Prince Albert
Prince Albert. Who was he? Well, I recon’ he was the husband if Queen Victoria of England. In the early year of my life I knew him as a figure on one of my favorite toys. I don’t remember who in our family did all that smoking but there was a large supply of tobacco cans up in the loft. I would go in the canning room and climb up the ladder into the loft and play for hours.
The loft was always dark with just a little light seeping in at the eaves. Out house was a hand built log house and there was not any soffits sealing in the eaves of the house. Therefore, we often had flying squirrels and birds nest in our loft. It was very warm up there in the winter so when I couldn’t play outside because it was to cold, I would play in the loft.
The floor of the loft was rough planking that was nailed to the under side of the log ceiling joist so that when you walked you had to step over the logs. The under side of the planks were the ceiling in the house proper, which was papered over with cardboard and then wallpaper on top of that.
A small bit of the loft had a plank flooring on top of the logs about 12 feet square just as you first climb up into the loft. There was an old, full size, cast iron bed in that section where some of the boys slept when they had company. They always had company! It was covered with thick homemade quilts mom had made from old denim and twill pant legs. Nothing was allowed to go to waste at our house.
The rest of the loft was open and had no flooring on top of the logs. Playing there was fun. I made houses and furniture by stacking the tobacco cans as if they were building blocks. Prince Albert cans made great places for treasures such as a pretty button or scrap of rickrack from mommy’s sewing scraps.
PA cans were also valuable to me and my sister Shirley for storing our birch scrapings for smoking later. Our older sisters, Jewel and Delphia, who were teenagers, used these cans to curl their hair. The cans were cut into half inch strips and the strips wrapped in brown paper bag so the edges would not cut their hair. Then these were used to roll the hair by wrapping the hair around the strips and bending the edges back over the hair to hold it in place. This worked just as well as modern curlers!
We had very few store bought toys. We didn’t need “something to do” to keep us from being bored. Finding an old tobacco can and a keen imagination made for days of fun!
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April 25th, 2009 at 11:19 am
I remember the loft . I remember the birch smoking. My city friends find that amusing. I dont remember the prince albert curlers!
July 11th, 2009 at 1:47 am
I’m pretty sure I remember Mom talking about tin can rollers when I was little. I love your stories. I don’t remember much about Big Branch because I was so little, but what I remember is always nice. Grandma snapping beans, sitting around a big table with a lot of people talking and my favorite toy when I was there (an egg turner?). We rode a mule over there and I absolutely hated riding that mule. It was way too high and I was scared of falling off lol. What great memories!