Breckinridge County KyArchives History .....Childhood Days 
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Dana Brown http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00005.html#0001067 October 14, 2006, 9:41 pm

Book Title: A Glimpse Of The Past

The life of country children seventy or eighty years ago was very dull based on 
today's standards, but to them and their childhood friends it was a happy 
experience.  The things they were familiar with were the best at that time, and 
crude as they were, they were far advanced over these of their parents when 
they were young.  The average country life was about the same for young and 
old, whether they were rich or poor.  There were so few practiced methods by 
country families in making a living that their applications were used by all, 
making closer association necessary.  Families with enough cash to live 
comfortably one year today would have been considered rich.
   Each child shared a part of responsibilities needed in maintaining a home, 
and he accepted his responsibilities without complaint, because he was born at 
a time when all children accepted this as a must.  The toiled in the fields and 
home, aware of the need for such and knowing it took work and cooperation of 
the entire family to eke out a living for all.  Their taking part in all family 
activities not only paid their keep, but also prepared them to succeed alone if 
and when it became necessary.
   Toys were crude and few, and recreation was for weekends and after church.  
Marbles, town-ball, horseshoes, wrestling and foot racing were the games.  
Gathering nuts, persimmons, pawpaws, wild grapes and swimming in the old 
swimming hole, furnished seasonal recreation.  Apple peelings, bean hullings, 
corn shuckings, neighborhood singings and church were the social offerings.  
All these would be scoffed at by the youth of today, but they were a source of 
great pleasure then.
   Eight-year old children know more about the facts of life in this modern 
age, than children did at the age of fifteen when the writer was a girl.  The 
sensation following the first date was the first sign of adulthood, and was 
followed by couples being more interested in the opposite sex.
   All fashions were presenting a new look.  Haircuts and shaves gave the males 
a better and younger appearance, while the females changed their hair and added 
a little makeup for the benefit of their admirers, but at times, at the 
displeasure of their parents and elderly people.  New suits, dresses, hats and 
wide ties made new personalities out of both young and old.  This new trent 
gave the feminine dress more frills, but left the hem and necklines at decent 
and respectable positions, leaving that which was hidden to the imagination of 
observers and admirers.  If present day fashions had been paraded before 
fathers and mother of the early or mid 1900s, by today's women and girls, 
church bells would have been rung and ridgers sent out, warning the neightbors 
to enter into prayer because the end of time must surely be near.
   Whether they were justified in their alarm over the overplay of sex appeal 
is an unanswered question, as of the present, and whether right or wrong, 
modern fashion is revelaing the silhouette of the feminie body so completely, 
little is left to the imagination of either sex.
   Before metropolitan fashons were introduced to small town and country fold, 
little grooming was done and that was periodically.  There were no barbershops 
in rural communities; men shaved themselves occasionally, making their ages 
difficult to estimate.  Mom and Pop did the shingling for the boys; women and 
girls let their hair grow uncut and changed their coiffeurs by braiding, 
twisting, matting, ratting, or curling.  About 1900, barbers set up shop in 
stores in rural communities and operated on Saturdays only, charging from five 
to ten cents for shaves, ten to twenty cents for haircuts.  Young women and 
girls began having their haircut and using beauty aids about 1915.  This simple 
and inexpensive beginning has ballooned into a multibillion-dollar business 
with all Americans as customers either as users of their products individually 
or by paying artists to apply the technique.
   There were no cars or planes in the early 1900s, and the nearest railroad 
was five miles or more away from most families; very few had an opportunity to 
see or ride a train.  The Hack, a horse drawn carriage, was the fastest means 
of travel.  Speed was four to seven miles per hour.  The average boy walked, 
rode a horse or rode on a horse drawn wagon.  The money boys had a buggy or 
surrey, pulled by well-groomed horses, to carry them around.  Horses and oxen 
were the power media prior to 1900.  Ox temas were slower but more powerful.  
There were few roads and they were one-lane dirt passageways, which were the 
highways except a few privately owned and maintained roads called turnpikes, 
and a toll or fee was charged for their usage.
   News traveled slowly, and only a few weekly and monthly newspapers and 
magazines were available in most rural communities and when those receiving 
them had finished reading, they were passed on to neighbor's for their 
perusal.  The Ladies Birthday Almanac was a must in every home; it gave a 
twelve months advanced weather forecast and all the signs of the Zodiac.  
Farmers never sowed or reaped without referring to it for guidance, and the 
altering of livestock was also based on its predictions.  Women used its hints 
in timing events and household duties, and when a child, animal or fowl was 
born, its signs predicted their future, enabling their guidance toward a 
successful life.
   Children at the beginning of the twentieth century had little choice of 
clothing.  It was grown on the farm and processed into clothing by members of 
each individual family.  Wool was made into winter wear for the family and 
blankets and comforts to snuggle under and keep warm during cold winter 
nights.  Cotton and flax fibers were woven into cloth, and manufactured into 
summer clothing, sheets, pillowcases, curtains and other household needs.  
Women folks, with needle, thread and thimble, made by hand all clothing and 
household needs.  The skins of animals were tanned and processed into leather 
for making harness for work stock and footwear for the family, which were made 
by parents or the local cobbler.  Children went barefoot from early spring 
until late fall, until they were fifteen or sixteen years of age, an in so 
doing, made the bottoms of their feet so tough, they could run over briars, 
grain stubble or gravel with the greatest of ease.
   The first store shoes available to rural Kentuckian's were called brogans, 
and made of split leather.  If one of a pair was made from outside grain 
leather, it lasted longer than the other, which was made from the inner side, 
after the leather was split.  They were classified as split-leather shoes.  
Parents estimated the size of their children's feet and bought accordingly.  
They fitted their feet to the shoes, rather than the shoes to their feet, thus 
causing ingrown toe nails, calluses, corns and bunions to torment them the 
remainder of their lives.
   I doubt that anyone would want to go back to the enviroments of long ago 
that were accepted willingly in that era, because there were no others to cause 
dissatisfaction.  Being forced to adjust to the customs of the day, these 
hardships and experiences prepared everyone to adjust to any challenge 
encountered.  When the 1898 and 1930 depressions struck our nation, 
Kentuckian's met the challenge and carried on without depending on relief 
agencies for existence.  It is doubtful that people living today will be able 
to meet the next depression, or financial catastrophe, which will surely come, 
as did those who survived and pulled through one or both of the ones mentioned 
above.  They won't be able to meet it on their own power.

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