Skills of Our Parents and Grandparents

Across the Fence #502

Am I the only member of the card-carrying AARP generation who feels technologically challenged? I watch in wonder and frustration as kids, barely out of their diapers, maneuver their way around iPads, computers, smart phones, and TV remote controls. It won’t be long before our two-year old grandson will be showing us how to install and and use Apps and programs on our computer. 

We live in a different world, where computer technology is built into just about everything we use. It’s like when I’m trying to figure out where all the different-colored cables go and if they are input or output, and then what buttons do I push to make the darn piece of equipment work properly? We either learn how to use them or get left behind. Sometimes I feel like the train has left the station and I’m running down the track trying to catch it and pull myself aboard.

Last week we had lunch with my cousins, Julie and Gay, when they were here planting flowers on their parents and our grandparents graves. We talked about how things had changed. That got me thinking about my parents and grandparents and all the skills they had that are becoming lost today. What could they do that most of the high-tech generation has no interest in and wouldn’t have a clue how to do or where to begin? 

We all have different types of skills and expertise. What kind of skills am I talking about that our parents and grandparents had? Lets start with food and canning. How many people know how to can these days? My mother and grandmothers canned everything from vegetables and fruits to meats.

Before the first snowflakes of winter touched the ground, our large garden had been harvested, sampled, canned, and stored in the cellar of our house. The simple, wood shelves were filled with Mason jars containing everything imaginable. A bin on the damp floor was filled with potatoes and carrots. To get to our cellar, we had to go outside and lift up a slanted door in the ground, located next to the house. That led down stone steps to the dark, cool cellar. In the winter we had the job of going outside in the snow and cold, and shoveling the snow off the door before we could open it and get to the cellar. Then we could retrieve all the treasures waiting for us on those shelves. Even though Ma hadn’t asked for it, a jar of strawberry jam often looked too tempting to leave behind.

Last time I was in the cellar, I found two old jars of canned goods that remained on a shelf. The rest were busted on the floor.

So much of what we ate came out of that old cellar, thanks to Ma and Grandma Inga knowing how to can and preserve all the food we grew. They didn’t need to buy cans and jars of food off supermarket shelves as we do today. They never knew how to access a computer, but they kept us well-fed and alive because of their cooking, baking, and canning skills and knowledge. We didn’t have much money when we were young, but we never went hungry.

Ma didn’t buy chicken, fish, or many meat products from a store either. It was cheaper to kill and butcher our own. I remember catching chickens, chopping their heads off with a tobacco axe, and helping Ma singe and pluck the feathers off. Then she cut the chicken up and cooked it. Now most people, including us, go to the supermarket and get a package of chicken parts from the freezer section. Most people don’t think of how that chicken found its way to the store. We also caught fish in the Mississippi River to take home. Today, securing our food becomes much more impersonal.

Another thing I thought about was how seldom we went out to eat. Ma provided us three meals a day, plus “coffee” mid-morning and afternoon. I don’t know how she had time to do all that, plus wash the dishes, clean the house, wash all our clothes with a wringer washer, hang them out to dry, iron them, darn socks, and patch blue jeans with holes in them. Today people buy expensive jeans with the rips and holes already built-in. Ma would have been horrified if we had gone off the farm with holes in our clothes.

When I stop to think about it, I don’t know how she did all that, plus help us four kids, day after day, seven days a week, with no vacations.

When we talked about those days while having lunch, Julie mentioned that we seldom went out to eat when we were young. It was a big deal to go to the root beer stand and get a hotdog and root beer. Now I think people eat out more than they eat at home. A trip to Viroqua was a big deal and a trip to La Crosse, maybe once a year, became a real adventure.

Growing, producing, canning, preserving, and preparing the food we eat is just one of the many skills our parents and grandparents had that is fast disappearing from most people’s lives in the high-tech world we live in. My mother never operated a computer, talked on a smart phone, programmed a DVR, or drove a car, but she had skills and knowledge that were far more essential for our family to survive, and helped us become who we are today.

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