Do you remember

This is really going to be a rambling ride.

 My baby sister emailed her comments and she started a storm in my mind, she said you forgot to tell the washing machine was the old wringer type and it was in the basement and there were steeps steps going to the outside thru iron doors (you know like the one in the song Playmates slide down my cellar door) mom would carry clothes, bedding etc. by the basket full and hang them to dry on lines she would place every Monday morning and take down at the end of the day, roll up and store with the clothes pins which were placed in a long style peach basket, I remember if something was badly stained and rubbing on a wash board wouldn't take out all of the stain, she would carefully lay it on the grass to dry (believe it or not that would work, the stain would diminish to near gone) and now that I have you in the basement I'll take this chance to explain everything that basement meant to all of us, follow carefully.

 First I would like to say this was as clean as the rest of the house for every Saturday we would scrub the floor down with a push broom and soapy water, rinse and let dry, you see on bad days the kids would play down there, we would roller skate, play laugh in the dark.

 Now I have to tell you we had extra boards that we stored down there,  were for our dining room table, well being kids we thought they would be fun to play laugh in the dark with, we would place two big round wash tubs with water on the floor just far enough apart so the extra table boards would fit across, you know on the very edge of one board on one wash tub and the other extending across to the other wash tub right on its very edge, then we would blind fold

the kid we were taking thru the laugh in the dark,

 Needless to say with water and wood we managed to ruin the boards, but boy did we have fun and laugh, when the board slipped and the kid got all wet, thru all of this mom held on to her sanity and lived a good long life. 

Well when my oldest sister was a teenager we had converted our furnace from coal burning to gas, so we tore down the wood coal bin, scrubbed till there was no trace of where it had been, then instead of the yearly white wash job on the walls, we painted with a shiny finish light green paint, a room size linoleum was laid on one side with porch furniture set around the Victrola, we thought it was end of all ends in Victrola it was electric, you didn't have to wind it up.

 This came just in time for me to learn the Jitterbug, you see my older sister was in high school and she needed someone to practice with and you guessed it I was available, those early years of practice helped me when I finally went to high school, I was privileged to have a circle form around me and my partner at the schools sock hops we attended on the weekends.

 By the way if you noticed I always refer to it as our basement it was a big no no to say cellar in our house, just as we referred to the top floor as the third floor, not attic.

 We had a basement, ist floor w/living room, dining room and kitchen, 2nd floor  had 3 bedrooms, and the third floor which had linoleum on the floors and wallpaper, this made 3 more bedrooms, one was heated, the older kids slept in the unheated rooms and we covered with blankets and piled warm winter coats on top of us to sleep and stay warm. 

 

I just thought of something else that I think is funny, we had those old style mattresses, when you used them long enough your body made a deep crevice (don't know if this is the correct word) in the shape of your body, you couldn't lie anywhere but there, even if you tried you soon rolled into it.

I don't know how many of you ever used a coal furnace to heat your home, but we did, mom would get up early while we were all snug in our beds, go to the basement and shake the old coals down, and shovel in a bunch of new coal, then come back to the kitchen, close the door, turn on the oven, put on a big pot to make oatmeal in, then since there were seven kids to feed, she would put at least a dozen pieces of bread on the rack in the oven and make toast, and she would never forget to watch to make sure when it was time to turn the bread over and then take out before it burnt. Now it's time to call upstairs and call out rise and shine, time to eat, we would all scurry down to the nice warm kitchen and eat oatmeal, cocoa and toast with mom's homemade jellies.  Then she would take the youngest over to the kitchen sink and wash us up to get ready for school or whatever, she had our clothes all laid out from the night before, those that could dress themselves did, the younger one's she took care of, all while the older ones were upstairs washing up, brushing teeth etc. and getting themselves dressed and making the beds.  All four girls wore long finger curls, so we would go to the kitchen sink one at a time and stand in front of mom while she would put her finger in a piece of our hair comb it around her finger, wet the comb and stroke it over and over our hair on her finger then when she pulled her finger out, walloh a finger curl, she made probablyabout ten curls in each head, then it was the boys turn, no long finger curls lol for them.  After she saw us out the door she took the little ones up stairs to our one and only bathroom and taught them how to brush their teeth and get herself dressed for the day, altho some mornings after she fixed the coal in the furnace she would dash off to church, walking 4 city blocks and be back in time to start the breakfast ritual. I still am amazed at that woman.

We didn't have lunch rooms at the school back then so we all came home for lunch, it was usually peanutbutter and jelly and some kind or fruit with a glass of milk, then stand at the sink for a touch up on the curls and comb over for the boys, then up to the bathroom to stand in line to brush our teeth and whatever else had to be done, off to school again, usually jumping rope in the middle of the street all the way, remember we walked 4 city blocks to school also, we went to Catholic school so the school and church were side by side, well not exactly, it was in a big square, on one street there was the church and rectory where the priest lived, then around the corner were two school buildings one for elementary, second for middle school, then around that corner was th gym and the custodians house, then around that corner was the nuns home and and entrance to our play yard and the side of the church,our play yard was asphalt and it was in the middle of the big square, I know I ramble, can you follow me?

Okay now it's time for supper, we ate that in the dinning room, at this meal eleven people sat down at excatly 6pm, seven kids, two maiden aunts, and mom and dad. We called it supper, we thought only the really rich people ate dinner, anyway it always consisted of meat, potatoes and two vegetables, and the first time we passed everything around, then said a blessing, the second time we had to say please pass the whatever, if there was anything left after that we could say excuse me and reach, no one could leave until we gave thanks and my dad left the table, now the fun begins, cleaning off the table everyone pitched, my aunts,mom and the three older kids, after the table was cleared mom and her sisters joined my dad and smaller ones in the living room, leaving the older to clean the dishes and the kitchen and we couldn't leave until one of the adults approved of the job we did, oh there was three, one washed, one dried, and one put thedishes away, now time to sit at the dinning room table and do our home work, after that we could lay on the floor in front of the radio and listen to maybe Red Skelton, different things on different nights. Now it's time to get ready for bed, remeber one bath room, we all were asleep the minute our heads hit the pillow can you imagine how my mom felt, because if fixing meals wasn't enough work, mondays she did the wash and hung it out to dry, tuesdays she ironed and patched the clothes and put them away, wednsday she did the shopping, I forget what she did on thursday and friday, but saturday we all cleaned the house, and it would take hours to tell you what that entailed so I'll leave it for another day, oh I forgot to say Sunday afternoon was our big meal and mom baked a cake or pie or something only on sunday did we get dessert.  Now I'll let you go.

Remember when you smile you may make another person smile!  gg

I went back in my archives, I wanted to see just how bad I really was  and found out I was, a lot of misspelled words, the punctuation was atrocious, and last but not least I wrote just like I speak, never taking a breath, or as my mother would say never coming up for air, therefore very few new paragraphs. Now some of you have read this before, and I don't know if any of you have gone back in my archives, so please let me know if you would like me to bring some of these old ones back, so you can see how I arrived, lived and why I named it Do You Remember? Please tell me in your comments.

gg/Jackie

The Innocence of Youth

I didn't know what to call this, you tell me do you think the title fits?

Now I don't know where to start, I think first I'll start by telling you my mom was raised on a farm with her 14 siblings and she  only had an elementary schooling, I can't remember how many years, but don't let that fool ya she's a real smart cookie, my dad came from a very wealthy family and had two sisters, both of their mothers died when they were young, mom was very young maybe 5 and she was sent to live with a neighbor farmer because her dad had to run the farm with her older siblings and he didn't want her in an orphanage, he wanted her on weekends, it was the neighbors that taught my mom to cook, they would make the the biscuit dough and kneed it then stand mom on box to reach the table, give her a large floured glass and let her roll out the dough then turn the glass over and cut out the bicuits and lay them on the cookie sheet, and when the hired farm hands would come to breakfast they would see her and say Rosie did you make our breakfast again, ummm ummm ummm now I know I'm hungry, well this pumped her and she tried harder and harder each time and she loved helping in the kitchen, dad claims that is why she is such a good cook, now speakning of dad, his dad remarried, he had a step mother, she instructed him to call her the Mrs., I don't know the truth of this but dad said she didn't like boys, so she talked his dad into sending him off to military school and from their he joined the navy, I guess he was a good looking dude, they say he looked just like Nelson Eddie, singer/movie star of yesteryear, I saw pictures of him when he was young and yes he did look like Nelson.

Well back then they had what was called (my mind just went blank I can't think of a word) anyway it was a school for young women and men, called a college to teach such things as proper english, secretarial skills for women and I really don't know what they taught men, anyway the very first day of school the buzz was Duke was back from the navy and coming to school, well mom said she didn't know him and it didn't make her any difference she was going to the college to learn to be the secretary so she could get a job and take care of herself, I forgot to tell you her two sisters attended that same college as they called it, along with her, well the buzz got louder, so mom turned to see what the noise was about and loand behold my dad came up and kissed her on the cheek and told her she was the prettiest girl there and he planned on marrying her some day.Now to make a long story short, they married shortly thereafter and stayed married for 64 years.

Now I have to tell you mom was a Catholic, and dad's dad was high up in the Masons, and I don't know how it is now but back then it was a big NO NO, so my dad was disowned and disinherited, and it is said from a lot of money.

So here is where the journey begins, times were hard, jobs were hard to find, mom and dad already had two children, so they took off with moms two sisters and the two kids in the only thing they owned, a car, and they took off from Iowa to find work, they figured if they were lucky one or two of them could find work and one could stay home and take care of the kids, they did this all the way from Iowa to Kentucky where they had to stop so mom could give birth to another brother, things weren't working out so well, work wise that is, so they got back in the car and drove to the big city of Cincinnati, they were pretty lucky getting jobs that lasted more than one day but nothing permenate, at least two or three of them were working pretty steady at jobs here and there, so they stayed.

We moved around a lot, I don't know if they couldn't pay the rent or we would out grow the place, anyway the car went Kaput so it was just a memory, then one time when they were looking for a new place to live and acquaintence said he thought payments on a place of their own would be as cheap as rent, so they listened, and we had a little red brick house on a dead end street with a large woods that took up the other side of our street.  Did you ever hear of the WPA well it was a government  plan to help people have a job, they built bridges, roads and parks etc, if you ever visit Cincinnati you can visit some gorgeous parks that were built by the WPA, back to the story and the large woods across the street from our house, the WPA decided it would be a nice place to build a park, with a ball diamond, large luxerios lawns and a beautiful overlook of the City of Cincinnat, the Ohio River and Kentucky just across the river from us, then they left a woodsy part the was kind of down in a hollow where all the neighborhood boys built tree house, explored and fought wars by shooting with their fingers, all summer long.

Now I just have to tell you this one last thing, then I'm going back to bed, did I tell you I woke up about 3:30am I was having a terrible night mare, so here I am at 4:15am trying to tell this story, sure hope you can follow this one. Back to the last thing I wanted to tell you, I was about 4 yrs. old when this was taking place, and I thought we were rich and my dad was building a play ground for us kids and our friends, I don't know how old I was when I knew the truth of the story, but to tell the truth if you havent' figured it out by now I tend to be a dreamer of sorts and I secretly still think my dad did that for us, and you might say I'm right he just did it for a different reason, put food on the table and clothes on our backs.

Maybe some other day I will pick up on this story and tell some more about my mom and dad and the two aunts that lived with us all of their lives.

Remember to keep a smile on your face, it'll make you look younger.