Illinois Commentary

Harry W. Kuhn

A bath and a path and the
next greatest thing

Since I am getting ready to retire and I am probably one of the last managers who has personal knowledge of what it was like to not have electricity in the home, please allow me to reminisce a little about the "good old days." Most rural homes were electrified by the early 50s, so many of today's young members only know life with electricity, but I am sure many of our older members can relate to my experiences.

I grew up in a little town of about 100 people in south central North Dakota, and it was one of those situations where the public utility serving that area did not consider it worthwhile to build a line to our town. We had some electricity because my dad operated a blacksmith shop and he had a generator to power some of his equipment. The generator capacity was larger than his requirements, so we provided power to others in town, mainly the grocery store, grain elevator and a few houses.

This was strictly a one-horse operation, and my dad started the generator at 6 a.m. and shut it down at 10 p.m. If you stayed up late, you had to get out the kerosene lamp. I can remember as a kid some days having to go tell the few ladies who did have electricity that they could not iron that day because the generator was overloaded. So my experience in the power business goes back a long way. The generator used a cistern for cooling water, and in the wintertime I had to shovel snow into the cistern to replace water that was lost. In the summer we had to use well water for replacement water. The engine was not all that reliable and outages were a fact of life and somewhat of an embarrassment to me. It never seemed to fail that on Saturday night when all the farmers were in town, the generator would quit and I would get teased by my country friends.

While we did have some electricity, it was for lights only and we did not have an electric stove or refrigerator. I am sure many of you have heard the expression, "a bath and a path" and that is exactly how I grew up. I tell my friends that they have not lived until they have experienced going to an outdoor toilet when it is 20 below and having to brush the frost off of the seat. The first few minutes until the wood warmed up were a little rough.

Our house was heated with an oil burner in the living room and a wood cook stove in the kitchen. It was hotter than blazes in the summer time and cold in the winter, and I can assure you that no time was wasted getting dressed when you jumped out of bed in the winter time. All water had to be hand pumped and carried in, and all wastewater had to be carried out. Of course, we all drank from the same pail with the same dipper, so we did not waste water like today, and we sure did not have a lot of glasses to wash by hand.

In 1948 life for us changed forever when James Valley Electric Cooperative constructed lines to our town. No one was happier than my dad when he was able to shut down that old generator for the last time. I can clearly remember that the first thing my parents did was to go and buy an electric stove and refrigerator and at that moment, some of the day-to-day drudgery left my mother's life.

Two years later, we had running water and a bathroom in the house and we were living the good life. Looking back, I really cannot recall ever using indoor plumbing before that time, and I was 12 when we finally had running water in the house. Back then, our main recreation was visiting other families on Sunday, and everyone we visited was in the same shape we were.

Our national electric cooperative association has published some books on the early days of the REA (Rural Electrification Administration) program, and there are stories about people who broke into tears the day the power was turned on to their homes and farms. People today probably cannot understand how anyone would get that emotional about having electricity, but those people (Continued on page 6)

Harry W. Kuhn is the general manager of Egyptian Electric Cooperative Association. He will be retiring this year after 23 years of service to the co-op. Before becoming manager he was manager of plant operations for Egyptian Electric and a field engineer for the REA in Illinois.

The opinions and views of guest commentators are their own and may not represent those of the Association of Illinois Electric Cooperatives or the electric co-ops of Illinois.

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ILLINOIS COMMENTARY (Continued from page 4)

who lived without it knew what it meant to them.

For us, the REA program meant that our quality of life improved immensely. Work for my mother and dad became much easier and much safer. Once you have experienced the stove pipes from the kitchen range catching fire in the middle of a North Dakota blizzard with no fire department help available, you develop a real appreciation for the electric stove. I will always remember my dad and my cousin on the roof of our house in the middle of a raging blizzard trying to put salt down the chimney to put out the fire.

Since the beginning, the REA program has drawn criticism from private utilities for the supposed low-interest subsidy, but in my opinion the program need not apologize to anyone. The opinion shared by many is that it has been one of the most successful government programs ever instituted and was instrumental in getting the rural economy going after the great depression. It made a tremendous difference in the lifestyle and well being of people living in the rural areas, and it sure was a blessing to us.

Our national association put out a book called "The Next Greatest Thing" and the title is based on testimony given by a farmer in a rural church in Tennessee in the early 1940s. I think his testimony pretty well summarizes what the REA program meant to a lot of people and the impact it has had. He said, "Brothers and sisters I want to tell you this. The greatest thing on earth is to have the love of God in your heart, and the next greatest thing is to have electricity in your house." To that I will just add Amen.

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