A lizard in the wash water

My grandmother's plain, careful script fills three lines a day in her diary starting on Jan. 1, 1924. As she sat down to make her first entry, a new year was dawning and a bitter winter storm howled outside. Her name was Fern Bruce. She was 31 years old with three children: Ellen, 8 (my mother); Robert, 7; and Don, 3. It would be another six years before her youngest was born, a daughter, Kathleen.
She lived in an old brick farmhouse with her husband Bobby just a couple miles from the farm where she grew up with 10 brothers and sisters. The diary lists births and deaths, illness and recovery, the odd and the ordinary, lots of church events, family gatherings and meetings of the WCTU, because, after all, prohibition was in force.
While each entry seems ordinary enough, as a reader moves through the record of each day, life on the farm takes shape. She tells what she is reading and what she is baking, and who is visiting, all the while keeping an eye on the weather outside.
Jan. 1, 1924: "The old year hated to leave us. Anyway, it went out with great bluster. Sarah and Grandpa were here for rabbit dinner."
Jan. 5, 1924: "Bitter cold. Too cold to make weekly trip to town. Baked and mopped. Tonight played Flinch (a card game) with the kids."
Jan. 8, 1924: "Robert did not go to school today. Butchered three hogs. Eunice and DeArle were up this evening."
Jan. 17, 1924: "Canned 10 quarts of pork and rendered three gallons more of lard." Her reading on this evening was: "Never the Twain Shall Meet," a bit of a bodice ripper, apparently, by Peter B. Kyne. The synopsis of the book says: "Islander Tamea, Queen of Riva, visits and she becomes infatuated with a local man and decides to have him for her own. And she's used to getting whatever she demands."
Jan. 22, 1924: "Much warmer but wind blows very hard. Ironed. Bobby bumped heads with one of the horses and hurt his eye."
Feb. 13, 1924: "Baked bread and fried bars. Tied off comforter for Don's bed. Went down to see Esther's new baby this evening."
March 10, 1924: "Washed and hung my clothes upstairs because there was a raging blizzard outside all day."
March 25, 1924: "Ironed and mended. Eunice was up this morning for a couple chairs. Bobby cut my hair this evening."
April 7, 1924: "Baked bread and washed. Hung my clothes upstairs. Snowed hard all morning. Found a lizard in the wash water. Bobby plowed for oats."

At the diary's conclusion, she listed some major events of the years 1924 to 1928.
May 30, 1924: Finished hatching 250 chickens.
July 8, 1924: Light plant installed. (This generator brought electricity to the farm for the first time).
Oct. 31, 1924: Bought a piano.
Feb. 28, 1925: Bought new Reo sedan.
June 14, 1926: Robert and Ellen commence piano lessons.
March 28, 1927: Got a new tractor.
Dec. 3, 1927: Got a new radio.
Nov. 6, 1928: Hoover elected president. (Almost exactly a year later, the stock market crashed and the Great Depression began.)

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