19-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Saturday, July 4, 1914: And quite a fourth it was. Saw not a single flash of even one firecracker.
Old 4th of July Postcard (circa 1914)
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Grandma’s July 4th celebrations seemed hit or miss, and very low key. The previous year, on July 4, 1913, Grandma wrote:
Wasn’t much celebrating done at this house today. I saw a balloon go up or rather I saw it after it had gone up. Saw a few fireworks this evening, but that was at a distance.
I can remember going out on the hill behind the barn when I was a child on the 4th to look for fireworks in the distance. Maybe Grandma’s family also went to a nearby hill and hoped to see fireworks from nearby towns in the distance.
19-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Friday, July 3, 1914: Had a jolly good time out in the hay field. You see if you have to work, you might just as well make a good time of it.
Photo source: Wikimedia Commons
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Grandma—
More details, please. It’s hot, hard work out in the hay field. It’s awesome that you had fun, but how did you make it fun? . . . Were you teasing and joking with other workers? . . . Who else was helping make hay? . . .
19-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Thursday, July 2, 1914: Ruth and I trotted up to town this evening. Didn’t want to go very bad, but Sis insisted.
McEwensville
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Hey Grandma —
Did you have fun? What did you and your sister Ruth do?
(I apologize if “Hey” is just too informal a salutation to use with my grandmother, but I think of you as the teen who wrote this diary—and somehow hey seemed just right in conjunction with my questions.)
19-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Wednesday, July 1, 1914:
July has come to us once more.
Bright with days of the summer time.
Laden with joys that we all may find.
Filled to the brim and running o’er.
It’s a sad way to begin a month, if you’ve forgotten all the things you did. Guess I didn’t do much for the day by the sound of the entry.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
The poem and the rest of the diary entry seem so diametrically opposed. Even though the month began slowly, maybe Grandma was hopeful that the reminder of the month would be busy, fun-filled, and generally awesome.
“sad way to begin a month” vs. “bright with days”
“forgotten” vs. “laden with joys”
“didn’t do much” vs. “filled to the brim and running o’er”
Monthly Poem
For more information about the poems that Grandma included on the first day of each month, see this previous post:
19-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Tuesday, June 30, 1914: It seems to me that the month of June comes and goes like a streak. The day passed like other days. Quite a few of them are alike.
summer
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Grandma—
I agree! June has come and gone like a streak. (Why can’t January come and go like a streak? It always seems to go on and on and on?)
19-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Monday, June 29, 1914: Nothing much to write about.
Recent photo of the road that went to the Muffly farm.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Since Grandma didn’t write much a hundred years ago today, I thought that you might enjoy reading some more hundred-year-old advice from an advice columnist called “Aunt Harriet.” It was published in Farm Journal.
Heart Problems
by
Aunt Harriet
A girl writes me that in her neighborhood “every boy who walks beside you or talks to you a while is a beau.” She goes on to ask how boys and girls, from fifteen to twenty, should act toward each other.
Is it not strange that the freedom which young people enjoy nowadays should not include the liberty of a natural friendliness between young men and women, the right to enjoy each others society without the comments, criticism and conjectures of the entire community?
You much realize that one of the phases of adolescence is the curiosity regarding the other sex; tis is a normal condition, worthy of consideration and not to be laughed at. Unconsciously, each seeks his mate and an unfettered choice is impossible in a narrow-minded community.
In choosing a garment or piece of furniture one rarely takes the first that offered; others must be seen for the sake of comparison. How much more important is the choice of a life mate, and yet people would restrict that choice.
Of course, I shall be misunderstood, but again I maintain that the happiest condition for young people is a community where they may gather together for all wholesome diversions, and where a boy can walk home with one girl today and call on another tomorrow, without being considered a “flirt”, while his sister has like privileges, without reflections on her character.
If the parents are sensible, they see that no one young man absorbs all their daughter’s time, until he is an accepted lover. As for the gossips, remember the old motto, “They say! Let them say!” In other words, why care?
Farm Journal (August, 1914)
You may also enjoy these previous posts that contained advice from Aunt Harriet:
19-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Sunday, June 28, 1914: Went to Sunday School this afternoon. It was held in the Town Hall as the church is not fixed up yet. It seemed like an awful stuffy place and as hot as there was any use in being.
Recent photo of McEwensville Community Hall (Town Hall)
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
The McEwensville Town Hall (or the Community Hall as it is now called) has been around for a long time—and I picture it looking very similar a hundred years ago to how it looks now.
In my imagination I can see clearly see a sweaty Grandma sitting in a folding chair fanning herself with a church bulletin while barely listening to the a very boring Sunday School lesson.
Inside of Community Hall
—
What was being done to remodel the McEwensville Baptist Church? The previous Monday Grandma wrote:
Had quite a time at rubbing and washing today, and it wasn’t here at home either. We are going to have the church fixed over, and it was necessary to wash off the walls. . .
