For those of you who do not know, this is an iron. Does not even faintly resemble the Rowenta that sets in my sewing room and give me a burst of steam when I want it. In our kitchen in Nickerson, was a very big wood cook stove. It was made of cast iron and burned wood as the fuel source. It had a tank we kept full of water which came in handy for dish washing and all kinds of stuff. It was probably 3' by 2 1/2' and had an oven on the bottom part. That never made sense to me since heat rises, but that is how I remember it. The cooking area had several lids that could be lifted off to put more wood in when needed. It had a shelf above where momma kept the salt, pepper, sugar, and a grease can. The grease can was aluminum and after frying something, the excess grease was poured in there. It had a strainer in the top to keep out the crumbs. We used the grease over and over until it became "rancid". Can you believe that?
This was not our only source of heat for cooking. We also had a small stove with four burners that was powered by either butane or propane. This was used in case of an emergency. An emergency usually meant we had run out of wood for one reason or another. Since it was Jake's job to keep the wood pile chopped into manageable size logs, it was most always his fault! The "good" stove was also used for frying chicken on Sunday. I think that was because we were not supposed to work on Sunday. It was a day of rest. Cooking on the "good" stove was always fun. Jake and I did that. Oh, we fried the chicken and boiled the potatoes and I am sure momma made the gravy, although I learned how from some where!
We did not attend a formal church until I was in seventh grade. That was when momma got her cancer and had to have a hysterectomy. The ladies from the church brought us food and made our dresses for school that fall. Then we started attending the Christian Church up on Main Street between the school and the doctors office. More about that later.
Back to the kitchen. The water source was a hand pump and below it was mounted a sink with a pipe that run out the wall into the back yard for drainage. The health department's of today would have had an absolute stroke when they say the Muscovy ducks playing in the water hole back there. I am sure in this day and age, looking back on the living conditions, they would have been described as "squalor". However, I want to go on record right now and tell you that those were the happiest days of my life and I would not trade one minute of them for all the tea in China!
(That is what we used to say when we really liked something. We knew if we had all the tea in China we would be very rich and to not trade something for all the tea in China was the highest compliment we could make.)
In the center of the kitchen sat the "wringer washer." It was called that, because that is what it was. When we moved in momma had one that had a gasoline motor, but later she got the electric one with the safety feature on the wringer that if you got your hand caught in it and it was going to rip your arm off, you hit the lever on top and it popped open. The wringer was used to run the clothes through to "wring" the water out of them. Otherwise, we had to twist them by hand to get it out. So when wash day came (and if I looked at the tea towels, I would know what day it was, but it seems like it was Monday) we drug the "wash boiler" down from the hook and set it on the stove. Water was heated on the wood stove in the winter. Summer was different. We also had a "three legged" cast iron kettle in the yard. We pumped water into buckets and carried it to the kettle where the fire was blazing merrily and began to heat the water. Again Jake was expected to tend the fire, which meant feeding the fire god logs. Since we were extra clean, we had two rinse tubs. These had to be cold water. In the last rinse tub went just a tiny bit of "bluing" which gave the white clothes the hint of blue which made them appear more white.
But the most important part was the soap. Tell you where we got our soap. In the corner of the kitchen set a metal bucket. In that bucket went all the grease that we did not use for other things. When it was half full it was strained into a clean metal bucket. When the time was right, momma dripped water through pure wood ashes and made her own lye. This was poured into the warm grease and stirred vigorously with a hammer handle until it began to "trace". At the first sign of "trace" (which you actually have to see to know what it is) it was poured into a wooden box lined with an old tea towel. This process was a definite art. I have seen the soap set up on the way to the box and the hammer handle remain in the mass until all the soap had been grated and it was free at last. This lye soap varied in color from dark tan to pure white. The pure white meant that every thing had gone just right and it was perfect.
Mother was a pioneer woman that I have learned to appreciate more the last 30 years of my life than I ever did before. I make my own soap now with commercial lye that is called "sodium hydroxide" because the first time I listed "lye" as an ingredient my customers were afraid of it. And I can not buy it at the store anymore. I have to order it online and sign all kinds of affidavits that I will not be making "meth" with it. Phshaw!
I have no doubt repeated myself today and told you things I have already told you on this blog, but I will try to do better next time. It is just that my childhood was so important to making me who I am today, that I want everyone to know about it. I left home when I was 18 and was so happy to escape those early years and move on to bigger and better things. When I turned 50 I decided that I should rethink my childhood and I have become more fulfilled than ever and I want the whole world to know that the values that were instilled in me at my mother's knee are the driving force behind the woman I have become. Makes me sad to think what I could have accomplished on this earth if I had pulled my head out of my ass way back then.
