Grandma’s house
My grandparents Ed and Ida’s house in Burlington, Wyoming, had a distinct scent that I remember to this day. It was not like any other smell I can identify, a kind of earth smell, like healthy dirt slightly damp. There was a bit of humidity, noticeable because out-of-doors was desert. They had indoor plumbing but I knew even as a child that the plumbing had come as an afterthought. The house had a tall foundation of concrete, wide steps down into a spacious basement that stood three or four feet above ground, with windows. The main house was over the basement, with tall front steps to the front door that faced the highway. There was no sidewalk to those front steps, and no sidewalk along the highway. No one ever used the front door. The back door was on the side of the house, next to the driveway. It was half way up between the main house and the basement, with a concrete pad outside it and a flat concrete area inside. There was a collection of useful items lined up there: tall rubber boots, hip waders, pitchfork, hoes, shovels, hooks with brooms and aprons and cloth bags of mysterious things. One of the bags held clothespins.
Out in the yard there was a full size apple tree, taller than any other I had ever seen. It was well designed for climbing; my sister and I got very near the top of the tree. There were lilac bushes and Russian olive trees. The grass was persistently dry and stiff, even when freshly watered. They had a well for water and a sprinkler that made a loud tsht tsht tsht tsht as it rotated back and forth over the grass. Over towards the gate into the fields and animal pens stood a pair of T shaped posts with ropes or wires strung from one to the other. They were for hanging wet clothes out to dry. I knew because my mother had hung out laundry on her own set in our yard. I have a vague memory of aprons and shapeless calico housedresses hanging on Grandma’s line.
Inside I particularly remember the can for food scraps. It was never allowed to stay long enough to stink much, but it grossed me out. They put it in the compost, as opposed to burn trash, which went into an oil barrel to be burned every few days. They didn’t use much plastic. Grocery sacks were thick brown paper, food came in paper bags, cardboard boxes, or metal cans. Foam egg cartons and foam meat trays were fairly new.
Grandma served homemade white bread, its round top risen into a half-circle, much lighter and less filling than my mother’s whole wheat bread. As a child I thought it was odd that Grandma served white bread when my mother would not willingly let white bread into her home. As an adult I can see that white bread was a status symbol and easier to make than whole wheat bread. Grandma had eaten whatever bread they could make from the grain her family grew themselves; being able to eat white bread was a blessing, a sign of financial success. She made her own until she physically and mentally could not anymore. They were people who did for themselves as much as possible.
