Oh yes, the good old days! They were probably back in the 1900s and 1920s.
People back then were ingenious in knowing how to get along with simple things and how to live off the land.
For instance, every home had a vegetable garden and the women knew how to preserve food by canning the produce to have food in the pantry all year long. Potatoes were kept in the cellar in a big box of farm soil. This way they were preserved for many months.
The farmers had horses to plow the fields – no tractors back then. My grandfather, Albert Nordby, who owned the property where the Victory Flagpole now stands, had a lovely team of horses named Pat and Mike, who plowed all 80 acres from Lake Drive to Edling’s farm on the west, Ryan Lake on the north and Xerxes Avenue and a little dirt road where Memorial Drive is now, on the east and southeast. It took quite a few days to plow the whole farm.
The acreage where the Flagpole stands used to be a melon patch – both muskmelons and watermelons – and other crops like potatoes, tomatoes, turnips and corn. There were no security systems back then, so grandpa set up a tent with a lit lantern in it, so any intruders (melon stealers) would think someone was standing guard all night. Oh the good old days! The melon patch area was sold to the Minneapolis Park Board in 1911.
The Nordby house, which was on the farm, is still there. It was built in 1906 and faces Lake Drive, which was a dirt road back then. The house had no running water or toilet facilities. So what did people do? For water there was a big cistern outside the kitchen area. When it rained, which was quite often, the water collected in the cistern and a small hand pump on the kitchen counter pumped it into the house.
As for the other necessities, there was a two-holer outhouse back by the barn. These were pretty common back then, but I can’t believe the rumor about stocking them with Sears catalogs. So what did people do at night? Trek to the back yard? I heard that each bed had a chamber pot beside or under it and there probably was a community commode for all to use.
That’s the way people lived! They were happy and hardy, and didn’t know any different until present day technology took over.
Oh, for the good old days!