Remembering Mama

Each summer when I listen to the weather report, I hear that record heat temperatures in the Ozarks were set in the summer of 1936. That was the summer my mom was carrying me. I was born in October of that year. There was no air conditioning in the little farmhouse outside Verona, MO. Mom cooked on a wood stove. There was no electricity until I was in upper elementary school.

About ten years before I was born, my dad's mom had passed away, leaving four younger brothers of my dad to be raised without a mother. The job fell to my mom. She took them into our home. She and my dad raised them along with my four sisters and me.

I can barely remember a gasoline powered washing machine with a wringer on top. Mom built a fire outside to heat water in a washtub. She carried the water to the screened-in back porch and poured it in the washing machine to do the weekly laundry each Monday. She had two clotheslines strung between two trees. When they were full, the clothes were spread over the barbed wire fence that separated the yard from the pasture. She cooked starch to use. When the clothes dried, they were stiff. She sprinkled them with water and wrapped them up in a sheet. Then she put her two old flatirons on the wood stove to heat them up to do the ironing. When the one she was using cooled off, she would put it on the stove and pick up the other one to use until it cooled off while the first one got hot. She never let her girls go out in public without starched and ironed dresses that she had made of feed sacks.

This was during the Great Depression so there was the added worry of what to feed the family. Mom told me once that she could remember going to the chicken house, sitting on a tomato crate, putting her head in her hands and crying because she didn't know what she was going to feed everyone. She remarked that she could still remember, after several years had passed, hearing one of my dad's brothers saying, "More beans, please." Beans, fried potatoes, and cornbread were served often. On Sundays, mom would wring the head off a chicken and we would have fried chicken. Thankfully, we never had to line up for soup behind the soup truck that came to town like many others did. I can barely remember standing beside my dad and seeing the line of folks holding their bowls, cups, and spoons, waiting for soup to be ladled into their containers.

Mom helped my dad plant a garden and milk cows. I can remember seeing her hands so chapped that they were cracked and bleeding. I don't ever remember seeing her have hand lotion. Things got easier for mom when my dad's brothers married and moved out of our home. Gradually the country came out of the depression and daddy built a house in town and opened a grocery store. He kept the farm and leased it out. Mom and another lady opened a restaurant in the back of the store and mom cooked there every day except Sunday.

Mom had only a scant sixth grade education but she knew to "stand by her man". When my sisters and I married, she told us each the same thing: "When you have problems ---and everybody does---don't come home. Work them out." Not one of us ever thought of divorce as an option. She had set a wonderful example for us and taught us to be faithful to our husbands.

I realize that many people have memories similar to mine and that my stories are not unique. I believe it is important to remember how things have been in the past and pass that information along to children of today so they will understand and appreciate the contributions that have been made. This Mother's Day, let's take a moment to say thanks to, or for, those moms who worked so very hard.