Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Low tech technology in France after WW2

It was another cold February days. It started out below zero F and warmed up into the single digits above. Fortunately there was no wind and in the afternoon, when I cut wood, it was not all that bad. Things are going to warm up marginally and that is a good sign.

I got my 272 Husky out of the shop and when I tried to run it it had no top end. When it reached cutting RPM it would bog. I need to get a book on chainsaws and find out where the lean screw is.

This morning I cooked bacon and made toast. My mother taught me how to cook bacon as a kid. The trick is to use a low temperature and keep turning it. That way you get a nice flexible strip. Then I made some toast. I looked for grapefruit juice in the refrigerator and there wasn't any. Had to settle for orange juice. How deprived does a guy get? I'm not a big breakfast eater but do like bacon and toast.

Then I had to go outside and get the stove going. Since Linda has been gone I have not tended the stove at midnight. As a result it goes out in the night and the temperature falls to 50 degrees F in the house. That isn't so bad.

As a matter of fact that is the way it was in the house I grew up in in France. In the morning my dad would get the potbelly stove going, mom would fire up the wood cooking stove and make breakfast. I know that sounds pretty primitive but my dad was raised on a farm and my mom grew up dirt poor in Norther Wisconsin during the depression. My grandfather was on the road as a glazier working on green houses and his pay check was hit and miss. She did learn to cook and do laundry with tubs and a washboard dragged into the kitchen.

When my Dad was assigned to LaRochelle France after WW2 the house we lived in was similar to what my mom grew up in. She took to it like a duck to water and all the other army wives used to flock to our house to see how she operated and get a weekly bath. Thats right, when my brother and I were in school all the ladies came over and took baths. My mom was a virtuoso on operating all that low speed French period technology. Her father taught mom and her brother how to wire and that was another useful skill to have. I can still see her on a stepladder running wires into that ancient fuze panel. The panel had round fuzes if you remember those.

That was the happiest period in my mother's life and she hated to come back to the United States.