Mom made sure we were all up at 6:00 or so. Fleta had to get up and go down to the barn and milk Brownie. I did that at night. I was not responsible enough to get down there and back to the house in the morning. She was. Remember after we got up we had to go outside into the cold to go to the bathroom. We did not have indoor plumbing. I don't think we brushed our teeth either as I don't think we had brushes or toothpaste. There would only be one mirror and probably one comb to get our hair fixed. We only had 2 or 3 outfits so it was not too hard to decide what to wear. We only had one coat so that was easy too. I usually had one thing I liked and that was all. I wanted to wear it everyday. Same outfit...day after day. Momma would finally insist I could not keep wearing one thing everyday. Now, we had a big breakfast. There might be side meat fried, eggs fried (never scrambled), big homemade biscuits, oleo, fresh milk, cream for the oatmeal, and you could usually have all you wanted. I wanted the big biscuits with oleo. We did not usually have jam or jelly. If we had it, we ate it in one day with a spoon. We had only ONE pair of shoes so picking what shoes to wear was easy. We caught the bus about 7:10 I think. Maybe Fleta will remember. We rode Mrs. Wise's bus which was just a little thing with 3 seats. When Clayton was in school, we rode his bus.
I was usually excited to go to school. No one made fun of my clothes or my hair or my shoes. I was a little mean. They knew not to mess with me. But I really had lots of friends and kids liked me.
I remember drinking water from that bucket with a tin dipper at home. If we did not have water, I might have to walk to the spring and get a bucket but usually Mom saw to it that we did it the night before! I remember we stood around the wood stove where it was warm. We backed right up to it and almost would scorch our clothes. No indoor plumbing, no nice clothes, no nice shoes, one coat, but plenty of love and a lot of good home cooked meals. I would not trade with anyone!
2 comments:
Mama never had an alarm clock. I'll bet she got up a dozen times every night
We didn't have indoor plumbing till we moved to the city when I was twelve. Up till then, nobody seemed richer or poorer than us. In north Missouri, all the little girls wore home-made dressed with a bow in the back, just like me. Once we became city folks, I felt very out of place because all the girls had store-bought clothes.
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