my mom (from grandma)

I want to write about my Mom. I feel the need to think about her life and the positive things she created out of such a strained existence. Lately I seem to be preoccupied with her daily hardships especially things that I take for granted. One of the aspects of that life was the important role of water in the raising of so many children and maintaining a house and home far out in the country.
She had running water in the house but it was cold. The only way she could have warm water, not very hot, was to heat it on the stove. After every meal, the dishes had to be washed (no paper plates) and to do that, water had to be heated. That’s three times a day, one pot for washing and one for rinsing. Water couldn’t be wasted. Washing your hands in between was done in cold water.
Clothes were washed by hand and that water had to be heated also. The clothes were washed on a scrub board, sheets also, then rinsed in cold water and hung outside on a clothesline, winter or no winter. I remember coming home from school and seeing my Dad’s long johns as stiff as a board. She left them overnight and then brought them in the basement to finish drying on the long clotheslines my Dad put up.
Bathing was a whole other situation. Each day we washed our faces and hands and other parts of our bodies. We called it a sponge bath. Water had to be heated up in the kettle for each person. Entire body bathing was done once a week and it was a big project. The big pots were put on to heat and that water had to be carried into the bathroom. You could then run some cold to make it comfortable but the idea of a whole tub was out of the question.
Since this was such a project, baths were taken once a week. With four brothers and a sister, this took the entire evening. I think my Mom took hers during the day, maybe also during the week.
In the summer months, my sister and I used to carry water from the rain barrel outside and heat it on the stove to wash our hair. We had no water softener and our tap water was very hard. The rain barrel was kept covered and the water was so nice and soft. What a treat!
I look at my own hands and see the hands of my Mom. Her hands were in far worse shape than mine were as hers were in and out of cold water on and off all day. During the winter months, they would crack and make open sores. No big bottles of hand cream at our house, nor was there any Band-Aids. A cut or sore of any kind was treated with a paste or poultice made of wash soap and sugar, then wrapped with strips of an old white sheet. When she could afford it, she would buy a bottle of rose water and glycerin to help heal her hands.
All of our food was made daily. Nothing was purchased from the store that was prepared. We had one store in town and it was about three quarters of a mile from our home. My Mom went once every couple of days as we did not have a refrigerator only an icebox. All of the purchases were carried, as we had no car. Food was as much of a challenge as water.
I really do not recall any recipe books. Everything was prepared from my Mom’s memory. We ate very simple foods. Soups, stews, wild fowl that my Dad caught and that was roasted or fried, potatoes by the bucket full., now and then a ham, always brown gravy as my Dad was German and that was a standard. As hard as I think I cannot recall much fruit or cereal or even desserts of any kind other than pie or cake when my Mom made them.
She made a lot of meatloaf and sometimes it was the big meal on Sunday. Our Sunday meal was about 1pm or 2pm. Usually my Mom came home from church and started finishing dinner. In the evening we had a sandwich or whatever the leftover was. I do remember snacking on cold boiled potatoes, not so bad. I still like them today. On Sunday we usually had a desert, not a big one but there was something. After dinner my Dad usually took a nap and then we listened to Jack Benny on the radio Sun. evening and I did my homework.
Now and again we would make popcorn on Sunday during the Benny show. That was a special time.
During the depression, my Dad worked on the WPA as a laborer. It was local and he came home for lunch. Lunch was a lot of fried potatoes and bread and butter. That was all there was.
A man called Sam Carlin owned the store in our town. He was a butcher and his wife was the clerk. Many of the women in town had husbands that had jobs and were able to come and buy enough meat for their family. My Mom would ask for soup bones and many times she had to also ask for credit. He was always good to us and let my Mom run up a bill during the worst of times. She must have been very embarrassed to have to ask for all of that in front of the other women. She would have done it for her family and gladly. Her ability to face other women and hold her head up is something that I really did not appreciate until after my own family was raised and I began to think about her life as another woman instead of just my Mom. My Dad was a violent drunk and the depression only increased the violence probably because of the frustration of not being able to get a job and support your family. We had to take food from the county and it was delivered to our house with my Mom and Dad sitting there watching. There was nothing either of them could do but take it for the children’s sake. The violence always got worse after that. After the depression was over and more people had jobs, my Mom paid Sam back everything she owed him. He never charged her any interest for all that time. Sam was Jewish and I think the only Jewish family in town. He knew that we were Catholic but it made no difference to him and surely not to us. We were very grateful. An added thought; while he was feeding Catholics, his ancestors or maybe family, were being burned in the ovens in Germany.