A Day in the Life of Anna Smith
Henry Smith
| Mary Smith | Anna Smith
| Joseph Smith
Life in 1903
with the Smith Family - Three Months Later
Anna Smith heard her father and mother walking around early in the morning. She felt hot under her covers and knew it was going to be a long day sitting in school in this heat. She heard her ten-year-old brother, Joseph, get up and change into his school clothes. She didn’t want to get up and waited until her mother came in saying, once again, how she would have to learn to get up soon because she would get married and would have to take care of her family. There were some days when Anna thought she would never get married and then there were the minutes when she got all giggly thinking about Horace Jones, the boy who sat next to her in class
She got up, washed her face and began her morning chores. She made the beds and helped her mother make the lunch pails and finish making breakfast. On Monday mornings she also had to drag the rugs out of the house and hang them over a line so that her mom could beat the dirt out of them later in the day.
After getting dressed and braiding her hair she ate some breakfast and headed off to school with her lunch pail and grammar books in hand. Anna and Joseph attended a one-room schoolhouse near Main St. Her teacher’s name was Ms. Brown and she taught all the students in grades first through eighth. Only seven states had laws requiring students to go to school until they were 16. As a result, very few kids went to high school. If kids from Field wanted to go to high school they would have to go to the next town over where there was one. Anna liked school and knew that she would go until she was at least 16. However, she also knew she didn’t pay enough attention in school, she daydreamed too much.
Once her and Joseph got to school their shoes were dusty from the walk in. They sat down at their desks took out their slates and began the lesson Ms. Brown gave each of the grades. She tried hard, but Anna’s mind began to wander. She thought about an article she had read in the newspaper Father had brought home. It was about child labor. Anna knew that her father made enough money to support his family, but she couldn’t understand why young, children had to work to help feed their family. The pictures she saw of children covered in coal dust or missing a limb from a work accident upset her. She had read newspaper articles about the slums that people were forced to live in, where they didn’t have any clean water or air and had to live in a small room with 10 other people and possibly animals. She became more and more grateful of her nice house and clean clothes when she thought about those things. Snapping her out of her thoughts, Ms. Brown reprimanded her and told her to pay attention. Anna remembered she was supposed to be writing proper nouns in complete sentences.
During lunch Anna gathered with her friends outside under the little oak tree and talked about what they were going to do for the weekend. Anna glanced over towards Horace Jones and realized he was looking at her too. Her face turned so red it almost matched her dress smock. Two of her friends wanted to go roller-skating on Saturday, but Anna had to say she couldn’t go along because she was going to the church picnic. Sarah, her best friend, was going to be at the picnic too and she said that she would bring her bicycle along. Sarah’s father was the banker in the town and for Sarah’s birthday in June he had got her a brand-new bicycle. Anna had tried the bicycle a few times but she wasn’t very good at it. She hoped the next day at the picnic that she could practice on it some more. Anna had asked her father for a bicycle for the past two birthdays and two Christmases but she never got one. She was a little disappointed but not too much because for her birthday this year her father had bought her a Brownie! The Brownie was a small camera by Kodak that had been introduced three years ago. It cost only one dollar and came in a colorful box. It had been named for sprites in a popular children’s book. A roll of film cost only $.15 cents. It was the best gift ever. All the kids in Anna’s school wanted one!
During the afternoon classes Anna tried very hard to concentrate on her studies, but everyone in the class was tired of the heat and wanted to get out of school for the weekend. When Ms. Brown finally let them go everyone ran out the door except Harper Wood who always stayed after and clapped the chalk out of the erasers for Ms. Brown.
On the way home Anna dragged Joseph into the general store because she wanted to look at the magazines and the latest Gibson Girls pictures. The Gibson Girls were drawings of women in doing the most fashionable thing, like playing ping-pong, and they were wearing the most beautiful clothes. After Joseph had gotten tired of waiting and eating penny candy Anna finally agreed to go home. They raced each other back to the house; kicking up dust all the way and taking all the shortcuts they knew.
When they arrived home Mother made Anna do her chores, which included getting vegetables ready for dinner, cleaning the soot out of the stove and emptying the water basins from the bedrooms.
After her chores were finished Anna worked on her homework practiced the piano. Every respectable family had a piano and if they were lucky they would have a family member who knew how to play. Anna had practiced for a very long time and she was becoming interested in new type of music called blues. Tonight, however, she practiced the latest music hits including “Ida! Sweet As Apple Cider!” by Eddie Leonard and “Toyland” from Babes in Toyland by Glen MacDonough.
After Mother had sent them to bed Anna read by the light of a candle for a little while. She was trying to finish the “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” by L. Frank Baum. It was a fantastical story about a girl from Kansas that got transported to the Land of Oz by a tornado and Anna was enjoying it. After closing the book Anna set her Brownie by her clothes for the next day’s picnic. She had picked out her green dress, the one that brought out the green in her eyes, to show off for Horace Jones. As she fell asleep she began to dream of what Kansas looked like. She wondered how much longer she would have to wait to see places outside of Field. Travel by horse and cart was not very fast and the railroad didn’t run directly through Field, but she hoped that someday she could marry Horace and he would be rich enough to own an automobile.
