INCLUDED IN THIS SITE:
     The Village, Employment, Local Institutions, Community Life, Farm and Household Life

Erieville, NY during the 1930's

This page includes the forth part of an ethnography written by Larry J. Schmidt in 1977.

Community Life

There was a great deal of local life in Erieville during the early 30's.   Only about half of the men owned automobiles.  Roads were narrow and poorly surfaced.  Autos were not used much for long distance travel but more like farm pickups are used today.  Heavy snows made auto travel almost impossible during the winter-time.  The cars would be jacked up to keep pressure off the tires and the battery would be taken inside the house.  Often horse and sleigh would cut their own trail through from Erieville to Nelson, and others would follow this trail.   Sometimes the Erieville-Nelson Road would not be open from Thanksgiving until May.  Men would finally meet the snowplow and shovel open the road.  The township roads were even worse in the winter.

People got together a lot then, especially during the winter.  A family often would put their team on the sleigh and go visit relatives for a day.  Members of the community all knew on another quite well and many were interrelated.  Weekday social activities included droppping in on neighbors or relatives for cards or conversation.  Saturday night was the big night for everyone in town, and people would save their money during the week for this night.  There was very little work done on Sunday, except for the necessary chores.   After going to services, the day was usually spent visiting relatives or going to a ball game.  Nice meals were served to visitors on Sundays.  Chicken and biscuits was a very popular Sunday meal.

Older and married people tended to rely on the more scheduled activities of organizations for their social life.  House parties were popular among the younger set, although these were often attended by people of all ages.  They were usually formed by calling around on the phone.  They usually included card playing, dancing and party games later in the evening.  These were prohibition days, so alcoholic beverages were not served except perhaps on the sneak.  Home brew, hard cider, and elderberry wine were commonly made then.  There was also some moonshine available although this was kept more secretive.  Many young men had a special pocket built in the inside of the front car door where they would store alcoholic beverages.

Among the school age set, young men would often get together after school to see if they could get a party going at someone's house.  Whoever volunteered would go home and tell his folks that the gang was coming over that night.  If parties were in the country, young people would walk together to the farmhouse.  The parties usually ended before midnight.  Hayrides were also popular among the younger set.  There were no weeknight places to gather in the village, although a couple of businesses kept open until 9 or 10.  The general store crackerbarrel was an especially popular spot.  Sometimes people would pool their quarters and rent the Grange hall for a couple of hours and dance.  There was a barn dance hall in South Otselic and it was popular to sleigh there during the winter.  As many as ten couples would ride together to the dance, on several bobs.  Square dancing was very popular, with a round dance to close out the evening.  It was also common for couples to drive in to Cazenovia on a bob during the winter.  Movies were becoming popular in this era.  A stop at th ice cream shop afterward was normal routine.

Pranks and devilry were also very common, especially on Halloween night.  They were often directed at relatives or other well known people and seldom were destructive in nature.  There were a number of informal institutions present then also.  One was the baseball league.  Baseball was a long standing tradition and a very popular sport.  Erieville had a village team which played the other village teams in the area.

Young men would practice or play a game after the evening milking.  Some played every evening.  Locally, there was a village team and a country team and these would often scrimmage.  The ballfield was just outside the village and many walked in from the countryside to get to it.  Youth would often practice with neighbors in a hay field.

The games were played on Sunday afternoon.  Rivalry was quite intense and games were usually patrolled by a deputy sheriff armed with a billy club.  Fights would sometimes break out among players and fans and a few even had to be taken to the hospital.   There was some exchange of good players for big games.  Neighboring towns would "load up" their teams with the best of players in the area to play a big game with a more distant town.  There was also a basketball team, although the villagers had no league.  Players would practice upstairs in the Union Schoolhouse and  play teams from other towns.

The party telephone line was a major source of information for all age groups.  Each party on a line had his own ring, but as the phone rang at all other houses in the line, everyone knew who was being called.  People would often listen in, especially if a good timer was being called.  People would also break in on a conversation if they were interested.  One could also find out everthing that was going on by calling the operator, who also listened in on a great many calls.  As a rule, people could answer their own telephone ring no matter where they were in the neighborhood.

Summer activities included some use of the lake, especially by the campers that were in the area then.  Slabsides dance hall was very active in the summer, sometimes on both Friday and Saturday nights.  The hot dog/ice cream stands were also open at night and people would meet there.  Occasionally the younger men would get bored and wander out looking for pranks to play.

In the winter, youth often would sled down the long hills leading to the village center at night.  It was possible to sled almost a mile and there were some people out almost every night.  Little automobile traffic existed then to cause worry about accidents. 

Country youth usually spent most of the weekday playing by themselves or with neighborhood friends.  It was quite typical for a farm youth to have a playmate much older or younger than himself.  Village youth were more close knit, living closer together, and more active in town than country kids.  Often parents would not allow their children to go into the village at night until they were 17 or 18.

Weddings tende to be small family affairs and were usually held at the bride's parents' home.  Either a Justice of the Peace or a local minister was invited to conduct the ceremony.  A small party for close relatives followed.  couples seldom took honeymoons, and were often subjected to "hornings" -- good natured harassment by friends on their wedding night.  Most commonly, friends would blow their horns outside the newlyweds' house.  Once one wife was kidnapped.  Newlyweds felt the need to keep the doors locked during a horning, which always occurred at night.  Earlier pranksters used to chain up the wheels of the newlyweds' buggy.  A horning could usually be avoided by passing out cigars at the wedding.

Funerals were rarely held at the funeral parlor.  The body of the deceased person was usually placed in his family's home for viewing.  From there the body was taken to the church for services and then to the local cemetery.

It was about this time that the Grange sponsored a square dance contest at the Hall one year.  Couples came from some distance to compete.  Many had their own callers and were quite good.  The contest was finally won by a local couple.

This era was characterized by frequent encounters with transcients, especially railroad bums, passing through the community looking for food and sometimes a place to overnight.  It was ocmmon to share a noonday or evening meal with anyone who happened to show up, be he friend or stranger.  There were two types of these transcients -- hobos, who would offer to do some work in exchange for a meal, and tramps, who simply freeloaded.  No one, however, was turned away at mealtime.  Also, on occasion, strangers would overnight in farmer's barns.

Periodically, the area would be visited by a "pack man" or a "tin man", roving door to door peddlers who would sell their wares to local housewives.  The tin man sold kitchenware and other trinkets and travelled in a squarish type wagon.  Dan McCarthy's house was once occupied by a tin man.  The pack man walked with a heavy pack, which he would completely unload and spread out to display to the local housewives.  The pack contained mostly cloth goods and needlework supplies.  The children used to enjoy the sight of the pack man or the tin man coming and were fascinated by their display of goods.

From time to time, the area would be visited by a band of travelling gypsies.  An organ grinder also came through once every summer, accompanied by a little bear.  During an earlier period a man named John Loury used to come through from Otselic carrying the news around.   He always carried an extra pair of trousers and would help with work, get fed, and overnight on occasion.  Local news in those days was carried mostly by word of mouth, as few people subscribed to newspapers.  The Morrisville Leader was the most popular paper at that time.

To learn about Farm and Household Life in Erieville during the 1930's, click here.

History needs a "keeper" to allow it to be passed on to future generations.  Erieville is lucky to have such a person in its Postmaster, Donna.  This document came from her file of information related to the history of the village.