We had it so rough that.....

Three of us had to share the same bath water in an aluminum tub. We would melt snow in the tub on our wood stove, adding more snow with each bath.

*Please participate with your "roughing it" experinences if you like. Try to save the roughest things for last...as we try to out-rough each other. I thought it would be fun, and at the same time show the youngsters how spoilt they are! Also good to reminisce.

I wanted to start the thread in the Saloon, but didn't have access.

We had it so rough ....we looked forward to going to school just to be in warm building. Sometimes the school bus heater didn't even work, so we had to literally wait til we got to school to thaw out.

If it got below 30* and the schools were shut down....guess what? We were stuck at home in the freezing cold. Get the wood heater going and endure til the next day. This we did for ourselves as 13, 14 and 15 year old children. Dad at work out of town for days at a time...Mom long gone.

Yeehaw! But now I got two horses that love me....so it was all worth it! And I usually got the new girl in school...so hey, life was good.

We were hand picking grass to feed the horses in the spring.
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Awesome! We used to go with our Dad at one point when we lived way out of town ...and he used a scythe to cut down grass in cutlines to feed out horses. Thanks for reminding me of that. We would load it up on the back of our truck with pitch forks. We were just 8, 9 and 10 years old then. The hardest part of the job for us was fighting off mosquitos!

I don't have that rough experinces. My might the most roughest experience was my summerjob at a strawberry patch few summers ago.

Stay there 7hrs per a day, picking, picking, picking. Mainly in the same position, hunched or squated, repeating the same movements. The sun shines without a break most of days during that 7 hrs, almost none speak the same language with you since most of your compatriots think they're too noble to do work like that. After few days you're so sore because of not ergonomic position that you aren't almost able to sit down or stand up.

We lived very rural. Parked, (our beater of a car), and either forded a small river in the summer or pulled ourselves across on a pulley in a tram car on a cable when the river was too high and carried all our supplies up to a cabin with no electricity or running water. Many years later I still feel grateful for things like a warm house and turning a tap on and having water come out!

I can relate totally. In the 1970s we still had old 1950s International trucks with a crank start. We used to go to rodeos 250 miles away ...the four of us piled in the back with the horses...we were up on the deck. I remember wondering if our truck would make it up some of the hills on the old Alaska highway.


My Dad used to ride his horse to town in the 70s and tie him behind the hotel and go in to drink and then ride him home. No drinking and riding laws back then. :)