Growing up Reildelberger:

Summers always seemed like happy reruns. Playing ball in the yard and eating vegetables from Dad’s garden. At least in the summer the long walk to the two-seater outhouse didn’t involve possible hypothermia. Jeanette and I use to walk from the house to the outhouse with towels wrapped around our heads. It was years ago so I can’t remember if we were trying to act like brides or practicing to become nuns. We danced the jitterbug in the living room to the sounds of Elvis or the Righteous Brothers.

When summer was winding down and the calendar getting to the final days of August, the garden would soon become a sore point. Sure the vegetables were great to eat during the summer and nice to have in the winter. Canning all the fruits and vegetables so they could be eaten during the winter made us vow to never can again! Canning was such a pain we almost looked forward to the start of school. Walking back and forth to grade school in Pierron was cold during the winter, but the experience of a three-class school was interesting. Grades 1-3 were one class; grades 4 – 6 were another class, while 7th and 8th were separate classes. Only 12 – 14 kids were in each class, with only a few kids moving between classes each year.

Trying to stay warm in our bedrooms during the winter could be a constant problem. Each bedroom upstairs had small vents then provided even smaller amounts of warm air. It was tough to keep the rooms warm those cold winter nights and we would have to keep the doors up to the hall-less stairwell to try to get a bit more warmth.

If keeping warm in the winter wasn’t enough, running water was just a rumor to us. We had to lug water into the house. If we wanted to bath or wash dishes, we had to heat the water up, no hot water tank. Jeanette always had to wash the dishes, and I had to dry. Bath time was, interesting. We had a small round metal tub. Jeanette and I would wash up first. Then Tom, or Tom and Terry once Terry was old enough, would wash up after us. Us girls would tease the boys that we pee’d in the bathwater. Tom said, “Thanks! That must be what has been making us boys so damn handsome!” But we would get our revenge later, at the two-seater outhouse.

Like Lincoln’s log cabin, the two-seater outhouse is a fond matter of history and legend in our childhoods. There was one large seat and one smaller one. One day Jeanette and I decided we wanted to get a picture of Tom and Terry in the outhouse. I guess we were a prelude to Woodward and Bernstein and wanted to get the “pewp” on their outhouse “business”. Time was a critical issue in this plan. Terry was small enough that we could outrun him, but Tom was faster. We had to time the picture to make sure Tom’s pants were down at this ankle. We grabbed the trusty brownie camera and crept up, quietly, to the outhouse. Throwing up the door, we snapped our picture and ran like hell. Although the picture is missing, the memory of childhood laughter echoes even through the hardest times in life.

More fun outside was hanging up the laundry. Since we didn’t have running water, do didn’t have a dryer either. God dried the clothes hung up on the line. During the winter this would amount to freeze-dried clothes. During extreme bad weather we had to hang up the wet clothes in the basement or in the kitchen.

Terry, our youngest brother, first seemed like a little doll that Jeanette and I could play with. The only problem was that unlike a doll, he would cry through the night and keep us awake. Since we didn’t get the benefit of the old pee-bath water; we needed our beauty sleep! 

Now, Jeanette’s Betsy Wetsy doll was fun. You could feed Betsy Wetsy a bottle and she would pee in her diapers. This was before we had children and the whole bottle/pee/diaper thing had maternal charm. Dad almost had us peeing in OUR pants when he put mustard in Betsy Wetsy’s diaper; we thought the doll had pooped its pants!

Some Friday evenings we would walk down and pickup up Dad from the bar. Dad was a bit philosophical about it, “I’ll get in the same trouble if we go back now or if we go back in two hours.” This meant that we got to play pinball, have some candy and drink soda. We liked it, even though we now trouble would be brewing when we did get home. Finally Dad would leave. The unpaved road had the center higher than the sides. Dad would walk down center while Jeanette and I walked on each side of him, as human crutches to help him stagger home. I’m sure we made for quite a sight. Once Dad got home we would lie down on the linoleum floor, doing his best to ignore the yelling coming from Mom. Sometimes, one of the kids would even get him a pillow to lay his head on.

Sis. Who would have thought that we would survive our childhood? We somehow managed to marry two strange, yet wonderful, men and mold them into good husbands. We’ve had children and one of us is even a grandmother (the YOUNG of us I might add). Even living in different two different time zones we have managed to remain sisters and friends, even though we only have three good hips between us.