Thursday's Internet Edition, September 02, 2010.

Jeanie Knopp looks at an old washboard at the Spencer Antique Mall like the ones she used growing up in Peniel and Reedy. Photo by David Hedges

She was born at Peniel in 1936, the middle of seven children.

“It was the last year of the Depression,” she said. “But nobody told us and we kept on living like that. Then World War II came along and knocked us for another loop.”

The home she was born into had no electricity, gas or running water.

“We had one oil lamp and we had to carry it from room to room,” she said.

“We slept three or four to a bed,” she added. “That helped us keep warm.”

She helped raise a garden even as a child, carrying buckets of water from the creek to water the plants.

She got her first new dress when she was a junior in high school.

“Before that, it was either hand-me-downs or dresses made from old feed sacks, when Mom could get the feed sacks,” she said.

Her mother packed their lunches in Karo syrup buckets, and on their walk home from the Union School, she and her brothers and sisters would use the empty buckets to collect hickory nuts.

Her father left home when the youngest was only two, which made things even more difficult.

“We were always hungry and cold,” she said. “But we scrounged around and we made it.

“Life was hard for us, but we were a happy group. Nobody ever told us we were miserable.”

The family moved to Pennsylvania for six years, before returning to Roane County and a place that had a few of the modern amenities.

Their home was a former hotel in Reedy and, even though it was in the middle of town, had no running water, and the bathrooms were out back.

“But we thought we were living in heaven because we had electricity and gas,” she said.

There was a hand-operated pump attached to the kitchen sink, and when Reedy flooded, they weren’t allowed to use the pump for days.

Clothes were washed on a washboard, then wrung out by hand and pinned to a clothesline. They were pressed with an iron heated on the kitchen stove.

By that time, older brother Larry was away in the Air Force, his sister said, and when he had some good fortune in a card game, he sent his mother enough money to buy a Maytag wringer washer.

“We polished that thing and kept it shining,” she said. “We thought it was wonderful.”

Knopp, now 74, raised her four children in Indiana under more comfortable circumstances.

But she never forgot the lessons she learned growing up.

She started thinking more about those times in the days before Y2K, the conversion from the year 1999 to 2000 when many feared the industrialized world would go dark as computers came crashing down at the start of a new century.

That disaster was averted, but Knopp says she is even more ready now than a decade ago.

“Look around. The time is coming soon,” she said. “I’m prepared for it emotionally, and with the essential goods.”

Knopp predicts many won’t be ready to survive without electricity, running water and other things we take for granted.

“In the first Depression, people were much better off because they were mostly rural,” she said. “They lived on farms and raised their own food. Even people in cities were better off, because they didn’t have all the conveniences we rely on.

“So many people now, if they couldn’t push a button on a microwave, they wouldn’t know how to eat,” she said.

A few years ago, she started making a list of items she says every household will need to survive.

“When I could see the way the world was turning, I thought I better start writing these things down,” she said. “Then I started handing it out to people.”

She not only made copies of the list for her friends, she even provided them with some of the items.

“I was like everybody else,” Knopp said of her attitude prior to Y2K. “I had my head in the sand.”

She predicts the world will again be in turmoil and life will be like it was when she was a child.

“We will get bounced back into the 1930s in the way we do things,” she said. “It will last about five years.”

And she plans to be ready.

Her list includes obvious things like matches and hand tools, as well as some not so obvious, like coat hangers.

“You can do about anything with the wire from a coat hanger. They’re so versatile,” she said. “People make antennas for their radios or use them on the farm. And when people come over, you can hang coats on them.”

Some items you have to be particular about. While hand lotions in a bottle will get sticky after about a year, Knopp said hand and face creams in a jar keep longer.

Criso or other types of shortening should be in a can, not the liquid variety a bottle, which tends to get oily in time.

She suggests rotating your stock of perishable items, putting new products in the back of the shelf and using the older items first.

She suggests saving all your buttons, since you never know when they might come in handy.

She said you can never have too much of anything, since excess items can be bartered for something else you may need.

Knopp said there is no reason to spend a lot of money, since most items on the list can be found at yard sales or second-hand shops.

“I have had fun doing this,” she said. “It’s like I was on a mission. I’ve even helped others get things for their lists.”

Knopp also enjoys getting suggestions for her list, which is a constant work in progress. Many of those who contribute ideas are, like her, a child of the first Depression.

“It taught me to be thrifty,” she said. “You learned to either use it up, wear it out or do without.”

“Because of what we went through,” she said, “I think it prepared us for whatever life will throw at us.”

But even if you don’t remember what life was life in the 1930s, don’t worry.

Jeanie Knopp is making a list, and she’s checking it twice.