I can remember my mom walking down the hill countless numbers of times to get a pail of water. That is when I learned how to prime a pump. If the pump wouldn’t give you water you poured a little water down the neck of it and started pumping the handle and instantly water would pour out of the pump. This water she used for her chickens and outdoor use and sometimes to take to the house.
We had a little pump that was attached to our kitchen sink. It was a single sink about thirty inches long. The pump was red. She used this pump for dish water, laundry, bath water etc.
One day a man came to our house and he ran a cold water line from the pump down the hill to our house. My mother was so happy. She still had to heat water for everything, but she didn’t need to pump water for the chickens and all the other things she needed water for.
She put water into her copper boiler to heat on the cook stove to do her laundry. There were some things that needed to be stomped. The stomper was a wooden tool that was used instead of an agitator in a washing machine now days. The stomper was about four feet long with a flat wooden piece attached to it about a foot long. The stomper was worn smooth from the constant use that mother gave it. The clothes that were put in the boiler to be stomped were more delicate clothes like underwear and white shirts that my dad wore on Sundays. She also stomped the cloth diapers that my brother wore. She said stomping did a better job on them. We did have a washing machine that ran on kerosene, but it was a cranky old machine that sometimes, my mother said would “eat” the good clothes. It also leaked oil on the floor, I can remember my mother complaining about that.
Now that we had running water, she could use a faucet to fill pails of water to heat for our baths.
Baths happened on Saturday nights in a square tub in the kitchen. She would start the cook stove to heat the water and also heat the kitchen so we wouldn’t get cold. We all used the same water. I was happy when I was old enough to use the square tub. That meant that I wasn’t a baby any longer. I always had to use the kitchen sink for my bath until I was five. A blanket was put up on the kitchen doorway to provide privacy and to keep the heat in the kitchen. She would give us little slivers of homemade lye soap to “scrub” with. That’s what she always said, “Scrub good so you will be clean to go to church.” While we were bathing she laid out newspapers along the kitchen counter to polish our shoes. She was a firm believer in cleanliness is next to godliness.
Now days I don’t give running water a thought unless the pipes freeze, but I know in the days when we lived on the farm running water was a miracle
We had a little pump that was attached to our kitchen sink. It was a single sink about thirty inches long. The pump was red. She used this pump for dish water, laundry, bath water etc.
One day a man came to our house and he ran a cold water line from the pump down the hill to our house. My mother was so happy. She still had to heat water for everything, but she didn’t need to pump water for the chickens and all the other things she needed water for.
She put water into her copper boiler to heat on the cook stove to do her laundry. There were some things that needed to be stomped. The stomper was a wooden tool that was used instead of an agitator in a washing machine now days. The stomper was about four feet long with a flat wooden piece attached to it about a foot long. The stomper was worn smooth from the constant use that mother gave it. The clothes that were put in the boiler to be stomped were more delicate clothes like underwear and white shirts that my dad wore on Sundays. She also stomped the cloth diapers that my brother wore. She said stomping did a better job on them. We did have a washing machine that ran on kerosene, but it was a cranky old machine that sometimes, my mother said would “eat” the good clothes. It also leaked oil on the floor, I can remember my mother complaining about that.
Now that we had running water, she could use a faucet to fill pails of water to heat for our baths.
Baths happened on Saturday nights in a square tub in the kitchen. She would start the cook stove to heat the water and also heat the kitchen so we wouldn’t get cold. We all used the same water. I was happy when I was old enough to use the square tub. That meant that I wasn’t a baby any longer. I always had to use the kitchen sink for my bath until I was five. A blanket was put up on the kitchen doorway to provide privacy and to keep the heat in the kitchen. She would give us little slivers of homemade lye soap to “scrub” with. That’s what she always said, “Scrub good so you will be clean to go to church.” While we were bathing she laid out newspapers along the kitchen counter to polish our shoes. She was a firm believer in cleanliness is next to godliness.
Now days I don’t give running water a thought unless the pipes freeze, but I know in the days when we lived on the farm running water was a miracle
I missed this one. A miracle indeed! And I complain about doing laundry. tsk. tsk.
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