17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Thursday, January 2, 1913: I’m so sleepy for I’m keeping later hours with my books Perhaps the thing will work all right after all. Hope it does.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Grandma’s New Year’s resolution was to study more in 1913. I can picture a teen-aged Grandma sitting by a gas lamp huddled over her books long after everyone else went to bed. In my mind, the wind was howling and there was a chill in the room, but Grandma persevered–at least for this one day.
I’m still trying to keep my Yew Year’s resolutions. I hope they work out all right, too.
I am debating on whether to write mine down or not. Or just to keep them in my memory where I can change them without a trace🙂.
LOL!
I remember the kerosene lamps my grandpa used on the farm. His house had no electricity or running water. We’d stay out there over the summer and maybe visit a couple of times in the winter. We thought it was fun, but of course we didn’t have to do any studying.
What a fun memory!
Love those old lamps! I had a kerosene lamp on last week and one of our guests asked if the power had gone out?!
It sounds like so much fun to use a kerosene lamp over the holidays. Hopefully your other guests appreciated it.
We used to use kerosene lamps when the power went off but the smell was so unpleasant we got camping lamp instead.
I also can remember how bad a kerosene lamp smelled when we used it one time when the power when out. After that we always used candles or flashlights. I think that I remember my mother saying that the kerosene that stores sold in the 1960s was scented–and that when she was young it was “unscented” and smelled better.