My sister had given our mother a notebook, with the suggestion she writes down some of her memories. While she was originally reluctant to do so, she did in the end fill almost the entire book. I will occasionally reproduce some of her memories here.<\/p>\n
The Kerosene Lamp<\/p>\n
We had at home a kerosene lamp, and if it was not quite dark, my mother would light that lamp.\u00a0 The wick was turned up a bit, the burning match held close, and then the small flame would quietly crawl around the round wick.\u00a0 I liked the yellow light.\u00a0 If the electricity failed in the evening (which happened then more than now), we also used the kerosene lamp, of course.\u00a0 The shade was silk, with a fringe of silver beads.\u00a0 The lamp sat on the table, but if it was not lighted, it stood on a small table in the corner of the room.\u00a0 I don\u2019t have special memories of it, but if suddenly it had disappeared, it would have looked empty.\u00a0 The kerosene was sold door-to-door by a man with an \u201cAutomat\u201d wagon: a small cart with a tank on it, from which the kerosene was drawn.\u00a0 A cart like that was from a large oil company, but I\u2019m not sure which one, maybe \u201cShell,\u201d I remember that name best, but I didn\u2019t really know what \u201cShell\u201d meant.\u00a0 Those carts were a great improvement for the kerosene sellers, but I don\u2019t remember how they did it before that time.\u00a0 The kerosene seller used to be an organ grinder.\u00a0 He had a small portable music box with a crank, which he turned, and then you could hear the music.\u00a0 He walked along the houses.\u00a0 He came on Saturday afternoons along our house, and he then received a penny.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My sister had given our mother a notebook, with the suggestion she writes down some of her memories. While she was originally reluctant to do so, she did in the end fill almost the entire book. I will occasionally reproduce some of her memories here. The Kerosene Lamp We had …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[18],"class_list":["post-261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","tag-stories","column","onecol"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dutchgenie.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dutchgenie.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dutchgenie.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dutchgenie.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dutchgenie.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/dutchgenie.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":262,"href":"http:\/\/dutchgenie.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261\/revisions\/262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dutchgenie.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dutchgenie.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dutchgenie.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}