In the summer of 1946, ten years after the Woody farm in Thorntown, Indiana, became the first in the state to be hooked up to an electric cooperative line, a reporter/photographer from Farm Power magazine stopped by to see how central station power had changed the lives of Clark and Lois Woody and their four children. Clark was one of the incorporators of Boone County REMC (now Boone Power) in 1935 and had been its secretary-treasurer ever since.

Boone County REMC had grown from 200 members living along 60 miles of line in 1936 to 2,800 along 683 miles of line in 1946.

On the way to Thorntown, the reporter visited the REMC's headquarters, some 17 miles southeast in Lebanon, where he interviewed General Manager H.E. Antle. Antle then followed him to the Woody farm where he posed for a photo with 16-year-old Clifford, where he's explaining how the watt-hour meter outside the farmhouse works.

Farm Power used a dozen photos in its article, and the biggest one shows Clark using a power grinder to sharpen a tractor blade, a convenience that halved the time it took to do the job.

Lois (“Mrs. Woody;" she's nameless in the article) appears in five photos: vacuuming, ironing, cooking on an electric range, looking for something in the refrigerator and filling a cooking pot with water at the kitchen sink.

The vacuum—called “an electric sweeper"—saves her labor and time, a caption says. “It's a great improvement over the old-fashioned days of the broom and carpet sweeper." The butter being kept cold in the refrigerator was “churned in three minutes flat with Mrs. Woody's electric mixer."

Other appliances and equipment on the farm that either weren't there in 1936 or ran off of a battery included a toaster, heating pad, two clocks, radio, coal stoker for an electric furnace, water pumps, three brooders, corn grinder and power tools in the farm shop.

“Their next purchase will be an electric-powered deep-freeze unit." the magazine says.

A photo shows Dick, the Woody's oldest, grinding corn. Before, the task required two men, one to feed and the other to crank. In another photo he's loading the automatic coal stoker for the farmstead's furnace. It's powered by a ¼-horsepower electric motor. The caption reads, “Eliminating winter drudgery."

And that's what was happening all over rural America in the late 1930s, 1940s and 1950: Electrification was improving the quality of life; increasing convenience and comfort and giving time back to farm families to do other things, including relaxing.

Drudgery was loosening its grip on farm life, especially for women. By 1946, 889 co-ops had brought a better life to more than 1.3 million rural consumers across the country.

The Woodys' dependence on central station power grew steadily after May 22, 1936. Between 1939 and 1946, their metered usage more than quadrupled, from 173 kilowatt-hours a month to 801 kwh.

“Cooperative electricity," said Lois, “is the most marvelous thing we have ever had on the farm."