to California. So dad and mom about that time got married and bought that house on South Emma Street. When I was about five, we moved to the north side of Christopher.

My favorite pet was a large Shepherd and Collie-mix dog named Shep and how could I forget the hot summer dad sheared him of his lovely, reddish brown hair. He then looked like a wolf.

I can’t remember being afraid in storms, I must have felt safe. We didn’t have much of this world’s goods, but we always felt loved. That was more important anyway.

It was hot in the summer and cold in the winter, but I don’t remember suffering too much. We had fans and sat out under the trees feeling the breeze when it was too hot in the house — of course, mother went inside to fix the meals. I remember sleeping on the porch or the floor many times in summer. We had goose down pillows and covers in the winter.

When we were small, I remember six-button shoes. We used button hooks to fasten and unfasten them.

I remember, except for school and church, the accepted heat was pot belly stoves fired by coal, which was plentiful because we lived over mines of it. Mother was of English descent and when she could find one, we had a cooked goose for Christmas dinner. She always kept the down feathers from them to make our pillows. Our couches and chairs were filled with horsehair instead of the fillings of today. It was bouncy, but came back into place when we arose. I can’t remember what the contents of mattresses were made of, only that they were different from today’s mattresses.

Christopher was a town, I would guess like very many others in the area. It was a mining town. Many people from Europe had come over here to live in Christopher. I remember that the women were especially, especially neat. They cleaned their house every day. I couldn’t imagine doing that today, still can’t.

Many of the residents of Christopher came from Europe: Italy, Slavic counties, Russia, Germany, and worked in the coal mines. We were a very diverse community. At one time we lived on what was called dago hill, a nickname for Italians. Each area in Christopher had such a nickname.

They tended to live, as people do, in the part of the town where the people who came from their country lived. So, we had a bob hill and a dago hill. It was just a normal word, not a bad word. I remember a Russian family lived there. So, they came from all parts of Europe and were miners or in the mining business.

Some of them could speak the language of their parents. Their parents spoke their foreign language and had not learned too much English. But, I remember that the children wanted to get away from the foreign language and be more American almost to the point of being snobs.

When mom taught first grade, she said that three-fourths of them couldn’t speak English at all. The others interpreted for her. It didn’t take long for them to learn English when they were around the other kids. But, they spoke their parent’s language at home.

I remember mom making her own soaps with strange ingredients. She took ashes, fat, shoot and made big ugly looking bars. She had little bits of lye in it, which may have been found naturally in the ashes. It was vile. It burned your skin and stunk. I wanted nothing to do with it.

If we had a toothbrush, we wash our teeth with salt or soap. Salt was gritty and probably not good for your teeth. You didn’t do that anymore than you had to. But you know we were happy.

In the winter we would wake up in the morning. We would grab our clothes and go back to bed to put them on because it was warmer in bed than in the room. I remember it would freeze a little in the house if there was any liquid about on some bad nights. We slept in long johns, no pajamas back then. We had a clean pair each Sunday and by Saturday we reeked. Saturday night we had a metal bath tub bath and started the new week clean. I remember when I taught school in the country those kids did the same thing. By Friday, that school really stunk. Those were the good old days.

We wore cotton socks. I certainly didn’t have name brand shoes or clothes. I don’t know how my parents afforded to clothe all of us. Mother made most of our dresses. We didn’t wear sports clothing. When I was in Junior High my friend Anna and I were brave enough to wear a sailor suit and anklets in summer, and in the winter some jodhpurs, navy blue and made of corduroy (ed. note: jodhpurs are full-length trousers worn for horseback riding, that are close-fitting below the knee, and have reinforced patches on the inside of the leg.) She probably bought mine so she felt secure wearing hers. We didn’t wear slacks in those days, just dresses. Also, I remember when we went to school they wouldn’t let you in until the first bell.

Mother had taught in the Christopher school system for eight years, so she taught me to read before I went to school. As there was no kindergarten, I went to first grade on the south side of town while I was just five years old, not turning six until January. The girls lined up to go in the school by one door and the boys by another.

Classes in school were not large like they are today. I was not aware of the size. If I remember correctly, there would be around 15 maybe 20 kids in a class. I remember we walked to school; everyone had to walk because nobody, very few had cars. We had to stay on the school grounds until school started and sometimes we were pretty cold by the time we got to go inside. I nearly froze to death because we also had to walk to school in the cold.

The first thing we usually did was sing together. I remember our principal loved to sing and he’d have us sing all kinds of songs. Then we would go to our classrooms. We’d bring our lunches if we lived too far away to walk home, especially if the weather was bad. They were kind of pitiful compared to today’s lunches, but they filled us up. We started school at nine and got out at four.

I’ve seen a lot of change in my lifetime. When we started school in the fall, a lot of children came barefoot, with no shoes. They saved their shoes for winter. I remember going to a friend’s house and the floor was dirt. I don’t think people were any unhappier than they are now. They were just glad to get whatever they could get.

I remember when in the third grade the teacher decided to put on a play. I wanted so badly to be in it, but not everyone could. I was not chosen. It broke my heart. Later in the year she had another and those of us who were not in the first one were in it. I have never wanted to be in a play since. It wasn’t my thing, but I still remember the heart break of the first rejection.

We went to the sixth grade in one school. For the seventh and eighth grades, we had to go across town. I had a real good eighth grade English teacher. She stood for no non-sense and we had to learn how to speak good English.

I remember walking to school and we’d go by a tree that had persimmons. We would pick up the persimmons and eat them. We’d open them up and the seed looked like spoons. There were simple pleasures in those days.

We moved regularly, but I lived the rest of my childhood days in Christopher on the north or west side of town. My twin brothers, Carl and Charles, were born on Cherry Street six years after I entered the world and my brother Jim when I was ten (ed. note: she was about 18 months old and too young to remember when her sister Laura was born.) The doctors in those days came to the homes for births as well as illnesses.

When the Great Depression came, everyone lost what they had and everyone was poor it seemed. All of our lights came from bulbs hanging from covered electrical wires attached to the ceiling. We pulled a chain in order to turn them on and off. We didn’t have any lamps or plug-in appliances.

I remember when we lived on Cherry Street, where Carl and Charles were born, and the kids across the street, the Kauzlarich boys, made a miniature golf course in the vacant lot next door. They charged one penny to play the course, it had several holes. Each hole was a different kind; one sent the ball through a tunnel, probably a tomato juice can or a 5 pound wooden cheese box, painted a bright color. Another hole would send the ball around an obstacle; another would be decorated with stones to go over or through two pillars made of two glass bottles. It took a lot of imagination and we kids of the neighborhood thought it was wonderful and often nagged our parents for pennies or used our small allowances to pay the golf course fee. One day the boys were to be away and asked me to be in charge. I felt really important collecting the pennies. Pennies meant something in those days.

I remember my mother cooking lots of potatoes, apples, and peaches in season and canning them — the over ripes (ed. note: over ripe fruit) were cheap. I guess I got my love to cook with onions from mother. Mother cooked on a coal fueled kitchen stove. I will never understand how she could bake pies on it. Mine are not good even when cooked with an electric oven. Many breakfasts were biscuits and gravy, bacon and eggs, sausage, etc. In the winter it was usually oatmeal. Later we started using cereals.

Dad always had a big garden. He was a good gardener. We canned vegetables and root vegetables — carrots, beets, garlic, turnips, potatoes, rutabaga, onions and sweet potatoes — and they were put down into a root cellar, below ground, to keep until we needed them. We had lots of turnips in season — needless to say it was not our favorite food back then. Milk, bread, and eggs were staples. Bananas, the over ripes, were 25 cents per peck sock. We loved banana pudding and pies. Mom made a lot of jellies and jams, and the bakery sold day old bread at a reduced price. We couldn’t afford to eat out and there were practically no restaurants — especially for the common fellas. Meat was a delicacy, we loved it and when we had it we had lots of roasts and fried chicken on Sundays.

I remember spring cleaning at everyone’s house. The sturdy people would take the rug out to the clothesline, hang it over the line, and we would all take turns beating the dust out of it with a rug beater very similar to a tennis racquet. This happened after the stove was taken down and the pipes cleaned of soot. Windows and curtains were washed and many times the room was repapered. Beds were torn apart and everything washed and aired. Coal stoves made everything dirty and everything had to be cleaned in the only way we could.

I remember that some of the old regal houses when I was a child were the same architecture as the newest houses are today. Most of the houses in our little mining town were small modest houses.

I remember that in the evenings the neighborhood kids came together and played hide and seek until our mothers called us in at dark. We did not have street lights to play under. I didn’t play much with dolls. We didn’t have store bought toys, except for wagons and skates. We made scooters from discarded skates, not the shoe-type. It was fun to squash a tin can and walk on them while stuck to our shoes.

Our games were jacks, jump rope while chanting poems as we jumped sometimes two people together, and hop scotch on marked up sidewalks. I’m not sure where the chalk came from to mark up the sidewalks. I hope not from school.

I remember sitting on the lawn on a blanket while dad mowed the yard and as he came near I inadvertently laid out my hand and the mower clipped it a little. Everyone made a big fuss over me. The sore it made no longer shows through my wrinkles these days.

I remember Shep, my first dog. I haven’t had many. It was a German shepherd mixed with Collie. I got it as a pup, but it grew quickly into a large dog and followed Laura and me everywhere. I guess you could say that it was our protector, though there wasn’t much need of protection in those days.

I remember one hot summer dad decided that Shep needed to have less thick long hair on his body. Dad shaved the whole dog of his long thick hair like he would a sheep. We were horrified as poor Shep looked so awful, like a skinned animal. By winter all his hair grew back and he looked like his old rust-colored self.

Emma, Laura & Shep, ca 1925

We had no car, so I walked wherever I went, school, church, grocery store in all kinds of weather. I grew up in the days of few cars, everyone walked. There were no buses to and from school or the store or drug store or any place else. Because we had to walk so much, I am able to still get around so well at my age of almost 90.

I will never forget the beginning of oleo margarine. When we could afford it we had butter, and then on the market appeared a white lard-like substance with an orange capsule in the package. The idea was to open the capsule onto the white mass and mix it, usually with our hands for the warmth of our hands mixed it best, until it was a nice yellow color. I usually got this job and I hated it. I can still feel that gooey substance on my hands today. This method of mixture continued for several years until the manufacturers decided to mix it themselves with machines.

I remember the first time I saw time-lapse photography. It was of a rose. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Today that seems simple as all the new technology has taken us into a world I cannot understand. I remember that my poor grandmother could hardly accept the world moving by car instead of horse power.

And, airplanes! Whenever one flew over our house we all ran out to watch and listen to it pass over. They were so rare that it was quite a treat to see them.

I remember an incident from my childhood. It was a time during the depression and we had hit an especially low place financially. For my school lunch, mother sliced a turnip and put it between slices of bread. It was weird, but nourishing. I was not fond of turnips then, but I am today.

I remember that most of us had no telephone. When we did get one, it was a party line, that is, 3 or 4 families used the same telephone line. We could all listen in on the community gossip. Often if there was an emergency we had to ask the person talking on the line to please hang up so we could get through to our doctor or whoever we needed to contact.

We finally got a radio and enjoyed listening to it as a family. I remember Saturday nights gathering around to hear a continuing mystery called, The Squeaking Door. Of course westerns, music, and Gospel were plentiful.

I read a lot and couldn’t put a book down until it was finished. I still have this habit. Some of my favorites were Lassie, The Last of the Mohicans, and later Jane Eyre.

At one of our houses we had a well and drew water in a bucket. We had an outhouse where dad grew tall sunflowers to cover it. Outhouses were the bathroom of the time. Someone was hired to regularly go around town to clean the outhouses and carry away the contents. We called these wagons pulled by horses a honey bucket. I can almost smell them today. The rest of the houses where we lived had indoor plumbing.

We always had electricity, but electric ice boxes were rare, so an ice truck came by every day with 50 or 100 pound blocks of ice. The delivery boy brought them in and placed them in our ice chest. Some of the ice chests were very nice pieces of furniture.

When twins Carl and Charles were small, mother tried to keep them dressed alike. They were so different in looks and disposition, likes and dislikes, that they soon changed how they dressed.

Our twin brothers, younger than Laura and I by six years, were big pests. They conspired with each other to spy on us, make fun of our boyfriends, put frogs down our dresses so they jumped around on our backs just above our belts, and were in general nuisances to us young ladies. Our younger brother, Jim, often joined in. Three against one or two of us!

Jim came along late in mother and dad’s life. He loved to try to keep up with his older brothers. They wouldn’t let him go along with them so he followed them at a distance. When they were so far from home that they couldn’t send him home alone, he presented himself and they had to let him tag along.

The three of them had lots of fun. Whatever project one couldn’t think up, the other could. They egged each other on and did many fun things they shouldn’t have done, pranks mostly. They often snickered about some of their pranks as they get older.

Occasionally, mother would let Laura and I ride a small railcar that travelled from Christopher to Sesser and back. It was called the Dinky. We went to Sesser to visit my aunt and uncle, Floy and Ralph Duckworth and their two daughters Vivian and Dorothy. They lived on a farm north of Sesser and we walked from the station to their house.

They had pigs, horses, and cows and the always under foot chickens, with of course the king rooster who crowed at daybreak. Eggs were gathered morning and night. We pushed the cackling hens out of the nest and gathered the eggs in a basket.

It was quite an experience as we went out to the pasture with our cousins, all of us barefoot, to bring home the cows from the pastures each evening. After the cows were milked, Aunt Floy let the milk sit overnight in a crock, the cream would rise to the top. She dipped it off and churned it — this made the butter. If the milk soured, as there was no electricity on the farm, there was cottage cheese to eat.

In the fall, they invited us to come for the harvest season. This was quite an event in our lives. All of the farmers would help each other harvest the wheat. They went from farm to farm with whatever machinery they had and cooperated in the work.

The ladies fixed the meal for the harvest hands. It was quite a meal, usually vegetables from the garden as by then they were plentiful, and fried chicken was heaped high on the platter. What I remember most is the banana pudding. The pudding itself was made from the eggs and milk that were plentiful in very large vats, then put together with graham crackers and bananas. I loved these meals.

Screen doors were essential as flies and other insects were prevalent. The use of DDT has eliminated most of them today (ed. note: the use of DDT, a potent substance used to kill insects, was used extensively by 1945 and then banned as a cancer-causing poison by the USDA in 1972.)

My grandmother Duckworth, the only one I knew, lived on the family farm with mom’s younger sister Cora until Cora got married; I was about ten or eleven. When Aunt Cora got married to Mr. Warren, grandma broke up housekeeping and rented her farm to Uncle Hershel. I think Hershel had been farming for her anyway. And then he moved out onto the farm. I don’t know how long he lived there, but he lived there a while.

Grandma then started living with each of her children; Ralph, Raleigh, and mom took turns having her stay at their houses. When she moved to our house we had just four rooms and Laura and I gave up our room so she could have it for herself when she came to live permanently with us.

It was quite a sacrifice as we lived in a four room house at the time. Mom and dad and the three boys shared a very large bedroom. The boys slept together. My grandmother Duckworth had her own room and Laura and I slept on the pull out