Gas lights and kerosine lanterns

We went back to the farm over the weekend and stayed with my sister and her husband. It was nice to be able to go to the place where I grew up. It surely is different today, with electricity and central heat.
Until I was ten years old we had natural gas lighting and a gas burning stove in each room. We got a gas Serval refrigerator in 1941. That was a big deal because we didn’t have to carry the milk to the spring house to keep it cold in the spring water.
The gas lights were in the middle of the ceiling and they had mantels that were very fragile. When my brother and I got to jumping around up stairs we always got shouted at because there was a good chance we would break the mantels. If we did that, we wouldn’t have any light in the room below until the mantel could be replaced.
We used a kerosine lantern to make light when we went to the barn in the evening or early morning to milk the cows. The lantern served as our only source of light when we did the chores; feeding the pigs, chickens and calves. Because the lantern didn’t make a lot of light there were a lot of shadows and dark places which made things kind of scary. Dad had told me a story about a big cat, he said it was a mountain lion, that had come out of the barn one morning when he had gone down to feed the horses, that didn’t make me feel any better about going to the barn alone. In fact, I was really spooked, but the work needed to be done and sometimes I was the one who had to do it.