Mom's Story - 3rd. Installment

Mom's SHere's another installment of Mom's story. I have it all laid out to print in book form and I believe I'm up to 125 to 130 pages, in that layout. I'm up to page 11 in what I've already posted here on the blog, so you can see there's a lot more to come.

I hope that you are enjoying the read as much as I enjoyed typing it up from her notes and proofing it a little. I thought she did a really good job remembering, considering she didn't start until she got down here, so would have been 87 years old. She was a sharp little lady.

Enjoy.....

I was the oldest and was to watch the younger kids and do the dishes. If Ma and Dad would be gone over dinner, I would have to make lunch – milk toast or graveyard stew. Hot milk over toast with sugar sprinkled on it. No butter. Graveyard stew was canned tomatoes put over toast or toast broken in tomatoes when it was hot. Sometimes hot canned tomatoes with macaroni in.

When Ma was home for lunch we’d have pancakes or fried cornmeal mush with Karo syrup on it. No maple syrup. Only people who made maple syrup could have it. Ma would make vegetables out of the garden. It was my job to peel them and cut them up. She also would make fried or canned meat and we’d have cake. I could mix up a cake when I was in 4^th. grade and it would be good. We had plenty of home canned food.

Our parents made it go in hard depression times. When I was 14, I went to work for ladies who had new babies. I would have to cook meals and wash clothes while the lady was sick. I did that for $3.00 a week and could get new shoes that I needed, or I gave it to Ma and she’d get what I needed.

School vacations were fun because I could go barefooted until Sunday. Then had to put shoes on for church, and we always had to go.

When I was 16, I went to Milwaukee and worked for people for $5.00 a week. I hired out to a family who needed someone to keep house and watch the older children when there was a new baby. Then at 17, I got $7.00 a week, and I could manage and save some for myself. I could go on city buses all over town and wasn’t afraid of going anywhere on the rapid transit car to visit people I knew from up north on my Thursday off work.

I had to go to the dentist to get my teeth filled. I had toothaches, and he did all the teeth that needed filling.

***********

Well, we'll stop this time with the dentist. I still find it hard to believe that you could actually save money and do stuff on $7.00 a week. Now that'll barely buy two gallons of gas. Isn't that depressing!?!?!

Till next time.
JB