Random thoughts from my childhood

We were pretty poor when I was a child. My dad was 63 when I was born in 1953 and had a sixth-grade education. He wasn't able to find much work at his age and hauled coal to supplement what my mother could make by cleaning houses and taking in laundry. We didn't have an indoor bathroom, although we did have running cold water in the house. Water had to be heated on the stove. The house was the one that my great-grandfather built in 1887 and has always been and still remains in our family. My brother has owned it since 1961.

Mom had a wringer washer and a big rinse tub. And, of course, all the clothes were hung outside to dry, summer or winter. I can remember her starching all those white shirts and nurses uniforms and caps in that blue liquid starch. It was my job to stir it up. I had the easy part. Oh, and she would let me iron the handkerchiefs. The men's were boring white, but I loved the ladies' hankies. No two were the same, and I thought we must be rich, because Mom had hankies just like those rich ladies. They weren't really rich, just a little better off than we were, but it seemed as if they were to me. I still iron shirts in the same order that Mom taught me.
1. Right sleeve, cuff first and spread out.
2. Left sleeve.
3. Yoke.
4. Back.
5. Collar.
6. Left front.
7. Right front.

We had beans every day for supper, except for Sunday when we would have fried or baked chicken. Mom put up vegetables in the summer. She made lots of sauerkraut, pickles, pickled beans and corn. We were of German ancestry, after all. There were also jellies. My favorite was the wild plum. I've always liked jelly and jam that is a little tart.

We had our own milk when the cow was fresh and Mom made her own butter, cottage cheese and buttermilk. I always begged to churn the butter, but she would say, No, you're too little. I couldn't get the rhythm just right. You sang a little rhyme...Come, butter, come. I can't remember the rest. Then she would gather the butter out of the liquid and form it into a ball, making sure to get as much of the whey out as possible. The best part of butter-making day was slathering a fresh slice of bread with the freshly made butter and eating it very slowly to savor each mouthful.

Every Spring, my dad would go to the post office and come home with a box full of baby chicks. Usually a couple hundred. They had to stay in the kitchen by the coal stove to keep warm. So exciting for a little girl!

The brooder house wasn't heated, but when they got too big, Dad would move them all out there and sleep with them on cold nights so they wouldn't freeze to death. All he had to keep the brooder warm was a dim light bulb and his body heat. Can you imagine doing that now? Of course, most of the chicks were destined at eight weeks of age to become meat for the deep freeze. On butchering day, my Aunt Ruth would come over and help with the scalding and plucking after Daddy chopped off their heads. Then she and Mom would dress them. I have no idea what they put them in after that, because there sure were no Ziploc bags back then. She always gave Aunt Ruth some dressed chickens to take home as pay for helping out. The rest became our Sunday dinners for the rest of the year.

Of course, they always kept hens for eggs and we had them every morning for breakfast along with biscuits. They were always fried soft and I would beg Mom to mash them up for me. Sometimes she liked to soft-boil her eggs and I still eat them that way occasionally. Mom made biscuits every day of her life with Dad. When he passed away at 73, she hardly ever made biscuits again. I wonder if she was just tired of making them or they reminded her too much of Dad.

An addendum: I found this churning song from Eastern Kentucky. It isn't the one my mother sang, but I like it.

Churning Song
(as collected in Eastern Kentucky)

Sing to the tune of “Farmer in the Dell”

Churn churn churn, this is churning day,
Til the golden butter comes the dasher must not stay.
Pat pat pat, make it smooth and round,
Now the golden butter’s done won’t you buy a pound.

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This hand-painted Delft ornament was brought to me by my dear husband from Amsterdam when he was there on business.