EUREKA -Life was so much simpler when Mae Schrock was growing up in Congerville, home to many in her family for six generations.

Now a resident of Apostolic Christian Home near Eureka, she was the sixth child in a family of four boys and four girls.

"I was a farm girl," said Schrock. "I had just a normal life."

And a long one. Recently, Schrock turned 105.

"They say that my generation has made the biggest change of any generation," said Schrock. "From the horse and buggy, mud roads to the moon."

There were not many luxuries in the Schrock household. There was no running water or indoor plumbing in those days.

"There was no store-bought toilet tissue" either, said Schrock. "We used the Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward catalogs. I think everybody got catalogs, but first we cut everything out of them. We cut our paper dolls, we had families. That was a lot of our play things of our own, not 'boughten toys. Children now with their rooms full of 'boughten toys are bored. We weren't."

She's also never had a television.

"A lot of people are better without it," said Schrock. "I never cared for that kind of entertainment, I was an outdoors person."

Never married, Schrock worked in accounting. Her first job was working for her brothers when they opened a seed corn business.

While Congerville was her home, she spent a lot of time in other places, spending 23 winters in Florida, traveling to the Hawaiian Islands, Egypt (where she rode a camel), Greece, the Middle East, and throughout Europe.

She's the first to tell you it's been quite a life, "especially if you're not married, loose, and can do what you please."

Her great-grandfather settled in the Congerville area after traveling out west to run a general store during the gold rush. When he returned, he built one of the first homes between Peoria and Bloomington.

"It was just one or two rooms in those days," said Schrock. "It's the same home now, but it's big. He and some other men were going to buy some extra land, which was just open country, between Goodfield and Congerville. It was swamp land, but he didn't because the price went up to $3 an acre. Too bad they didn't buy a few thousand acres!"

"Work was never work, just a part of life," added Schrock, noting the homestead had a commercial orchard when she was growing up. "We never thought of it as work, we just did what we were supposed to do."

For now, Schrock is happy to stay in her room at the Apostolic Home, knitting and reading. She knits ski caps for the needy that are distributed by World Relief. Many of her caps have been sent to an Indian reservation in the Dakotas. After all that she has seen and done, she is content to take her meals at the Home and return to her room each day with a good book.

"Now getting into a bus and going a couple of miles for something to eat - that's no novelty," said Schrock. She will, however, take the occasional trip to IGA to pick up fresh fruit, which she grew accustomed to growing up near an orchard.

She's written down her many memories and documented her life in two different pieces. The first, "Mae Reminisces" was written for her family.

"My nieces and nephews would get together and I would tell them things," said Schrock. "Someone said I should write it down, so I did." She also wrote a book through the church, "Yester-Year in Woodford County," in which she recalls stories of her childhood, such as when the railroad and "hard roads" were built.

Both items will be available for public view at the Apostolic Christian Home's booth during Eureka's upcoming Sesquicentennial Celebration.

"People ask me, 'What's your secret that you could live this long?'" said Schrock. "I tell them, 'I didn't die!'"

"And that answer will be good as long as I live."