16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Saturday, June 3, 1911: Went over to Stouts this forenoon to telephone to Besse. The carpenters went away tonight.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
It’s interesting how the telephone has gone from being a new curiosity that Grandma was afraid to try less than a month ago to a tool that she uses to call her married sister Besse.
The carpenters were building the addition on the barn—and Grandma seemed to think that two of them were cute (see yesterday’s entry). But why does their leaving merit mention in the diary? Did they come from a distance and typically stay overnight at the Muffly’s? (It may have been considered acceptable hundred years ago for transient laborers to sleep in the barn.) Maybe the carpenters left because the next day was Sunday and they won’t be working. . .
