18-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Monday, July 28, 1913 – Thursday, July 31, 1913:Nothing very much doing for these days. It’s so terrible hot and I have a hard time of it just doing nothing. I’d hate to go anyplace such weather as this is.
Maximum, Minimum, and 8 p.m Temperatures
July 28, 1913
Source: Washington Post (July 29, 1913)
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Sounds like it was miserably hot in central Pennsylvania. A hundred years ago farmers like the Muffly didn’t even have electricity so there were no fans—just the sweltering heat.
Grandma apparently didn’t even have enough energy to write in her diary for several days. How hot was it?
Two Pennsylvania Cities—Philadelphia and Pittsburgh had highs of 90, so it’s a safe bet that it was in the upper 80’s or possibly 90 in McEwensville. Hot–but it doesn’t sound as unbearably hot as Grandma described it. Maybe the humidity was really high and there was no breeze– that could make it seem “terrible hot”.
18-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Sunday, July 27, 1913: Went to Sunday School this afternoon.
Grandma would have walked down Main Street in McEwensville to get to the Baptist Church.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Across the two and a half years that I’ve been posting the diary, most Sunday’s Grandma wrote that she went to Sunday School. She rarely mentioned Church. Why? . . . Didn’t she attend the church service?
Did Grandma go alone to Sunday School a hundred years ago today, or did other family members also attend? What about her parents?
In the past, sometimes the diary entries suggested that her sister Ruth may have at least occasionally accompanied her to Sunday School. And, if I remember correctly, Grandma mentioned one time that her 7-year-old brother Jimmie went to Sunday School. But her parents are never mentioned in the context of church or Sunday School.
Today I think that parents are more likely to attend church than their teen-aged children. It almost seems like it was the opposite for Grandma—she attended, but her parents didn’t.
18-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Saturday, July 26, 1913: Ma wanted me to keep digging at my music this morning. I don’t like to practice very well.
Source: Ladies Home Journal (November, 1911)
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Oh dear, Grandma just began taking piano lessons on June 13—it’s sad that she’s already tiring of practicing.
Playing the piano must have been extremely popular a hundred years ago. Back then there was even a column called “Piano Questions Answered by Josef Hofmann” in Ladies Home Journal.
Today I’m sharing two examples from his columns.
Playing Staccato and Legato Together
How can one play staccato when there are two voices, as in the notes of the second measure of the example? Naomi
Why should one finger be unable to play staccato while another finger of the same hand holds a key down? It takes a little practice, it is true, but it is by no means difficult, much less impossible.
18-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Friday, July 25, 1913:Not worth writing about.
Photo Source: Wikipedia
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Since I knew my grandmother when she was much older than the teen in the diary, I’m constantly trying to reconcile how the young Helena in the diary evolved into the grandma I knew.
Since it was a slow day a hundred years ago today, I’m going to share a memory that I have of Grandma as an older woman—when she actually was my grandmother.
—
Every year when the hydrangeas bloom I think of Grandma. I can remember playing with my cousins—and seeing Grandma “watering” her hydrangeas with a can filled with something that wasn’t water.
I ran over and asked what she was doing . She explained how she needed to add aluminum sulfate to the soil to make the hydrangeas blue.
I couldn’t understand how a flower could possibly change colors depending upon what was put on the soil—so I asked a zillion questions. And, I remember Grandma carefully and patiently answering each one.
In many ways this story is very typical of many of my memories of Grandma. When I was a small child Grandma always welcomed questions and treated each question with respect.
When I was a youngster, she treated me like an older person than almost anyone else I knew—but I always understood her answers and really liked that she knew that I was big enough to understand what she was saying when she explained complex things to me.
18-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Tuesday, July 22, 1913:Nothing much going.
Source: Good Housekeeping (July, 1913)
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Since Grandma didn’t write much a hundred years ago today, I’m going to loop back to a couple posts that I made in early July.
A few weeks ago the diary entry indicated that Grandma’s father hired a “little boy” to help with the farm work—and a few days later the boy ran away. At the time, I wondered how old the boy was.
I recently was browsing through some 1913 issues of Good Housekeeping, and came across an article titled, “Why Do Children Toil?” Since a boy helping with farm work is very different from a child working in a factory, the article really isn’t very relevant to this conversation, but I still found it interesting and thought that I’d share a few quotes and pictures.
Neither beasts of the filed nor birds of the forest impose the burdens of existence upon their young. Only man lives upon his offspring. Why is it?
Involuntary poverty underlies child labor. . .
Poverty drives many a child into the factory.
Good Housekeeping (July, 1913)
Photo caption: Midnight workers in a glass-factory. To the company, it is just a question of getting the work done at the lowest cost, and youth is ever cheaper than age. Some states have forbidden this.
