Kettle River news

National Night Out is Tuesday, Aug. 1. Come for a meal at 5 p.m., stay to visit with friends and neighbors.

The Kettle River city council meeting is Tuesday, 7 p.m. on Aug. 8 at the Kettle River senior center.

Ma & Pa Kettle Days is Saturday, Aug. 12 with a pancake breakfast at 8 a.m., pie social at noon and bingo at 3 p.m. Mark and Tina Tollgaard are Ma & Pa Kettle, and Sam Huhta is the grand marshal. There will be a steak fry at the Star Club on Friday night and a presentation by Mark Munger at the Suomalainen Kirkko on Highway 73 on Sunday. (See the ad on Page 5.)

The next Finnish Luncheon is at noon on Wednesday, Aug. 16 at the Kettle River Senior Center.

Tickets for the Kettle River American Legion Post 360 rifle drawing are available from Legion members.

Get your team ready for the pickleball court, which will be on the basketball court near the pavilion.

The old house

When I was young, we lived 40 miles from Grandma, but it was like going back in time. She had a crank party line phone, which she still had until my son was about 4 years old.

There was an outhouse at the back of her yard, and a mulberry tree just outside the outhouse. Mulberry juice is like permanent ink: if it gets on you, it takes forever to wash off.

Grandma didn’t have running water. She had a hand pump in the house, which pumped water from the cistern. It was not water that we could drink. There was a flap on the rain drain which she would flip when it rained, so the rainwater would go from the roof into the cistern. The well for the drinking water was in the yard.

During the summer, Grandma had a large pail on the top of the clothes line pole. She would fill it with water to be warmed by the sun. After dark, we could use that water to shower. You got a little water to get wet, soaped up and washed, then used the spray nozzle that was on the end of the hose to rinse off. In the winter, we took our baths in the washtub in the middle of the kitchen in front of the cook stove. Her cast iron cook stove had a reservoir that we heated water in for washing dishes. She had an oil heater in the dining room that heated the house in the winter.