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Betty's Haven
Letter to my mom
I never got to say
"Thank you"
Dear Mama: A big Thank you
I never thought much about all the things you did for me while I
was growing up until after you died. I then began to remember
and to think of what it must have been like in one of your days
of homemaking with three children to take care of. I'm afraid I
took so many things for granted. The following are what might have
taken place in;
" A day in the life of my mama"
Got up in the morning in that little two room log house with no
insulation. She would light the kerosene lamp so she could see to build
a fire in the wood stove to cook breakfast and if it was in the winter,
a fire in the heating stove. Now building a fire, one had to put some kindling
under the dry wood, which had hopefully been gathered and brought into
the house the evening before. As the fire was heating up the stove, she
was probably making out the biscuits in a pan of flour the way she always
did. She would mix up the dry ingredients in the center of the flour in
the pan, then add milk which had been milked the day before from Brownie,
our jersey milk cow. She would milk the cow sometime in the morning. I
don't know if it was before we left for school or not. I remember milking
old Brownie too, but don't remember milking her on a school day. I remember
waking up to sounds of my mama in the kitchen and when I walked in there
was warm biscuits and hot gravy all ready and waiting for us to eat. She
would make the gravy in a big cast iron skillet using the milk from the
cow. She also would add a small amount of BV meat flavoring to the gravy
which gave it a nice brown color and tasted so good. Also a glass of milk
to drink and fresh churned butter which had been churned from cream skimmed
off the top of the milk and put in a canning jar with the lid screwed tight.
It was then shook until it turned to butter. She would make our lunch which
consisted of not much more than a biscuit with salad dressing or jelly.
The jelly was sometimes the kind that could be bought in a big gallon jar.
It was an imitation fruit jelly which could be bought real cheap. We finally
got hot lunches at the school and we liked that much better. Everyday it
was pinto beans, mashed potatoes, cold slaw , biscuits or cornbread and
a dessert, which was usually a fruit cobbler or homemade cake. We attended
a country school and had to walk over a mile to school. We were very poor
and lived a very simple life. Mama and my daddy had divorced when I was
about seven years old and I could not understand why I couldn't be like
most of the other families living back in the 40's, having both a mama
and a daddy around. After we kids left for school, mama would do the cleaning,
laundry and when in season, the gardening. She would have to draw water
from the well in a water bucket with a chain and a pulley over the top
for our drinking water, washing dishes and cooking. She would "catch" rain
water in tubs and barrels sitting under the roof where it slanted in the
back of the house for washing clothes, baths and etc. She would have to
heat water on the wood stove to wash dishes, clothes and even for our baths
and head washings. We would take our baths in a galvenized wash tub. We
would wash our face and hands in a wash pan and drink water from a dipper
into a bucket of water which had been drawn from the well in the
back of the house. At night we had to wash our feet in the wash pan before
we went to bed. We had chickens and when we went barefoot in the warm weather,
chicken droppings were just about everywhere in the yard. We also had dogs
and cats most of the time. A pig sometime and of course the cow. Mama had
a Singer treadle sewing machine with which she would sew our clothes from
feed sacks and flour sacks. Her sister, my aunt would sew a lot for my
mom when she was around. We had no indoor plumbing back then, we didn't
even know what indoor plumbing was. Oh the joy of living as a kid and not
worrying about tomorrow. That was left up to our parents be it one parent
or two.
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