She says I Say Hmmm

It is not unusual for my daughter Melanie and I to talk about once a week for a couple of hours to catch up with each other. E-mails just don't quite cut it. Melanie has quite a lot on her plate with six children and homeschooling. So she has a lot to tell me about. Last week she told me she was going to ask for an extension on her deadline for a booklet that she is writing. She told me last night that even though I had disapproved of her getting an extension it worked out for the best. Well, I was shocked! How could she think that I had disapproved? She says I have a habit of saying, "Hmm" when I disapprove of something she says. She told me a lot about myself when she said that interesting little observation of hers. I caught myself on several occasions last night saying, "Hmm" to her. We laughed and laughed. She says that when I disagree with her decisions she is almost always right? I again said, "Hmm". We don't agree on politics, we don't agree on quite a few things, but you know what, that is what makes our relationship so much fun and soooo interesting. I love her to pieces and of that point we do not disagree.

My Mother's Kitchen

My mother’s kingdom was her kitchen when we lived on the farm. She could perform miracles in that room. It was twenty six feet long, and had no cupboards, only shelves. She also had what they called a kitchen cupboard which was a unit. Built into this unit was a flour mill which took up a fair amount of space. It had drawers, a counter, and a cupboard for dishes. Next to the cupboard I just described was our ice box. It attempted to keep our food cool. Mother would put ice in it on the top and it would melt into a pan underneath it. I don’t know where they got the ice, but someone must have delivered it. I can remember dad bringing ice into the house. It was covered with a piece of burlap. I suppose that helped to keep it from melting.
On the other side of the kitchen she had a cook stove that she threw cobs into. She could bake angel food cakes in a stove that she regulated by adding a few or a lot of corn cobs to. Beside that stove was a cob bin. Dad would fill that for her from ears of corn that he had shelled for the cattle. I can remember one time for a few days dad put a day old calf in that cob bin to keep him warm. His mom had died and he had to be hand fed. That was interesting to a little girl like me. Probably not mom. Next to that stove we had a smaller stove that was run by kerosene. Next to that was our kitchen sink with a pump attached to it for our dishes. We did not have running water for a long time.
At the end of the kitchen she had her washing machine and the milk separator. The milk separator separated the cream from the milk. She did that twice a day.
She made cottage cheese by letting it clabber on the cook stove, she churned her own butter, and we always had cream in our mashed potatoes. She frosted many cakes with whipped cream. I wonder why we were all chubby.
So that was our kitchen, the kitchen table and chairs was on the end by the windows. I asked my dad one time why he fell in love with my mom. He said that she always sat against the west window when they ate supper. The sun would shine on her hair and make a halo of gold and red. He said he knew that he had to have her for his own.
The kitchen was a happy place and I will remember always how good it smelled when Mother performed her miracles.

My First Vacation

I had never ridden in a car for five hours. I had never been on vacation before. I had never seen a lake before. It was so big I couldn’t tell where it ended. I doubted if it did.
We were in southern Minnesota at Lou and Ozro Baldwin’s house. It wasn’t a house it was a resort, my mom called it because it had lots of cabins that went with the house. I had never heard of such a thing.
Lou and Ozro had been friends of my mom and dad’s during the depression. I didn’t know what a depression was either, but I heard the grown ups talk about it a lot when I was little. The Baldwin’s had moved from Iowa to Minnesota and bought this resort and rented out the cabins to people like us who were on vacation. I was so excited, but much to my disappointment, we didn’t get to stay in a cabin, we stayed in their house, which was much nicer than ours, but it was still just a house.
In their house they had a little office where they rented fishing boats to people, took money for the cabins, sold fishing licenses, and had a little gift shop.
The first night we were there Mrs. Baldwin fried fish for our supper. It was delicious. Crispy and golden brown, but there was also something else on the platter that I just loved. My family kept looking at me and smiling as I attacked these little things that looked like golden crunchy cakes of some kind. I found out later that they were fish eggs. I didn’t care they were wonderful.
I got my first ride in a boat the next day. My father wasn’t a fisherman, but wanted to go for a boat ride. The whole family went. It was a little scary, but it was so beautiful out on that never ending body of water.
I can remember that the day that we left, I wanted to spend the fifty cents that I had in my little red change purse. I had saved it from my allowance. Mrs. Baldwin had a pair of swan salt and pepper shakers on her shelf for sale for fifty cents. I asked her if I needed two more cents for tax and she said that Minnesota didn’t charge tax. I to this day do not know if that was true, but I was able to take those beautiful little swans home. They were white with gold speckles on the wings and little pink rosebuds on the tips of the wings.
As I grew older and moved, the swans were moved with me. They sat on my knick knack shelf until I was well into my fifties and then they just disappeared. I have no idea what happened to them, at one point, one of them was cracked, but I still dusted them and protected them. I loved my little white swans.

Moving to Town

When I was eleven years old, the financial situation was not good for our family. There was a possibility that we were going to lose our farm. My mother always said my father was not a good gambler which you needed to be to be a good farmer. He would raise pigs then the market went down for pigs and up for cattle and so on.
The decision was made to sell the farm. The farm belonged to my grandmother. My parents rented it from her on a share crop deal. Drought, too much rain, and poor market choices were making it impossible to pay the rent. My grandmother decided to sell the farm which had been an inheritance from her father, and we moved to town.
The house that my parents chose cost two thousand dollars.
When I look back on my minds eye, it was not a nice house, but my brother and I loved it. My mother papered it and painted it inside and even bought some new furniture. We had never had any new furniture ever. Keith and I thought it was a palace. We had never lived in town before and there were an abundance of things we were introduced to that were never imagined.
The first change was that my mother went to work in a grocery store. She had always been home when we got home from school. I can only remember having a babysitter one time the first eleven years of my life. One reason was because my sister was eleven years older than I was, so she would stay home with us, but even that was seldom.
The secondary change because my mother worked until six o’clock was that it was my duty to peel potatoes and start them to cook at five thirty so that they would be done in time for supper. Well, there was a problem with that. I was and always have been a dreamer. If I did put the potatoes on to cook, I started reading or playing piano and the potatoes burned. If I didn’t remember to do the potatoes, supper was late and I was in big trouble. It seemed that I was always in trouble. I secretly was angry at my mother for working, I didn’t want to grow up instantly.
Another change was milk that was purchased at the store. It tasted terrible. We had fresh milk at the farm and it had cream in it. The new milk tasted like it had been cooked. Later on I learned that yes, it had been cooked.
We had a lot of friends when we moved to town. That was another problem. My mother worried all the time about who and what we were doing.
I can remember that my mother earned twenty five dollars a week. She worked in the butcher shop in the grocery store. She was always cold and not very happy.
My father worked for the Daily Times Newspaper in Cherokee as a linotype operator. I don’t know how much he made, but it wasn’t much. Keith and I knew better than to ask for money. The allowance had stopped when we moved to town. It was just expected to do your part because you were part of the family.
One day I decided to go to J.C. Penny Store just to look. I had never been shopping by myself before. As you can expect I found a dress I knew that I would die if I didn’t have it. I will never forget it. It was a variegated rose and pink chiffon with a pink under slip. It had three quarter length sleeves and a scoop neck. It was twelve dollars.
With all the nerve I had, I visited my mom at work which was not heard of. I told her about the dress. She listened and replied with the old stand by, “We’ll see.” Not another word was mentioned about the dress. The following Friday was her payday. She came home and handed me thirteen dollars and told me to go to Pennies and get the dress. I cried I was so happy. The reason I wanted the dress was that I was going to be the pianist at the school cantata that was going to be the next week-end. I will never forget that dress.
Keith and I didn’t always get along at that little house, in fact we had some horrible fights. Sometimes we would talk about the farm, but all in all we decided that living in town was good.

My Mom and Me

I was about thirteen years old and a bit stupid as most thirteen year olds are. I thought that if my mom could do something effortlessly so could I.
I belonged to 4-H and the county fair was coming up. The Director of my club wanted us all to enter something for the fair. I volunteered to make an angel food cake. My mother made countless angel foods and they were easy beans.
I told my mother what I had volunteered and man she went bonkers! “what, she said, you have no idea what you are doing!"
Well she made me do that cake twice before she was satisfied that the cake was satisfactory for the fair. This is how it went:
She stood behind me, never touching a utensil, but I am sure she wanted to grab them out of my hands and do it herself a million times.
Unlike today with a box mix that looks and tastes very good, in those days an angel food took either one dozen or thirteen egg whites. Each egg had to be separated one by one. If even one little speck of yolk got into the white, it contaminated the whites so that they would not whip up into a frothy mess. This in my estimation was ridiculous. After all the whites were separated they were put in a glass bowl and whipped stiff until a rubber spatula made a path through them. They could not be dry, but stiff enough to hold a peak.
Then the next thing the cake flour, yes, not all purpose, but cake flour had to be sifted several times until it was light and fluffy.
Then some sugar was added. Just a little bit at a time. I was a dumper, that was not how it happened in my mother’s kitchen.
After all the ingredients were put together to my mother’s satisfaction, I had to check the angel food cake pan. Even though it had been washed after the last cake had been made, it had to be washed again. If an angel food cake pan has the least bit of grease on it, the cake won’t raise.
After the pan had been rewashed, the batter was put in the pan one glob at a time. The batter then had to be spread out with a silver knife to make sure that there were no air bubbles in the batter. Believe you me, I thought this will never happen again. I could actually feel my mother breathing down my neck during this whole process.
The day came to take the cake to the fair. The judging proceeded and I was confident I would get a purple ribbon. I got a blue ribbon. Mom was kind, but reminded me that I had picked something way too difficult for a beginner. We brought the cake home and had it for a snack that afternoon. I didn’t think a blue ribbon was bad, but as my mom cut the cake she said, “oh my goodness” There was a hole in the cake that the judges had missed, that was as big as an egg.
You see the whole thing is, my mom was a professional baker. She baked for the local grocery store and for individuals. She had a reputation to maintain, I had yet to establish one. I lucked out. I never made another “from scratch” angel food cake again.

My Brand New Sunshine Dress

When I was five years old my grandma made me the most beautiful new dress for my birthday. It was bright yellow with what I called sunshines trimmed with red all over it. My mother told me I could not wear the dress until we went to my grandma’s house the following week.
I kept looking at my new dress that was hanging in the closet and wishing that I could just try it on. I just knew it wouldn’t hurt anything if I just tried it on for a little while.
So , of course, I did just that. Oh I can remember how pretty I looked.
My sister was eleven years older than I and we shared a room. On her dresser was an array of multi-colored bottles of fingernail polish. I had been told many times that I was not to touch that either. Life seemed to me too full of rules.
My new dress and it’s pretty sunshines and one bottle of fingernail polish looked so pretty together. I thought, “what could it hurt if I just put a little bit of polish on my nails?” That would be perfect. As I opened the bottle of polish it tipped upside down and ran all the way down the front of my new dress. I was terrified of what my mother and sister would do and say and I was so sad that I would not be able to wear my dress for my birthday.
I sneaked down the stairs and ran outside. I thought I had made a clean get away when I heard my mom yell at me not to run away. I can remember her words perfectly. She said, “You will have to come back, young lady, and you will get a spanking for disobeying me.” I had never had a spanking but I imagined that it was not a good thing.
I stayed out in the yard for a long time, but finally came back to the house. The “talking to” that I got was much worse than the little spanking that came afterwards. That has been sixty years ago and the memory is vivid to this day.

The Little Black Radio

There it was, the little black radio, high above my head on a little wooden shelf, right above where my mom worked in the kitchen. The radio was black with cursive letters in cream that said “Admiral.”
I never touched that radio even when I was grown. That radio was my mom’s. I have seen radios like that one at flea markets. In fact, just the other day I saw one. It was for sale for twenty five dollars. I have no idea how much my parents paid for that radio, but it certainly wasn’t that much.
My mother listened to “soap operas” on the radio while she worked. I did too. One that I remember was “Ma Perkins” That program lasted for fifteen minutes. The program was probably only about seven minutes long. She advertised Oxydol detergent.
Besides “soap operas” the radio had fun programs on it. One was Fiber McGee and Molly. Fibber was a great one for stuffing things in his closet until it would hardly close. Every time the program came on Molly would have him get in the closet for something, and the sound effects people would make it sound like everything under the sun was falling out of it. I have two Fibber McGee closets at my house. I stuff them as full as I can. I never have enough closet space. There was another was one I really liked. It was just for kids. It was called “Sky King” He had an airplane and always caught the bad guys. There’s only one more I can remember, and that was about the Canadian Mounties. It too, was like the Sky King show.
I would sit in the kitchen and listen to my stories just like my mom did. It was fun.
Mom and dad would listen to the radio in the evening. We had no television, so radio was our entertainment. My father also read to my mother while she was mending, or other quiet work in the evening. I never liked the books he read because they were geared towards grownups.
I can remember my dad reading to my mother when I was a teenager. My love for reading came from both parents. Mother loved to read too, she just didn’t have much time for it when I was little. One afternoon the radio had some rock and roll music come on
and I started dancing around and my mother grabbed my hand and started jitterbugging with me. I was shocked. I will never forget that day. She said, “Well you know I used to be a teenager, too.”
It is so difficult for children no matter how old they are to imagine their parents being young. The little black radio reminded me that mine once were.