Memories

Today is Friday, February 27, 2009. The sun is shining and the sky is blue as can be. I am so happy.
We have been reading Aunt Mabel's Memoirs. Glen reads out loud to me while I stitch on my quilt. Will I ever get it finished? YES !! I am determined to finish it. Right now I am quilting the side pieces. I still have to do the bottom edge and the top. Then add the Prairie Points all around and I am DONE.
Aunt Mabel, Dad Wahlquist's sister, spoke into a tape recorder for about 18 hours telling her story. Marcie, Glen's cousin Keith's wife, completed the transcribing and made it into a wonderful book. Thank you, Marcie!!
It is very interesting to hear all her stories. It has stirred a lot of memories of my own. Mabel was born in the early 1900's and lived until February of 1991. I was born in 1937 and am still alive. Well, somedays I think I am still alive.
As she described their living accommodations through the years, I couldn't help but be reminded of my own. And thinking about our grandchildren - they all have such wonderful living conditions. Each of them live in a nice home with hot running water and central heating. Most of them have never had to ride a train or a city bus. They go everywhere by car. What a plush life and they don't even realize it.
From the time my parents divorced when I was six years old, Mother and I had to walk everywhere we went or ride the city bus. We didn't have a car. Mother had never learned to drive. We couldn't have afforded one anyway. I didn't mind walking or riding the city bus. When we went to the grocery store we bought only as much as we could carry. Mother would carry a grocery bag in each arm. (Bags were the same size as now - all brown paper - no plastic.) And the clerk would fix two smaller bags for me - one for each arm- and we would head off home, about 5 blocks.
I liked to ride the city bus from Independence to Kansas City. We had to walk about 5 blocks to catch the bus and it took about an hour to get to KC. We went over there about once a month - to window shop or go to a movie. Once in awhile Mother had some business Downtown. KC was always referred to as Downtown. If we shopped or went to the movies in Independence it was Uptown.
If we took a longer trip we had to go by train or by the Greyhound bus. I rode the train with my grandmother each summer. She stayed with us during the school year and then went home to Sheldon for the summer. I would go with her - about three hours on the train. That was a great experience in my memory.
And what a wonderful thing hot water is? Coming right out of every tap in the house- bathrooms and kitchen. That is sheer delight every time I think of it. In our house in Independence we had an old water heater in the kitchen. It never worked properly and took so long for the water to heat that most of the time we just acted like there was no hot water. Washing the dishes meant heating a tea kettle full of water on the stove till it was boiling. Fill the dishpan and then cool it down some with cold water from the tap. The dish water would get colder and colder as you went along. We would put the kettle back on the stove and add hot water until we finished. I am sure glad I don't have to do that anymore.
Aunt Mabel mentions counter tops, too. I had forgotten that the old board cabinet top, painted white, was not as wonderful as the formica countertop I have now or the newer types now used in homes. One area right next to the sink was not painted. It was sort of like a big bread board with grooves for the water to drain off into the sink. And of course the dish drainer was metal. Plastics were not invented yet.
Everytime I get into the shower I thank God for hot water coming from the tap. The bathroom at home was a long ways from that old hot water heater. We did run the water long enough to get a bit of warmth in the old tub. And the bathroom was cold, cold, cold in the winter. We could heat it with an electric space heater which we turned on while we bathed. We didn't have a shower, only a big old bathtub with iron legs. That was in our house at 403 South Pleasant.
At least we had an indoor bathroom. Glen didn't have that until he was a senior in high school.
Twice in my life I've had to share a bathroom with other people. When we first moved to Independence in 1943, we had an upstairs apartment - two rooms with a small porch where we hung the clothes out to dry. The bathroom we shared with two other upstairs apartments. Our apartment was closest to the bathroom so it was easy to open the door to check if the bathroom was unoccupied. You had to remember to leave the bathroom door open when you left.
Then, believe it or not, in 1958 when Glen and I got married, we had an apartment in Junction City, Kansas. It was at the front of the house. There was another apartment in the back of the house. And we shared the bathroom. There was an upstairs apartment in the house, too. They were lucky. They had their own bathroom.
I never mind washing dishes nowadays, with all the hot water I need or want coming out of that faucet. I'm glad I never had to carry water. I am so thankful for indoor plumbing. And, of course, if I want, I can just load the dishes in the dishwasher and be done with it. But I sometimes savor that hot soapy water on my hands and think about the "not so good old days.
Washing clothes, what a wonder! With our easy washing machines all fixed to add water, hot or cold. All we have to do is push the buttons. Growing up, the washing was not so easy. We were lucky. Mother had a nice washing machine. She had washed with a wash board in her young years but by 1943 automatic washers were pretty easy to come by. We used the bathtub for our rinse water since there was not room in the bathroom for the customary square rinse tubs.
Once the clothes had sloshed around in the soapy water, one of us would run them through the wringer into the rinse water. We'd slosh them around until most of the soap was out and then we would run them through the wringer again into the old wooden bushel basket to take them out to the line to hang (in the summer - in the winter we had hanging places all over the house) to dry. There was so much humidity in the air in Missouri that they never got really dry, even in the summer. And the house was so cold in the winter. We had heavy drapes hung over all the doors and kept only the kitchen and the dining room warm with the space heater. Oh my! How I love my washer and dryer! And think of all the young people that take all of this so for granted. I sometimes wonder what memories they will share with their grandchildren. Who would ever dream how things change over the years? I can hardly wait to see.
Just a closing note to say how glad I am for living in this day and age. Aunt Mabel said she was glad to live in such exciting times. Well, me too. Life is good. And that's all for today.