Spend a day in that girl's shoes

I would one day like some of the social service workers that ignored me on the homestead to spend a day in my father’s “kingdom.”

The notorious table that the "family" sat around. Those big metal bowls were used for salad and also bathing indoors. The "oven" on the left was full of kindling. My father would often grab a stick out of there and start randomly beating someone. The door on the right leads to my parents "bedroom"...they were the only ones that had a real bed.

First of all, when they got to the bottom of the hill before having to walk up the hill to the homestead they would remove all makeup, traces of hairspray or perfume, jewelry and don long denim skirts and long sleeved baggy shirts. They would not be allowed to have phones, toilet paper (they can use bark or a leaf to wipe with), any electronics, toothpaste (they can use sage leaves or baking soda), extra clothes, towels (they are a waste…they can dry off  with a washcloth or air-dry). They need to get rid of all candy, gum, any type of food that can’t be grown on the land.

Next can get ready to be assigned a “bed”…probably it would be anything from a moldy hay pile, uneven board pile to just bare boards or dirt in any location. It could be the stable, the main cabin, “library”, a tiny building in the woods, the storage building, or a wood shed that had no sides where snow could blow in. Where-ever they could fit…and if they were “important” enough perhaps they would get a warm, non-drafty soft bed. The not so lucky victims…oh well.

Now if they even got a good night sleep with the snow blowing in and the frost bite and the “brush wolves” howling, they would probably be woken about 5 or 6 am by my father singing loudly “Lift Thy Soul Unto The Lord.” If they didn’t come back with the proper response with let’s say 3.5 seconds, my father would pull a branch off the nearest tree and give them a “thrashing” as he liked to call it. The proper response was “I have my soul lifted up to the Lord.” Even if they said it and their tone wasn’t to his liking or they weren’t loud enough or he just felt like beating someone that day, he would find any excuse to use a stick.

I would love to watch all these Social Service ladies stumbling out of bed on the homestead. He would then criticize them for how they were walking and talking, tell them they were ugly, fat and worthless. And order them to get to their chores. They better not take a glance at their reflection in the storage building window on the way by. If they did, they might get a beating for that, or a lecture and made to write Bible verses on how evil vanity is and their belongings would be searched for mirrors. If any were found, they immediately would be destroyed.

  Any response had to contain “yes papa”, “no papa,”. They better speak in old English terms and not use any slang or any words like “cake, cookie, birthday, monster, stupid, silly, etc.” Birthdays were not allowed to be celebrated. Birthday cake was evil. The social service ladies would have had fun saying “Thou aren’t welcome,” “God bless thee,” “Can I have thy help?” If they were caught not using perfect language, tone and doing their chores perfectly to please Richard they would be humiliated or beat.

They would have fun taking a bath in a large bowl in the living room while Richard sat on a bench and commented on the bodies and told them how fat and ugly they were. Maybe he would pull the scale out while he was at it and make them weigh themselves in front of everyone. No, they would have no towels to cover themselves. Richard did not believe in towels. He believed that humiliation was key to building character.

     In between all this they should do some heavy manual labor, dig some trenches, get dragged by some horses, get kicked in the face by a cow or horse, get a huge rock or piece of wood dropped on their foot, chop piles of wood, build a few stone walls, peel mountains of vegetables while cutting their fingers open, spill boiling pots of water on their hands and legs, explode a few pipe bombs on themselves, break a few bones, fall a few times down a ladder or off an uneven surface, milk a few cows, and fall in maggot filled latrines. (side note: every one of these things happened on the homestead)

The supper table would be especially fun for these social service ladies. They better come prepared to sit in a dark room elbow to elbow with fourteen people on benches. If they cooked the meal, they better announce it loudly “We are having Savory parsnip soup!” and start serving. They better have something edifying to say about the scripture that was read at “morning prayer” that morning, and SPEAK UP loudly. Their voice better not crack or quiver for a second either when he called on them one at a time. If it did, they would be beaten and banished to the back room with no dinner.

I guess if they survived even a day, I am not sure they could get through evening prayer. I am not going to get into that now though…I am sure they had enough suffering for one day…

  And that would have been a good day….

The notorious "storage building." As you can see there is a ladder going up to the small door, where some people could sleep. In the winter it was extremely cold and drafty and the summer it was extremely hot. Downstairs in the storage building was a combination tool shed/ pantry. In there we kept barrels of soybeans, rice, oatmeal, feed store grade corn meal, beans, split peas and mung beans. The lids didn't fit very tightly and were stored closely to chemicals such as kerosene, lime, concrete mixtures, w-40, etc. A few times kerosene was spilled in the beans while someone was filling a lamp, and one time someone accidentally drank kerosene because it was in an unlabeled jug that looked similar to the jugs we put water in. One of the reasons we were probably always sick was the extremely unsanitary conditions and cross-contamination and mold that was on food.

The stable: A building that I slept in often. I often slept upstairs and had to either climb a rickety ladder or try to climb boards to get up there. I slept among musty, moldy boxes of books up there on some hay and blankets. There were mice, snakes, yellow jackets, hornets and bats up there. One time I woke up with hornets in my hair and I got stung. At one point I started sleeping downstairs with the cows and my chicken. It was freezing cold and snow was blowing in. I remember being sick for days with an ear infection and the flu and neither of my parents checked on me. I couldn't hear out of both ears.