Chores and Allowances (and other memories)

As children we had certain prescribed tasks that we were expected to do in order to receive our weekly allowance. Mine was to sweep the kitchen and the sunroom every day in the morning. My recollection of this task was that there was not much dust accumulated but there was always a lot of paper debris etc. I think Clarice and Vivian had either the dishes to wash and wipe, or perhaps the beds to make. I don’t recall that Vincent was as yet assigned any chores. Perhaps he was still too young.

My allowance was 25 cents per week and I suppose Clarice’s was also. Vivian’s was I think a little less. The use of the allowance was not however at our discretion, 5 cents of mine being designated for the weekly contribution in my Sunday school class.

I don’t really recall what I used my allowance for — perhaps some went for popcorn at the summer band concerts in the park. Periodically our family would make a shopping trip to Fort Dodge, all of us more or less tightly packed in the Essex (I don’t recall the old Chevrolet in this regard).

On one such occasion I recall throwing caution to the winds and buying two little toy cars — cast iron red-colored with stamped metal wheels. One was a coupe, the other a truck. Each cost 25 cents — no sales tax in those days. I bought these toys at one of the dime stores, Kresge’s or Woolworth’s.

I also remember candy purchases, particularly the gelatin candy in the shape of orange slices — sugar-coated on the outside and with orange flavoring. There were also such goodies as either an ice cream sandwich at one of the dime stores, or perhaps a stop at the start of the homeward journey for an ice cream cone for everyone. The stop was made at some store on the outskirts of Fort Dodge along the Callender road back to Gowrie.

After the cones were consumer we children were naturally thirsty but no stop was made (or practical) to slake our thirst and we had to wait until we were home for a drink of water. The Callender road passed along the west edge of Gowrie, and en route passed through the little towns of Callender and Moorland.

The other route to Fort Dodge lay east of town and the north-south portion of the trip was along highway 169. Originally this route near Fort Dodge ran along the Des Moines river and was characterized by several (to us) spectacular hills. It was along this “river road” that Vivian and Gene had their little blue house before moving to Urbandale near Des Moines.

The road also had the attraction for us of an overhead tramway on which little cars ran along the wires of the tramway carrying loads of gypsum ore from where it was mined t o the processing facility. The tramway passed right over the road at one point. Sometimes they were not operating which was a disappointment to us. Some time in the 1930s the highway was routed to the west of Fort Dodge along a more level route and the river road became just a local access road.

I should say that there was a third route which my father used in commuting from the farm to the courthouse in Fort Dodge. This route ran north about a mile east from the farm, past the Bohemian hall and the county “poor farm” and joined up with highway 169 near Fort Dodge.

Vivian and Gene’s house was close enough to the river so that it had some danger of being flooded in the springtime. The river road was between it and the river and there was a fairly respectable rise between the normal level of the river and the house — I suppose vertically it might have been as much as 20 or 30 feet. Despite this the house had been flooded before they bought it and was also after they sold it and moved to Des Moines.

Gene was an individual who delighted in projects and one of the things he did while they lived in the little blue house was to put a basement under it. I happened to be back in Iowa on vacation while this project was underway and helped out one day when the concrete floor of the basement was being poured. I suppose at that point the house had already been raised and the basement walls erected. As I recall my part in the proceedings was wheel-barrowing the mixed concrete from the mixer into the basement. Gene I think was running the mixer and he had hired someone to actually finish off the floor properly.