Family history, Hunt

Harry “Hal” Hendrick and Effa “Effie” Ada Hunt May biography

[recollections by grandchildren Charles “Chuck” LaVerne May and Gloria “Jean” Jean May Huffman Cavanaugh, June 29, 1994]

· They lived in an old farm house with no electricity, no running water, no sewer, no phone

· Chuck recalls asking his father Robert if he could call somebody while they were visiting Hal and Effie, and Robert responded, “You gonna call ‘em through the fenceposts?”

· Used oil lamps for light at night

· Churned their own butter and made their own bread

· Meals were nothing fancy or special, just good home cooking

· The outhouse was poorly located (near the fresh-water well)

· Chuck remembers Hal didn’t take very good care of the place and often let things run down beyond repair. Once he fetched Bob to help him pull a cow out of the mud that was “down” (meaning it couldn’t walk around and was fatally weak). They tried to use a pulley to get it back  on its feet, but it didn’t work

· Everything was muddy when it rained, even the roads; rural roads were not graveled yet

· Chuck remembers Effie sitting in a wooden rocker with leather seat and arms looking out the kitchen window to the southeast, surveying everything

· The kitchen was actually a lean-to shack that stepped down slightly from the adjacent dining room dominated by a big oak table and chairs

· Jean remembers being afraid of the upstairs of the house; a very steep and spindly staircase led to faceless dolls sitting at the top of the landing (Effie made dolls to sell, and they were piled about in various states of development)

· An old iron post bed sat in the bedroom with a porcelain potty nearby; perfumed powder covered the dresser and everything else. These two smells mixed with an untraceable musty smell