Quote:
Originally Posted by Canonman
As a kid, we'd stay at my grandmother's farm house during the summer. They had an old fashioned screen door with a simple spring that would slam it shut if you didn't didn't hold the door while it closed. After a morning of running in and out of the house letting the screen door slam behind us my grandad grabbed me by the arm and put my fingers in open door jam. He asked me if I'd rather let the door slam or close it slowly.
Lesson learned, problem solved  |
My grandparents had the same type screen door and spring to "slam it shut"...
Grandpa took one of the rubber "paddle balls" that we always broke the rubber band within about 5 minutes of getting a new one from Ben Franklin Five and Dime.... Breaking the rubber band kept Grandma in paddles and kept Grandpa in rubber balls. He ran a string through the rubber ball and tacked it to the inside edge of the screen door. As it would "swing shut" the ball would swing out, getting caught between the door jamb and the screen door frame. As it stopped, the door would bounce on the rubber ball and it would fall back inside, letting the wooden screen door close "with much less fussing and yelling" from Grandma and Grandpa.....
I'm not sure how kids these days would cope with Grandma's instructions immediately following breakfast. "You youngun's get out in the yard and play and don't come back inside till I call you for dinner (noon meal)." If we wanted something to drink, the garden hose was in the back yard, always full of fresh, cold water from the well. The water in the cistern was used to make coffee and tea, well water tasted like iron, so it was only for bathing and watering the kids in the back yard..... The outhouse was "out past the chicken coop" and there was always an exciting journey on the pages of the Montgomery Ward Christmas catalog that we never used for the intended purpose, only the pages torn from the Sears catalog were "crinkled and tossed".....
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