memoir

Little House in the Big Woods – Jennie Fitzkee

Sue Vincent's avatarSue Vincent's Daily Echo

Reblogged from A Teacher’s Reflections:

I began reading aloud a new chapter reading book, Little House in the Big Woods, by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  In thirty minutes, I had read only four pages.  Four!  There was so much happening in the story, we had to stop and talk.  That always means learning.  And a captive audience.

Let me back up, as there is much to tell about yesterday…

The day before, we finished reading The Story of Doctor Dolittle.  At the end of the book I closed it and said, “I don’t want the book to end.”  This is what happened next:

Ella said, “Can we read it again and again and again?”

Me:  ” I wish we could, Ella.  Your Mom and Dad can read it to you again.”

Ella:  “But I don’t have the book.”

Me:  “The library has the book.  Mom and Dad can get it…

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Laundry in the Old Days Part 2

 

Image courtesy of Pixabay

Once all that mountain of wash was done, the heavy, wet wash had to be lugged out to the clothes line, no small feat. Mother had three lines stretched between T-shaped supports. Shaking each piece in shape after its trip through the wringer, the towels and diapers gave a nice, sharp pop! She propped the heavy lines up with clothes line poles so the wash could dance in the breeze. Woe be it to the foolish kid who’d run off with her clothes lines poles. I’ve been known to do it!

She usually sent us out several times to check to see if the laundry was dry. There is no smell fresher than line-dried laundry. I just loved sliding into bed between sheets fresh off the line. The mountain of laundry was likely to be piled on a bed till it could be folded.

Starched clothes came off the line still slightly damp, if she caught them at just the right time. Rolled into tight balls and stuffed into a pillow case, they’d be stuffed into the freezer till ironed. If they got completely dry, she’d have to sprinkle them before stuffing them in the pillowcase, by dipping her hand in water and flipping droplets on the clothes. One Christmas, I gave her a sprinkler cap that fit in a coke bottle. She said it was the most useful gift she ever got, making her sprinkling so much easier.

When Mother had to wash in rainy or wet weather, laundry was hung lines on the back porch, and on chair backs. Once in a while, after a string of rainy day, she’d get desperate and have to take laundry to the Washateria to dry, but that was a huge hassle and unnecessary expense, not to mention, we only had one car. That meant she had to take Daddy to work and pick him up, with small children in tow.

As soon as we were old enough, we were pressed into service on clothes line duty and folding and putting away the laundry that didn’t have to be ironed. Naturally, I thought that was awful, having to do “Mother’s work.” I did have enough sense to keep my opinions to myself after a couple of complaints, though.

Mother kept an eye out for sudden rain, flying to the line to get her laundry. If it wasn’t quite dry, it went on the back porch to finish. Laundry had to be in as early as possible, for fear of sudden showers. God forbid, from time to time, birds left a surprise on the drying clothes.

At the end of this relaxing day, Mother usually set us down to a slow-simmered supper(not dinner) of beans or soup and cornbread since she’d been working on laundry all day.

It was the life!

Laundry in the Old Days

Images from Smithsonian collection

When she first married in 1946, Mother washed on a rub board. By the time I was born, they’d come up enough in the world to acquire a second wringer-washing machine. It cut her work tremendously. Wash days were so much more pleasant and relaxing. All she had to do was sort the laundry into whites, colors, towels, and work clothes.

She  manually filled the machine with hot water from a connection on the back porch as well as several pans of water boiled on the stove for her whites. Adding plenty of Clorox and laundry soap, she turned on the agitator and loaded her whites. The machine agitated the wash vigorously till she turned it off. When she was satisfied the whites were clean, the water was was usually still steaming hot. She’d turn the agitator off. While the clothes were washing, she’d fill two big galvanized tubs with rinse water, using the hose

After  switching the wringer on, she’d fish the whites out of the scalding water with a stick and carefully run them through the wringer, allowing the wash water to drain back into the washing machine tank. The flattened clothes fed from the wringer into the first rinse tub. She worked them up and down with a plunger to rinse, then swiveled the wringer into position between the galvanized tubs, to wring the wash before the second rinse, plunging and wringing again and winding into a basket for the line.

Water had to be added to the the washer and tubs after each load, since a great deal of water remained in the clothes and ended up on the floor. Between loading, agitating, and rinsing, the laundry not requiring starch had to go on the line. The washer had to be manually switched into drain. Since the washer was on wheels many times the drain hose ended up on the floor, instead of the drain, ensuring plenty of excitement and extra mop up.

Now the good part, starching. Using powdered starch, Mother cooked up a thick batch of starch on the stove. Refilling the washing machine with hot water, she mixed the cooked starch in, making sure to stir till the mixture was absolutely smooth Our good cotton dresses, pants, shirts, and Daddy’s work clothes went back in to agitate, then were run through the wringer, into the laundry basket for the line. Of course, they were very hot. As the family got bigger, Mother had to starch two or three loads.

The floors were a dirty, sloppy mess by the end of laundry day, necessitating a thorough scrubbing. The greatest hazard was getting caught in the wringer, hence the phrase, putting you through the wringer.”

Tuesday was ironing day, another treat.

My Dirty Laundry

Bud says I am stubborn.  It’s true.  Once an idea occurs to me, I can’t get rid of it! Since the kids are long gone, I decided to treat myself to some white fluffy towels a couple of years ago. No problem since I would be totally in control.  These towels would never languish on the floor, under the bed, or touch mascara or muddy shoes.  They’d never wash a car or wipe spaghetti sauce off the sofa.  Time passed.  They got dingy.  I didn’t like them anymore.  I started sneaking into Bud’s bathroom to get his luscious green ones, but  I couldn’t get the white ones off my mind.  Surely, I could fix them. They couldn’t be bleached, so I tried non-chlorine bleach.  That didn’t brighten them at all, so I decided to bleach them, anyway.  What did I have to lose?

So I bleached them. They went from dingy gray to a dull hen poo poo muffledy dun.  Those towels were disgusting, sort of like they had been wiping shoes, smearing mascara, washing the car, and wiping up dog vomit with.  I tolerated them for a while, then checked the internet for a solution.  I needed to boil them in a solution of dishwasher detergent, vinegar, borax and detergent.  Sounded like a lot of trouble, but I really wanted them white again. I mixed the concoction right up and put my towels on to boil.  I boiled them for about thirty minutes, frequently punching them down.  I believe this was the high-tech method used up until folks got washing machines.  The water turned an ugly brown.  It must be working!

 

                 

Eventually, I finished them up in the washer.  Meanwhile, I’d made a real mess of the kitchen.  The sink was full of pots, the stove a sloppy mess, and the floor tracked up.  It didn’t look like I’d done a deep cleaning just yesterday.  It only took an hour to get back to where it was.  My back still hurts.

            

In the picture on the right, you can see the result of all my hard work.  Aren’t those colors bizarre?  Some of the towels remained plain dingy gray.  Others took on an ugly, rusty hue.  The big surprise was, some turned a pale pink. I am partial to dingy gray, but that’s just me.  Does anybody out there need some ugly towels?  They’ll be perfect to  wash the car and wipe mud off the dog.

Wait!  I just saw two more things to try.  Laundry bluing is supposed to brighten dingy clothes up.  Sunshine bleaches!  Bud is going to have to put up a clothes line!

 

 

A Little Marital Levity

Grumpa Joe's avatarGrumpa Joe's Place

A

Pharmacist to a customer:
“Sir, please understand, to buy an anti-depression pill you need a proper prescription.

 Simply showing your marriage certificate and wife’s picture is not enough.”

………

 

A bookseller conducting a market survey asked a woman “Which book has

helped you most in your life?”

The woman replied, “My husband’s cheque book!”

……..

 

A prospective husband in a book store “Do you have a book called,

“Husband: The Master of the House”?

Sales Girl: Certainly Sir, you’ll find it under ‘Fiction and Comics’ on the 1st floor!

………

 

Someone asked an old man: “Even after 70 years, you still call your

wife darling, honey, luv… What’s the secret?”

Old man: “I forgot her name and I’m scared to ask her.”

……….

 

Wife: I wish I was a newspaper so I’d be in your hands all day.

Husband: I too wish that you were…

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Miss Tillie Tittilates the Heathen

imageMiss Tillie, my Sunday School Teacher held my attention like no other before or since, giving the class candy, bubble gum, and tiny little paper umbrellas if we learned our Bible verses. Mother thought she ought not to bribe us to do our lessons. I thought Mother ought to mind her own business. Miss Tillie had already taught Sunday School for thirty years by the time I had her in 1956. She still wore lacy dresses left over from her daughter’s high school days when she didn’t opt for gabardine suits with oversize shoulder pads from the forties. She showed up once a month with robin’s egg blue hair that faded over the next three weeks to a pale lavender. We always complimented her when it was at its brightest and she’d shyly say, “Can you believe I don’t even have to color it?” I couldn’t. She still wore seamed stockings long after the other ladies wore seamless. I always looked forward to seeing a special one with a mended run she wore every third Sunday. I got to know Miss Tillie before I was old enough to know she was a little wacko, so I admired all her differences.

Miss Tillie was so sweet I wouldn’t have wanted to misbehave. The naughty words in the Bible caused her a big problem. She couldn’t bring herself to say the bad words like lie, sin, Hell, and ass, so she made modest substitutions such as fibbing, doing wrong, the bad place, and donkeys. The lesson of Samson versus the Philistines was a challenge for her. Starting out fine, she described Samson’s great strength and glorious hair, reminding us of his obedience to God. Things were going well until the battle reached its zenith. With her modesty, she couldn’t possibly say, “Samson slew ten-thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass,” so after a great deal of obvious preparation and practice, she concluded the lesson with a flourish, “and so Samson picked up the assbone of a donkey and slew ten-thousand Philistines.” That lesson is still burned in my brain.

Smorgasbord Laughter Lines – A multi-International cast, two cats, a dog and WI training.

Contrasts

 

 

Dad jokes

A neutron walks into a bar and orders a drink.

He asked. “Bartender, how much do I owe you?”

The bartender replies, “For you, neutron, no charge.”

 

Did you hear about the proton who heard there was going to be an electron?  He went down to the polls and volted.

 

Why can’t you hear a pterodactyl go to the bathroom?

Because the p is silent.