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M/M John Kascak interviewed by Dennis Mercier -2- 8/22/72 Tape 12-2

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before you can remember. Do you remember how, like, you know, every house, every house, look behind it and it's got the addition on the back with the sloping roof, the kitchen is usually put there, and did they all come about the same time, or were they just added on whenever people could afford it, or what?
JK: Well, the smaller ones, I would say yes, they, the people put them on themselves. But the bigger ones, the homes, the company built them on when the home was built. Well, maybe sometime later, after, I don't know.
MK: But as far as we remember, Daddy, the kitchens were all on with the homes.
JK: The kitchens were all on with the house.
MK: Yes, we can remember we'd say sixty years back, because we can remember the kitchens were always there.
JK: But since then, the people that built them on, whey they built them themselves yeh.
MK: Well, that wasn't down on these homes. These homes had these kitchens all the time.
JK: These homes, they all had kitchens built on with the house.
MK: Since we remember. It's only up there in those little homes that the people built the kitchens themselves.
DM: And the functions of the outbuilds, any outbuilding you ever had was either a garage or a chicken coop or a coal shed, or of course a privy?
MK: yeh, yeh, yeh.
DM: Anything else?
MK: No, I guess that's all we had. That's all we had. The chicken coop, and a coal house, and the garage, and your bathroom up thee, and if you wanted a little extra, another extra building or something, you made it yourself. Like, for wood, if you wanted to store, or something else.
DM: Right now, all you have is the garage and a chicken coop, huh?
JK: Coal house.
MK: We have a coal house up there.
DM: How come you keep your coal up there instead of down in the basement?
MK: We have it down here, too.
JK: This here, we get for the heater, in here. And up in back we get it for the range. See, we burned a different coal than we burned in the heater.
DM: oh, that's right, you burn smaller...
JK: We burn the peat coal in here, and the chestnut coal out in that one. So we have to keep, we can mix the two of them. Of course we can only have room for two ton in there, you know. I could draw it into the basement, you know, and have them put more in here, but so far, I've been able to keep the snow shoveled and get up to the back to get the coal for the range!
DM: Do you use your basement for cold storage, too? I mean, do you keep cans down there, or if you put up beans...
MK: Oh, yes, when I canned, for canning, and then we'd put our potatoes down there, and we bought some, if we bought extra, or we had cabbage or carrots from the garden we kept it in there. Use a box made with a lid on, there, that goes, we put it in. And our canned stuff, jellies and things.
DM: Does it keep about fifty degrees, or so, it's kind of cool down there?
MK: Well, it, I don't know.
DM: I would say around fifty.
DM: Even when you open the door like this? Because I notice you always have your door open...
MK: You know why that door is open? We have no window, or no ventilation. We have to have it...