Well, Internets, I’m in Salina , Kansas
Mom was the 7th kid, born 1921. Ten were in her family. Six girls, two boys, mom and dad. In one house, four bedrooms, one bathroom. Kitchen had an icebox and a wood-fired cook stove/oven. You put a big cardboard sign in your front window on the day the ice man came by, with the amount of ice you needed; 25, 50 or 75 pounds of block ice. He would pull the block down with tongs, go around to the kitchen and heft it up in the top compartment of the ice box.
The stove was fired with wood. I don’t even want to know how difficult that was. No hot water (they heated buckets on the wood stove). Washed the clothes that way. No dryer. You ran the clothes through a wringer and hung them outside. Six girls, two boys must have made wash day interesting.
For baths, same drill. Heat buckets of water from the pump on the stove; carry them through the dining room, living room, boy’s bedroom, mom and dad’s bedroom to the one bathroom in the corner of the house. Take a bath. Drain the water into the yard. Put on your clothes from the clothes line after ironing them with an iron heated on the wood stove and you’re all set to go out and walk to wherever you need to go. The boy’s Sunday shirts and dad’s shirt were starched with a mix that mom would make on ironing day.
Their dad had the car all week, traveling in western Kansas Kansas City
This all sounds like geezer-speak, but danged if I haven’t been impressed with all the things my mom’s family didn’t have. What they did have was a closeness that you don’t see too often these days.
All except for my mom they’re all still very close – in the dirt about a mile from here. And as one may or may not choose to believe, now in a better place with more conveniences.
It’s always something.
